Iraq tries to root out IS remnants in farms north of the capital

Across the border in Syria, where thousands of Iraqi suspected IS militants and their families remained detained, top US military officials have warned that Russian actions are "distracting" from the fight against IS.

Read more: Inside Al-Hol Camp: IS threat lingers as world stalls repatriation

'Wali' of Tel Afar arrested near Baghdad

On 18 June, the Iraq Security Media Cell announced the arrest of a man they said had been the IS 'wali' of Tel Afar, a city in Iraq's northwestern province of Nineveh about 50 kilometres west of Mosul and 60 kilometres east of the Iraqi-Syrian border.

He too had been found in the northern part of the Baghdad province.

Tarmiyah is located in this part of the Baghdad Belt. It is known for its lush date palm groves and fisheries on the Tigris River. The town lies in a V-shaped wedge between the main roads running north from Baghdad: one to Kirkuk and the other to Tikrit.

Iraqi counter-terrorism expert Hisham al-Hashimi, who was assassinated in Baghdad in July 2020, told this Al Majalla reporter in a 2018 interview that Tarmiyah was "the centre of Salafi recruiting in the Baghdad area".

The 'wali' of Tel Afar, according to the 18 June statement, had recently been involved in sleeper cells here, less than an hour's drive north of Baghdad.

Lack of investment

While security in Iraq as a whole has improved immensely since the 2014-2017 war against IS, cells continue to operate.

During a visit to the town of Tarmiyah and the surrounding area in late March, the town's unpaved streets had become a muddy mess and rubbish was piled high and burned in empty lots.

Sheikh Saeed Jassim al-Mashhadani, the former head of the Arab Awakening in the northern Baghdad area, stressed in an interview in his diwan with Al Majalla that this lack of development in the town was what needed to be addressed, first and foremost.

"The situation for the past 12 years means there has been no investment and the streets are in very bad shape – you saw that yourself on the way here," he said, noting that "the prime minister has spoken about the matter and inshallah something will be done."

"We met with (Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-) Sudani in the Green Zone [in Baghdad]. He didn't come here," he said.

Three of the sheikh's sons were killed by IS and al-Qaeda. He too has been targeted by multiple assassination attempts but continues to live in the town.

The dominant tribe in Tarmiyah is his, the Mashhadani, members of which are considered to be of direct descent from the Prophet Muhammad. The largest concentration of this Sunni-majority tribe in Iraq is in this area north of Baghdad.

"IS ruined people's idea of Islam in all areas. They took the name of Islam but they have nothing to do with Islam," the sheikh stressed to Al Majalla, noting that "I have been on the Hajj [religious pilgrimage to Mecca] 16 times and I hope to go again."

"I am now president of the tribal council of the area stretching from Taji to Dujail," the sheikh noted. "Mashhadani is in all of Iraq, Syria, Jordan, etc., but the main centre of the Mashahada tribe is Tarmiya."

"We take care of tribal issues but other things are the government's responsibility," he said, stressing that "many innocent people are now in jail" in the country as a whole and that "dozens of Tarmiya residents are missing. We don't know where they are."

"During the period of the Americans' presence (in Iraq)," the former Arab Awakening leader reminisced, "we had water, roads were paved, and sidewalks were prepared. But in the end, they left."

He warned that a lack of investment in the area could foster resentment among jobless youth and others.

Nonetheless, he said, "security is good, for now".

Senior terrorist leaders linked to Kirkuk

Multiple members of the Mashahada originally from Tarmiyah have held high-level positions within both IS and al-Qaeda.

IS operative Jamal al-Mashhadani was originally from town and served for a period as the terrorist organisation's 'wali', or governor, of Kirkuk. He was also known as Abu Hamza al Kurdi.

After being arrested in 2018 in Baghdad's Hurriya area – a northern part of the city on the road towards Tarmiyah – Jamal confessed to parading 18 Peshmerga captives through the streets of Hawija when it was under IS control in 2015, among other crimes.

Hawija is in the western part of the Kirkuk province.

Khalid al-Mashhadani, a senior operative in al-Qaeda in Iraq, was originally from Tarmiyah. Khalid served as a liaison between al-Qaeda's command in Iraq and Osama bin Laden's inner circle, including in Pakistan. He was reportedly captured in July 2007.

Some local residents and other members of Iraq's Sunni community both in the country and abroad claim that Shiite militias from the south encourage terrorism in the Tarmiyah area or overestimate its presence for political purposes.

They claim that these militias would like to engage in "demographic change" in the area by forcing the local Sunni community and tribes to leave through whatever means necessary.

One member of the local security forces, on being questioned by Al Majalla about why the police were preventing a bridge over the Tigris in Tarmiyah from being crossed during a visit in March, claimed that "over there they are Shiite, here we are Sunni".

Though sectarianism has dramatically diminished in recent years in Iraq compared with the height of sectarian warfare from 2006 onwards, it remains a problem in some areas. Fear of sectarian violence causes many to take precautions they otherwise would not.

Russia 'distracting' anti-IS forces

Meanwhile, concerns have been raised about attacks attributed to IS across the border in Syria and tension between US and Russian forces in the north-eastern part of the country.

Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, the Combined Forces Air Component Commander for US Central Command, said in a 21 June online briefing with Al Majalla and other media that the Russian Air Force is "being more aggressive in Syria, perhaps as a way to compensate for the fact that they have had to move capability and capacity out of Syria in order to support the war in Ukraine."

He added that "We've had incidences where the Russians have flown into airspace that has been long recognised as coalition airspace where the Russians could fly if they deconflict that with us."

"But we've had incidences as recently as just earlier this morning in Syria time where a Russian aircraft came into our airspace.  We had incidences yesterday and we had incidences the day before."

"We've had as many as three or four times that the Russians would execute in a single day where they incur into this airspace," he stressed.

He added that this "distracts us" and IS "continues to have the capability and a fair amount of freedom of action, primarily in areas where the Syrian regime and the Russians ought to be putting pressure on them."

"They are running training camps, and they're building up their capabilities because the Russians and the regime are either incapable or unwilling to put pressure on IS. That then spills over into the parts of Syria where our partner forces operate or into Iraq or other neighbouring countries."