Iraqi president warns: ‘The danger and the risk of Isis hasn’t been eliminated’

Hinting at US and Iran, Barham Salih also urges countries not to use his nation as a proxy battleground

Iraq’s president has warned that Isis still proves a threat to his country.

Barham Salih also cautioned that security in his oil-rich, war-ravaged nation remained fragile.

At the opening of a security and economy conference on Wednesday in the northern Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah, Mr Salih said it was “unacceptable” for other countries to use Iraq to settle their scores.

“The victory against Isis was an important one and we cannot downplay it,” Mr Salih said.

“But this was a battlefield and military victory. The caliphate has been eliminated. But there are still sleeper cells and extremist groups along the Syrian border,” he added.

“The danger and the risk of Isis hasn’t been eliminated.”

Speakers at the conference noted improved security throughout the country following the near total elimination of Isis’s vast self-declared Islamic caliphate across Syria and Iraq in a four-year war.

But Iraqi politicians, international officials and scholars also warned of other dangers amid rising public expectations for better schools, healthcare, running water and sewage systems.

Iraqis continue to vote and participate in a political system established following the 2003 US invasion, but disillusionment and anger have grown amid continuing failures and incompetence of the country’s political leaders.

“Hundreds of millions of dollars in aid money have poured into Iraq in recent years,” said Jeanine Hennis Plasschaert, the head of the UN’s mission to Iraq. “How is it possible that services are so bad? Corruption is pervasive in all levels of Iraq.”

The Sulaymaniyah Forum conference at the American University of Iraq was first held in 2013. It was cancelled last year amid a blockade imposed on Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish-led region following a controversial independence referendum that angered Turkey, Iran, and the government in Baghdad.

Relations have since improved with neighbouring countries. But the Trump administration’s scuttling of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran has put fresh pressures on Iraq. The countries share a 900-mile border and deep economic and religious ties.

Washington has demanded that Iraq downgrade energy and other ties with Iran. But Mr Salih warned that his country could be plunged into fresh crises if outside powers sought to use Iraq to settle scores.

“We don’t want Iraq to be part of these conflicts,” he said. “This is not a very stable situation and putting an extra political burden on Iraq is not acceptable.”

International officials in Iraq have been watching the rising tensions between Iran and the US with alarm.

Jon Wilks, UK ambassador to Baghdad, urged Iraqi officials to define clear “parameters” with outside powers, and not let the country get dragged into others’ conflicts.

“The problem we have at the moment is that the US has imposed sanctions on Iran and there is an atmosphere of confrontation,” Mr Wilks told a packed room on Wednesday.

“Iran sees itself in a very threatening regional global environment. It’s using all the tools in its toolbox to defend itself.”

Andrew Peek, a US diplomat speaking at the conference, acknowledged that Iraq should have a “normal relationship” with Iran and not become “a playground for outside powers”.

Without explicitly naming him, Mr Peek referred to Qassem Suleimani, commander of Iran’s foreign expeditionary force, in trying to illustrate the country’s unhealthy influence over Iraq.

“I travel to Iraq about once a month,” he said. “I come through the airport, get my passport stamped, go through customs and get into a car. There is a particularly well-known general officer from one of the neighbouring countries who does not do these things, who has so intimidated local authorities that people do not ask for any identification. That is not a normal relationship.”

Beyond Iraq’s international problems, internal squabbling continues. Baghdad has yet to name key cabinet posts – including ministries of defence and interior – 10 months after general elections, amid a parliamentary deadlock that has further alienated the public from the political class.

“If you’re weak, of course other countries will take advantage of you,” said Laith Kubba, an adviser to Iraqi prime minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi.

Failure to address the country’s divisions and fractures could contribute to the resurrection of another insurgency, he warned.

“Isis did not come from a void but from a lot of cracks that exist,” he said. “There were hands that manipulated this issue and in the end, it resulted in disasters.”