Iraqi paramilitaries launch operation to seal off Mosul
AL QAYYARAH, Iraq: Iraqi paramilitary forces launched an operation yesterday to cut the Islamic State group’s supply lines between its Mosul bastion and neighboring Syria, opening a new front in the nearly two-week-old offensive. Forces from the Hashed Al-Shaabi, a paramilitary umbrella organization dominated by Iran-backed Shiite militias, have largely been on the sidelines since the launch of the operation to retake Mosul.
But yesterday they began a push on the town of Tal Afar on the western approach to the city, the only side where ground forces, which have advanced from the north, east and south, are not yet deployed. “The operation aims to cut supplies between Mosul and Raqqa and tighten the siege of (IS) in Mosul and liberate Tal Afar,” Hashed spokesman Ahmed Al-Assadi told AFP, referring to IS’ main stronghold in Syria.
Assadi said the operation was launched from the Sin alDhaban area south of Mosul and aimed to retake the towns of Hatra and Tal Abta as well as Tal Afar. The drive toward Tal Afar could bring the fighting perilously close to the ancient city of Hatra, a UNESCO world heritage site that has already been vandalized by IS. Though it was not mentioned by name, the operation may also pass near the ruins of Nimrud, another archaeological site that has previously been attacked by IS.
The involvement of Shiite militias in the Mosul operation has been a source of contention, although some of the Hashed’s top commanders insist they do not plan to enter the largely Sunni city. Iraqi Kurds and Sunni Arab politicians have opposed their involvement, as has Turkey, which has a military presence east of Mosul despite repeated demands by Baghdad for the forces to be withdrawn.
Relations between the Hashed and the US-led coalition fighting IS are also tense, but the paramilitaries enjoy widespread support among members of Iraq’s Shiite majority. Tal Afar was a Shiite-majority town of mostly ethnic Turkmens before the Sunni extremists of IS overran it in 2014, and its recapture is a main goal of Shiite militia forces.
Assadi said Turkish forces, who are training Sunni tribal combatants in a camp northeast of Mosul to join the offensive against IS, were in no position to obstruct the Shiite militia advance. He also said Hashed forces, who have already fought in support of President Bashar Al-Assad in Syria, would cross the border into Syria to support him again once they had “cleared” IS from their own country. Human rights groups have warned of possible sectarian violence if the Shiite paramilitaries seize areas where Sunni Muslims form a majority, which is the case in much of northern and western Iraq.
Amnesty International says that in previous campaigns, they committed “serious human rights violations, including war crimes” against civilians fleeing Islamic State-held territory. In July, the United Nations said it had a list of more than 640 Sunni men and boys reportedly abducted by a Shiite militia in Fallujah, a former militant bastion west of Baghdad, and about 50 others who were summarily executed or tortured to death. The Abadi government and Hashed forces say a limited number of violations had occurred and were investigated, but they deny abuses were widespread and systematic.
As the Hashed push on Tal Afar got underway, Iraq’s federal police advanced into Al-Shura, an area south of Mosul with a long history as a militant bastion that has been the target of fighting for more than a week. “Federal police units raised the Iraqi flag” on a local government building in the area, federal police commander Lieutenant General Raed Shakir Jawdat said in a statement. Police are now “chasing terrorists fleeing towards the north” of the AlShura area, Jawdat said.
The offensive operations came despite an assertion from the US-led coalition on Friday that Iraqi forces were temporarily halting their advance on Mosul for a period expected to last “a couple days”. “They are pausing and repositioning, refitting and doing some back clearing,” coalition spokesman Colonel John Dorrian told Pentagon reporters via videoconference. An Iraqi military statement, apparently issued in response to Dorrian’s remarks on the halt, said that “military operations are continuing” and proceeding on schedule.
More than 17,500 people have fled their homes toward government-held areas since the Mosul operation began, the International Organisation for Migration said yesterday. Numbers are expected to soar as Iraqi forces close in. Civilians are suffering even more in jihadist-held territory, with the United Nations saying that there are credible reports of IS carrying out mass executions and seizing tens of thousands of people for use as human shields.
IS’s “depraved, cowardly strategy is to attempt to use the presence of civilians to render certain points, areas or military forces immune from military operations”, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said in a statement. The militants are “effectively using tens of thousands of women, men and children as human shields”, he said.