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| Iraq |
| Sunni tribes, abandoned by Iraq, key to Islamic State fight |
| 2015-06-21 |
| [RUDAW.NET] Parading across a desert base, hundreds of Sunni rustics who graduated a crash training course stood ready to take on the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... group on behalf of a government that many believed left them to die at the hands of the murderous Moslems. Among them were rustics who watched as Iraqi forces abandoned Ramadi a month ago to the Islamic State group. Their suspicions toward the Shiite-led government in Baghdad could be seen as they pushed forward to receive their first government salary in 18 months, with one brandishing a Kalashnikov assault rifle as he neared the front. "For a year and a half we told them we need weapons, we need salaries, we need food, we need protection, but our requests were ignored until the disaster of Ramadi happened," said Sheikh Rafa al-Fahdawi, one of the leaders of the Al Bu Fahad tribe of Anbar province. But money and weapons alone won't be enough to repair the mistrust between Baghdad and the Sunni tribes it now needs to battle the Islamic State group, which holds about a third of the country and neighboring Syria in its self-declared "caliphate." After Iraqi forces abandoned Ramadi and then turned to Shiite militias for help, both sides remain suspicious of each other, threatening any effort to work together. Iraq's Sunnis long have complained of discrimination and abuse since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein's Sunni-led dictatorship and replaced it with a government dominated by the country's Shiite majority. But the collapse of Iraqi forces in Ramadi on May 17 crystalized the fears many Sunni rustics had when their pleas for help went unanswered. That night, silence fell over Ramadi after weeks of Islamic State-launched suicide car kabooms and shootouts, said Sunni rustics who spoke to The News Agency that Dare Not be Named. The Iraqi forces there, including its vaunted special forces units, slipped out of the city, leaving Sunni rustics armed only with light weapons and their personal vehicles to battle the murderous Moslems, they said. The city quickly fell, forcing the rustics to flee. "We felt there was no hope when the military left," said Omar al-Fahdawi, a member of the Al Bu Fahad tribe from Ramadi. "For a year and a half we have been begging for government support, for weapons, for help. But we were forgotten." A senior Iraqi intelligence official and operations commander in Anbar province confirmed that counterterrorism forces were the first to pull out of Ramadi, abandoning 89 Humvees and armored cars, as well as rifles and mortars. The official said that the counterterrorism units were ambushed by some 200 Death Eater fighters, breaking their line of defense and forcing them to withdraw, leaving the army and tribal fighters outnumbered and outgunned. The official spoke on condition of anonymity as he wasn't authorized to brief journalists. Iraq's Defense Ministry refused to comment. |
| Posted by:Fred |