The fact that ISIS has managed to attack in and around Baghdad is an anecdotal yet strong indicator that during this time of multiple crisis, the terror group is looking to move from its recession into a guerilla insurgency back towards committing more complex and planned attacks.
The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have clearly been far and wide; Western powers have been reeling under the pressure of the virus, with the death toll crossing the 80,000 mark in the US itself. Europe has been under stringent lockdowns, economies reeling under pressure from shuttered factories and offices, with millions facing a stark future of unemployment and uncertainty.
However, despite the large media coverage of how the West has been ravaged by the virus, some other states in other regions may face a more existential crisis threatening the ‘state’ itself. As the COVID19 crisis unraveled, there was already a crisis being played out which perhaps did not envisage it getting embroiled with the pandemic. The oil price war between OPEC and non-OPEC members unfolding since late 2019 was an event that not many paid heed to, it was a political play over a commodity critical to the global economic system that periodically surfaces, making it not an unexpected event. However, as Harvard University professor Meghan L. O’Sullivan correctly points out, history has usually shown that a big change in energy markets often precipitates a big change in geopolitics.
When talking about oil and the geopolitics that encompasses it, the likes of Saudi Arabia, USA, Russia, OPEC and the political wrangling amidst these states and organisations take up most of the narratives. However, one of the major worries over the past months in West Asia’s fragile ecosystem has been Iraq, which holds the world’s fifth largest reserves of oil and who’s new US-backed Prime Minister, former intelligence chief Mustafa al-Kadhimi, now takes over in Baghdad amidst a mountain range worth of crisis ranging from COVID-19 amidst social unrest to a resurgent Islamic State (ISIS) and counterterror challenges.
Perhaps at the forefront of it all for Kadhimi will be to manage the coffers of the state. Iraq earns 90% of its annual revenue from oil, and in March its oil revenue had dropped by a massive 50 percent, leaving little money to not only pay its state work force but fund its counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations that have made critical success over the past two years. In mid-April, oil prices collapsed below $0 as the pandemic kept global trade and transportation captive. This meant that there was over-supply, not enough buyers and space to store the extra capacity running out.
The scope of a country like Iraq to weather such a storm may be limited, which in turn can have regional security consequences leading to global instability in an already precarious world economy. Along with the budgetary problems, with domestic turmoil of citizens’ protest against economic apathy, the security situation through all this has been deteriorating. According to analysts collating data on insurgency attacks both in Syria and Iraq, the latter interestingly has clocked more consistent attacks by ISIS, and the number of attacks has been growing as the pandemic mixed with the oil crash pushes Baghdad into a corner.
According to estimates shared by researcher Aaron Y. Zelin of the Washington Institute (along with the map shown below), there were 88 ISIS related attacks in both Syria in Iraq in January of this year. Fast forward to April, with the lockdowns and oil price crash in place, the number of attacks rose to 151, majority of which took place in Iraq. On 2 May, an ISIS attack in the country’s Salahuddin province that borders Baghdad, killing at least 10 members of Hashd al-Shaabi (known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF)), a Shia-led militia group designed and resurrected in 2014 by then Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki who enlisted the help of popular Shia cleric Ayatollah Sistani to help mobilise man power showcased an increasing appetite by the likes of ISIS to take advantage of the crisis and regain lost ground. These forces are seen as anchors of Iranian influence in Iraq, which has grown significantly since then, bringing the state into the direct path of the US–Iran kerfuffle that has intensified since the killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, commander of the Iran backed Kata’ib Hezbollah, part of the PMF fighting ISIS, but also blamed for orchestrating attacks against US interests in Iraq.
ISIS attacks in Syria and Iraq, January–April 2020The fact that ISIS has managed to attack in and around Baghdad is an anecdotal yet strong indicator that during this time of multiple crisis, the terror group is looking to move from its recession into a guerilla insurgency back towards committing more complex and planned attacks, which in turn can be translated into an increasing capacity and regrouping effort during a time when global and regional capacities are held captive to both an international health emergency and a developing global economic crisis.
All of the above is also coupled with a gradual recession of US power in the West Asian region. While a lot of it has been orchestrated under the Trump administration in a brash manner, realistically it is a detachment that many US presidents may have privately wished for, but not have the capital to orchestrate. Researchers Hal Brands, Steven A. Cook and Kenneth M. Pollack in a recent essay argued that the ‘lackluster’ administration of one-term president Jimmy Carter may have been forgettable, but it did create an ecosystem of protecting the oil highways in West Asia for the US, which Washington is now dismantling. The end of the Carter doctrine, the authors argue.
While the entire argument of Brands, Cook and Pollack may be highly debatable, specifically over the contours of the 2003 Iraq war, there is no doubt that the protection umbrella US built for its interest also benefitted others such as India equally. While during the first Gulf War, the Indian economy was nothing, it is now something. Even though back then as well India relied on oil imports, these supplies today are more critical than ever. During the height of US sanctions against Iran, one of India’s critical oil suppliers, it was Iraq that regularly rotated as the top two largest suppliers to New Delhi, often even trumping Saudi Arabia.
The stability of smaller states such as Iraq is not just a regional interest for West Asia and the powers, but the global political architecture as well. Oil does often change the geopolitical landscape, however, the designers of the new look have almost always been Western powers, commodity hawks and individual profiteers. Today’s fractures perhaps gives a rare window of opportunity to knit together a new and inclusive dialogue system where stakeholders are evenly distributed. However, despite the opportunity, there is no denying that this has presented itself during some of the worst and challenging times in modern history.
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Kabir Taneja is a Fellow with Strategic Studies programme. His research focuses on Indias relations with West Asia specifically looking at the domestic political dynamics ...
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