Strategic Ideological Alliances

"ISIS has humiliated the top sheiks of Diyala and has done horrible and unforgivable crimes against people here."
"They tried to vandalize the tribal system and break its ties."
Abu Othman Al-Azawi, Aza Sheik, Iraq

Smoke rises after an U.S.-led air strike in the Syrian town of Kobani October 8, 2014. U.S.-led air strikes on Wednesday pushed Islamic State fighters back to the edges of the Syrian Kurdish border town of Kobani, which they had appeared set to seize after a three-week assault, local officials said. The town has become the focus of international attention since the Islamists' advance drove 180,000 of the area's mostly Kurdish inhabitants to flee into adjoining Turkey, which has infuriated its own restive Kurdish minority and its NATO partners in Washington by refusing to intervene. (Reuters/Umit Bekas)

Agreed: Iraqi police and military officials to supply weapons to two tribal regiments whose total battle force is comprised of 1,150 fighters. That would gain Iraq's military additional strength in fighting numbers through the allegiance of the tribes determined to fight alongside government security forces against the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham. So much to the good.

And good to their word, the two tribal regiments fought in collaboration with Iraqi government troops, and Shiite militias -- no doubt distinguishing themselves as real fighters as opposed to the penchant by Iraqi troops to turn and run in a panic of fear -- enabling the liberation of 13 villages from ISIS, in Diyala province.

The forces battling the ISIS militias have seen little success realized, on the other hand, from the U.S.-led air strikes. Meant to help drive the terrorists from territory seized in Iraq and Syria, only limited usefulness has resulted from the airstrikes. The Iraqi government's military strategy now revolves around a long-term plan to integrate Sunni tribal fighters within national-guard units in the provinces that are Sunni-dominated and where ISIS has made its greatest gains.

Needless to say, had the Shiite-led government of Nouri al-Maliki done the honourable, useful, fair and practical thing and integrated the Sunni Northern Awakening militias that had fought alongside U.S. forces from 2006 forward into the mostly Shiite military, there would have been no alliances between Sunni Iraqis and the ISIS contingents now in the ascendancy in northern Iraq.

The agreement with the Aza tribe could certainly serve as a template for future such agreements. But it didn't come about as government policy, but rather as the initiative of an Iraqi brigadier general, lacking orders from Baghdad. It offers a hope for projected long-term cooperation between the Shiite-majority security forces and the hitherto-ignored Sunni tribes.

Government forces and some Sunni tribal leaders are now brokering their own arrangements of convenience that have concluded with a patchwork of informal alliances battling ISIS. In the past week tribal fighters fought alongside government forces in most of the more significant clashes in a clarifying demonstration of the success that could be achieved in overcoming the Islamic State forward momentum.

Members of the Jubouri tribe working with Iraqi security forces and a Shiite militia have been fighting ISIS 80 kilometres north of Baghdad. In some instances the agreements come complete with the resolve to arm tribal fighters. Even cash payments by the government are occasionally involved. With other agreements it is by the understanding that regardless of historical animosities between Sunni tribes and the central government, practicality and the efficacy of forces of numbers bring them together.

An Obeidi tribal sheik, Wasfi Al-Aasi, head of a council of tribes in opposition to Islamic State jihadists explained in an interview that most tribes fighting in cooperation with government forces do so from necessity, with no contracts or guarantees. "The Iraqi government and the coalition should arm us and support us because it's us who are on the ground."