The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Top cleric urges Iraqis to fight militants
Obama links U.S. military aid to political reforms in Baghdad.
BAGHDAD — Iraq’s top Shiite cleric exhorted all able-bodied Iraqis to take up arms Friday to combat the marauding Sunni extremist militants who have seized broad stretches of the country this week and are threatening the wobbly, Shiite-led central government in Baghdad.
President Barack Obama, meanwhile, said it was up to the Iraqis themselves to contain the crisis.
The call to arms by the cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, was the most urgent sign yet of the growing desperation of the country’s Shiite majority in the face of a resurgent Sunni militant movement drawn from the insurgency in neighboring Syria and vestiges of the Saddam Hussein loyalists toppled from power by the U.S.-led invasion a decade ago.
At the same time, the
ayatollah’s plea also risked plunging Iraq further into the pattern of sectarian bloodletting between Sunnis and Shiites that convulsed the country during the height of the U.S. occupation.
For the U.S., the chaos engulfing Iraq risks reentangling the U.S. military in a conflict the Obama administration spent its first term winding down. Obama, in a televised statement Friday, said it was clear that Nouri al-Maliki’s government needed more help and that the United States was weighing a range of options. But Obama said he would not be sending troops back and U.S. military aid alone was not a solution.
“The United States is not simply going to involve itself in a military action in the absence of a political plan by the Iraqis that gives us some assurance that they’re prepared to work together,” he said. “We’re not going to allow ourselves to be dragged back into a situation in which, while we’re there, we’re keeping a lid on things” while the political leaders fail to address the underlying fissures di- viding Iraqi society.
Obama did not specify what options he was considering for helping Iraq’s government, but administration officials said he is weighing airstrikes using drones or manned aircraft. Other short-term options include an increase in surveillance and intelligence-gathering.
CNN reported that the Pentagon was moving an aircraft carrier, the USS George H.W. Bush, to the area.
The U.S. also is likely to increase aid to Iraq, including funding, training and both lethal and nonlethal equipment.
Al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders have pleaded with Washington for more than a year for additional help to combat the growing insurgency led by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The Sunni extremist group has emerged as one of the most potent opposition forces in the Syrian civil war and that now controls large areas of both Syria and northern Iraq.
Shiite powerhouse Iran, which shares a border with Iraq, signaled its willingness to confront the growing threat from the militant blitz.
Former members of Tehran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard have an- nounced their readiness to fight in Iraq, the official IRNA news agency reported. Iranian state TV quoted President Hassan Rouhani as saying his country will do all it can to battle terrorism next door.
Thousands of Iraqi Shiites responded to the call by al-Sistani, 83, whose statements carry enormous weight among not just the Shiite majority but members of other groups including some Sunnis. The statement, read by his representative, Sheikh Abdul Mehdi al-Karbalaie, during Friday prayers, said it was “the legal and national responsibility of whoever can hold a weapon to hold it to defend the country, the citizens and the holy sites.”
Volunteers began to appear within an hour at the southern gate to Baghdad, which leads to the predominantly Shiite south of the country.
The Sunni insurgents continued their offensive Friday, fanning out to the east of the Tigris River, and at least temporarily seized two towns near the Iranian border, Sadiyah and Jalawla. Security officials in Baghdad said government troops, backed by Kurdish forces, counterattacked several hours later and forced the insur- gents to withdraw, a rare success.
In Geneva, U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay warned of “murder of all kinds” and other war crimes in Iraq, and said the number killed in recent days may run into the hundreds, while the wounded could approach 1,000.
Pillay said her office has received reports that militants rounded up and killed Iraqi army soldiers as well as 17 civilians in a single street in Mosul.
Her office heard of “summary executions and extrajudicial killings” as ISIL militants overran Iraqi cities and towns this week, the statement said.
“I am extremely concerned about the acute vulnerability of civilians caught in the cross-fire, or targeted in direct attacks by armed groups, or trapped in areas under the control of ISIL and their allies,” Pillay said. “And I am especially concerned about the risk to vulnerable groups, minorities, women and children.”