Speaking to reporters in his weekly press conference in Baghdad, Abdul-Mahdi attributed the recent fires in fields of wheat and barley just before their harvest to a host of reasons other than ISIS.
“We have fires every year. Not all fires are the work of Daesh or hostility…some of them are internal feuds between landowners, between farmers,” the Iraqi PM said, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.
The PM’s comments come after 600 dunams of cropland were burned over the course of May in Khanaqin district, Diyala province alone. Media outlets belonging to ISIS have claimed some of the attacks.
More cropland was burned earlier this month in Makhmour, a disputed area to the southwest of Erbil, after local farmers refused to give ISIS what they called zakat, a form of Islamic tax.
Disputed parts of Diyala, Nineveh, and Saladin governorates are claimed by both the Kurdistan Regional Government in Erbil and central Iraqi government in Baghdad. Militants are exploiting the resulting security gaps between federal and Peshmerga lines.
ISIS is not the only militarized body accused of arson. In fires that took place in Khanaqin, locals blamed the Shiite paramilitaries Hashd al-Shaabi (known in English as the Popular Mobilization Forces, or PMF). Locals there also claimed to have received calls demanding zakat.
Downplaying the amount of crops burned, the PM said: “The number [of fires] in Iraq remains humble compared to other countries.”
“Fires always happen in the summer season, everywhere and every year.”
He said the number and scale of the fires have been blown out of proportion by intensified media scrutiny. He called on news agencies to “go and investigate to see the areas that face the fires.”
The government will nevertheless follow up on any “criminal” act that is reported concerning the issue and fires caused by electrical faults or cigarettes, he said. “We have complete numbers. Fires don’t just happen spontaneously without the awareness or follow up of the state.”
A security analyst with a focus on Iraq and Syria who writes under the moniker Tom the Cat has published photos of what look like improvised incendiary devices being used to burn the crops.
ISIS was declared defeated in Iraq in December 2017, and later declared territorially defeated in Syria in March 2019, at the hands of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
As a result, they are now operating from “sleeper cells” and resorting to more disparate attacks, which have become increasingly frequent in recent weeks.
Since last Friday, ten people have been killed and ten more injured in bombings attributed to ISIS in the provinces of Saladin and Nineveh.
Arson on agricultural land, however, is a new tactic for the group.
An increase in fires on agricultural land by any means will only exacerbate Iraq’s already fragile food security. Iraq is already heavily reliant on food imports from neighboring Iran and Turkey.
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