Exempting Iraq would not protect the U.S. from threats by the Islamic State group or other terrorists.
By Paul D. Shinkman | Senior National Security Writer
March 3, 2017, at 5:00 a.m.
The Trump administration's plan to exempt Iraq from a new executive order banning travel from mostly Muslim nations to the U.S. faces more questions following reports that Islamic State group fighters are blending in with refugees fleeing Mosul and elsewhere in the country.
The recent disclosures from the war-torn city appear consistent with Trump's long-held concern that extremists could join those escaping the widespread unrest in the Middle East and ultimately sneak into Europe or even to the United States to mount terror attacks. Political opponents frequently criticize the view as divorced from the realities on the ground, but the president nevertheless used such a scenario to justify issuing his order in January limiting travel and the flow of migrants from seven majority-Muslim nations, including Iraq, to the United States. That order was placed on hold by a federal judge last month.
Yet even as U.S. military commanders confirm the reports from Iraq about the extremists' activities, the Trump administration has signaled that it plans to back away from placing Iraq among the list of countries from which travel to the U.S. would be temporarily prohibited – a move some say fatally undercuts the very premise for his own order.
"It blows a hole in his alleged logic," says Elissa Slotkin, who until January served as the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, adding that she does not support the president's travel ban.
"If you say Iraq – which has the highest number of ISIS fighters potentially per capita than anywhere in the world – is going to get a blanket exception, it exposes that the original decision on the ban was more about politics than it is about protection," says Slotkin, a former intelligence and National Security Council official, using an alternative name for the Islamic State group. "The original ban alienated the very Iraqis fighting ISIS. Exempting them, while other countries stay on the list, exposes how this has nothing to do with keeping the U.S. any safer."
As many as 15,000 Islamic State group fighters are still in Iraq and Syria, where some can easily travel back and forth across the border, and many continue to operate among innocent locals, according to Army Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, the U.S. commander for the wars there.
Townsend confirmed media reports that Iraqi security forces have caught some Islamic State group fighters at checkpoints outside Mosul posing as civilians fleeing the intense combat there. The U.S.-led coalition continues to support Iraqi ground forces in laying siege to the last bastions of extremists holed up in the western part of the Iraq's second-largest city.
"They're here hiding amongst the civilian population all over Iraq and Syria, and we're focused on chasing them out in a sequential campaign," Townsend, commander of Operation Inherent Resolve, said Wednesday from his headquarters in Baghdad. "It's our intent, with our partners, to go root them out of the other population centers first and then chase them into the river valleys and palm groves and the rural areas."
The general said he is not particularly concerned about the threat posed outside the region by the roughly 2,000 fighters who continue to fight inside Mosul. But the group does retain control of a key border crossing between the Iraqi town of al-Qa'im and the Syrian city of Abu Kamal.
"The enemy has freedom of movement there," Townsend said. "We only have the ability to watch and strike when we see something that is definitely visible from the air to be enemy. Until we get down there, the enemy can move back and forth across the border there, at least, fairly frequently."
Trump as recently as Tuesday, in his address to a joint session of Congress, emphasized his belief that the travel ban is necessary and that the countries that pose the greatest threat to the U.S. are those that do not have the ability to vet their citizens and monitor those who may be dangerous.
"It is not compassionate, but reckless, to allow uncontrolled entry from places where proper vetting cannot occur," Trump said. "Those given the high honor of admission to the United States should support this country and love its people and its values."
The driving force behind lifting the ban on travel from Iraq in particular is its position as a key partner in a war the U.S. is helping wage on Iraqi soil. After Trump signed his first executive order – which remains suspended pending further judicial review – the Iraqi parliament at the end of January passed legislation calling for a comparable ban against Americans traveling to Iraq, which could have applied to the roughly 5,000 U.S. soldiers based there. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi refused to follow through on any restrictions against the U.S. until the Trump administration made its stance clear.
"No doubt the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq working with the Iraqi army highlights the urgency of taking Iraq off the list. But does the logic of partnership not apply everywhere else in the Middle East?" says Fred Hof, formerly President Barack Obama's special adviser for Syria. "Does anyone think we can defeat violent extremism anywhere in the region without partners well-disposed toward the U.S.? Have we really measured the potential impact of labeling entire countries and their citizens as threats on the crying need for effective, anti-terrorism partnerships with locals?"
Hof, now with the Atlantic Council, believes the administration should re-examine its entire methodology for restricting certain people from traveling to the U.S., which can include greater precision without providing a propaganda victory to Islamic extremists who claim the American government hates Muslims.
Some key lawmakers have expressed support for the Iraq exemption.
"That's vital," Sen. John McCain, chairman of the powerful Armed Services Committee, said Wednesday at a town hall event organized by CNN.
The Arizona Republican said he has been told Iraq will be exempt from the new executive order.
"We have Americans fighting in Iraq against ISIS, and we need the cooperation of the Iraqi government," McCain said.
And others believe Trump is right to effect the ban on these particular countries, with Iraq excepted, saying most of them are failed states or on the brink of becoming so, or have made clear their intentions of attacking the U.S.
"I strongly support exempting Iraq," says James Jeffrey, U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 2010 to 2012, now with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "The chances that a young male ISIS fighter could pass through the already extraordinary U.S. vetting for people from the region – especially as many who would try to flee would not be native Iraqis and recognizable by Arab accents – are all but impossible. There is no real danger, assuming vetting remains tough."
Jeffrey cites the 2011 incident in which two men believed to be acting on behalf of Iran's Quds Force tried to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. with a bomb, and who reportedly were planning to launch other attacks against the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington, The other five nations on Trump's travel ban are either failed states or ungoverned territories in chaos, Jeffrey says, "with little intrinsic importance."
