Forces Under IS Banner Begin Infighting

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Sunni tribes in Iraq that have been fighting under the black banner of the Islamic State (IS) have declared they will only pledge allegiance to the jihadists after the fall of Baghdad.

Their announcement came days after the Reuters news agency reported that in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city that fell to the rebels last month, IS had picked up dozens of former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party because they had not made their vows to the new caliphate declared by IS.

Although there has been no independent confirmation of the report, it is seen as the start of infighting between the different factions gathered under the IS banner.

After crossing from Syria into Iraq the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria -- or ISIS as it was then still called -- was joined by a number of Iraqi groups and organizations.

Among them was the Iraqi Tribal Revolutionaries, whose spokesman Sheikh Raad Abdul Sattar Suleiman told the pan-Arab Asharq Al-Awsat daily that the tribe is holding off on pledging allegiance to the IS. Suleiman is a member of the Dulaim tribe, which counts about three million members.

“Iraqis are prepared to accept help from any party in order to defeat the gang that is ruling Iraq,” Suleiman said, referring to the Shiite government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. “We are Iraqis; we can change Maliki and his rule, and we will change the whole political process in Iraq.”

He stressed that Iraq’s Sunni Arab tribesmen – not IS – had led the fight against government forces.

 “We are the ones who liberated Anbar and Mosul. ISIS does not have more than 2,000 fighters, while there are millions of tribesmen who are fighting this government to end its oppression and corruption.”

At the same time, former senior Baath-members are heavily involved in the push by Iraqi Sunnis to reclaim power. Proof of this was found on memory sticks confiscated at the home of an IS military official, Abu Abdul Rahman al-Bilawi, after he was killed in Mosul before the city fell on June 10.

Two key deputies of IS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who are charged with managing the territories controlled by the group, formerly held senior posts in the Iraqi military.  They are a former major general in Saddam’s army, and a former lieutenant colonel in the Iraqi military's intelligence core.

According to a report by Britain’s The Telegraph newspaper, some of the senior men working as “governors” under both deputies appear to have previous affiliations to the Baath party, or al-Awda (the Returning), as the movement calls itself now.

Discontent in the insurgent ranks is reportedly on the rise since the secular ex-Baathists are not as radical as the jihadi fighters they have been fighting alongside.

When IS started demolishing Sufi shrines near Mosul, the Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order protested. This Sufi military band is said to be led by Saddam’s former deputy Izzat Al-Douri, and to have set up front groups of Baathists, unified under the General Military Council for Iraq's Revolutionaries (GMC).

There are reports of skirmishes between the two in the Diyala province and assassinations of IS leaders. According to the reports, in two weeks IS lost two leaders and a number of their assistants.

As IS wants to quell possible dissident amongst the Iraqis inside its caliphate, 12 moderate Sunni clerics were killed in Mosul.

Only two days after the fall of Mosul, IS fighters killed the imam of the city’s Great Nurridin Mosque, Muhammad al Mansuri, according to a UN official. Just four weeks later, Baghdadi held his first Friday sermon in public in the very same mosque.

Two days later, 12 other imams who refused to pledge allegiance to IS were executed, the UN reported.

Recently, IS showed Iraqi Sunnis what would happen if they do not conform to its rule: the village of Zowiya, near Tikrit, was changed to ruins, with 18 dead, and IS heralding the “cleansing” of the village in an Internet posting. It warned that “all those who may even think about fighting the Islamic State and conspiring against the caliphate can know what their fate will be.”

As reported by the McClatchyDC news site, the village was home to many military officers and provincial government employees. Rumors spread that some villagers were plotting to form a rival force to counter the extremists – or Sahwa, the Sunni militia formed in 2006 to fight al-Qaeda.

The IS wants “to tell the tribes that you cannot repeat what you did in 2006 and 2007,” one of the villagers said.

In an apparent move to try to pry Sunnis away from their uneasy allegiance to IS, in Baghdad a former member of the Sunni resistance against the prime minister, Meshan Jibouri, has been appointed by the Maliki government to make the Sahwa ready for the fight against IS.