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Sunni Militants Seize Crossing on Iraq-Jordan Border Iraqi Insurgents Secure Control of Border Posts
(about 11 hours later)
BAGHDAD — Sunni militants seized the border crossing between Iraq and Jordan late Sunday night as they consolidated control of Iraq’s vast western region. The seizing of the crossing, known as Turabil, raised the specter of the insurgency’s becoming a menace not just to Iraq and Syria, where they already control territory, but also to Jordan and Saudi Arabia. ERBIL, Iraq — The Sunni militant extremists who have seized a broad area of Iraq extended their control on Monday to the country’s entire western frontier, having secured nearly all official border crossings with Syria and the only one with Jordan, giving them the semblance of the new independent state that they say they intend to create in the region.
The advance by the militants followed their seizing of an important border crossing with Syria at Qaim, allowing them to move fighters and supplies almost unimpeded between the areas they control in Syria and Iraq. A third border crossing, Al Waleed, was also said to be in militant hands on the Iraqi side, though officials said the Syrian army still controlled the Syrian side of that crossing, indicating that at least for now, the militants could not cross freely there. With the seizure of the Jordan crossing, which militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria first assaulted late Sunday night, the Iraqi military defenses crumpled, as they have in other battlegrounds in the western and northern parts of the country over the past two weeks. ISIS control of the Jordan border raised the risks that its insurgency could menace not just Syria and Iraq, but Jordan and Saudi Arabia, two important American allies.
The Iraqi government said it had abandoned the Qaim crossing as a “tactical” decision as it concentrates its forces — Iraqi army units and Shiite militias — around Baghdad and in the Shiite heartland of Iraq. The border seizure came as Secretary of State John Kerry made an emergency visit to Baghdad for consultations with Iraqi leaders on the need to bridge the country’s deepening sectarian splits and form a new unity government that can halt the ISIS insurgency. That is an enormous challenge, given the polarizing effects of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite whose autocratic tendencies have increasingly been a worry for American officials.
Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Baghdad on Monday morning for talks with Iraqi leaders, urging them to form an inclusive government, as they face the grave threat from Sunni insurgents, many of them fighting under the banner of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, known as ISIS. In recent weeks the militants have gained control of large areas of northern and western Iraq, including Mosul, the country’s second-largest city, as the government’s forces were routed or melted away. Mr. Kerry said Mr. Maliki, whose Shiite bloc won the most seats in parliamentary elections but not enough to form a new government, would work with the Sunnis and Kurds to expedite that process, although it remained unclear how long it might take and whether Mr. Maliki would remain the prime minister. But Mr. Kerry also said the Americans might not wait for an outcome before taking military action because the ISIS militants were posing an increasing danger for American interests in the Middle East region.
Meanwhile, in Hilla, south of Baghdad, dozens of Sunni prisoners were said have been killed as they were being transported by security forces to a more secure prison. As the troubling news emerged about a new sectarian massacre, officials gave conflicting explanations. “They do pose a threat,” Mr. Kerry said. “They cannot be given safe haven anywhere.”
Security officials said that at least 69 prisoners were killed, many of them senior leaders of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the forerunner of ISIS. One account, given by an intelligence officer in Hilla who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the policemen who were transporting the prisoners “just stopped the buses on the highway before they reached their final destination and shot them dead.” Even as Mr. Kerry was conferring with Iraqi political leaders, sectarian reprisal violence appeared to be worsening, with at least three instances of mass killings. Shiite policemen were believed to have killed at least 69 Sunni insurgent prisoners on a highway, insurgents bombed the funerals of 15 Shiite civilians they had killed, and a Sunni family of six, including three children, was found shot to death in a Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad.
However, other security and local officials said the convoy was ambushed by militants, and that some prisoners died during the clashes. The ISIS advance on the border posts highlights the quick and strategic gains the militants have made against the Iraqi government’s security forces, which have shown little resistance and little willingness to retake them by force. But the advance also starkly symbolized the broader aim espoused by ISIS of erasing the border drawn by the colonial powers after World War I and establishing an Islamic state that stretches from the Mediterranean through the deserts of Iraq.
Sadiq al-Sultani, the governor of Hilla, said at a news conference on Monday that “the convoy of prisoners was attacked by militants on the highway,” and that 10 militants and 15 prisoners were killed. “The rest of the prisoners were transported to another jail,” he said. “Taking the border crossing with Jordan would mean to me that ISIS is messaging to Jordan and Saudi Arabia that it is a state now,” said Jessica D. Lewis, research director at the Institute for the Study of War, who has scrutinized the militant group’s advances in Iraq and Syria.
The episode in Hilla follows the discovery in a police station last week of the bodies of 44 Sunni prisoners who were held by the Shiite-led Iraqi government in Baquba, north of Baghdad. “I do not think that ISIS is necessarily going to move into Jordan or Saudi Arabia imminently,” she said, “but they are willing to force Jordan and Saudi Arabia to plan forward and treat ISIS as a state actor with military means.”
Over the weekend, as militants captured towns in the western Iraqi province of Anbar and advanced on the crossing with Jordan, called Trebil, the Jordanian government rushed military reinforcements to the remote outpost. Jordanian officials said Monday that the crossing remained open, although with little traffic.
An official at Jordan’s Agriculture Ministry, for instance, said that 140 tons of peaches had crossed into Iraq, indicating that the militants may want to use the crossing not to threaten Jordan, but to secure its claims of statehood, by allowing goods into its territories.
The border post, which links with the main highway from Ramadi, the capital of Anbar, had been an important crossing for goods, as well as Iraqis fleeing violence over the years. But in recent months, it had been less trafficked because the highway had become extremely dangerous to travel. Oil exports to Jordan, trucked over this highway, had halted this year, as militants gained strength in Anbar.
On Monday afternoon, a policeman who works at the crossing and who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that several members of the Iraqi security forces were still holed up in one of the buildings, which was surrounded by militants. Local tribal leaders were trying to negotiate their passage to safety, the policeman said.
“The troops are inside, and the heads of the tribes are forming a separate line between the two sides to avoid any clashes between the militants and the security forces,” he said.
In recent days, the militants also seized two Iraqi posts on the Syrian border. There were unconfirmed reports late Monday that militants occupying one of the posts, Waleed, had scattered from Syrian government airstrikes. But the other post, in Qaim, was under complete ISIS control and opened up an important supply line for the militants between the battlefields in both countries.
In the north, Iraqi Kurds, who have taken steps during the crisis to secure their own borders and perhaps advance their aspirations of independence, have secured another outpost, leaving the Iraqi government with no control of any crossing into Syria or Jordan. On the frontier between Syria and Turkey, ISIS controls at least two border crossings.
As the Iraqi state, especially the military, seems to be weakening by the day, ISIS has been building the trappings of a new state, seizing assets like armored vehicles, weapons and money, fighting for control of Baiji, Iraq’s largest oil refinery, and now securing border outposts.
As the group has taken territory in the north, capturing control of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, one of the battle lines has been set at Samarra, home to an important Shiite shrine. American officials say ISIS has its sights set on destroying the shrine, which would likely lead to an explosion of sectarian violence, just as an attack there did in early 2006.
“Clearly, everyone understands that Samarra is an important line,” Mr. Kerry said at a news conference in Baghdad.
So great are the concerns that Mr. Kerry stressed on Monday that if American action is taken soon — President Obama has said that he is considering airstrikes — it should not be interpreted as a gesture of political support for Mr. Maliki, whom many American officials say privately they would like to see replaced because they believe he is incapable of leading a unity government.
Such a decision by Mr. Obama, Mr. Kerry said, should not be considered to be an act of “support for the existing prime minister or for one sect or another.”
While broadly gaining territory around the country, it is ISIS’s moves on the border crossings that perhaps most emphatically illustrate its ambitions, which it has steadily pronounced through a well-honed public relations campaign. Almost a year ago the group began speaking publicly about its goal of obliterating the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the secret pact between France and Britain to carve up the Middle East into its own spheres of interest after World War I, and the resulting borders that were drawn by the two countries.
In a recent issue of its English-language online magazine, ISIS published a picture of militants busting through a berm on the Iraq-Syria border, which accompanies a long article about the Sykes-Picot Agreement, described as having led to “the partitioning of Muslim lands by Crusader powers.”
It called the breaking of the berm “a historic moment in the fight to unite the Muslim lands.”