Steve Coll and Dexter Filkins on new developments in Iraq.

Summary

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The Political Scene | The New Yorker

Episode: Steve Coll and Dexter Filkins on new developments in Iraq
Date: June 20, 2014
Host: Dorothy Wickenden
Guests: Dexter Filkins, Steve Coll

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Overview

In this episode, Dorothy Wickenden discusses the rapidly intensifying crisis in Iraq and Syria with New Yorker staff writers Dexter Filkins and Steve Coll. With ISIS sweeping across northwestern Iraq, there are urgent questions about the effectiveness of U.S. policy, the deepening sectarian conflict in the region, and what might lie ahead for Iraq, its government, and its people. The conversation explores the roots of the current conflict, the impact of Western intervention, and the near-absence of promising political solutions.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Rapid Expansion of ISIS in Iraq and Syria

[02:10 – 03:37]

• Filkins details ISIS's dramatic advances, capturing Mosul, progressing to Baiji and even threatening Baghdad.
  • "It's pretty dramatic the way they've swept first into Mosul and then basically down the Tigris... even into Uba, which are close to Bakuba, which is just outside of Baghdad." — Dexter Filkins, [02:44]
• The Syrian civil war provided ISIS with sanctuary and a base to launch its advance into Iraq, effectively erasing the Syria-Iraq border.

2. Ba'athist Alliances and Sunni Discontent

[03:37 – 04:56]

• Discussion of Saddam Hussein's Sunni loyalists, particularly Izzat al-Douri, cooperating with Islamist fighters.
  • "It's not that surprising, though, that he [al-Douri] would team up with the Islamists... So that much isn't new. I think what's troubling about it is that it suggests that ISIS... has a much broader political appeal, and it probably can speak for a lot of Sunni discontent in Iraq." — Dexter Filkins, [04:17]

3. The Root of Sectarian Conflict

[04:56 – 06:40]

• Steve Coll reviews the U.S.'s critical post-invasion decisions: disbanding the Iraqi army and excluding Ba'ath party members, fueling sectarianism.
• Funding from Gulf states, seeking to counter Iran, has perpetuated the Sunni-Shia divide.
  • "This is a sectarian war now... as it already has been in the last couple of weeks, a war of civilian beheadings and bodies dumped in the night." — Steve Coll, [06:14]

4. Limits of Power-sharing and Maliki’s Sectarianism

[07:29 – 09:14]

• Maliki's refusal to meaningfully cooperate with Sunnis and Kurds undermines proposals for power-sharing.
  • "Maliki, at a moment like this, is not... going to be in a bargaining mood... Maliki has been sectarian to the core, and that's really at the heart of this." — Dexter Filkins, [07:50]
• The lack of genuine dialogue makes a political solution highly improbable.

5. Skepticism of Military Intervention & Negotiations

[09:46 – 11:38]

• Coll criticizes calls (e.g., from Anne-Marie Slaughter) for limited force to push parties to negotiations.
  • "I don't find it convincing in the circumstances because I don't know what kind of negotiating table anybody's going to be driven to in these circumstances... The idea that under this kind of bloodlust, suddenly people are going to be shocked into cooperation..." — Steve Coll, [10:32]
• Existing political processes have failed to produce unity; military intervention is unlikely to change that.

6. U.S.-Iran Dialogue and the Problem of Drones

[11:38 – 14:37]

• Limited talks were held with Iran about stemming ISIS, but there’s no clear U.S. strategy for the region.
• Coll describes how drone strikes are seen from Pakistan, noting their limitations:
  • "To think that you're going to win a war from the sky entirely by drone strikes is a fantasy... This is an insurgency. It's not a terrorist group, and it uses terrorism as a tactic." — Steve Coll, [13:38]

7. Obama’s Counterterrorism Strategy and U.S. Policy Dilemmas

[14:37 – 16:28]

• Filkins is skeptical about the effectiveness of Obama’s proposed $5 billion counterterrorism fund for countries like Iraq.
  • "If the United States starts to undertake airstrikes on his behalf, then we... are responsible... for what he's doing." — Dexter Filkins, [15:10]
• U.S. support for Maliki might reduce his incentive to enact necessary changes.

8. The Consequences of U.S. Involvement

[16:28 – 17:42]

• The hosts agree that the Iraq invasion fueled the spread of militant Islam rather than containing it.
  • "We were warned about this by our oil despot friends in the Gulf. They told us we would be uncapping something we couldn't control and that would spread outside of Iraq's borders." — Steve Coll, [16:44]

9. Iraq’s Bright Spots: Tunisia and Kurdistan

[17:42 – 20:24]

• Tunisia is highlighted as a rare Arab Spring success, maintaining constitutional government.
• Filkins discusses Iraqi Kurdistan as a notable region of stability and autonomy amid chaos:
  • "The one bright spot in all this is Kurdistan... you have essentially a reasonably democratic, pro-western, secular... region right in the heart of the Middle East." — Dexter Filkins, [18:12]
  • Kurdish forces seized Kirkuk during the ISIS advance, further strengthening their autonomy.

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Memorable Moments & Notable Quotes

• On the collapse of the Iraqi military:
  "We saw four divisions disappear before the ISIS onslaught. They just left and deserted." — Dexter Filkins, [15:47]

• On drone warfare:
  "This kind of terrorism, which is embedded in an insurgency... is just a tactical kind of expression of a much broader, deeper problem than 10 terrorists sitting around a table thinking about what they're going to blow up tomorrow." — Steve Coll, [14:12]

• On the Kurdish drive for independence:
  "It's always been a bit of a trick, which is as long as the Kurds don't say out loud that they're independent, they can more or less act as an independent state." — Dexter Filkins, [19:37]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 02:10: Dexter Filkins describes ISIS’s actions in Iraq and the group's roots in Syria
• 03:37: Analysis of Ba’athist involvement and broader Sunni discontent
• 04:56: Steve Coll explains how U.S. post-invasion decisions inflamed sectarianism
• 07:29: Maliki’s intransigence and the implausibility of power-sharing
• 09:46: Debate about the limits of military force and the political process
• 11:38: Brief on U.S.–Iran talks over Iraq
• 12:36: Coll’s critique of drone-based counterterrorism
• 14:37: Filkins analyzes Obama’s counterterrorism partnership fund
• 16:28: The U.S. role in the rise of militant Islam in the region
• 17:42: Glimmers of hope: Tunisia and Kurdistan amid regional turmoil

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Conclusion

This episode delivers a sober examination of the multi-layered crisis unfolding in Iraq and Syria. Filkins and Coll reject simple solutions, casting doubt on both U.S. military intervention and the prospect of meaningful negotiation. The rise of ISIS, sectarian divides, deep Sunni grievances, and the limitations of American influence are all examined in their historical and regional context. Amid a generally bleak outlook, Kurdistan stands out as a rare example of stability, autonomy, and hope in the Middle East.

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Transcript

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[Dorothy Wickenden]

This is the Political Scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and editors about Politics. It's Thursday, June 19th. I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of the New Yorker. With Sunni militants taking over large parts of Iraq and moving closer to Baghdad, President Obama is facing pressure to respond militarily. He spoke about administration policy at the White House last week.

[Dexter Filkins]

The United States is not simply going to involve itself in a military action. In the absence of a political plan by the Iraqis, that gives us some assurance that they're prepared to work together.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Dexter Filkins and Steve Kahl are joining me today to talk about the metastasizing crises in Iraq and Syria and about what works and doesn't work in the fight against terrorism. So Dexter, in less than two weeks, much of Northwestern Iraq has fallen to isis, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. And as in Syria, everyone seems to be belatedly recognizing the strength of this group and of other Al Qaeda offshoots, even though experts have been warning us for a year that ISIS was moving toward establishing an Islamic state in parts of Syria and Iraq.

[Dexter Filkins]

Well, yeah, I mean, it's pretty dramatic the way they've swept first into Mosul and then basically down the Tigris, and then yesterday capturing the big oil refinery at Beijing, which, you know, provides Iraq with much of its energy, and then even into uba, which are close to Bakuba, which is just outside of Baghdad. I mean, that's about 30 miles out. It's amazing. Shouldn't be that surprising, though. ISIS is very strong in Syria, where, of course, the war has been going on there for three years. They control a string of towns and even a provincial capital, but a string of towns along the Euphrates River. And it's that big open space between the borders, and that border there between Iraq and Syria has basically ceased to exist. But it was essentially Syria that allowed them to have a sanctuary and a base from which to launch this attack on Iraq.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

It's also clear now, probably has been to you for a while, but wasn't to some of us, that Saddam Hussein's former loyalists, the Ba', Athists, have been working with ISIS in this Sunni surge. Could any of this have been prevented way back at the beginning of the war?

[Dexter Filkins]

One of the most amazing bits of news from last week was that Izzad Al Dhuri, who was Saddam's vice president, actually took some time out over the last few days to visit Saddam's grave outside of Tikrit in Iraq. Izzid Al Duri, who is on the deck of cards. Most of the people on the deck of cards, you know, the top leadership of Saddam's regime are either dead or in prison. But Izad Al Duri has been around for a while. It's not that surprising either that Izzid El Duri, who comes from the Ba'ath Party, Saddam's Ba'ath Party, is basically secular. It's not that surprising, though, that he would team up with the Islamists to do this. They did it throughout the war, the Islamists and the Ba' Athists kind of getting together. So that much isn't new. I think what's troubling about it is that it suggests that isis, which is really extremist and contains clearly a lot of sociopaths, has a much broader. This movement has a much broader political appeal, and it probably can speak for a lot of Sunni discontent in Iraq.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

So, Steve, we seem to be seeing not just another civil war unfold, but a regional Sunni versus Shia war. Dick Cheney, you know, is preposterously blaming it all on Obama. Walk us back a little bit through all of this.

[Steve Kahl]

Well, when the United States invaded Iraq and took Baghdad, one of the first and most consequential decisions that the Coalition Provisional Authority made, against advice from the intelligence community and others, was to dissolve the Iraqi army and to make Ba'ath party members ineligible for positions in the new regime absent heavy vetting and disenfranchise the Sunni minority that had ruled Iraq for the previous three decades and set up post war Iraq in an even more clearly sectarian framework than would otherwise have been the case. Since then. You know, a lot has changed in the Middle east and the sectarian virus has really run free, not just in Iraq, but in Syria and elsewhere the Gulf states. Funding of groups like ISIS and Al Nusra and Syria is partly a reflection of their own engagement as Petro states in a sectarian contest against Iran and elsewhere. This divide has already taken so many lives, spilled so much blood, divided so many neighborhoods, created so much self segregation, that this is a sectarian war now. And it's going to be, as it already has been in the last couple of weeks, a war of civilian beheadings and bodies dumped in the night, much as it was before the surge into Baghdad and during the surge into Baghdad in 07 and 08.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Also, Steve, Sunnis are a relatively small minority in Iraq and the number of militants far smaller.

[Steve Kahl]

And.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

And Maliki is heavily backed by Iran and to a limited and anguished extent by the US So what is the end game likely to be?

[Steve Kahl]

Well, Steve Simon is a very smart guy who is running the Middle east desk at the National Security Council and has been around these subjects for a long time. I remember talking to him, you know, five, six, seven years ago about Iraq. And he just said in his laconic way, we're midwifing the breakup of the country. And I've been reflecting on that this week. Yeah, now we're here. But he wrote in the Times recently that he thought the demography favored ultimately a Shia victory after a long bloody contest within the borders of Iraq. But are the borders of Iraq really going to be relevant by the time this thing burns itself out? I don't know.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

And Dexter, apparently Maliki met with Sunni and Kurdish leaders this week and Maliki refused their offer of a kind of army If I understand it correctly, to take down isis. A number of commentators have been saying there should be some kind of power sharing arrangement, but that just seems absolutely implausible given the kind of leadership Maliki has shown so far.

[Dexter Filkins]

Maliki, at a moment like this is not. I mean, you could say any national leader is not going to be in a bargaining mood. He feels like he's under siege, and I think he feels like probably the immediate need is to stop the advance of the Sunni militants who are, you know, ravaging through northern and western Iraq. The bigger problem here is that Maliki, his whole adult life, has been a very hardcore Shiite sectarian political operative. I mean, that's his entire worldview. When the Americans were there, they could restrain his worst impulses and broker the political deals that actually managed to come about until they left. Within 24 hours of the last American troops leaving Iraq in December 2011, Maliki ordered the arrest of the Sunni Vice president, Tarq Al Hashemi, who had to flee the country and now lives outside the country and is facing a death sentence if he comes back. Maliki has been sectarian to the core, and that's really at the heart of this. You have to ask yourself the question when you see a meeting like that, Maliki sitting down with the Kurds, Maliki sitting down with a collection of Sunni leaders, is he really capable of. Of reaching out and making a deal with these people after so long, after spending his entire adult life going in the other direction? I really don't think so.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Okay, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.

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[Dorothy Wickenden]

Steve, this week in the Times, Ann Marie Slaughter, the former director of policy planning in Obama's State Department, advocates the use of force on a limited basis in both countries, actually Iraq and Syria, enough, as she puts it, to compel governments and rebels alike to the negotiating table. Is that good advice? Is it plausible?

[Steve Kahl]

I don't find it convincing in the circumstances because I don't know what kind of negotiating table anybody's going to be driven to in these circumstances. I mean, this has been the fantasy of the Obama administration in Syria throughout that if only they could bring Assad's proxies together with a responsible rebellion, they could find a political solution backed by the great powers in some kind of traditional way. And the war in Syria has never seemed amenable to that kind of solution. And in any event, no such solution has arisen despite great effort. And we're way past that in Syria now, in Iraq, for all the reasons Dexter's described, these photographs of roundtables in Iraq have been transmitted by the wire services for six or seven years and have never produced a durable source of political unity within the country. The idea that under this kind of bloodlust, suddenly people are going to be shocked into cooperation when they've had hours and hours of patient negotiations about oil sharing and power sharing and they have not been able to come up with sustainable arrangement outside of autonomy for the Kurds. It just doesn't make sense to me. So if you're going to use force, for what now, if the answer is to prevent ISIS from running into Baghdad for 30 days in order to allow some Malachi backed government that you've decided to go in with defend the perimeter of the Capitol, I mean, I suppose there are tactical uses of force that someone could talk the President into, but the idea that you're going to use force for political ends in this way just doesn't seem plausible to me.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Steve, on another point, there was another meeting this week between a State Department official and an Iranian counterpart in Vienna to discuss Iraq. What happened there?

[Steve Kahl]

There was an exploration of taking the nuclear talks that the United States had been making intermittent progress in building confidence with the Iranians and using them to create a forum for talking about cooperation to prevent ISIS from overrunning Baghdad, I'm still from a distance admittedly here in Pakistan trying to understand what the end state is if the Obama administration plausibly imagines it can pursue in the next couple of weeks. It would have to figure that out before it knew what it wanted to talk to the Iranians about.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Yeah, as you mentioned, you're talking to us from Islamabad, where the use of drones is a major political issue and drones have been the defining strategy of the Obama administration's approach to terrorism. Tell us how it looks from there.

[Steve Kahl]

Well, Pakistan has launched its own little small war while I've been here this week. One of what seems like now three dozen going on around the world in which the Americans are are engaged and drone strikes kicked it off. In fact, there's been no announcement about this, but it seems obvious that the Pakistani and American governments have cooperated now again, on drone strikes in Pakistani territory, in this case in North Waziristan, after periods where they were estranged on that subject. So it goes back and forth. I mean, counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, we all know, is not where you win primarily by force. It's mostly about intelligence, eyesight, policing, political will, political unity, a whole suite of conditions that isolate the irreconcilable nihilist violent groups that society wants to suppress and expel. And to do that occasionally. The precise use of force is an important part of the picture. But to think that you're going to win a war from the sky entirely by drone strikes is a fantasy. And in the case of Pakistan, I think after a lot of early enthusiasm about the power of drones in some quarters of the Pakistani elite to solve their Waziristan problem, this week's events suggest that they've come around to the view that actually they're going to have to do this event themselves. On the ground, drones and F16s can play a supporting role in the air from time to time, but really, this kind of terrorism, which is embedded in an insurgency the same way it is in Iraq, the same way it is in Syria, is just a tactical kind of expression of a much broader, deeper problem than 10 terrorists sitting around a table thinking about what they're going to blow up tomorrow. This is an insurgency. It's not a terrorist group, and it uses terrorism as a tactic.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Dexter, what do you think about Obama's announcement last week at West Point about a counterterrorism partnership fund, as he put it, to help offer, I think it was, up to $5 billion to vulnerable countries like Iraq, Lebanon, and Turkey.

[Dexter Filkins]

I guess it's a good idea. But take the case of Iraq. The difficulty that Obama faces in deciding whether or not to use force. It's not just, you know, whether they have sufficient targets to hit or whether the intelligence is good enough to n some of these guys. The danger that he faces and the danger that Obama will face in any of these countries that he offers money to is, but particularly in the case of Iraq, if the United States starts to undertake airstrikes on his behalf, then we, the United States, are identified with Maliki's government, and to a large extent, we are responsible for not just for what we're doing, but for what he's doing. And I think that's the much greater difficulty that Maliki needs to make changes or the Iraqi government does, with or without Maliki. And the moment we decide to get behind him and support him, the less incentive he has to change. And I'm really pessimistic about any sort of endgame here, at least in the immediate future. I think that ISIS was able to roll into these places. I mean, my gosh, Mosul is the second largest city in the country. They were able to roll into these places because of the extraordinary discontent that exists among the Sunni populations. But I think the Iraqi army, such as it is, is in absolutely no position to march back into any of these places. And that's assuming even that they hang together. I mean, you know, we saw four divisions disappear before the ISIS onslaught. They just left and deserted. Maliki's not in a position to go back into these places. And so I think we're in for a very long stalemate at best.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

So, Steve, what both of you are saying seems to be that in some terrible way the United States has helped ensure spread of militant Islam rather than.

[Steve Kahl]

Containing it well through the invasion of Iraq for sure.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Yes.

[Steve Kahl]

And look, we were warned about this by our oil despot friends in the Gulf. They told us that we would be uncapping something that we couldn't control and that would spread outside of Iraq's borders. We dismissed that advice. The Bush administration dismissed that advice on the grounds that it was just sectarian bias looking to prop up a Sunni minority dictatorship in Iraq that had brutalized the Shia majority that the Gulf didn't care about. And so we walked right past that neighborhood advice and did decapitate the Ba'ath party and Iraq's army right in the middle of a pretty rough neighborhood. And really the region hasn't recovered. There have been a lot of different things like the Arab Spring that have intervened since. But the truth is that from 2003 until today, sectarian conflict in the Gulf region and in Iraq has just gotten darker and darker.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

And Steve, are there any glimmers of hope left from the Arab Spring?

[Steve Kahl]

Tunisia seems to be holding together. How it's going to do so next door to Libya, I'm not entirely sure. But they were the first people to rise up against a dictator in the name of constitutional self government. They've actually constructed constitutional self government. They've got pockets of Islamists and Salafis under arms running around in places, but by and large, you know, they've gotten through it remarkably well.

[Dexter Filkins]

Can I just jump in here?

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Yes, please.

[Dexter Filkins]

The one bright spot in all this is Kurdistan. That's the Kurdish region. It's not Arab, so it's not officially part of the Arab Spring. But the Kurdish region in northern Iraq, which represents about 20% of the population. Amid all of this and all of the turmoil, and this has been going on for a long time, but you have essentially a reasonably democratic, pro western, secular. I can't call it a country, but it's getting pretty close to that right in the heart of the Middle East. For all the turmoil in Iraq, this has been a great moment for the Kurds. One of the main things that's been keeping the Kurds in Iraq has been the dispute over the city of Kirkuk, which is basically a divided city. It's about a third Arab, a third Kurdish, and then there's third of the population is Turkmen. But they've never been able to settle that. When ISIS started to roll across western and northern Iraq, the Kurds moved very quickly, seizing the opportunity. They basically took Kirkuk, and they now have it. And Kirkuk is all through that region, as for much of other parts of Kurdistan, has a lot of oil and gas. This was really a big turning point for the Kurds. It's going to be harder and harder for the government in Iraq to keep the Kurdish region part of Iraq.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Right. And they want total autonomy anyway. They have for many, many years. I mean, they're a little island, are they not?

[Dexter Filkins]

They are. They are. I mean, it's always been a bit of a trick, which is as long as the Kurds don't say out loud that they're independent, they can more or less act as an independent state. They have their own foreign policy, they have their own army. They have everything but their own currency, really. And as the oil industry there has grown and developed, there's less and less of a need for Kurdistan to be part of the rest of Iraq at all. They don't speak Arabic there. Most of the young people there don't even understand Arabic anymore. And they have a long and terrible history with the rest of Iraq, particularly during Saddam's time, where I think more than 150,000 Kurds were killed. So they would be more than happy to say goodbye to the rest of Iraq. And they seem increasingly ready to do that.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Okay, thank you. Both Steve Collins and Dexter Filkins are staff writers. This has been the political scene from the New Yorker. I'm Dorothy Wickenden.

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[Dexter Filkins]

Foreign.

[Katie Drummond]

I'm Katie Drummond. I'm Wired's global editorial director. I'm Michael Colory, Wired's Director of Consumer, Tech and Culture.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

And I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior correspondent at Wired. And our show, Uncanny Valley is about the people, power, and influence of Silicon Valley.

[Katie Drummond]

And right now, Silicon Valley and Washington have never been more intertwined. So each week we get together to talk about a big story, often at the intersection of tech and politics.

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Right?

[Dexter Filkins]

So whether we're talking about Trump, Coin.

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[Katie Drummond]

Explain how these Silicon Valley forces are affecting Washington and how they affect you. Make sure you're following Uncanny Valley in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss an episode.

[Dexter Filkins]

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