Issued by CEMO Center - Paris
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Repercussions of Diyala massacre: ISIS remains a threat to Iraqi national security

Monday 24/January/2022 - 07:20 PM
The Reference
Eslam Mohamed
طباعة

ISIS still poses a direct threat to Iraqi national security, which gives space in return for the state factions affiliated with the mainly Shiite Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) and enhances the legitimacy of their presence under the pretext of fighting the terrorist organization and tracing its impact in the various provinces. Between the two, Iraqi citizens suffer from two terrorists of different sects, although they do not differ, and the victim is the Iraqi people.

 

Diyala massacre

 ISIS committed a massacre in Diyala Governorate, east of Baghdad, when a group of ISIS elements, comprising about ten terrorists, launched an attack on a site of the First Division in the Iraqi army, killing 11 soldiers, in addition to a sniper, using medium weapons. Members of the terrorist organization took advantage of the soldiers’ sleep in the Diyala camp and attacked them by shooting them randomly.

On the other hand, the Diyala Operations Command of the PMF announced the launch of a large-scale security operation from several axes to search for and pursue the terrorist organization's elements in the Great Basin area in the east of the country.

The PMF commander of Diyala operations, Talib al-Moussawi, said in a statement that the PMF launched a large-scale security operation on Sunday morning to pursue ISIS remnants in the eastern and western parts of the Great Basin area.

 

Warning of chaos

For his part, the leader of the Sadrist movement in Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr, warned against exaggerating the danger of terrorism to spread fear and sectarianism, in an implicit warning of the scenario of the PMF exploiting the situation to carry out sectarian acts.

It is worth noting that the ISIS attack on the Iraqi army camp in Diyala came in conjunction with the rebellion of the organization’s members in a prison in eastern Syria and their attempt to escape with the support of their comrades abroad, which raised the Iraqi government’s fears of the terrorist organization’s return, so its forces mobilized on the border to prevent the infiltration of ISIS elements fleeing from Syria.

The recent ISIS activity raises fears that there is an error in international assessments about the terrorist organization's capabilities, its reconnaissance means and an incubating environment through which it can inflict painful strikes on sensitive sites in Iraq, in addition to a noticeable change in its tactics and the transition from the method of lightning attacks on small targets to an advanced stage of attacking supposedly fortified sites to achieve military goals that will lead to more targets and regaining what it lost after its defeat and loss of all the areas that it controlled in Syria and Iraq, including the Badia desert region extending from western Iraq to eastern Syria, where the organization threatens to attack again.


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