Jul 2, 2014

Iraqi leaders have moved their explosive disputes out of the cities and provinces and into the parliament. Exactly as they failed to agree on a settlement outside the parliament, they failed to elect its president after both the Sunni and Kurdish blocs withdrew from the first session.

While new deputies were taking the constitutional oath and exchanging accusations of supporting the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and allowing it to take over Ninevah, the mayor of Mosul, Atheel al-Nujaifi, told the story of its fall years ago. This was the result of the officers’ corruption, the government and the Americans’ disregard of the big smuggling operations conducted by ISIS, which was also imposing royalties on merchants and companies. A runaway merchant told Al-Hayat of how the group has been a state inside the state for 10 years.

Nujaifi said that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki refused to listen to the information offered to him about senior officers from the intelligence services being involved in facilitating the work of ISIS in Mosul, as well as smuggling oil through the area of Ain al-Jahash. “Officers in the internal intelligence services and the 2nd Division of the Iraqi army were specialized in blackmailing contractors, developers and owners of parking lots and gas stations,” Nujaifi said. “The province sent official letters to the Special Operations Command, the Ministry of Defense and the General Command of the Armed Forces pointing out these transgressions. Yet, our constant problem was that citizens feared giving their testimonies in any investigation, and this was not in our best interest because the prime minister forbids us to arrest any officers without his consent.”

A source in Nujaifi’s office let Al-Hayat in on some extra details, saying, “Officers from the intelligence service were facilitating the passage of trucks smuggling oil from outside the province, as well as finding a place to sell it, facilitating the entry of merchants and smuggling mafias in areas on the border. They knew that these merchants were leaders in the second tier of ISIS. These people were getting information about the distribution of security and military divisions throughout the province, as well as their numbers and equipment, in exchange for significant bribes.”

Such information is not surprising. The people of Mosul have been talking for years about a state inside the state built by ISIS, in all its different names, whether with the presence of the US Army or the local governments and with the presence of the Iraqi army.