Iraq’s Shiite Muslim governing parties and armed groups are evaluating the pros and cons of armed intervention in Syria, considering the advance of Sunni Islamist rebels who have seized two Syrian cities and are now approaching a third to be a serious threat.
Baghdad has a dark history with Sunni fighters based in Syria, thousands of whom crossed into Iraq after the 2003 US invasion and fueled years of sectarian slaughter before returning in 2013 as Islamic State to conquer a third of the country. .
Syrian rebels currently advancing in Syria, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, have rejected Al Qaeda and IS and claim they have no ambitions in Iraq, but Iraq’s dominant factions have little confidence in these claims.
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Iraq has gathered thousands of fighters from its conventional armed forces on the border with Syria, in addition to the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a security agency that relies on Iran-aligned armed groups that previously fought in Syria.
So far, the order is to defend Iraq’s western flank rather than intervene to help Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to an Iraqi Shi’ite politician, a government adviser and an Arab diplomat briefed on the matter.
But the calculus could change, at least for some Iraqi factions, depending on developments, including if rebels seize the main Syrian city of Homs, if Assad falls or if Shiites are persecuted, the sources said.
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Iraqi government spokesman Bassem Al-Awadi stated that Iraq does not seek military intervention in the neighboring country, but described the division of Syria as a “red line”, without going into details.
Reuters had previously reported that hundreds of Iraqi fighters had crossed into Syria to help Assad’s forces, joining Iraqi and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters already in the country, but there has not yet been a mass mobilization from Iraq.
