Nemesis: The Shadowy Iranian Training Shia Militias in Iraq
Down a dusty backstreet in the Baghdad
neighbourhood of Karada this month, I met Sheikh Raad Al Kafaji, a
former Iraqi Army officer specialising in artillery, and a veteran
fighter from the days of the Iran-Iraq war. He is head of the al Kafaji
tribe and a commander in the Kata’ib Hezbollah militia, one of the Shia
militias at the forefront of the fight against ISIS in Iraq.
After
the fall of Mosul in July, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani issued a
religious edict (fatwa) calling on Iraqi “citizens to defend the
country, its people, the honor of its citizens, and its sacred places”.
That is, to come defend their religion in a holy war against ISIS.
Sheikh
Raad says that in the initial days after Sistani’s fatwa, men as old as
60 came to his small offices begging to fight to hold back ISIS and
Sunni-led insurgents.
According to Iraqi Deputy National Security Adviser, Dr
Safa Hussein al-Sheikh, the Kata’ib Hezbollah militia, founded in the
months leading up to the 2003 American invasion, is known for being
smaller and more organised than the other Shia militias – and is
considered highly secretive and adept, even by Iraqi intelligence
standards.
“In the past, they had focused more on
American targets – sophisticated, lethal, organised attacks that were
not penetrated by the American or Iraqi intelligence,” Al Sheikh says.
When I visit, the 58-year-old Sheikh Raad sits
wearily in his office wearing battle fatigues and several jewelled
garnet and turquoise rings. With him is his young fourth wife, who
surprisingly has her dark hair uncovered, and is heavily made up,
dressed in tight trousers and high heels. She wants to film his
conversation on her cell phone.
The Sheikh sees no irony in the fact that his current financial backer, Iran, was his former mortal enemy.
“Saddam
imposed that war (the Iran-Iraq war) on the Shia people in Iraq and
Iran,” he says. “It was Saddam’s fault. Not the fault of Iran.”
He
says Kata’ib Hezbollah has about 4,000 fighters (Iraqi intelligence
puts the figure closer to 1,000) that are “experienced from fighting in
Amerli, Samara, but also have past experience fighting with Hezbollah in
Syria”.
He himself goes back and forth to Syria,
largely to protect Shia shrines near Damascus. Much of it is done
around the town of Sayyidah Zaynab – “Lady Zaynab” – a southern Damascus
suburb that has a Shia shrine of the same name.
Sadr City residents carry weapons as part of a local auxiliary militia to defend Baghdad, June 14, 2014.
Ayman Oghanna/The New York Times/Redux
Some of his men, he says, were paid up to
$700 (£446) a day by Iran to fight in Syria, but in Iraq they are
getting far less, although he says Iran is arming his men with weapons –
AK-47s, 12.7 mm heavy machine-gun and PKCs, a lighter, 7.62 mm,
machine-gun used in many of the former-Soviet Bloc and Middle Eastern
countries.
“Here, we are fighting for justice – for our faith –
not for money,” he insists. “And don’t forget there is a big difference
between Hezbollah in Iran and Hezbollah in Iraq. Philosophically, we
have the same enemy – Daish (ISIS) and Israel – but we are fighting here
for justice.”
To understand the presence of Shia
militias in Iraq today, and the increasing sway of Iran, you have to go
back to the legacy of the mass graves.
Shortly after
Saddam Hussein, a Sunni who had systematically repressed the majority
Shiites for decades by cracking down on their political parties and
crushing Shia movements, fell from power in April, 2003, human rights
workers and US investigators began exhuming graves where thousands of
Shiites and ethnic Kurds had suddenly disappeared.
It is
unclear how many Shias died during the Saddam years, but the figures
range from 400,000 – 700,000 people. One grave near Baghdad alone held
nearly 15,000 bodies. In another, near the southern city of Samawah,
more than 72 were discovered, mainly women and children.
It
is believed that up to 60,000 Shias disappeared from Baghdad during
those years of terror, and ended up in pits of earth. Years later, when
Saddam was finally gone, relatives would stand at the open graves,
desperately tried to find something that could link them to their lost.
“I
just wish I could feel him, touch him, see him,” said the sobbing
mother of one of “the disappeared,” Hilu Issa, who went missing in 1980
at the age of 25. (I spoke to her in May 2003 just after the US-led
invasion.)
The image of her vanished son remained frozen in time. “I need to know what happened to him.”
Iraqi
men line up for physical examinations at the main army recruiting
center to volunteer for military service in Baghdad, Iraq, July 9, 2014,
after authorities urged Iraqis to help battle insurgents.
Karim Kadim/AP
Saddam’s men typically came at night, and took people away without warning. Hilu’s mother never saw him again.
The day after Saddam fell, with the city of
Bagdad in chaos, it was finally possible to put together pieces of the
puzzle. In al-Haakimiya, a notorious Mukhabarat (secret police) prison
used during his reign, I and an Iraqi colleague found evidence of
brutal torture: restraints; blindfolds; torture instruments with
hardened blood still on them; cells the size of bathtubs where desperate
men had scrawled messages to the families they would never see again.
In
post-war Iraq, the political tables flipped. After the American
invasion, it was the Shias in power, the Sunnis who were being hunted.
When
Haider al Abadi, a moderate Shia was designated prime minister last
August, it was with the promise that his government would be more
inclusive, and break the cycle of revenge and vengeance between Iraqi
Shias and Sunnis.
But it is still hard to find any Shia
family that has not, in some way, been touched by Saddam’s brutality and
that does not still bear, in some way, a grudge or at least a quest for
justice.
Last January, Nouri al Maliki, the former prime
minister, and a Shia dissident under Saddam who held strong
nationalistic ideals, launched a bombing campaign in Anbar Province,
which is largely Sunni, apparently with the intention of driving out
jihadists, aka, ISIS.
But human rights groups were
concerned that the bombs were not just landing on the insurgents – but
on civilian targets and neighbourhoods, in particular hospitals and
residential areas. They saw the Anbar campaign as another widening of
the endless sectarian conflict. As the bombing went on, it also became
apparent that the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) were simply not up to
handling the job of pushing back ISIS. This opened the door to the Shia
militias.
“What happened then is that some smaller Shia
groups proposed they would join the fight,” says al-Sheikh, the deputy
national security adviser, at his office in Baghdad.
“That
was their first operation. There were initially probably only a couple
of hundred Shia militiamen fighting then, until the fall of Mosul. Then
it went in a different direction.”
When Mosul fell on
June 10 2014, a wave of terror rippled through Baghdad’s population.
Rumours and truths flew through the crowded markets and streets: ISIS
fighters were a mere 20km (12 miles) from the city; ISIS were killing
Shia and raping Shia women; ISIS had come to destroy all Shia Muslims.
Then
came what the Baghdad morgue director called a “spike” in the number of
Sunni disappearances and murders in the capital: clear reprisals for
the ISIS killings. One June morning, he showed me and other reporters
photographs of the work of the Shia militias: Sunni men tortured,
beaten, murdered, their bodies thrown into fields, bloated and purple.
“It’s starting again,” he said, referring to the bloodiest period of the civil war, in 2006.
Iraqi security forces and Shi'ite militias advance towards town of Amerli from their position in the Ajana, Sept. 1, 2014.
Reuters
He also meant that the Shia militias were
back in control, filling in the military vacuum the ISF had left. Now
the Shias were back– but this time as protectors of the people, with the
government heavily relying on them.
“They call
themselves jihadists, not militias,” says al-Sheikh. “They learned their
skills from fighting American occupiers before they left.” (The Shia
militias are believed to be responsible for a large proportion of the
American combat deaths during the occupation).
It also brings another element to Iraq – the
increasing reliance and influence of Iran, the Shia regional giant. Ever
since the Iranian revolution in 1979, governments inside and outside
the Arab world have feared Shia fundamentalism. But today in Baghdad,
the men who rose up to fight against ISIS in the wake of them
overrunning Mosul are overwhelmingly Shia. And they clearly have a
religious as well as a military agenda.
Their money
comes largely from Tehran, as do their weapons and best trainers,
according to various sources in the Iraqi government and foreign
analysts. The memory of a bitter war fought between Iraq and Iran from
1980-1988 in which nearly a million men died seems very far off in their
memory.
Part of this resurgence of the Shia militias is
the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani’s potent call to arms in July,
following Mosul’s defeat.
The rush of Shia men of all
ages – some even in their 60s who had fought in the Iran-Iraq – was
staggering. They crowded to three or four central recruitment centers in
Baghdad, were vetted, and about half of them were immediately
dispatched to the belt of Baghdad. They then fanned out to ISIS fight
alongside what was left of the demoralised ISF.
Five months on, with the American led campaign to
“degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS, underway, the Shia militias are
the backbone of the Iraqi military operation.
As well as
their American experience, their training also comes from the recent
battlefields of Syria. Many were sent to help protect the Shia shrines
from the Syrian Sunni rebels.
Iraqis insist there is
nothing to fear from Iran’s heady presence in Iraq. They also say, in
many ways, their allegiance lies with Iran.
“Who arrived
here to save us three days after Mosul fell?” asks Dr Mowaffak
al-Rubaie, a Member of Parliament and a former National Security Adviser
(and best known as the man who led Saddam to the gallows and requested
the guards loosen his handcuffs).
“Not the Americans.
They only sent abysmal air strikes three months later when their
citizens [the journalists James Foley, and later Steven Sotloff and
Peter “Abdul-Rahman” Kassig] were beheaded. The speed of the Iranian
response to Baghdad and Erbil was the next day.”
The
Iranians sent 88 Russian-made Sukkhoi ground attack jets within weeks.
They also sent their best fighters to train and advise – members of the
elite Republican Guard. They sent pilots, weapons, and uniforms.
They
also sent their military mastermind, Qasem Soleimani, leader of the
Quds Force, whom many military leaders regard as an excellent, and
highly strategic commander.
While usually secretive,
Soleimani allowed himself to be photographed last September on the
battlefields of Amerli, clearly sending a message to the West that
Tehran was very present.
“He is here often in Baghdad,
and Northern Iraq,” said one of Iraq’s leading Shia politicians who
asked to remain anonymous. “Of course the Iraqi government knows about
this. He is smart. He is also a man who loves war. He knows he is good
at it.”
As to why Iraq would trust Iran with their
bitter legacy and so many dead, al-Rubaie shrugs: “We are faced with an
existential threat – ISIS. You use any means in this case. You use any
means.”
Many Iraqis see the militias as crucial for
their survival. Sajad Jiyad, a London-based analyst with the Iraqi
Institute for Economic Reform (IIER), explains that: “The militias are
very powerful – but post-June they became even more so because there was
a vacuum. They have good resources and committed fighters,” Jiyad says.
”Most of the Shia communities that suffer from car bombs and suicide
attacks are actually glad to have their protection.”
And
the fact that they are backed by Tehran? “The US has to reconcile with
Iran,” says al-Rubaie. “With or without a nuclear deal. A US-Iranian
reconciliation will be a huge contribution to the stability of the
region.”
One of the main militias, Asaib ah Al-Haq, or
The League of the Righteous, has leaders who have been jailed on
terrorism charges during the US occupation. Asaib is the group most
loathed by Sunnis who see it as a threat to their security. There is
also believed to be a large criminal backbone at the heart of the
militia, which is sometimes, but not always true.
“When
anything bad happens in Baghdad, Asaib get blamed,” says al-Rubaie,
making the militiamen sound more like naughty schoolboys than hardened
killers.
Another is the Badr Brigades, formed in the
1980s during the Iran-Iraq war. A third is Sheikh Raad’s Kata’ib
Hezbollah. Added to this are many other splinter groups that have risen
up in various Shia neighbourhoods in Baghdad.
With the
militias, however comes Iran’s powerful political and religious
influence. The question is, what will happen to Iran when ISIS is
eventually destroyed? (which al-Rubaie reckons might be 3-5 years
militarily, but 7-10 years ideologically.)
Will the Iranians be willing, after this kind of investment, to pack it all in and go home?
Probably not, says al-Rubaie, but he says it’s time the West softened its “allergic” stance on Iran.
So
what will be the end game? The fear is a Lebanese civil-war scenario,
with militias from various sectarian divisions running riot throughout
the country. Or that the Shias, tasting power now, and with Iran’s
strong backing, are unlikely to give the Sunnis a fair hand when ISIS is
eventually destroyed.
For Western diplomats, the concern is how the Shias see the future.
“Do they envision an Iraq that is completely Shia – where they are running little fiefdoms?” asked one.
Whatever
their role in the future, for the moment, the militias are not going
anywhere. They are crucial to ending the war against ISIS. One Western
security adviser in Baghdad says that the Shias are “essential” to
bolstering the flagging Iraqi Army.
“The truth is,” says
Safa Hussein al-Sheikh, the Deputy National Security Adviser, “They
prove to be more effective fighters than the Security Forces in many
situations. They have experience from fighting the Americans, and from
recently fighting in Syria. “
He pauses, and does not seem happy
about his conclusion. “Fighting the Americans made them really
experienced, really strong fighters.”
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SHIA WAR CRIMES
In
recent months, Shia militias have been abducting and killing Sunni
civilian men in Baghdad and around the country. These militias, often
armed and backed by the government of Iraq, continue to operate with
varying degrees of cooperation from government forces. For these
reasons, Amnesty International holds the government of Iraq largely
responsible for the serious human rights abuses, including war crimes,
that have been committed by these militias.
Reports by
families of the victims have been corroborated by Ministry of Health
workers, who told Amnesty International that in recent months they have
received scores of bodies of unidentified men with gunshot wounds to the
head and often with their hands bound together with metal or plastic
handcuffs, rope or cloth.
Some of the victims were
killed even after their families had paid hefty ransoms. Several
families told Amnesty International how they had received the dreaded
call from the kidnappers, had searched frantically for the ransom money
and had managed to pay it, only to discover that their loved one had
still been killed and their money gone.
From Absolute Impunity – Militia Rule in Iraq – a report by published by Amnesty International published this week
