US Secretary of State John Kerry reached Baghdad on Monday to push for stability, as Sunni militants overran a strategic Shiite town and an airport, tightening their grip on north Iraq. Flying in from Jordan on a visit which the State Department had sought to keep secret amid security concerns, Kerry met Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and was to hold talks with Iraqi leaders across the political and communal spectrum.
Prime Minister Maliki told Kerry that the crisis in his country was a threat to peace in the region and the world as well. “What is happening in Iraq poses a threat not only to Iraq but to regional and global peace,” Xinhua quoted Maliki as saying during a meeting with Kerry in Baghdad Green Zone. Maliki called on the international community, especially countries in the region, to deal with the threat seriously.
The Shiite Iraqi leader also mentioned that a timetable for forming a new Government, and holding elections to the country’s three top posts, including the President, the Prime Minister, the parliament speaker, has already been set according to the Constitution.
On his part, Kerry reiterated the US commitment to the protection of the security and independence of Iraq, as well as its support to the country in combating terrorism, represented by the Islamic State of Iraq and the levant (ISIl), an Al-Qaeda offshoot, a statement said. It also said that Kerry agreed that ISIl poses a menace to Iraq, the region and the world. “Washington was prepared to reflect that (support) on the ground,” the statement quoted Kerry as saying, reaffirming Washington’s commitment to the strategic framework agreement with Baghdad, particularly security cooperation.
Washington’s top diplomat arrived in the Iraqi Capital of Baghdad earlier in the day for talks with Iraqi leaders on the current security crisis as the country is trying to curb a Sunni blitzkrieg. Kerry is also expected to meet with the Parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi, a Sunni, and the leading Shiite cleric Ammar al-Hakim, as well as other Iraqi officials, before he travels to Arbil, Capital of the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan to meet with the Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani.
Iraqi security forces are struggling to hold their ground in the face of an insurgent onslaught that has seized major areas of five provinces, displaced hundreds of thousands of people and sparked fears that the country could be torn apart. Maliki’s security spokesman said on Monday that “hundreds” of Iraqi soldiers have been killed since the insurgents launched their offensive on June 9.
The announcement on television by lieutenant-General Qassem Atta is the most specific information provided so far by the Government on losses sustained by the security forces. The militants, led by the ISIl, consolidated their control of the north of the country by capturing the Shiite-majority town of Tal Afar and its airport, a local official and witnesses said.
“The town of Tal Afar and the airport are completely under the control of the militants,” the official said on condition of anonymity. Witnesses said security forces had departed from the town after days of heavy fighting, and confirmed that militants were in control. Atta said that security forces were still fighting in the Tal Afar area, but added that, “Even if we withdrew from Tal Afar or any other area, this doesn’t mean it is a defeat.”
The town, which is located along a strategic corridor to Syria, had been the largest in the northern province of Nineveh not to fall to militants. The latest advance came after insurgents at the weekend swept into the towns of Rawa and Ana in Anbar province, west of Baghdad, after taking the Al-Qaim border crossing with Syria.
The Government said its forces made a “tactical” withdrawal from the towns, control of which allows the militants to widen a strategic route to neighbouring Syria where they also hold swathes of countryside along the Euphrates river valley. As Kerry began his visit, 69 detainees were killed in an attack by militants on a convoy carrying them near the town of Hashimiyah, in Babil province.
One policeman and eight gunmen were also killed in clashes that erupted during the attack in the Hashimiyah area of Babil province, according to a police captain and a doctor. It was not immediately clear how the detainees died. ISIl aims to create an Islamic State incorporating both Iraq and Syria, where the group has become a major force in the rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad.
The US wants Arab states to bring pressure on Iraqi leaders to speed up Government formation, which has made little headway since April elections, and has tried to convince them ISIl poses as big a threat to them as to Iraq. Washington’s top diplomat warned all countries, particularly in the Gulf, that “there is no safety margin whatsoever in funding a group like ISIl.”
The group, which has been at the forefront of the insurgent offensive, has commandeered an enormous quantity of cash and resources as a result of the advance, bolstering coffers that were already the envy of militant groups around the world. US leaders have stopped short of calling for Maliki to step down, but there is little doubt that they feel he has squandered the opportunity to rebuild Iraq since US troops withdrew in 2011.
“The US would like to see the Iraqi people find leadership that is prepared to represent all of the people of Iraq,” Kerry told reporters in Cairo on Sunday. He noted that minority Kurds and Sunni Arabs, and even some within Maliki’s own Shiite community, had voiced dissatisfaction with the premier’s leadership, and said the Government had to “rise above sectarian motivations.”
The Iraqi Government has “to be inclusive and share power in a way that will maximise the ability of Iraq to focus on the real danger at this moment from an external source, which is ISIl,” Kerry insisted. A top US official who has been on the ground in Iraq told reporters that there was “a lot of anxiety and a lot of looking to the US for help”. Obama has offered to send up to 300 military advisers to Iraq, but has so far not backed air strikes as requested by Baghdad.