Protests in Baghdad throw administration’s Iraq plan into doubt

President Obama’s plan for fighting the Islamic State is predicated on having a credible and effective Iraqi ally on the ground in Prime Minister Haider al Abadi.

And in recent days, the administration had been optimistic, despite the growing political unrest in Baghdad, about that critical partnership, The Washington Post reported on Sunday.

But that optimism — along with the administration’s strategy for battling the Islamic State in Iraq — was thrown into severe doubt after protesters stormed Iraq’s parliament on Saturday and a state of emergency was declared in Baghdad.

The big question for White House officials is what happens if Abadi — a critical linchpin in the fight against the Islamic State — does not survive the turmoil that has swept over the Iraqi capital.

The chaos in Baghdad comes just after a visit by Vice President Biden that was intended to help calm the political unrest and keep the battle against the Islamic State on track.

As Biden’s plane was approaching Baghdad on Thursday, a senior administration official described the vice president’s visit — which was shrouded in secrecy prior to his arrival — as a “symbol of how much faith we have in Prime Minister Abadi.” 

After 10 hours on the ground in Baghdad and Irbil, Biden was hurtling toward his next stop in Rome. The feeling among the vice president and his advisers was that Iraqi politics were on a trajectory to greater calm and that the battle against the Islamic State would continue to accelerate. Some hopeful advisers on Biden’s plane even suggested that Abadi might emerge from the political crisis stronger for having survived it.

No one is talking that way now. “There’s a realization that the government, as it’s currently structured, can’t hold,” said Doug Ollivant, a former military planner in Baghdad and senior fellow at the New America Foundation. “It’s just not clear how the Iraqis get out of this. I just don’t see how they will.”

The president and his top aides have pointed to battlefield gains against the group in Iraq as proof that the administration’s much-criticized strategy was working. In the past 18 months, the Islamic State has lost more than 40 percent of its territory in Iraq, according to US officials. 

Source : MENA