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U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced Monday that the United States will deploy 560 more troops to Iraq, bringing the total upwards of 4,600 as preparations get underway to recapture Mosul from the self-proclaimed Islamic State. It comes as Iraqi forces and militias, with U.S. backing, have retaken large swaths of territory from the group, but this progress may come to naught if the state cannot extend rule of law to newly liberated areas, says Ned Parker, former Baghdad bureau chief for Reuters. "If there's no solution for the different sides to live together under a workable governing system, Iraq risks a future in which once again an uprising will take away land from the state," he says.
This campaign is building up to retake Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city. Is Baghdad thinking about how to not just defeat ISIS militarily, but also address the underlying circumstances that gave rise to them?
There is no consensus about what the state should look like. Sunnis are in disarray, their population ruined and displaced by war, their political leadership seen as discredited. The Shia elite are fighting each other to control the state. The army has not been rebuilt. Shia paramilitary forces challenge the state. All of that prevents any meaningful discussion of what the social contract should be for Iraqi Shias, Sunnis, and Kurds. There is a real mystery hanging over what will come the day after ISIS is defeated.
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