Shiite militias join push to retake Mosul
More than 100,000 fighters taking part in campaign to reclaim city from Daesh
IRBIL, IRAQ— Iraq’s Shiite militias said Saturday they had joined the operation to recapture the Daesh-held city of Mosul, a move that could whip up sectarian and regional tensions in an already-complex battle.
Militia leaders said that they launched an offensive toward the town of Tal Afar, about 40 miles west of Mosul, in the early hours of the morning. More than 10,000 fighters are participating, they said.
Containing the role of powerful Shiite militias presents a challenge for Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi as Iraqi troops push toward the largely Sunni city of Mosul in the country’s largest military operation since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. In past battles against Daesh, also known as ISIS or ISIL, the Iraqi militias have been accused of kidnappings and executions.
After more than two years of Mosul being under the militants’ rule, the battle is seen as a chance to reset relations between the city’s Sunnis and the Shiite-led government, which had plunged so low by 2014 that some of its residents welcomed the militants.
How the advancing forces deal with the local population is key to rebuilding trust.
Shiite militia leaders have agreed not to enter Mosul itself for now. But Tal Afar, where the militias are now focused, is itself a dangerous flash point, analysts have said.
The town where Sunnis and Shiites once mixed has the potential to be the scene of revenge killings.
The presence of Iranian-backed militias could also give Turkey — which has repeatedly insisted on a role in the Mosul operation despite furious protestations from Baghdad — an excuse to deepen its involvement, raising the spectre of more conflagration.
Turkey has said it has a duty to protect the people of Tal Afar, who are ethnic Turkmen, but it also has a strategic interest in countering Iranian influence in Iraq.
It has stationed hundreds of troops near Mosul and trained local Sunni fighters, ignoring Baghdad’s repeated requests for them to leave.
Any Turkish forces in Iraq will be dealt with “as the enemy,” said Jawad al-Tleibawi, a spokesperson for the Asaib Ahl al-Haq Shiite militia. “We already have plans to confront any intervention by them,” he said.
Tleibawi said Shiite militias also planned to retake Hatra and Baaj, putting them in the vicinity of Kurdish peshmerga forces, who have clashed with them in the past.
Many of Iraq’s Shiite militias formed after 2003 to fight U.S. troops, but they have burgeoned since 2014, when they stepped in to fill security gaps as the Iraqi army collapsed in parts of the country.
Due in part to sectarian concerns, the militias have been gradually sidelined during operations to retake largely Sunni urban centres from Daesh militants, but they have fought on the outskirts of those battles.
When Iraqi forces retook the western city of Fallujah earlier this year, militias were accused by rights groups and local government officials of kidnapping hundreds of men as they fled the city.
“This morning the second page of the Mosul operations started,” said Ahmed al-Assadi, a spokesperson for the umbrella group of mostly Shiite militia forces known as popular mobilization units. He said they were moving toward “beloved Tal Afar.”
Tal Afar had a sizable minority of Shiites before Daesh militants captured the town in 2014 and they were forced to flee. Some were later recruited into Shiite militias.
Turkey will take all necessary measures allowed by international law to counter any threat from Shiite militias to Turkmen in Tal Afar, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Wednesday, according to the Anadolu news agency.
“Ethnic and sectarian balances must be taken into account in Mosul and Tal Afar,” he said.