Foreign ministers of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) were scheduled to meet today for the second part of a two-day meeting at the Organisation's headquarters in Jeddah to discuss developments in Iraq. The meeting was to convene as the US sent in extra troops and warships to its forces stationed in and around the Arab Gulf in anticipation of still-to-be-decided action on developments in Iraq following the seizure by an ultra-radical Sunni group, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), of cities in northern Iraq. The group is also present in several cities in neighbouring Syria and possibly elsewhere in the Arab Mashrek region, according to some Egyptian sources perhaps also in Sinai. The Jeddah meeting is expected to be the venue for political confrontation among some of the major stakeholders regarding developments in Iraq: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Iran. At the heart of it, diplomatic sources suggested to Al-Ahram Weekly, was disagreement between these influential neighbouring countries. Most wish to see an end to the unmasked Shia political predominance over the country that has never recovered from the vendettas that were synonymous with the rule of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, but some wish to maintain the heavy Shia influence. The meeting will also see confrontation on how to move on from what many regional capitals qualify as ethnically unbalanced power-sharing in Iraq to a more inclusive ruling system without allowing potential splits that go beyond the implicit disintegration of the state among the three components of Shia, Kurds and Sunnis. Saudi Arabia, which is hosting the meeting and has strong influence over many of the poorer 50+ member states, has already been discussing the issue with key world capitals, as well as with regional allies, particularly Turkey. The latter has been getting tense over the strength the Kurds are gaining in northern Iraq, while the US has been arguing for a national unity government that would put to an end to the rule of the government of Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki. In an Arab League meeting held earlier in the week, Riyadh managed to garner considerable, but not collective, Arab support. The meeting saw a rare rapprochement between the otherwise conflicting countries of Qatar and Saudi Arabia on Iraq, fending off speculation that Qatar had been one of the sources providing financial support for ISIS. Contrary to its positions on other Sunni-Shia confrontations in the region, Qatar blamed Al-Maiki's sectarian choices for the situation in Iraq. On the eve of the OIC meeting, Qatari Foreign Minister Khaled Al-Attiyah was explicit in his criticisms, accusing the Iraqi prime minister of triggering the unrest that has swept the country through his “marginalisation” of the Sunni Arab minority. “This [unrest] is partly a result of negative factors... mainly implementing factional policies, marginalisation and exclusion,” Al-Attiyah said in comments carried late on Sunday by the QNA state news agency. Al-Attiyah was referring to Iraq's Sunni Arab minority, which has mostly been disgruntled since the US-led invasion in 2003 that ousted dictator Saddam Hussein. The Qatari minister also cited the “forceful dispersal of peaceful rallies,” in reference to crackdowns in April 2013 and January this year on Sunni Arab protests that were demanding Al-Maliki's ouster. Meanwhile, according to one source in New York, the venue of UN negotiations on Iraq, Saudi Arabia has approached the permanent five member states of the UN Security Council with its ideas. “It is a very elementary diplomatic exercise, but it is happening already,” the source said. The end of Al-Maliki, repeatedly qualified by leading Sunni figures in Iraq as exceptionally sectarian, is not something that Iran would settle easily for, however, and attempts to remove him would add to the regional bras de fer that is particularly evident in Syria. This battle, of an explicit Sunni-Shia nature, is also present in Lebanon. In Washington some US state department officials, according to an Arab diplomat based in the US capital, have advised the White House to seize the moment of havoc in Iraq to use it as a bargaining chip with the Iranians who clearly do not wish to see the extended influence of the ultra-radical Sunni group in Iraq. Iran, the diplomat said, has already “sent fighting battalions to support the power of Al-Maliki.” Hassan Rouhani, the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, denied reports that he had sent over 500 Republican Guards to Iraq. However, according to the Iranian TV channel that carried the Rouhani statement, Tehran is “open” to ideas to cooperate with its neighbours to deal with the threat of ISIS. In Jeddah today the Saudis are likely to try to overcome the tide in Washington that is favouring cooperation with Iran over Saudi Arabia regarding Iraq. Something similar earlier took place in Syria, where Washington's support for the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad was interrupted despite Saudi encouragement because of an agreement with Iran to end the tolerance of ultra-radical Sunnis in the country who consider Al-Qaeda's current leadership to be “insufficiently orthodox.” In recent press statements made by US Secretary of State John Kerry, the latter revealed what he qualified as “intensive” discussion within the administration over cooperation with Iran over Iraq. “Let's see what Iran might or might not be willing to do before we start making any pronouncements,” he said, adding that he “wouldn't rule out anything that would be constructive to providing real stability.” Kerry made it clear that the US was “open to any constructive process here that could minimise the violence, hold Iraq together – the integrity of the country – and eliminate the presence of outside terrorist forces that are ripping it apart.” “One thing is clear: the Americans are apprehensive, truely apprehensive, over the tide of militant radical Islamism that they cannot control,” said the Arab diplomat based in Washington. However, it is not just Saudi Arabia that the US has to worry about when deciding its next move with Iran on handling Iraq. Turkey, a NATO member, is also a serious concern. A Turkish diplomat told Al-Ahram Weekly that Ankara would “not sit and watch” as Iraqi Kurdish troops take control of northern Iraq and responsibility for facing up to ISIS. The US, like the rest of the Security Council, say European diplomats in Cairo, is well aware that the situation in Iraq goes beyond the stability – some say “unprecedentedly challenged territorial unity” – of the country to affect the increasingly acute issue of Sunnis versus Shias and Arabs versus Kurds, and, for that matter, Turks versus Kurds, in the Middle East region. “It is a very complicated situation; the challenges are not small and the risks are not small either – no decision has been made on what to do, not in Washington and not in Brussels [headquarters of the EU] or elsewhere,” said one diplomat. He added that there were some among the international powers who wanted to see the otherwise “resilient Al-Maliki” having to deal with pressure, especially as ISIS has acquired personnel in recent weeks from the ranks of Saddam Hussein's former military, disbanded by the US following the invasion of Iraq in 2003. This has been in revenge for the Iraqi prime minister's exclusion of Sunnis from top military and other government posts. The option of some sort of military intervention is the assessment of most of the diplomats who spoke to the Weekly, their saying that this was “somehow on the table – one way or the other.” “Of course it depends on what you mean by military intervention, because nobody is talking about a military operation with boots on the ground – this is not being discussed, not our troops anyway,” said one Western diplomat. This assessment, offered on Tuesday morning, was challenged, however, when US President Barack Obama decided to send close to 300 troops to Iraq to ”protect the US embassy.” The troops are said to be “equipped for combat.” Western capitals are not unaware that the situation may be reduced to two things: the expansion of the influence of radical Islamist groups across the Middle East in a way that has been troubling to Israel and an ethnic tug of war that includes Shia-Sunni, Kurds-Turk, Turks-Arab and Kurds-Arab factors. Western diplomats say that the options on Iraq are many and that no decision has been made as yet. It would, they suggest, take intensive consultations with allies on where to go long term. “Short term, there will be an intervention that is politically essential and of course of a military nature to help contain the situation. But long term, really, nobody knows; the stakes are too many and it is very complicated,” said one. On the ground, military confrontations have continued as ISIS continued its hold on areas of north-central Iraq that it has controlled since last week. The Iraqi army has also, Western diplomatic sources say with considerable Western intelligence assistance, started to deal blows to the ISIS troops. Iraq said on Sunday that its security forces had killed 279 militants and soldiers had recaptured two towns north of Baghdad. At the same time, ISIS militants are also said to have killed scores of Iraqi soldiers as they pushed their advance on the capital, a horrifying massacre that has drawn international condemnation. Western embassies began evacuating staff from Baghdad on Monday despite Iraq's claim it was repelling militants who had captured vast amounts of territory in a lightning offensive that has shaken regional stability. Some staff would be flown to the US embassy in Amman, US spokesperson Jen Psaki said, citing “ongoing instability.” The diplomatic evacuation, confirmed by the United States and Australia, has been coupled with the announcement from Washington that the country's sprawling embassy in Baghdad's heavily-fortified Green Zone will now receive more security. It was unclear how many American embassy staff would be evacuated from the mission, but Psaki said they would be “temporarily relocated” to US consulates in the southern port city of Basra and the northern Kurdish regional capital of Erbil, both of which have been insulated from the unrest. In the assessment of Arab League, OIC and Western diplomats, the situation could get much worse in Iraq before it starts to get better. It could, said one Arab diplomat, “get much worse in Iraq's neighbours before it gets better, too. Always keep an eye on Lebanon if you want to know if things will settle down or not,” he said.
