As Sunni forces march towards Bagdad, Shiite militias also pose threat to Iraq
By Hamza Hendawi and Qassim Abdul Zahra June 15, 2014
BAGHDAD (AP) — Emboldened by a call to arms by the top Shiite cleric, Iranian-backed militias have moved quickly to the center of Iraq's political landscape, spearheading what its Shiite majority sees as a fight for survival against Sunni militants who control of large swaths of territory north of Baghdad.
The emergence of the militias as a legitimate force enjoying the support of the Shiite-led government and the blessing of the religious establishment poses a threat to Iraq's unity, planting the seed for new sectarian strife and taking the regional Shiite-Sunni divide to a potentially explosive level.
Iraq's Shiite militias attacked U.S. forces during the eight-year American presence in the country. They also were in the lead in the Sunni-Shiite killings of 2006-07, pushing Iraq to the brink of civil war. Their death squads targeted radical Sunnis and they orchestrated the cleansing of Sunnis from several Baghdad neighborhoods.
More recently, Shiite militias have been battling alongside the forces of President Bashar Assad and Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah against mostly Sunni rebels and militants in neighboring Syria. Some of them have returned home to Iraq — first to fight Sunni militants in Anbar province, and now on Baghdad's northern fringes and in Salahuddin and Ninevah provinces.
Those are the areas where the Sunni militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, captured cities and towns in a lightning offensive last week. Among their gains were Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, and Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein.
(More here.)
BAGHDAD (AP) — Emboldened by a call to arms by the top Shiite cleric, Iranian-backed militias have moved quickly to the center of Iraq's political landscape, spearheading what its Shiite majority sees as a fight for survival against Sunni militants who control of large swaths of territory north of Baghdad.
The emergence of the militias as a legitimate force enjoying the support of the Shiite-led government and the blessing of the religious establishment poses a threat to Iraq's unity, planting the seed for new sectarian strife and taking the regional Shiite-Sunni divide to a potentially explosive level.
Iraq's Shiite militias attacked U.S. forces during the eight-year American presence in the country. They also were in the lead in the Sunni-Shiite killings of 2006-07, pushing Iraq to the brink of civil war. Their death squads targeted radical Sunnis and they orchestrated the cleansing of Sunnis from several Baghdad neighborhoods.
More recently, Shiite militias have been battling alongside the forces of President Bashar Assad and Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah against mostly Sunni rebels and militants in neighboring Syria. Some of them have returned home to Iraq — first to fight Sunni militants in Anbar province, and now on Baghdad's northern fringes and in Salahuddin and Ninevah provinces.
Those are the areas where the Sunni militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, captured cities and towns in a lightning offensive last week. Among their gains were Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, and Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein.
(More here.)
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