Daesh suffering setbacks, trying to take initiative in Iraq: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Jim W. Dean, managing editor of the Veterans Today from Atlanta, about the new wave of terrorist attacks that killed nearly 30 people in and around the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Well, after what happened last week, I think it was on Wednesday, that around 100 people were killed through another bombing, it seems like these such suicide bombings and terrorist attacks are gaining in frequency. Do you get that sense as well?

Dean: Absolutely and we have a long track record of this, whenever Daesh or any of these big terrorist groups are suffering reverses in the field obviously their recruiting is down and having a problem with desertions, they have to try to do something to regain the initiative.

And of course that always involves the use of terror attacks against soft targets, because murdering, slaughtering innocent civilians randomly in public places is anything that the most cowardly person can do.

And of course they seem to have no shortage of people not only willing to kill themselves but due to this crazy indoctrination that they have on this extremism, they see this as some kind of a spiritual act to slaughter innocent women and children to just blow themselves up.

And at the end of the day, frankly Iraq’s got a huge population. These terrorist attacks have no effect on strategic balance whatsoever, but it does allow them to demonstrate (to) the Iraq regime there is no real protection from continued public attacks like this on soft targets. There’s just you cannot guard every place.

Press TV: To what extent can these be increased and the numbers of such terrorist and suicide attacks be attributed to the territorial losses of Daesh Takfiri terrorists on the ground being pushed back and experiencing setbacks and to what extent can they be attributed to the recent political rifts that we’re witnessing on the Iraqi political scene?

Dean: The political risks, I think, are going to be minimized, because Iraq has been dealing with these bombings for ages. The risk, I think, is going to be in the military strategy. The reports, I’ve read, said that some of these trucks that have been used in these car bombs came from Fallujah and again Fallujah is fairly close to Baghdad.

And you have to take a look that the security failure is when Fallujah is under attack and basically it’s pretty much surrounded, how can suicide trucks basically set up in Fallujah find their way out of there and go to these other places to do these attacks? So, that’s a security problem that would embarrass them more than the political aspects of it.

Press TV: Do you think the Iraq government is on the right track to pull together the various disparate strands of the Iraqi political spectrum at the moment?

Dean: That’s they’ve never really been able to do that and I mean not been able to do that in a way that works long term. I’m sure they’ve always reshuffled the government and done this or that, but the continued problems of corruption, incompetent people because of the tribal system and no one wants to fire anyone particularly if it’s a member of their tribe.

And this really hurts the military strategy. It takes much longer to get things done the necessary, which means the body count is going to keep going up and up. And there are no easy solutions to this because you cannot change how these tribal structures particularly operate both politically and during war time.

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