(C) MEASURED RESPONSE IN DIYALA TO SAMARRA BOMBING; ISF

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 03 KIRKUK 000050

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

EMBASSY FOR POL, POLMIL, ROL COORDINATOR, NCT, IRMO

E.O. 12958: DECL: 3/2/2016
TAGS: PGOV PHUM KDEM MOPS KISL IZ IR
SUBJECT: (C) MEASURED RESPONSE IN DIYALA TO SAMARRA BOMBING; ISF
RELUCTANT TO CONFRONT JAYSH AL-MAHDI

KIRKUK 00000050 001.2 OF 003


CLASSIFIED BY: Scott Dean, Regional Coordinator (Acting),REO
Kirkuk, DoS.
REASON: 1.4 (b),(d)



CORRECTED COPY (KIRKUK 49) - CLASSIFICATION CHANGE TO SECRET


1. (U) This is a SET Ba'qubah cable.


2. (C) SUMMARY: The reaction in Diyala to the destruction of the
al-Askariya shrine in Samarra has been restrained and generally
focused on positive messages of shared determination to fight
against takfirism, due in no small part to the responsible
rhetoric and frenetic behind-the-scenes work by Diyala's
religious and political leadership. Both Sunnis and Shi'as have
generally kept their heads rather than responding to acts that
could have been taken as substantial provocations - despite the
unsettling, though not entirely surprising, unwillingness of the
ISF to keep armed Jaysh al-Mahdi elements off the streets.
Unfortunately, this good-news story has been overshadowed by
several massacres carried out in the thinly populated southwest
corner of the province, a topic that will be covered septel.
END SUMMARY.

-------------- -
FEB 22: SMALL DEMO AND CIVIL STRIFE CONTAINED;
GOVERNOR AND PC CHAIR PROCEED WITH IRAN VISIT
-------------- -


3. (SBU) News of the "Golden Mosque" explosion had filtered to
all population centers in Diyala by the early afternoon of
February 22. A small demonstration formed in the late afternoon
in the Shi'a village of Huwaydir, a suburb of Ba'qubah where
many of Diyala's primary Shi'a political "fixers" reside. It
was accompanied by armed militiamen from the local "Sistani
Brigades" as it marched into Ba'qubah, ultimately dispersing
before reaching downtown.


4. (C) Also during mid-afternoon of February 22, events that are
still in dispute occurred in central, predominantly Sunni,
Muqdadiyah. According to our Sunni contacts, armed Jaysh
al-Mahdi elements entered the city's marketplace and forcibly
closed down shops in compliance with the call of Shi'a
authorities for a mourning period. When some shopowners refused
to close down their shops, the JAM members allegedly fired into
such stores, in some cases igniting the merchandise and causing
further damage to seven stores. (Sunni Assistant Governor Hafiz
Abdulaziz al-Juburi, the owner of one of the damaged stores, has
showed SET photographs taken of his store and others near it
that show substantial gunfire damage.) There are
counter-allegations by Shi'as of gunfire from Sunnis during this
period as well. At some point during this exchange, one Sunni
was killed and five, including the brother of (Sunni) Deputy
Governor Auwf Rahumi al-Rubay'i, were wounded in the crossfire.
The Deputy Governor exercised restraint in calling for calm,
which was restored to the marketplace area by early nightfall.


5. (C) The Deputy Governor's restraint was important, as he was
not only the ranking Sunni provincial official, but the acting
Governor. A delegation led by (Shi'a) Governor Ra'ad al-Mullah
Jawad al-Timimi, which included Provincial Council Chairman
Ibrahim Bajillan and several other Provincial Council members,
DG's, and security officials was en route to Kermanshah, Iran,
on the morning of February 22 when the Governor received the
news of the destruction of the al-Askariya shrine. Our
understanding is that the multi-sectarian delegation planned to
discuss routine cross-border issues such as trade, electrical
supply and return of refugees; despite any apparent urgent need
to travel to Iran, however, the Governor elected at that time to
continue his visit. The decision left the province stripped of
top leaders at a critical time; the delegation is currently
scheduled to return to Diyala on March 1.

-------------- --
FEB 23: LARGE, PEACEFUL DEMOS THROUGHOUT DIYALA
-------------- --


6. (C) The morning of February 23 saw a wave of demonstrations
in Shi'a population centers. The largest of these
demonstrations, incorporating some 2,000 people, was held in
Kan'an, a town east of Ba'qubah that is neither particularly
large nor particularly dominated by Shi'as; the demonstration
was organized by leading independent Shi'as, including Deputy
Provincial Council Chairman Sheikh Dhari Tha'baan al-Asadi. A
1,000-person demonstration in the northwestern Shi'a center of
Khalis included a substantial number of apparent JAM members
armed with semiautomatic weapons.


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7. (SBU) Smaller demonstrations, numbering several hundred
people, took place in Ba'qubah, Muqdadiyah, al-Ghalabiya (a
village outside of Khalis),and the southeastern cities of
Mandali and Balad Ruz. As at Khalis, the march in Muqdadiyah
allegedly incorporated armed JAM members to protect it. After
the events of the previous afternoon and evening, the Sunni
leadership viewed this as a provocation and reacted by arming
themselves; they did not, however, strike back. In Balad Ruz,
our Sunni and Shi'a contacts tell us that Sunnis and Shi'as
marched together, chanting, "We are free, Sunni and Shi'a; this
homeland we will not sell."

-------------- --------------
FEB 24 AND AFTER: CONSTRUCTIVE SERMONS AND EQUILIBRIUM RESTORED
-------------- --------------


8. (C) By February 24, our contacts were reporting that all was
quiet. A crowd gathering that morning at the primary Shi'a
mosque in Muqdadiyah (which allegedly included armed JAM
members) was dispersed after the Sunni mayor of Muqdadiyah
contacted the imam of the mosque to request that he take steps
to control the group. Attendance at Friday prayers was light
due to the curfew, but those of our contacts who did attend
reported that the imams of the mosques preached sermons
rejecting takfirism and calling for unity and restraint. (This
information tracks with the wider survey of mosque sermons
carried out by the CF brigade stationed in Diyala, and with the
assurances made to SET prior to the sermons by the Chairmen of
both the Shi'a Waqf and the Sunni Waqf.) A February 25 press
conference brought together Diyala's ranking Sunni and Shi'a
political officeholders, the local commanders of the Iraqi Army
and Iraqi police, and representatives of the Shi'a Waqf and Suni
Waqf to deliver the same message.


9. (C) The curfews over the past several days have been
maintained in Diyala's cities with varying degrees of
stringency, but without substantial further incident. IA
elements have tended to enforce the curfew more strictly than
IP, who reportedly took advantage of the curfew and consequent
lines at the gas station to fill up their various vehicles.

--------------
HIGH PROFILE FOR JAYSH AL-MAHDI
--------------


10. (C) One constant feature of the various accounts that we
have received from Diyala's major cities is the presence of
armed JAM throughout the period following the Samarra mosque
explosion. (Ba'qubah is the notable exception to this rule.)
Aside from the events of February 22 in Muqdadiyah (the exact
details of which are still in considerable debate),the presence
of these elements does not appear to have provoked sectarian
violence. After their participation in "protecting" several of
the marches on February 23, the JAM generally restricted
themselves to protecting the Sadrist offices and principal Shi'a
mosques, and did not often appear on the street outside of the
vicinity of these places.


11. (C) (NOTE: JAM mosque "protectors" appear to have primarily
focused their efforts on large mosques rather than those with
Sadrist leadership, many of which remained unguarded; their
efforts in turn appear to have been welcomed by the imams of
those mosques, regardless of their affiliations. An example of
this was the al-Imam al-Hussein Mosque in Balad Ruz, whose imam
Taleb al-'Utbi is the principal deputy of Abdulrazzaq al-Asadi,
Ayatollah Sistani's "envoy" in Diyala.)

--------------
LITTLE ISF INTEREST IN CONFRONTING SADRISTS
--------------


12. (C) Despite relative JAM restraint, ISF tolerance of the
presence of armed Shi'a militiamen on the streets during a
period of high tension was troubling to Diyala's Sunnis, who
allege IP complicity in the events in Muqdadiyah on February 22
and contrast the tolerance of armed Shi'as with the hard line
against armed Sunnis - four of whom, armed only with sticks,
were detained by the IP on February 26. In Khalis, the
sustained presence of JAM in the marketplace (which lies between
the city's principal Shi'a mosque and the Sadrist office)
provoked continued complaints to us and to the ISF from the
city's Sunnis. None of these complaints appears to have
provoked the ISF to disarm JAM forces or order them off the
street. The lone counterexample to this pattern during this
period occurred on February 24, when IA elements responded
positively to a request by a Sunni village in southwestern
Diyala for protection against a JAM incursion (which did not, in
the end, materialize).


KIRKUK 00000050 003.2 OF 003



13. (C) In part, the reluctance of the ISF to deal with JAM may
have stemmed from a desire not to provoke an unnecessary
confrontation - and the results appear to vindicate this course
of action. Another reason for the lack of ISF action may have
been the apparently semi-legitimate status of the people
guarding the mosques. Assistant Governor Hafiz al-Juburi,
requesting from the Muqdadiyah Chief of Police action against
the men dressed in black patrolling around the area of the
market, was told that the IP could not take action because those
men held valid IDs issued by the Ministry of the Interior,
naming them as members of the Public Order Battalions.


14. (S) On the other hand, there are indications that the ISF
reluctance to come to grips with the JAM may have had more to do
with the JAM's perceived status as an ally in protecting the
Shi'a from further attacks. The Deputy Governor, while
maintaining positive rhetoric towards the ISF in public, has in
private accused the IP of actively cooperating with JAM in many
cases - and in some cases, of serving as active members of JAM.
The police chiefs in the principal areas where JAM were active -
Khalis, Muqdadiyah, Balad Ruz, Khan Bani Sa'd, and Abu Sayda -
are all Shi'as, and we have heard similar accusations from other
Sunni contacts. As is often the case in Diyala, it is difficult
to tease out how much of the alleged collusion is real and how
much is conspiracy theory, especially in the face of such
one-sided demographics


15. (S) The Deputy Governor's estimation of the IA performance
was substantially more positive; in contrast to the IP, he sees
them as having been scrupulously fair. However, even the IA
seems to have been unwilling to confront the JAM. The Shi'a
commander of the IA battalion assigned to Muqdadiyah -
considered by CF to be one of the most dynamic commanders in
Diyala - refused repeated requests by the Sunni Muqdadiyah mayor
to bring troops into the market on February 22, well after there
was evidence that people were being shot there, on the basis
that it was not his job to intervene in political infighting.
In one case just outside of Diyala, the identification between
Shi'a members of the ISF and Shi'a militias showed clearer
links: CF in southern Salah ad Din were able to successfully and
peacefully turn around a convoy of 80 black-clad, armed men
heading from Balad towards Samarra after the leader of the CF
unit was recognized by a member of the convoy - who was also a
sergeant in the IA unit with which the CF officer had worked.

--------------
COMMENT
--------------


16. (C) Though the massacres of February 24-25 have dominated
media coverage of Diyala's response to the Samarra mosque
explosion, the overall picture was a positive one. Shi'as were
able to sufficiently assuage their grief through peaceful
demonstrations; the Sunnis, despite a profusion of rumors of
Shi'a atrocities, the wounding of the brother of the Deputy
Governor, and the provocative presence on the streets of armed
Shi'a militiamen, remained disciplined enough to keep the
conflict from escalating. Those members of the
often-contentious provincial leadership who were present in
Diyala ultimately came together with a consistent message of
unity and restraint, though the Governor's puzzling decision not
to cut short his trip to Iran left him looking both shortsighted
and risk-averse. Ultimately, the province emerged from crisis
without any major conflict outside of the extreme southwest
(which were likely reprisals neither for the Samarra explosion
nor for the attacks on Sunni mosques in Baghdad - septel).


17. (S) On the other hand, the events following the Samarra
explosion also provided indications of potential problems if the
ISF is ever ordered to confront the JAM. The restraint of both
the JAM and the Sunnis allowed the IA to avoid taking sides in
the aftermath of the Samarra bombing, leaving open the question
of how it would respond if ever ordered to confront the JAM. By
contrast, the cooperative approach evident in the IP's
relationship with the JAM during the events of the past several
days provides a clear sign of where their loyalties might lie in
future crises.
ORESTE