Iraqi protesters gather amid clashes with security forces following an anti-government demonstration in Iraq’s southern city of Nasiriyah in Dhi Qar province. Agence France-Presse

Daesh is exploiting the world’s preoccupation with the coronavirus to regroup, recoup, and mount frequent attacks in Iraq and Syria. Daesh’s leadership has announced a “Ramadan offensive” and urged fighters to open up a second front by carrying out operations while the Iraqi and Syrian governments fight Covid-19. This broad front has taken priority over mopping up Daesh remnants.

While they no longer occupy 40 per cent of Iraq, they have taken refuge in the mountains in Kirkuk and Dyala provinces and conduct deadly raids on police and army objectives. Roads, urban areas, and countryside emptied by the virus containment effort have allowed Daesh more freedom of movement and enabled its adherents to strike repeatedly.

Since Covid-19 emerged, Iraq’s security and military forces have been deployed in cities and towns to ensure compliance with lockdowns and curfews.

These and social distancing are just about Iraq’s only weapons against the stealthy corona virus. The country’s once well-developed health sector has been devastated by the 1991 US-led war and the 2003 US invasion and occupation and has not been rebuilt. Testing and tracing facilities are few, protective masks and gear are in short supply, and life-saving ventilators are lacking.    

While nowhere near the height of its prowess, Daesh has managed to hit sensitive targets north of the hyper-sensitive cities of Kirkuk and Baghdad. A Daesh suicide bomber struck an intelligence headquarters near Kirkuk, once Iraq’s oil hub, and a checkpoint north of the capital Baghdad where ill-equipped Sunni militiamen had no night-vision equipment to see the attackers coming.

Attacks have taken place elsewhere as Iraqi protesters have returned to the streets demanding reform, an end to corruption and the ouster of the US-imposed sectarian regime which has mismanaged and robbed the country since taking over in 2004. The situation has deteriorated since the assassination at Baghdad’s international airport of Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani by US drone strikes in early January.

Daesh has been encouraged to re-assert itself by Baghdad’s failure to govern and a pause by US forces from active engagement with Daesh and their withdrawal from Iraqi bases in Kirkuk, al-Qaim in the west, and Qayyarah airbase in the north. The reduction and concentration of the US forces followed attacks on Iraqi bases hosting US troops and those of its Western allies.

Although the Kirkuk attack was launched by Daesh, all were blamed — rightly or wrongly — by the Trump administration on Kataeb Hizbollah, a pro-Iran Shia militia. This has turned Hashd al-Shaabi, popular mobilisation units which have merged with the army, against the US and prompted politicians allied to the Hashd to demand the full withdrawal of US troops from the country.

Daesh’s attacks have followed the pattern set before the 2014 establishment of the false caliphate in north-central Syria and northern Iraq. Daesh fighters ambush convoys, army patrols, and checkpoints and finance their activities by kidnapping for ransom and other criminal activities.

As Daesh is based in inaccessible mountainous territory in Dyala, Salahuddin, and Kirkuk provinces, the group’s fighters can easily cross Anbar and Nineva  provinces to reach Syria where they can link up with fellow Daesh fugitives and carry out operations against Syrian troops and civilians in both the north and south of the country.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet has said that her office is receiving frequent reports of “targeted killings and bombings from one end of (Syria) to  the other, with many such attacks taking place in populated areas...

Various parties to the conflict in Syria including Daesh appear to view the global focus on Covid-19 as an opportunity to regroup and inflict violence on the population.” She reported 35 deaths in April due to improvised explosive devices compared with seven during March.  She pointed out that the majority of the attacks have taken place in the north in areas occupied by Turkish and Turkey’s surrogate forces or the US-backed Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces.

Some attacks in the north may have been mounted by the Kurds, taking revenge against Turkey and its clients for seizing and ethnically cleansing Kurdish populated territory along the border with the personal permission of Donald Trump. He has also drawn down 2,000 troops in northern Syria to 600, deployed them in occupying Syria’s main oil fields, and abandoned the Kurds.  At the cost of 11,000 lives, they had provided ground forces for the fight against Daesh while the US, which lost half a dozen personnel, and its allies bombed from high in the sky.

Daesh is particularly active in the east and south-east where its fighters strike in Deir al-Zor and Deraa provinces.  The Kurds do not have enough men to police the vast Deir al-Zor desert while the undermanned and overstretched Syrian army and its Russian allies have been unable to impose security in Deraa since its surrender to Damascus in 2018.

Both countries suffer from displacement of millions of civilians and host camps for them while Kurdish-held eastern Syria has established prisons for Daesh fighters and camps for their families and followers. People living in crowded conditions without sanitation and health care are prime targets for the virus, particularly since the West has refused to lift sanctions on Syria and has not provided Iraq with the wherewithal to contain infection.   

Covid-19 and the rapid fall in the price of oil, drastically cutting Iraq’s hard currency earnings, have collapsed the Iraqi economy, making that country prey to Daesh violence and disruption. Lebanon’s economic crisis and Covid-19 closure of the border between Syria and Lebanon, halting trade and sanctions busting financial transactions, have beggared Syria.   

Due to civil conflict and external intervention the very existence of these two once prosperous Arab countries, the heartlands of the Eastern Arab World, are under fresh threat from Daesh, its terrible twin, al-Qaeda’s Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, based in north-western Syria, and other radical groupings.

The pre-Covid-19 Trump administration’s determination to abandon the catastrophes the US has wrought over decades by intervening in Iraq and Syria provides an opportunity for wiser, regional and international leaders to step in, provide Iraq with financial and medical aid, and lift sanctions on Syria, enabling it to rebuild.  Intelligent intervention could halt their downward slide and deny Covid-19 permanent bases for infecting the region and the wider world.