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Sectarian rivalries blight Iraqi intelligence 'services'
12 July 07
In a further sign of Iraq's deepening sectarian divisions, security chiefs in Iraq's Shia-dominated government have formed a shadow intelligence service to rival the Iraq National Intelligence Service (INIS), created and funded by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and that is manned largely by Sunnis and former members of Saddam Hussein's mukhabarat (secret police). The head of the INIS is General Mohammed Abdullah Shahwani.
The hostility between these two services is intense. The overall Shia objective seems to be to eradicate, or at least drastically reduce, US influence within the security establishment and put intelligence gathering firmly under Shia control. This is at a time when speculation is growing that a large-scale US military withdrawal may be ordered in the coming months. The emergence of this new service could be bad news for the US because it might facilitate penetration of Iraq's security establishment by the intelligence services of neighbouring Shia-majority Iran.
Senior officials in Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government, including national security adviser Mouafak al-Rubaie, insist that the Iranians have no say in how Iraq is run. But the US is adamant that Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, through its elite Quds Force, are arming, funding and training militant Shia organisations and even some Sunni factions to keep Iraq in turmoil. Tehran denies that, but the two countries are locked in a covert intelligence war. The emergence of rival, highly partisan intelligence services will exacerbate the sectarian bloodletting in Iraq and, given the explosive nature of the conflict, could thrust them into open warfare.
While it is not possible to determine what damage marginalising the new intelligence service will have on US policy and operational capabilities in Iraq, the Ministry of the Interior is flexing its muscles at a time when the US is vulnerable, not just in Iraq but in the wider regional context. Events in Iraq impact directly on situations in Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories, the US confrontation with Iran over its nuclear programme and in the Middle East generally.