MESOP TODAYS Iraq Situation Report – August 21 – 24, 2015 by: Sinan Adnan,Theodore Bell, Patrick Martin & ISW Iraq Team

 SOUTH KURDISTAN (IRAQ)Key Takeaway:   The government of PM Abadi is using its control over the ISF to protect anti-corruption demonstrators from local authorities south of Baghdad. The new dynamic emerged on the 21-22 of August when the SLA-led provincial government of Babil used anti-riot police to disperse demonstrators near the local government headquarters in Hilla, the capital of Babil province, and imposed a curfew on the city. PM Abadi subsequently ordered the Babil Operations Command to cancel the curfew and ordered the Iraqi Army (IA) to provide security for demonstrators in central Hilla. In addition, the mayor of Hindiya, a district east of Karbala claimed that a demonstration on August 23 was composed of supporters of Dawa Party leader Nouri al-Maliki, who attacked the mayor’s building and angrily called for the removal of the Hindiya council and mayor.

The claims of the mayor were not confirmed but it is important to watch for how inter-party politics affect the demonstrations. Potentially another indication of political competition undermining the movement at the provincial level, unidentified assailants attacked demonstrators in Basra on August 22 at a sit-in in front of the governor’s building while security forces assigned to protect the building reportedly did not intervene, causing demonstrators to close the protest site for security concerns.

The ISF may face challenges in ensuring peaceful protests continue, especially in Baghdad. The leader of popular Shi’a religious group the Sadrist Trend, Moqtada al-Sadr, ordered his Baghdad-based followers to participate in the upcoming Friday demonstrations in central Baghdad, on August 28. The participation of the Sadrist Trend’s large, active support base would likely cause the upcoming demonstrations to be the largest this summer. Al-Sadr claims that his supporters will participate for nationalist, rather than sectarian or political reasons. However, the sheer expected number of participants and their political affiliation raises concerns regarding ISF’s ability to keep the demonstrations peaceful, especially if Sadrists rivals such as AAH attempt to cause instability. The Sadrists have so far been supportive of PM Abadi, and this call is most likely an effort by Sadr to maintain his reputation and stance as defender of the peoples’ rights in the face of corruption. The demands of the Sadrists are unlikely to diverge from those of the majority of the demonstrators in Baghdad which are directed at corruption at all levels.

ISIS is defending in Ramadi, attacking in Baiji, and probing ISF defenses near Samarra and Haditha. Over the last week, ISIS has demonstrated its operational capability on each of these fronts, in addition to the reported use of mustard gas against Kurdish Peshmerga positions in northern Iraq in Makhmour and recent high casualty VBIED attacks in Diyala and Baghdad. ISIS’s attacks near Ramadi are part of its main defenses to keep the ISF out of the city while ISIS builds static defenses inside. ISIS’s attacks on other fronts are likely diversions to pull the ISF’s attention away from Ramadi, as in the case of Haditha, and to split the attention of Iraqi Shi’a militias between their primary efforts in Fallujah and Baiji. However, some of them are also key terrain objectives for ISIS. ISIS likely seeks to control both Baiji and Haditha, for example, both prized because they are gaps in ISIS’s consolidated control and because they are they house major infrastructure vital to the Iraqi state. ISIS will seize the opportunity to control them while the ISF is concentrated in Ramadi. ISIS has launched simultaneous attacks upon Baiji and Ramadi several times in the past since the beginning of 2015; it is an ISIS signature and a repeatable play. It is therefore essential that the ISF maintain its defenses on fronts away from Ramadi where ISIS is attacking while the ISF makes gains against ISIS’s defenses in Ramadi.