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special to the tribune
Fresh raid by ISIS on Baghdad suburbs raises alarm
Shyam Bhatia in Baghdad

Shi'ite volunteers in Samarra on Sunday. AFP

The latest raid by gunmen on a suburb of Baghdad has prompted fresh fears about the safety and vulnerability of the Iraqi capital.

One Western ambassador accredited to Iraq, who asked not to be identified by name, told The Tribune: “For the first time, I feel vulnerable.”

Until a few months ago, Baghdad was witnessing five or more bomb attacks every day. But a much calmer atmosphere has prevailed in the past month because of fewer attacks.

Now, however, the blood spattered walls of the Zayounah apartment complex, in which at least 30 were killed on Saturday, is a stark reminder of the vulnerability of Indian diplomats, businessmen and workers, as well as other foreigners, who continue to live in Baghdad.

One school of thought blames ISIS extremists and their supporters for the raid carried out by gunmen travelling in four-wheel drive vehicles. The vehicles they used in the week-end attack on the Zayounah suburb of eastern Baghdad are identical to the types of transport used by ISIS forces when they crossed the Syrian border before taking Mosul.

Others say the raid was the handiwork of one of the many Shia militias who operate in Baghdad and seek to enforce their own brand of orthodoxy in the capital. Hence, the Arabic word for prostitutes that was painted on the outside walls of the doomed apartment complex.

Either way the police and army units deployed in the area should have been sufficient to prevent the deadly raid. Analysts say the presence of four Iraqi army divisions deployed to guard the capital and their failure to prevent the Zayounah raid invokes comparisons with last month’s ISIS attack and conquest of Mosul in northern Iraq. Mosul was defended at the time by some 50,000 Iraqi soldiers who just melted away when the city was attacked and captured.

A senior Iraqi government official has told The Tribune that the army’s poor performance in Mosul can be explained by “the corruption prevalent among our armed forces in Mosul and elsewhere…the officers were extorting bribes from the population and their own soldiers and they were in no position to put up any fight.”

The soldiers guarding Baghdad are supposed to be of a much higher calibre, yet they proved to be completely ineffective in Zayounah raid in which most of those killed were women.

All hopes of defending Baghdad are now pinned on the visiting head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, General Qassem Suleimani, who is credited with helping Syrian President Bashar Al Assad in his fight against anti- government forces.

Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al Mutlaq was credited with saying about Suleimani in the past, “All of the important people in Iraq go to see him.”

Suleimani himself has been quoted as saying, “No force or country except for Iran is capable of leading the Muslim world today…due to Iran’s support for revolutionary and Islamic movements and fighters, as well as its defence of Muslims against aggressors.”

Two years earlier he was quoted by the Iranian media as saying, “Iran has a presence in southern Lebanon and Iraq. In fact those areas are in a way influenced by the Islamic Republic of Iran’s ideology and conduct.”

Apartment complex attack kills 30

• The blood spattered walls of the Zayounah apartment complex, in which at least 30 persons were killed on Saturday, is a stark reminder of the vulnerability of Indian diplomats, businessmen and workers, who continue to live in Baghdad
• Militants managed to attack Zayounah, despite the presence of four Iraqi army divisions deployed to guard the capital, invoking comparisons with last month’s ISIS attack and conquest of Mosul in northern Iraq