Tag: king of Iraq

Iranian-backed militias used to infiltrate into Syria via the unguarded border – as such, any wall would actually hurt Iran’s project to control the Middle East.

Iraq has continued to construct a 600km wall bordering Syria, despite Hamas’s October 7 invasion proving that such barriers are often inadequate.

So far,Baghdad has built 350km of the wall, the North Press agency in eastern Syria reported on November 23. The completed sections are made of concrete.

The fortification began being constructed in 2022. “Iraq has accelerated construction of a concrete security wall along its northwestern border with Syria, a stretch that also marks the frontier with the Kurdistan Region,” the report says.

According to North Press, the Iraqis have “explained that approximately 350 kilometers of the concrete security wall have been completed, while efforts continue to seal all remaining gaps to prevent infiltration and smuggling.”

The concrete wall is “reinforced by a multi-layered security system, which includes a trench 3 meters wide and 3 meters deep, an earthen berm rising 3 meters high, a four-layer inflatable barrier, observation towers positioned at one-kilometer intervals, each equipped with advanced thermal cameras linked to a centralized monitoring system.

ISIS invaded Iraq from Syria in 2014. But it wasn’t just ISIS that Iraq had to worry about. After ISIS was largely defeated in 2019, it was Iranian-backed militias that used to infiltrate into Syria via the unguarded border. As such, any wall would actually hurt Iran’s project to control the region.

When the Assad regime fell, the Iraqi government decided to increase work on the wall because it wanted security with Syria.

Syria and Iraq have a complex history

In the wake of the Arab Revolt, one of the sons of the Arab leader Sharif Hussein, Faisal, sought to seize Syria and crown himself king. He was expelled by the French and ended up as the king of Iraq. His family’s rule came to an end in 1958.

Eventually, both Syria and Iraq were led by types of the Ba’ath party. Later, Saddam Hussein was overthrown and Iraq shifted closer to Iran. This suited the Assad regime because it was also close to Iran. Today, things are a bit different; Iraq is led by pro-Iranian officials, while Damascus is led by former members of HTS, a Sunni group that opposed Iran’s role in Syria. Both Iraq and Syria have Kurdish regions that enjoy forms of regional rule.

The wall is also supposed to have “an integrated defense network made up of trenches, barbed wire barriers, and early warning systems, supported by high-precision thermal imaging and 24/7 day-and-night surveillance devices.”

Other reports in the region have closely followed the construction. Levant24 in Syria has also reported on it. A website named Sarif noted that “with the completion of this wall, four of Syria’s six neighboring countries have now begun to build security barriers on their borders.” These include Turkey’s 911km wall on the Syrian border, Israel’s fence system on the Golan, which the report says is 92km long. It also says Jordan has a “multi-layered barbed wire system, trenches, and guard towers are being completed with US funding.”

A previous report in North Press also noted that Iraq had recently invested in a 40km section of wall between the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and Syria. This stretches from Peshkhabur in Duhok Governorate to Rabia. It was unclear if this was an anti-Kurdish policy designed to divide the Kurdish regions of Iraq and Syria.