Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Baghdad on Thursday in a surprise visit aimed at trying to help broker a political crisis in the country that is hampering efforts to defeat the Islamic State.
The vice president’s official Thursday schedule said he would travel to the Vatican and spend the night in Rome. Instead, he landed in Baghdad midday where he is expected to meet with Iraqi officials, according to a U.S. government official.
“A major theme is the importance of national unity in terms of maintaining the momentum in the counter-ISIL campaign,” the official said.
The trip was scheduled a couple of months ago, but was not announced in advance out of concern for Biden’s security.
The vice president is “arriving at a moment of a lot of turbulence,” the official said, as protests and demands for political reforms are rocking an already fractured government struggling to deal with a bad economy and the havoc wreaked by the Islamic State and its supporters.
Biden is the highest ranking U.S. official to visit Iraq since his own visit in 2011. The vice president, who has been the Obama administration’s point person on Iraq since taking office, was “itching to get back” to Baghdad “for a while,” a senior administration official told reporters traveling with the vice president.
The 66-nation, U.S.-led coalition countering the Islamic State has momentum on its side and Biden wants to make sure that can translate into additional territorial gains, such as retaking Mosul, Iraq’s second-biggest city.
“Militarily, the momentum is clearly in the coalition’s favor against ISIL,” the official said. “Every objective fact speaks to the fact that ISIL is losing.”
Administration figures, including President Obama, repeatedly tick off recent wins against the Islamic State, including shrinking its territory, taking out its leadership and stemming its ability to fund its terrorist operations and “caliphate.”
Coalition airstrikes have destroyed $300 million to $800 million of terrorist cash, the official said.
“So they’re losing,” the official said. “It’s our sense that if momentum is lost in the campaign, it’s more likely to happen on the political side [in Baghdad].”
The administration is trying not to repeat the mistake it made in allowing former Prime Minister Nouri Maliki to rule with a government that did not include enough minorities, especially Sunnis, nor allow that minority that formerly governed the country under Saddam Hussein to retain much power.
Many attribute the Islamic State’s rise to Maliki’s Shiite-led government’s suppression of Sunnis. Prime Minister Haider Abadi promised a more inclusive government, but he’s faced resistance to his reforms.
With large protests led by cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in the background, Abadi on Wednesday gained the ability to appoint six new cabinet ministers.
“In the last few days, things have trended in a more stabilizing direction,” the official said, adding that Biden’s timing was good.
“There can be no greater symbol of how much support the United States gives the Iraqi government in general … and how much faith we have in Prime Minister Abadi specifically, than the vice president of the United States showing up in Baghdad,” the official said. “So it is very important symbolically.”
A second senior administration official underscored the importance of an inclusive Iraqi government.
“We have an interest … in a stable and effective government in Iraq that is unified and pluralistic, that’s democratic, and that’s functioning effectively not only to promote stability in Iraq, but also so that Iraqis can keep their eye on the very real threat that they face every single day from terrorist attacks from ISIL,” the official said.
Militarily, Biden will tell the Iraqi leaders he meets that they must allow Kurds to partake in the battle for Mosul and that coordination between Kurdish and Iraqi forces is essential, the first official said.
“We have to be realistic; we are at the end of April. Once we get into July and August, it starts to get pretty hot in Iraq and things start to slow down. But we want to make as much progress as possible before the summer heat really rages,” the official said.
