Baghdad: Even before a formal announcement, the deal for Australia to help Iraq battle the so-called Islamic State which now controls swaths of Iraq and Syria, drew sharp criticism from forces allied to the Baghdad government.

As Foreign Minister Julie Bishop was finalising the deal for Australian Special Forces.  it was condemned by senior figure in three of the Shiite volunteer militias that now prop up the Iraqi Army on the battlefield.

Haji Jaafar al-Bindawi, chief of training and logistics for the Imam Ali Brigades, told Fairfax Media that the 200 Australians on standby in the United Arab Emirates to deploy in Iraq “should go home”.

Likewise, Adnan al-Shahmani, an MP who serves as a parliamentary and military liaison for several militia forces and who leads his own force in battle, said: “Foreign forces? Never! We don’t need them … in combat or as advisers.

Sunni militia-leader Sheikh Abdul Hamid al Juburi asks why Western air strikes can’t win the war with Islamic State. Photo: Kate Geraghty

“The militias’ objection to Australian and American advisers is part of a greater distrust of Western intentions.

Asked how the conflict would run, the Imam Ali Brigades’ Haji Jaafar al-Bindawi said that victory would be declared when “the [IS] terrorists have been defeated and we have driven out the returned [US-led] occupation”.

“We don’t need air strikes – unless they are by the Iraqi Air Force.

“More foreign troops? No, we have a million heroes.

“Advisers? No.”

Earlier, Fadil al Shairawi, Baghdad actor and poet who serves as the Imam Ali Brigades’ spokesman, told Fairfax media: “I hope this new experience in Iraq for the Americans will not be a repeat of the last – we were a peaceful people with a full infrastructure, but the US destroyed that infrastructure and made us an aggressive nation.”

That deep suspicion of the West permeated an interview with the MP Adnan al-Shahmani. He argued: “We don’t need a coalition of more than 40 nations to defeat IS, so what’s going on here?

“We don’t need advisers. It’s not complicated – we are at war with a gang of thugs and the Americans say they want to help, but they won’t give us the weapons we need.”

On the Sunni tribal side of the equation, a senior figure – Sheikh Abdul Hamid al Juburi – was derisive about the intent of coalition air strikes.

Claiming to speak for all of the Sunni tribes in central Salah ad-Din province, where IS now controls several major centres, the sheikh argued: “In the war in Yugoslavia, the US was able to use air strikes alone to end the war – why not here?