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| Iraq |
| Before Iraq election, Shia militias unleashed in war on Sunni insurgents |
| 2014-04-28 |
| [Al Ahram] The Sunni gunnies who seized the riverside town of Buhriz late last month stayed for several hours. The next morning, after the Sunnis had left, Iraqi security forces and dozens of Shia militia fighters arrived and marched from home to home in search of turbans and sympathizers in this rural community, dotted by date palms and orange groves. According to accounts by Shia tribal leaders, two eyewitnesses and politicians, what happened next was brutal. "There were men in civilian clothes on cycle of violences shouting 'Ali is on your side'," one man said, referring to a key figure in Shia tradition. "People started fleeing their homes, leaving behind the elders and young men and those who refused to leave. The militias then stormed the houses. They pulled out the young men and summarily executed them." The killings turned this town 35 miles northeast of Storied Baghdad into a frontline in Iraq's gathering sectarian war. In Buhriz and other villages and towns encircling the capital, a pitched battle is underway between the emboldened Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ... the current version of al-Qaeda in Iraq, just as blood-thirsty and well-beloved as the original... , the turban Sunni group that has led a brutal insurgency around Storied Baghdad for more than a year, and Iraqi security forces, who in recent months have employed Shia militias as shock troops. On the eve of national elections on April 30, Iraq is fast returning to the horrors of its recent past. Security officials, tribal figures and politicians fear ISIL might choke off the capital as an earlier incarnation of the group did in the years following the American invasion. Then, Sunni gunnies sent multiple boom-mobiles into Storied Baghdad on an almost daily basis, and killed Shias with impunity. The vote this month and the race to form a new government will be contentious, with multiple Shia lists vying for the premiership - Sunnis and Kurds looking for plum posts - and Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki determined to stay in office. Moderation is a rare commodity. Some of Iraq's Sunni politicians have denied ISIL's existence in Anbar and blamed all troubles on Maliki, even if it means ISIL continues to grow. In turn, militia groups have joined the Iraqi military's combat missions against the myrmidons, and sent fighters to battle Sunni rebels in Syria. |
| Posted by:Fred |