Why Mosul matters: security, sectarianism and stability in a post-ISIS Iraq

Katherine Pye

As Iraqi government Special Forces enter the outskirts of Mosul and Kurdish forces advance from a new front in the north, the world witnesses the beginning of the end of the great black banner which once sprawled across the Levant.

Relief, however, will be short lived. The defeat of ISIS is by no means the dawn of a new Iraq. If the current course is pursued, the events of 2016 will continue a cycle of insurgency and jihad which has spanned decades. It may lead the country to the same fate as its Syrian neighbor with global repercussions to match.

However, Mosul presents an unrivalled opportunity to reverse this. Firstly, the battle for Mosul will be the largest deployment of Iraqi forces since 2003, significant in itself as a push by the weak Iraqi state to assert its dominance in a region of Iraq where they had never traditionally exerted much control. If the government is successful it is a promising first step for a stable new Iraqi state.

Secondly, Mosul embodies political and strategic problems in the nation; the Iraqi army are leading forces inside the city whilst their supporters are disparate and disjointed. They form a highly unstable fractious coalition including Kurdish Peshmerga forces, Sunni tribal units and Shia militia. Such a multilateral attack will set an important precedent for how ethno-religious groups are able to work with each other as Iraq begins reconstruction.

Furthermore, unlike previously liberated cities such as Tikrit and Fallujah, the northern city of Mosul is religiously diverse, meaning the way in which anti-ISIS forces handle their victory and treat Mosul’s inhabitants in the immediate aftermath could have crucial implications for ethno-religious politics in Iraq in the future. 

Government responses to divided communities such as Mosul will also have a real impact on geopolitics in the region. Whilst the USA has poured funds into Pershmerga coffers, Turkey has been watching the situation closely. Erdogan’s government have been eager to play a more dominant role since interventions in Jarabulus last September which threatened the Kurds with full-scale retreat.

Iran too has demonstrated strategic interests in the region, with the government funding the launch of a "United Shia Liberation Army", linking sectarian conflict in Iraq to Shia ‘struggles’ in Yemen and Syria. Should sectarian violence break out after Mosul is liberated, there are more than enough key players to intervene. A Syrian-style proxy war is never far away.

Yet despite this, groups fighting ISIS have not yet all met and there is no agreed verdict on what victory would look like in a political rather than military sense. As in 2003, troops move in once again without a clear strategy or any plans beyond the immediate term. Astoundingly, even US strategy in the region is overwhelmingly  ‘short term’, as outlined by Brett McGurk, the US Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL. Instead, each stakeholder will most likely rush to fill the ISIS vacuum by grabbing as much power as possible. This risks collapsing back into turmoil after fighting finishes, in a settlement where central government authority has never been assertive even in peacetime.

But what is often forgotten is that in the months that follow a defeat of ISIS on the ground, an estimated 30,000 foreign fighters will travel back to their home states. Like Al-Qaida after the US invasion of Afghanistan, these brutalised individuals represent an urgent yet invisible security threat, transforming from a state to a “brand”, maintaining an ability to inspire and recruit all over the world.

ISIS itself was born under conditions dangerously similar to those we see in Iraq today. The founder of Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, the Iraqi Sunni insurgency which became ISIS, was Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi was a Jordanian fighter living in Afghanistan under the Taliban when the US invasion forced them out. Moving to Iraq, he worked underground to build a new Islamic state, carrying out suicide attacks in Shia areas to heighten underlying sectarian tensions. Aggression against Sunnis from the Iraqi government, allied Shia militias or US-backed Kurds would provide perfect propaganda for insurgents in a fragile post-war Iraq.

What can the Iraqi government and its allies do to break this cycle of insurgency, or avoid sliding into total sectarian warfare in the absence of a common enemy? As a matter of urgency all groups opposed to Daesh must meet before invading Mosul, which the US can help facilitate. Religious communities and tribal leaders in and around Mosul need a platform on which to correspond and cooperate before hostilities are further entrenched. The Iraqi government also needs to set a precedent of much lower tolerance for Shia militia brutality. The recapture of Mosul is a critical time for the state to demonstrate post-ISIS Iraq is inclusive and even handed, robbing any Sunni extremist insurgency of the chaos it needs. Addressing Iraq’s long-term security issues requires strong leadership, cool-headed pragmatic decision making and a long-term outlook. At the moment, all are in dangerously short supply.  

Duterte Money: Geoeconomics, America, and the Philippines

Michael Green

“I announce my separation from the United States, both militarily and economically” proclaimed Rodrigo Duterte in mid-October to an audience of Chinese businesspeople. “America has lost.” Having called Obama a “son of a whore” - among numerous other disparaging remarks about America and its president - Duterte has launched an ostensible rebalancing towards China. He speaks of “realigned… in your ideological flow “. This constitutes a drastic break from the policies of his predecessor, Benigno Aquino III, the pro-American foreign policy of whom was epitomised by pursuing a case against China in the Permanent Court of Appeals for UNCLOS. What does this rejection of American security cooperation mean for US policy in Asia? How should the State Department regain favour with the erstwhile linchpin of its much-vaunted ‘pivot’?

Before formulating a prognosis, it is important to note the prior advantages possessed by the US in terms of relations with the Philippines. 90% of Filipinos view the US favourably, there is a millions-strong diaspora therein, and America is its second largest trading partner. Colonial links stretch back decades. There is a longstanding security relationship, including five bases and an American program to help train Philippine forces against insurgents on the southern region of Mindanao. Indeed, the Filipino establishment is outraged by the apparently reckless behaviour of Duterte, and even dignitaries within the government explicitly downplay Duterte’s iconoclasm. In the words of Trade Minister Ramon Lopez, “the statement the President made maintains the relationship with the West”. The US-Philippines alliance is unlikely to disintegrate any time soon.

Nevertheless, overtures to China are clearly being made. This is for two reasons: firstly, Duterte’s brutal and merciless anti-drugs campaign has flagrantly contravened commitments to Human Rights and the Rule of Law, both championed by the US and ignored by China; secondly, and perhaps more importantly, Duterte feels that the economic benefits to be gained by alignment with China outweigh the geopolitical costs. The US thus faces the challenge, without abandoning its values, of convincing ordinary Filipinos that the fruits of pursuing quasi-suzerain obeisance towards China will not match the largesse of the United States.

The US already provides over $40 million per year in military aid to the Philippines, but this is not felt by average Filipinos. Given the already overwhelming military superiority of the US armed forces in the region, there is scope for replacement of some of this military aid with direct investment in development and infrastructure. Certainly, the US already provides significant non-military aid to the Philippines ($150 million in 2012), and is a massive contributor to multilateral institutions like the Asian Development Bank that attempt to achieve these aims. Even so, in order to pre-empt geostrategic realignment on the part of the Philippines, the US could transition into providing a greater amount of more visible non-military aid. Although unable to emulate the Chinese by using State-owned Enterprises to build infrastructure, the US can encourage investment through various incentives, including giving greater support to providers of FDI. This, in conjunction with augmentation of extant aid, can increase both economic ties and American soft power. Tax incentives could even play a part. With enough trade and investment, Filipinos might be convinced of the relative gains of siding with the US. Duterte may have announced separation from the United States, but American munificence could lead to rapprochement. 

Could Zika prompt legislative change regarding reproductive rights for women in Latin America?

Emily Dillistone

Over the past year the Zika virus has swept across the world, affecting countries in Africa and Asia, and since 2015, the Americas. The Zika virus is spread predominantly by mosquitos, though a recent case in Utah suggests that the virus may also be contagious, given a son caught the virus from his father in hospital. Of particular concern is the effects the virus has on babies born to mothers who carry the virus; it causes microcephaly and Guillain-Barré syndrome in new-borns, leading to the babies developing smaller-than-usual heads. They need constant care: something difficult for many women to give. These effects would be easy to prevent, if it weren’t for the strict anti-birth control and anti-abortion policies that Latin American countries so vehemently maintain.

In reaction to the rise of birth defects in Latin America, the United Nations has urged the continent to relax their laws; however, this advice has thus far fallen on deaf ears. Latin America’s issue with women’s reproductive rights harks back to Spanish and Portuguese invasions and the introduction of the Catholic faith to the people of the continent. The Catholic Church is an institution that overrides much of today’s social movements and has held immense political power over states worldwide since it was instigated as the state religion of the Roman Empire in 380 AD. Yet it would be a mistake to believe that the only pressure to limit access to abortion comes from the Vatican; in 1984, President Reagan’s Global Gag Rule prohibited international organizations that benefitted from US funds from performing or even recommending the practice of abortion. The issue of reproductive rights in Latin America is far more complex than it seems from the surface.

Condoms and birth control pills are a rarity in Roman Catholic Latin America. In Venezuela, pharmacies sell a pack of three condoms for around 600 bolivars – the equivalent of around 80p – but they are rarely stocked, and soon become expensive for those earning the minimum wage of 33,000 bolivars per month. In Brazil, for example, it is often only wealthy middle-class women who use birth control. Emergency contraception has been banned in Honduras since 2009, and in Costa Rica and Peru the public sector has very limited access to these drugs. As with any legislative change, social attitudes are often the main factor holding it back. In Uruguay, where abortion laws are more relaxed, only 5% of people think contraception is morally wrong, whereas in El Salvador, where abortion is forbidden in all circumstances, the figure rises to 45%.

Many countries in Latin America have placed restrictions around birth control and access to abortion. Across Central and South America abortion is legal in only Uruguay, Guyana, and French Guiana. Often, abortion is illegal with the exception of rape or incest, or when the mother’s life is in danger. In the case of El Salvador, abortion is prohibited altogether. Women who attempt to self-abort can spend up to 40 years in prison, even if their own life is at risk.

Why is it that birth control remains such a taboo topic, and why is it such a focus in the feminist movement? Many so-called ‘pro-life’ campaigners in the United States have come under fire for their unmoving resistance to abortion while they uphold the American citizen’s right to bear arms and fail to support movements that give aid to children who have left the womb such as refugees and victims of parental abuse. The question of what constitutes human life and thus deserving of equal rights is one that has plagued much of history. Reproductive rights bring to the fore the legal status of two types of beings: women and unborn foetuses. In the United Kingdom, the rights of the born are given precedence over the rights of the unborn, whereas in Latin America the reverse is very often the case; multiple court decisions have granted personhood to fertilized eggs. There are many who argue that human life is defined as an animate independent being. If we were to take this definition, foetuses are quite simply ruled out of the equation.

The truth is, denying women access to birth control and safe abortion and thereby forcing them to carry to term unwanted pregnancies often denies them other human rights: the right to safety, the right to work, and, in some cases, the right to life. According to the findings of the World Health Organization in 2015, around 830 women die every day from pregnancy-related causes. Most cases are preventable, but due to poor medical services women do not receive the treatment they need, hence 99% of all maternal deaths occur in developing countries. According to the WHO, Venezuela’s maternal mortality rate was 95 per 100,000 live births in 2015, one of the worst rates in Latin America.

Moreover, it is the high rate of teenage pregnancy that poses such a threat to women. In Latin America, 38% of women become pregnant before the age of 20 and almost 20% of births are to teenage mothers. Research shows that the risk of complications during pregnancy and delivery for girls aged 15 to 19 is twice what it is for women aged 20 and older. Many girls die simply because their bodies are unable to carry a child to full term.

The reality is that banning something doesn’t stop it from happening. For example, in 2011 4.2 million unsafe abortions were carried out in Latin America. In Argentina 31% of maternity deaths are caused by unsafe abortions and worldwide, nearly one million women are hospitalized each year because of complications from unsafe abortion. The question of prohibition is similar to that of A-class drugs: they may be against the law and, having been driven underground, have a higher risk of fatality, but people will still do them.

The Zika virus has presented Latin America with a new national crisis. Pregnancy no longer just threatens the mother’s life during pregnancy, but also potentially after birth. If the baby is born with defects and requires constant care, mothers become unable to provide for the rest of their family. Lines for food in developing countries such as Venezuela are often a day long, and mothers have to bring their babies with them to wait, leading to their babies getting sunburnt. Venezuela’s ‘pro-family’ attitude has crumpled in economic crisis. Increasingly, women are attending ‘sterilization days’ in order to avoid future pregnancies. While last year places at centres offering sterilization were often left unfilled, some ‘sterilization days’ now have waiting lists of 500, according to Reuters. The increase in cases of sterilization is worrying; but rather than viewing these acts as an assertion of agency and liberation, perhaps one should see them as acts of desperate women.

Archbishop of Merida, Baltazar Porras, told Reuters an increase in sterilizations would be a “barbarity.” And yet, it is not as if these women have a choice. Amnesty International estimates that more than 50% of the pregnancies in Venezuela are unplanned, and it is likely that neighbouring countries carry a similar figure. Sexual violence is abundant in Latin America and often goes unreported. Half of women in Latin American cities have been a victim of sexual assault in their lifetime, up from 1 in 3 in 2012, according to the Pan American Health Organization. And these are only the reported cases. In Columbia, for example, only 14% of domestic violence survivors report the crime.

Despite the UN’s plea to introduce safe abortion in countries where the Zika virus is prevalent, Latin American governments remain stern-faced. The advice of Brazil, El Salvador, Columbia, and Ecuador government officials to women of their countries is simply to “not get pregnant”. Eduardo Espinoza has declared that the government will have to uphold the anti-abortion laws, “whether we like it or not.” The only case where the Zika virus has prompted legislative change is in 2012 in Brazil, where the country’s Supreme Court ruled that anencephaly is a justifiable condition for terminating a pregnancy. Perhaps other countries will follow suit, but it has been four years, and thus far does not look promising. If anything, governments are leaning the other way. Government officials have proposed laws requiring medical examinations of rape victims to prove the legitimacy of their claims and have also suggested that women who were suspected of self-aborting should be examined. Fortunately, these laws were not introduced.

Women’s rights around the world are in an ever more dizzying perpetual state of fluctuation. While women in Brazil fight for protection against sexual violence, in Venezuela women plead for birth control. While in Afghanistan women campaign for the vote, in Indonesia women are required to have virginity tests before entering the public services. Women’s rights movements are arguably very much behind in Latin America, where women’s primary concern is often simply a struggle for survival. We have seen in recent years a movement towards recognising women as citizens deserving equal rights. In Brazil the first women’s rights organizations were formed in the 1980s, yet it was only in 2004 that the Plano Nacional para Saude da Mulher (The National Plan for Women’s Health) was created for women’s sexual and reproductive rights. Similarly, only in 2012 did Costa Rica introduce a national sexual health education program that incorporates human rights, gender equality, and the importance of diversity and pleasure. In Venezuela, between 1999 and 2013 President Chavez built thousands of new health centres in poor neighbourhoods and launched maternity health programs. However, current President Maduro has since cancelled many of his predecessor’s programs in light of the economic crisis and decreased oil prices. Though his government claims that it has one of the best health systems in the world, the state has not released any recent health data to support this.

One can only conclude that the Zika virus, though somewhat enlightening the rest of the world to Latin America’s poverty and high rate of maternity mortalities, has not as of yet prompted much legislative change in support of women’s reproductive rights. Birth control remains expensive and largely inaccessible, while abortion is increasingly difficult to obtain and the women seeking it are viewed more often as criminals than they are victims of sexual violence, which is often the case. International pressure is twofold; Latin America is pressured by the Vatican to maintain their control over women’s reproductive rights in the name of faith, while the UN urges the continent to prevent the spread of the Zika virus and the defects in new-borns that come with it. One might say that Latin America’s reluctance to increase the reproductive rights of its women is literally disabling its women and children. Alternatively, one could argue that it is the state of poverty of Latin America and the subsequent lack of medical resources that lead to the high mortality rate and should instead constitute the focus of international intervention, if there is to be any. The Zika virus is, in reality, a short-term issue that has brought to light many of Latin America’s deep-seated economic and social problems that will not be resolved by temporary law changes. 

Have media conglomerates suffocated the ‘perfect information’ dream?

Tom Stevens 

Prior to the late 1970s, mass media was a public service to inform and educate populations on domestic and foreign affairs, shaping a general consensus and justifying policy. The BBC encapsulated this model, a state-owned enterprise that was exploited by Anthony Eden in the late 1950s to incite popular support to overthrow Egypt’s General Nasser throughout the Suez Crisis.

Free marketeers rallied against the public sector media monopoly during the 1970s. These outriders gradually shifted attitudes internationally and the floodgates for widespread privatisation and deregulation were opened by Carter, Reagan and Thatcher’s policies. The 1996 Telecommunications Act in the US permitted cross-ownership across multiple media platforms, with the aim of creating a pure, competitive communications market. Neoliberals envisaged a free ‘marketplace of ideas’ open to everyone, a pluralistic community devoid of bias – a system of ‘perfect information’.

The rise of the conglomerate, however, has disillusioned many to deregulated international media.  Multi-national corporations, most notably Rupert Murdoch’s expansive News Corporation empire, operate a model of vertical integration, allowing them to cross-promote and cross-sell their brand through their many channels of production and implementation. The British and Australian populations may be all too aware (or perhaps more worryingly, unaware) of the influence Murdoch possesses in domestic politics, however the role of conglomerates as international actors is perhaps more sinister still.

It is generally agreed that the greater the number of parties in a state, the higher degree of media pluralism and transparency of information. Conglomerates’ frightening power to mould public opinion towards foreign policy within the US and UK throughout the Iraq War in 2003 revealed the enormous potential for disinformation in two-party states. Harvard’s political commentator Matthew Baum has proven that independent newspapers were far more likely to publish ‘hard’ stories focussing on policy success and military issues during the Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo conflicts, than media conglomerates who far more frequently wrote ‘soft’ articles about personalities and humanitarian issues. This pattern is only being continued through the dissemination of hostile rhetoric towards migrants from Sudan and Syria from Murdoch’s US Fox News and the UK’s The Sun, rather than the degree of success of Angela Merkel’s integration policies. The lack of concrete information broadcast by these elite corporations are a massive threat to the accountability of the West’s foreign policies, with public scrutiny constantly being squashed by their framing of public discourse.

At the dawn of the internet, neoliberals looked forward to the formation of inter-connected ‘digital boroughs’ of international groups sharing political values. Ironically, digitised news corporations have frequently sought to entrench national particularism within the countries they operate in, with the alarming effect of creating online echo chambers in which a collective consciousness of ‘us’ against ‘others’ is perpetuated. Analysis by Oxford researcher Vyacheslav Polonski on the internet behavioural patterns of the opposing campaigns in Britain’s EU referendum has demonstrated how these communities are as distinct and separate online as they are in reality. The echo chambers of Brexiteers were housed on media conglomerates’ websites, whereas Bremainers were more disparately spread across many platforms. Few would contest that these self-affirming echo chambers are not harmful to the international ‘democracy of ideas’ vision that a deregulated, digitised media promised.

Has globalisation and the information revolution accidentally caused a regression into national self-assertion? Are global media elites allowing governments’ foreign policies to go unscrutinised? These questions will doubtless cause a campaign for greater public ownership of the media, but for now it is clear that conglomerates have tarnished the neoliberal dream of an open, transparent market place of ideas. Indeed, their power as international actors continues to swell unchecked.

In Seeking Distance from America, Duterte Plays into China's Hands

Ed Bithell

Rodrigo Duterte is no stranger to controversy. Having likened himself to Hitler and called Barack Obama a 'son of a whore', the irrepressible Philippine president has seen his relations with much of the world's media and the Philippines' greatest ally, the US, grow increasingly sour. This comes despite relying on the international community's support for his country's ongoing dispute in the South China Sea over ownership of the Spratly Islands, a case that recently went before the International Court of Arbitration in the Hague.

Duterte sailed closer to the wind again by cancelling joint military exercises with the US scheduled to take place in the South China Sea. The Balikatan exercises, meaning 'shoulder to shoulder' in Tagalog, ran for the 32nd time last year, and despite some protests from Beijing formed part of a 'strong message' that the US was determined to send in the Pacific theatre. The exercises are controversial amongst some in the Philippines, and certainly reflect enormous US influence over the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). Instead, Duterte declared that he ‘can always go to China’, seemingly threatening the US with a divorce in favour of his northern neighbour.

It is tempting to think that this could work out in his favour, leading to preferential treatment from the Chinese in appreciation for rare cooperation amongst South East Asian states - as a bloc, ASEAN opposes China’s claims to sovereignty in the region and until now, the Philippines has been no exception. However, Duterte's ditching Obama may easily lead to gains for nobody but China.

While the US does exert military power through joint exercises and hosted bases in the region, any potential hegemonic aims are fundamentally limited, both by a lack of its territorial claims and the impossibility of subjecting China or dismissing its claims completely without direct action. By contrast, the relatively precarious nature of US influence through cooperation with ASEAN means that China, which claims sovereignty over essentially the entire South China Sea, and refuses to acknowledge rival claims, could use Duterte’s essentially tactical friendship and cooperation to start a strategy of playing one nation off against another in order to weaken all their claims, aiming to turn the South China Sea from a multipolar area, with a united ASEAN balanced against China thanks to US support, into a Chinese lake. This would then further push out any chance of favour from Beijing, as China finds it no longer needs particular friends.

While Duterte appears to be able to pick and choose his friends on the international stage, the reality is that this could easily backfire. If he gets his way and US influence in the region - or at least the Philippines - declines, replaced with growing Chinese involvement in infrastructure and natural resources as well as Beijing calling the shots on territorial claims, he may soon realise that the Chinese are interested in being much closer than the Americans ever were - and more demanding too.

Image: President Duterte meeting Chinese Ambassador Zhao Jianhua. By Presidential Communications Operations Office [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.