Tag: Shiia Militia

IS

‘US created conditions for ISIS’: RT talks to Iraqi Shia militia as they leave to fight

http://on.rt.com/qkh0qo

An RT reporter has spent a day with a group of Iraqi Shia fighters amid its final preparations for a battle against Islamic State. Blaming the US for the war and the rise of the militant group, they vow to protect their land and religious sites.

“This is both a nationalistic war and a sacred war, nationalistic in the sense we are defending our land and sacred in the sense that we are defending our religious sites,” Qais Khazali, a leader of Asaib Ahl al-Haq (AAH), an Iraqi Shia paramilitary group, told RT’s Eisa Ali.

The RT reporter traveled to the Taji base north of Baghdad to meet the anti-Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) fighters.

“ISIS we are coming, just wait a few days God willing, we won’t leave one of them alive,” the young militia fighters vowed.
Khazali, the founder and head of AAH, blames the US for the rise of Islamic State because it is Washington, he says, that “created the conditions.”

“They did so with their policy in Syria. But we are present everywhere fighting against ISIS,” Khazali said.

Between 2006 and 2007, Asaib Ahl Haq launched some of the deadliest attacks during the American occupation that lasted eight years, from 2003 to 2011.

AAH troops are said to be trained by Iranian forces and Hezbollah. Khazali was kidnapped by US troops in 2007 for killing American soldiers, but was released in 2010 in a prisoner swap in exchange for four UK citizens who had been taken hostage by AAH in May 2007.

Now Asaib Ahl Haq has been credited with retaking some key territories from IS, including Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit.

Apart from Islamic State militants, the group also fought Syrian rebels, as well as Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra. When Mosul fell last summer, most of its fighters headed back to Iraq to fight radical Islamic groups there.

Read more‘Dirty bomb’: ISIS has enough material to build WMD, Australian intelligence warns

It has been almost a year since Islamic State hit the headlines. They invaded huge areas in Syria and Iraq. The militants captured Iraq’s second city of Mosul (population 2.5mn) in June 2014, as government forces retreated from the country’s Sunni stronghold. The city remains in IS hands, with minorities persecuted and people being killed.

IS has seized one-third of Iraq over the past year. It now controls two provincial capitals, as well as the city of Fallujah. Forces have retaken Tikrit, northwest of Baghdad, but many of its residents have been unable to return due to buildings being rigged with explosives.

While both the international community along with Iraq and Syria are struggling to bring Islamic State down, jihadists threaten to seize more territory and improve its fighting efficiency. In May, in its propaganda magazine Dabiq, IS announced it was aiming to develop a weapon of mass destruction (WMD), saying with the pace it was expanding it would buy its first WMD within a year.

Iraq

Holding Tikrit, Iraq Fuels New Round of Sectarian Unrest — News from Antiwar.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

Holding Tikrit, Iraq Fuels New Round of Sectarian Unrest — News from Antiwar.com.

Iraq

Shiite militias quit siege of Islamic State in Tikrit over US role: Strange Abbott is given the same message in Iraq as here. We don’t trust you get out your not wanted.

Smoke rises from buildings in Tikrit during clashes between Iraqi security forces and Islamic State militants on Thursday.

Smoke rises from buildings in Tikrit during clashes between Iraqi security forces and Islamic State militants on Thursday. Photo: AP

al-Rashid airbase: Three major Shiite militia groups have pulled out of the fight for Tikrit, immediately depriving the Iraqi government of thousands of their fighters on the ground even as US warplanes readied for an expected second day of airstrikes against the Islamic State there.

The militia groups, some of which until recently had Iranian advisers with them, pulled out of the Tikrit fight on Thursday in protest at the US military airstrikes, which began late Wednesday night, insisting that the Americans were not needed to defeat the militant Sunnis holding the city.

Together the three groups represent as much as a third of the 30,000 fighters on the government side in the offensive against the so-called Islamic State (also known as ISIS),analysts said.
Iraqi security forces prepare to attack Islamic State extremist positions in Tikrit on Thursday.

Iraqi security forces prepare to attack Islamic State extremist positions in Tikrit on Thursday. Photo: AP

“We don’t trust the American-led coalition in combatting ISIS”, said Naeem al-Uboudi, the spokesman for Asaib Ahl al-Haq, one of the three groups which said they would withdraw from the front line around Tikrit. “In the past they have targeted our security forces and dropped aid to ISIS by mistake”, he said.
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One of the leaders of the biggest militias in the fight, the Badr Organisation, also criticised the US role and said his group, too, might pull out.

“We don’t need the American-led coalition to participate in Tikrit. Tikrit is an easy battle, we can win it ourselves,” said Mueen al-Kadhumi, who is one of the Shiite militia’s top commanders.
Iraqi security forces prepare to attack Islamic State positions in Tikrit on Thursday.

Iraqi security forces prepare to attack Islamic State positions in Tikrit on Thursday. Photo: AP

“We have not yet decided if we will pull out or not,” he said. The Badr Organisation’s leader, Hadi al-Amiri, was shown on Iraqi television leading the ground fight in Tikrit on Thursday.

The US air strikes began late Wednesday night and continued for more than eight hours, subsiding at dawn on Thursday, when Iraq’s handful of Russian-made fighter jets took over from this base on the outskirts of Baghdad and further bombed Tikrit in a succession of daytime raids.

Before starting the strikes, US officials demanded that Iranian officials and the militias closest to them to stand aside while other Iraqi forces went in to drive out the last militants in the city.
Iraqi security forces launch rockets against Islamic State militants on Thursday.

Iraqi security forces launch rockets against Islamic State militants on Thursday. Photo: AP

But a pullout by those militias, especially by the Badr Organisation, would effectively disband the largest and most effective ground force the Iraqi government has been able to field since the invasion by the so-called Islamic State last year.

The other groups that announced they would boycott the Tikrit operation were the Hezbollah Brigades, which like Asaib Ahl al-Haq is closely aligned to and supported by Iran, and the Peace Brigade, the latest name for a militia made of up followers of the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, previously known as the Mahdi Army.

Hakim al-Zamily, one of the leaders of the Sadrist group, said his group had warned it would pull out of the Tikrit fight if the Americans were brought in. “We don’t trust the Americans; they have targeted our forces many times in so-called mistakes,” he said.

Sadr, whose troops fought bitter battles against the Americans during much of the Iraq war, said his group was pulling out because, in his words, “the participation of the so-called international alliance is to protect ISIS, on the one hand, and to confiscate the achievements of the Iraqis, on the other hand”.

Since March 2, Islamic State forces in Tikrit have been under attack by the Iraqi militias, collectively known as the Popular Mobilisation Committees, and regular Iraqi military forces, together numbering more than 30,000 fighters. The great majority of the fighters were members of the militias. Some of those fighters, particularly followers of the Badr Organisation, which is closely identified with the Iraqi government’s leaders, have so far remained in the fight.

Still, a much smaller force of Islamic State fighters has been able to hold them off in a few areas of the city for almost four weeks. In recent days, despite the claims of self-sufficiency made by militia commanders, Iraqi military officials said American airstrikes were needed to break the deadlock.

The militias who were withdrawing did not say they were quitting their positions in the Tikrit area altogether, or in adjoining areas of Salaheddin province, just returning to their nearby bases and boycotting the front-line advance.

By 10am on Thursday, the Iraqi jets had carried out four waves of attacks on Tikrit, consisting of up to five jets each from this base, taking over from the US bombers in the coalition.

As the Tikrit operation continued through Thursday, Staff General Anwer Hamid, the commander of the Iraqi air force, said that for operational reasons US aircraft would concentrate on night bombing runs, and the Iraqis would continue their daytime sorties.

“Their role in this fighting is very important to us,” he said. “They have a high number of aircraft and they have good capabilities, they can really help us,” he said.

New York Times

Iraq

In Iraq, Kurds Repel Islamic State With Help of Shiite Militiamen They Distrust . Abbott keeps saying we are doing a great job. We never hear anything about the Iraq army.

In a bold move, Daesh (i.e. ISIL or ISIS) fighters moved Monday on Kirkuk and Erbil, two cities patrolled by the Iraqi Kurdistan paramilitary, the Peshmerga (those who stand before death).

Erbil is the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.  Kirkuk is an oil city and is disputed among Turkmen, Arabs and Kurds.  If Daesh, based in Syria’s al Raqqah and in Iraq’s Mosul, could capture Kirkuk, it would gain a major source of oil income.

Daesh fighters were repelled, and some number killed, by the oddest coalition you’d ever want to see.  The Kurdistan Peshmerga took the lead in defending Kurdistan, but they were joined by Iraqi government security forces and by Shiite militiamen who came up from the south.  These forces were given close air support by the US Air Force.

Kurdish commanders announced that they had regained control of Kirkuk and had chased away the Daesh fighters.

The Peshmerga were aided in a number of battles by the Arab Shiite militiamen, recalling their coalition at Amerli, last fall.  They had also collaborated in Diyala Province more recently.

Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani visited the front and stressed that any force willing to fight alongside the Peshmerga against Daesh is welcome.

Daesh fighters also tried to take villages near Erbil, the captial of Iraqi Kurdistan.  They were repelled with the additional help of US fighter jets.  Dozens died in this fighting.

The cooperation achieved between the Shiite “popular forces” militias and the Peshmerga may not have been unprecedented, but it did refute observers who had predicted an Arab-Kurdish fight.

Kirkuk has an Arab population, including some Shiites, along with Turkmen Shiites– who contest Kurdish insistence on annexing it to Kurdistan.  Barzani appears to have earlier been threatened by the Shiite paramilitaries’ approach.  He warned that he would not let them come into Kirkuk.

His warning was in part a reply to the leader of the extremist Shiite militia, the League of the Righteous (Asa’ib Ahl al-Haqq), who had complained of the “Kurdishization” of Kirkuk.  Hadi al-Ameri, head of the Badr Corps, another Shiite militia, also pledged to come into Kirkuk.  The largely Shiite Iraqi army deserted its posts in Kirkuk last June, leaving the Peshmerga (who had conducted joint patrols with the army) in charge of the oil city.  The Shiite militias appeared to wish to replace the Iraqi troops, laying down a marker on Arab interest in Kirkuk, which has de facto been annexed by Kurdistan.

As Daesh approached, Barzani abruptly changed his tune and welcomed the Shiite militias with open arms.  (It is not impossible that Iran played a behind the scenes role in getting Barzani and the Shiites to make up.  Iran supports both Iraqi Kurdistan and the Shiite militias.

This tension tells us two things.  1) The potential for further Kurdish-Shiite tension is there.  And, 2), both sides are for the moment pragmatic enough to bury the hatchet in the breast of their common foe.