Derek Gannon
The pro-Iranian, mostly Shia militia known as the People’s Mobilization Force—or, in Arabic, the Hashd al-Shaabi—have announced that they have captured key villages and the air base within and around the town of Tal Afar, Iraq, just west of Mosul and the Iraqi Army-led offensive taking place there. This Iranian-backed and -supplied paramilitary unit in essence closed the uncontested 20-mile-wide escape route left open by the U.S.-led coalition, giving ISIL a direct pipeline of retreat into Syria. The Hashd al-Shaabi, or HaS, has swiftly taken large swathes of desert and villages back from Islamic State fighters since defying the Iraqi government and opening up a western front, closing off ISIL’s escape just three short weeks ago. But they aren’t supposed to be there, and that has caused some members of the coalition, especially the Americans, to get nervous.
The United States, as well as the Iraqi government, have a good reason to be wary of the HaS militia. They have ties to Iran and its external Shiite military wing, the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, or the IRGC. Weapons and training of HaS fell to both Quds Force and its proxy paramilitary unit known as Asaib al-Haq, or AAH. AAH is well known in the military and intelligence circles. They arrived on the scene in 2006, entering Iraq from Syria, and used Tal Afar—among other border cities—to conduct over 6,000 suicide attacks and other hit-and-run guerrilla attacks on American and Iraqi forces until the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2011. Aligned with the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Madhi army during the height of the Iraq War, AAH received the designation of a “special group” by the U.S., which is a label given to Iranian-backed Shiite militias operating in Iraq.
At the outset of the Mosul offensive to take the city back from ISIL, the coalition left the western edge of the region open for the Islamic State to escape into Syria and their mini capital of Raqqa, which Syrian intelligence officials claimed was an attempt to “swamp Syria with hordes of ISIS fighters.” Many in the U.S. and around the world thought this a tactical blunder on the part of the American and Iraqi coalition. Michael Pregent, a Middle East analyst and former U.S. intelligence officer who served during the Iraq War, stated, however, that the intended strategy by Baghdad and Washington was that ISIL would use the western route to flee Mosul for a “final battle” later in its Syrian bastion of Raqqa. He also added that the Shia militias’ move to begin operations in the northwestern portion of Iraq was not sanctioned by Iraq’s government. The same scenario played out in Fallujah earlier this year when the Iraqi Army retook the city from ISIL, its fighters tucking tail and fleeing directly into Syria to escape that buzzsaw.
Now, with Hashd al-Shaabi claiming to be “encircling” Tal Afar, along with retaking the main supply line ISIL was using at the airbase, the Shiite militia is confident they are within weeks, if not days, from destroying the Islamic State fighters still holed up within. A spokesman for the HaS, Ahmed al-Asadi, went on to confirm on the militia’s website that “Hashd al-Shaabi’s control over the airport will pave the way to liberate the Tal Afar district and will cut the last ISIS supply lines between Tal Afar and Mosul.” He claims that up to 10 villages have been ‘liberated,’ and that HaS has been busy clearing mines and improvised explosive devices placed throughout. Asadi continued, “This corridor is considered the main artery of the ISIL terrorist organisation between Mosul on one end and Raqqa in Syria on the other.”
All of this sounds like a positive in a sea of bad, until you take into account the tribal ramifications. Tal Afar is mostly Sunni, as is the majority of the Iraqi Army. It was hoped that the Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi militia would not play any part in the retaking of Mosul or any fighting in the north, as Sunni Muslims consider them just as deplorable and criminal as ISIL themselves. Many in the upper echelon of the U.S.-led coalition fear the militia is looking to exact revenge on the ISIL fighters who went door to door searching for Shiite families, either killing them or displacing them, sending 950 men, women, and children out into the desert to die, reportedly with help from the local Sunni population. Now, with unconfirmed reports of the militias attacking Sunni civilians, things could get worse for Tal Afar, as well as for the coalition’s efforts to route the Islamic State from Iraq altogether.
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