Sunni tribes joining Shia militias as war

against IS heats up in Iraq

Partial rapprochement despite credible allegations that some militia troops abused or killed Sunni
civilians and destroyed homes

Sheikh Qais Jassem al-Khazraji (in brown robe) with Sheikh Abdul Mahdi al-Karbalai and another Sunni
tribal leader (MEE / Jonathan Steele)

Jonathan Steele-Tuesday 1 December 2015

KARBALA, Iraq - Wearing elegant gold-fringed robes and traditional

Arab head-dresses, three Sunni tribal leaders waited respectfully in an upstairs
reception room inside the Imam Hussein shrine in Karbala one morning last week.
The shrine is one of Shia Islams holiest places and on this day, dozens of pilgrims
sat cross-legged reading sacred poems in the courtyard below or knelt in prayer in

the Shia way with their foreheads touching a round clay tablet on the carpet in
front of them.
When the shrines senior cleric, Sheikh Abdul Mahdi al-Karbalai, entered the
ornately furnished reception room to welcome his unexpected Sunni guests, their
mission rapidly became clear. There was barely time for the four men to exchange
greetings with the requisite number of alhamdulillah - praise be to God - before
the leader of the Sunni trio came to the point. The Islamic State group had killed
around 200 civilians from his tribe, the al-Khazraji, Sheikh Qais Jassem al-Khazraji
said. He and his colleagues now wanted to offer 150 armed men to fight alongside
the Shia paramilitaries who are battling IS.
The offer was accepted with alacrity. The Shia cleric told his guests the
paramilitaries had lost 30 men in one day the previous week in battles north of
Baiji. Another 90 men were wounded so new volunteers were definitely needed.
The Khazraji leaders, whose people are centred in an area between Tikrit and
Mosul, asked the Shia cleric to confirm the arrangement by signing a paper which
they had brought with them. Karbalai did so without hesitation and the brief
encounter ended.
Two years ago such a deal would have been unimaginable.
But ISs eruption on to the scene in Iraq and Syria has produced several startling
changes. One of the more remarkable is the creation of armed militias (Shia
leaders discourage the word which they consider pejorative) by Iraqs top religious
leaders. Although some clerics who also head political parties long ago formed
militias - for example the Badr brigade of the Hakim family or Moqtada al-Sadrs
Mahdi army - this practice was frowned on by the grand ayatollahs whom Shia
communities largely follow. The ayatollahs felt that private militias heightened the
risk of intercommunal violence and undermined Iraqs national army.
Attitudes changed in June last year when IS seized Mosul after most of the Iraqi
army fled. IS was already occupying Fallujah just west of Baghdad and after the
Mosul debacle the Shia authorities worried that the militant group, which treats
Shias as heretics, could capture Baghdad itself or move on the holy cities of
Karbala and Najaf. No-one could forget that in Samarra in February 2006 ISs
predecessors, al-Qaeda in Iraq, had blown up the golden dome of the Askari
shrine, which houses the remans of two of the Shias 12 imams.
Iraqs top Shia authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued a fatwa declaring
that in the face of the danger from IS it was every able-bodied mans duty to come

to the defence of Iraq and volunteer to protect the shrines in the first instance. He
pointedly did not urge the volunteers to join the Iraqi army but he also did not
want to see more militias with party-political loyalties and agendas.
Rise of the hashd
Instead, the shrines leading officials created their own paramilitary forces which
took food and supplies to people who had fled from IS and started giving
volunteers military training. Tens of thousands answered Sistanis call. The Imam
Hussein shrine set up the Ali al-Akbar brigade, while the Abbas shrine which is
also in Karbala set up a battalion as did the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf. Known
officially as hashd al-shaabi, or Popular Mobilisation Units, the three are referred
to sometimes as hashd Sistani.
Their exact numbers are not declared but the two battalions and one brigade are
estimated to have about 50,000 men. Sheikh Maytham Rahi, the general
supervisor of the Abbas battalion, told MEE his force consisted of 7,000 men, of
whom 40 had been killed. This total of 50,000 in the hashd is considerably higher
than the number of effective fighters in the Iraqi army, which is thought by some
experts to be no more than 10,000, although authorities contest this saying there
are far more fighters on the ground.
The main fighting forces however are deployed in the US-trained Golden Division
and the Counter-Terrorism Bureau which are special forces who report directly to
the Iraqi Prime Minister. Defeat by IS in Mosul last year and in Ramadi in May this
year revealed how hollow the Iraqi army is, full of ghost soldiers whose presence
inflates the numbers, allowing corrupt commanders and government officials to
pocket the salaries of troops who only exist on paper.
As a result, the hashd have become one of the most successful boots-on-theground in Iraq, even though the 3,500 US advisers who have been sent back to
Iraq by President Barack Obama are racing to train more units in the Iraqi army,
with the US declining to train the hashd.
The militias first big victory came in October last year when they pushed IS out of
the largely Sunni town of Jurf al-Sakhar. The town is close to the main road linking
Baghdad with Karbala.
Some Sunni politicians have made much of the fact that although IS has been
driven away, none of the residents of Jurf al-Sakhar have been allowed to come
home. They charge the Shia with forced displacement of people or even sectarian
cleansing. Maytham Rahi conceded that Jurf had no civilian residents now but said

this was because of concern that the residents would invite IS to infiltrate back
again.
"No civilians have returned to Jurf. Many collaborated with IS so they cant go
back. The roads are also full of booby-traps and bombs, Rahi told MEE.
Until last year, Rahis military experience was confined to a short stint as a
conscript in Saddam Husseins army performing peacetime duties. Now he takes
part in all the battalions operations. He was wounded by an IS sniper in Balad last
November, but he described himself as the battalions chief administrator. Under
him, there are five former generals from Saddams army who take the military
decisions.
Allegations of abuse
There have been credible allegations that some militia troops abused or killed
Sunni civilians and destroyed houses after liberating Tikrit this summer. Officials
in Karbala admit there have been cases of revenge killings but say the government
needs to investigate fully. Sistani issued a 20-point list of advice for paramilitary
fighters in February, saying that members of their opponents families and their
property must not be touched.
Hashd leaders insist their aims are not sectarian. We are not allowed to talk
about Shia and Sunni. We are all Iraqis. Five percent of our battalion are Sunni,
and people in Ramadi have asked us to liberate their areas, said Rahi. No part of
Iraq can be liberated without the hashd.
The hashd also has Christian units. In the military wards of the Imam Hussein
hospital, I came across a wounded soldier who could not speak Arabic. He was
from one of Iraqs other minority communities. A Turkmen, he had joined hashd
after fleeing with his family from Tal Afar in north-western Iraq after IS arrived.
In another hospital room I met Salim Kadhim, a 21-year-old who said he had
moved from the Iraqi Army to the hashd because the army was badly managed.
The hashd was better trained and had higher morale than the army, though it had
lighter weapons. Volunteers usually got 45 days basic training, while snipers got
six months. Army conscripts had only 30 days of training.
Sunnis join hashd against IS
There is strong communal pressure for young men to join the hashd. They are
supposed to earn $625 a month, a relatively generous wage, but there is no time
limit on their service. They will fight until the battle against IS is over, as

Maytham Rahi of the Abbas battalion put it. Some of this summers refugees to
Europe are known to be deserters from hashd, while other refugees have claimed
that they have escaped the hashd's heavy-handed recruiting tactics.
The hashd is currently fighting north of Baiji in the Makhoul mountains, not far
from where the Kurdish peshmerga has also been confronting IS.
Qassem Musleh, who served as top commander of the Ali Akbar brigade until two
weeks ago, was also eager to highlight the role of Sunnis, saying they comprised
about a sixth of the men (16 percent) in his brigade. He stressed that the hashd
operated closely with the Iraqi army and the strategic missions for both forces
were decided by the office of Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi.
The liberation of Jurf al-Sakhar had been done jointly by the hashd and the army,
he said. The hashd were the spearhead which liberated places so that the army
could protect and patrol them once IS were driven out.
I asked Musleh about Abadis plan, which is strongly backed by the US, to create
local forces in each province on the pattern of the US National Guard. The aim is
to create Sunni militias which could defend their own areas from IS or take the
lead in liberating them. Shia parties in the Iraqi parliament have rejected the plan
but Abadi is hoping to persuade them to change their stance.
Its segregating people, Musleh told MEE. We were not formed in a spirit of
sectarianism. Our aim is to liberate towns so that people can go home and to
provide services, regardless of sect. The number one priority is to liberate our
country.
Posted by Thavam