| Wall Street Journal | - |
BAGHDAD—Another
wave of explosions in the Iraqi capital killed at least 70 people on
Tuesday, the latest in a surge of urban violence that has the
government, beset by political crises, looking increasingly paralyzed.
- 57
Baghdad Rocked by New Blasts Amid Deadly Wave of ISIS Attacks
Shift in Islamic State strategy has Iraq government looking paralyzed
ENLARGE
Iraqi security forces inspect the site of a suicide bomb attack Tuesday in Baghdad’s Arbat Elaf market.
Photo:
Reuters
Bombings almost every day over the past week in or around Baghdad have killed at least 194 people, and the political strain from the bloodshed has begun to show on U.S.-backed Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s government.
Islamic State’s success in breaching cordons around the city have politicians and security forces openly trading blame for the gaps.
The attacks represent a shift in strategy amid recent losses by the group in Anbar province, which borders Baghdad. Dislodged from the cities of Ramadi and Hit and under pressure on the front lines, militants have stepped up suicide bombings in populated areas they don’t control.
Despite the growing threat to the capital, the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State is urging Iraq not to divert any forces from the front lines, according to coalition spokesman Col. Steve Warren.
“If you want to stop these bombs, you have to keep forces in the field,” to defeat Islamic State there, he said. He added that the Iraqi government already had almost half its military deployed in Baghdad.
U.S. officials have noted the city couldn’t be made completely secure even when thousands of U.S. troops were deployed there. They describe the new string of attacks as opportunistic attempts by Islamic State to sow discord in Baghdad and gain international attention.
“We are seeing them use more traditional terror tactics to strike out in part because they’re weaker,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said. “They don’t have the same quasi-military capabilities that they once had.”
Iraqi officials and some analysts say the Sunni extremists have been aided by the poor training of Iraqi security forces as well as bad equipment, faulty intelligence and a lack of coordination among the agencies that police the city.
Followers of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who is leading an antigraft movement that has already pressed Mr. Abadi into a corner, are among those seizing on what they claim is the government’s weak response to further challenge the prime minister.
Munadhil al-Mosawi, a lawmaker in Mr. Sadr’s camp, said Mr. Abadi was “directly responsible” because he is commander-in-chief.
“Abadi has to act immediately and fire the interior minister, who dedicated all the ministry’s intelligence to chasing peaceful protesters while leaving terrorists free outside,” he said.
Hundreds of Mr. Sadr’s followers broke into the capital’s fortified International Zone on April 30 and ransacked the parliament building, demanding immediate enactment of measures to combat corruption. While Mr. Abadi agrees with the need for reform, he condemned the intrusion.
Timeline of Recent Attacks
- May 11: Islamic State attacks on Sadr City in Baghdad and elsewhere kill at least 88 people, one of the deadliest days in the Iraqi capital in years.
- May 12: Islamic State attacks police forces in Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, killing at least one officer.
- May 13: Islamic State gunmen storm a coffee shop in Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad. Thirteen people are killed.
- May 14: Attacks by Islamic State in Amiriyat Fallujah, in heavily contested Anbar province, kill six people.
- May 15: Islamic State militants assault a natural-gas plant north of Baghdad, killing 12.
- May 17: A series of bombings in Baghdad, including two claimed by Islamic State, kill at least 70 people.
The Obama administration remains supportive of Mr. Abadi’s efforts to “move the country forward,” Mr. Kirby said.
Islamic State still controls vast stretches of territory in both Iraq and neighboring Syria, where it has declared a caliphate under its own harsh interpretation of Islamic law.
The group said it carried out the deadliest of Tuesday’s attacks, hitting a market in the mainly Shiite al-Shaab district with an improvised explosive device followed by a suicide bombing. It killed 33 people and wounded 55, authorities said. Islamic State also said it was behind a truck bombing in the mainly Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City that Iraqi officials said killed 22 and wounded 36.
The militants said the attacks were aimed at Shiite militia fighters who are allied with Iraqi government forces against Islamic State.
Another suicide bombing hit the eastern district of Habibiya, while other blasts targeted the town of Abu Ghraib on the western edge of the capital and the Rasheed market in southern Baghdad. In all, 15 people were killed and 42 wounded in those attacks, and though there was no immediate claim of responsibility, they bore the hallmarks of Islamic State.
“There is a deficit in the government strategy, a deficit in planning and a deficit in the management of the security battle,” said Ahmed al-Shireifi, a Baghdad-based security analyst.
After the al-Shaab attack, Mr. Abadi ordered the security commander in charge of the area brought in for investigation. It was the harshest action the premier has taken against his security forces since the recent wave of attacks began. The commander, whom the government didn’t identify, hasn’t commented.
“Inside the city, we should rely on mobile checkpoints in different places and different times,” he said. “Many times terrorists who were caught said they can avoid the fixed checkpoints by getting out of the car before they get to a checkpoint and walking through.”
Even if someone is stopped, he said, inadequate equipment—including a type of bomb-detecting wand long known to be ineffective—was still in wide use.
Some analysts, including Mr. Shireifi and Nate Rabkin, the managing editor of the newsletter Inside Iraqi Politics, blamed sectarianism and the proliferation of security agencies. The Ministry of Interior, which controls police, and the Ministry of Defense, which also has forces on the street, are controlled by political appointees who don’t always get along, Mr. Shireifi said.
“The security agencies were established based on political party loyalty, not on skills and capability,” he said, referring to a quota system that guarantees places in the political structure to the main religious and ethnic blocs—Kurds, Shiite Muslims and Sunni Muslims.
Mr. Rabkin noted the different forces often have overlapping missions. “The chain of command is nominally unified. But in practice different units report to different ministries or offices, which are in turn controlled by rival politicians,” he said.
Brig. Gen. Saad Maan, the spokesman for Iraq’s Ministry of Interior and Baghdad Operational Command, dismissed the notion that security bodies failed to coordinate.
He said that security forces had an especially hard time detecting suicide bombers who come to the capital from Islamic State-held areas.
“Most of them are Iraqi and their dialect is the same,” he said. “You don’t have any indications about them that would allow you to capture them, because most of them are ordinary people coming from places controlled by” Islamic State.
— Ali Nabhan in Baghdad and Paul Sonne in Washington contributed to this article.
Write to Asa Fitch at asa.fitch@wsj.com 
