(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Of: Thee-Yezen Al Obaide
In an article published in Klassekampen 27. April Minister of Defense Ine Eriksen Søreide answers questions from Audun Lysbakken. She says that "the rules of war will be an important part of training to help prevent human rights violations".
Søreide has repeated this on several occasions – as if she thinks Iraqi forces are killing because they have no respect for human life. I thought we were done with white supremacy. Has it not hit the Norwegian authorities that war crimes can be part of a larger plan?
In sunny areas, farms are leveled with soil, houses are blown up and families run away. In an interview with Egyptian TV channel Sada Al-Balad last December, Iraq's top Sunni Mufti, Rafi 'Taha Al-Rifa'i, said that when families want to return to "liberated areas", they are told they will not can come before in a year – and that it shines clearly through that it will never really happen. The purpose is to provide space for Shi'a families to be settled in order to obtain Shi'a majority throughout Salahuldin Province.
The government's leaflets. This war is about religion, geopolitics, power and dominance. When these four factors meet, war crimes tend to occur. The war crimes of the Iraqi army are planned and carried out on purpose. Both sides of the war legitimize rape, murder, kidnapping and other serious war crimes through religious declarations and the Qur'an.
I and many others have provided concrete evidence of what Shiite militias are capable of doing with the civilian population. But are their war crimes limited to this? No.
Ever since the war broke out in Syria, Iraqi militias have been involved. For four years, Shiites have been fighting on the side of dictator Bashar Al-Assad. Over the past six months, I have been trying to map the Shiite militias in Iraq. I have made an overview of the terrorist groups – their names, number of soldiers, ideology and where they are. As soon as I came across a militia, it changed its name. Old groups were split and new ones formed. The most shocking thing has been to discover how deeply involved these militias are in the Syrian war. It is frightening that the Norwegian government has overlooked this. Or do they have it? The militias do not hide their participation in the war – on the contrary, they proclaim it loudly. How is it possible that the Norwegian government can miss this? Or is it perhaps not so dangerous anymore, now that we have a common enemy in IS? On 11 February last year, Foreign Minister Børge Brende stated that Assad must leave. Should he still be allowed to stay?
Most of the Iraqi army is made up of militias. If we study them more closely, we quickly see that these terrorist groups have Syrian blood on their hands – in addition to Iraqi blood.
The Washington Institute has recently published the study "The Shiite Jihad in Syria and Its Regional Effects" by researcher Phillip Smyth. Here is how Iraqi militias mobilize and fight on Syrian soil. We can also read about how they recruit transnational warriors. Amnesty International's report "Absolute Impunity – militia rule in Iraq" also states that one of the largest militias, Asaib Ahl al-haq, is fighting with Assad. Other reliable sources – Foreign Policy, The Economist, The Huffington Post – also confirm the findings of this report. Why is this being overlooked by the Norwegian authorities? It is tempting to think that the Ministry of Defense does not have good enough analyzes, or that they have serious shortcomings in understanding what is happening on the ground in Syria and Iraq – but this is hard to believe. The information is easily accessible to anyone who bothers to look. For the Minister of Defense, it all boils down to Norwegians "teaching the rules of war" to driven, Iraqi soldiers, without taking into account who these soldiers are and what ideology they stand for. It's scary.
Sectarian war crimes. One of the biggest culprits in these widespread conflicts is al-Hashd al-Shaabi – an Iraqi, state-sponsored umbrella organization that embraces most Shiite militias in Iraq today. The organization is not an official part of an Iraqi defense, but both the Interior Ministry, the Prime Minister and the Defense Ministry in Iraq have openly stated that these belong to the government. A number of human rights organizations – including Amnesty International – have accused al-Hashd al-Shaabi of war crimes and retaliatory actions against civilian populations on a sectarian basis. Among others, they were behind the latest sectarian purges in the Sunni-dominated city of Tikrit. We also see clearly that the Iraqi government is turning its back on these serious crimes, continuing to pay the militias, but failing to pay Kurdish peshmerga forces – who by the way are the only ones who are not sectarian in the region.
Al-Hashd al-Shaabi also has great influence in Syria. The Syrian regime follows the Iraqi model and imports militants from Iraq – and has now, according to Al-Jazeera, formed its own al-Hashd al-Shaabi, which is at least as brutal as the Iraqi version. The Syrian regime is also still promoting this group. What is the goal? To empty Iraq and Syria of Sunni Muslims, as has long been done in Iran? Will Norway be involved in building a sectarian Persian empire that extends beyond the Middle East, and which is first and foremost hostile to the West and everyone who does not have the same values as them? Norway must think more long-term and focus on the consequences.
Just as brutal. The Norwegian government is now stepping in and taking part in an ideological, deeply religious and sectarian conflict. As is well known, IS wants to establish a Sunni Muslim caliphate. On the other hand, the Shiite militias and their leaders want to establish Ayatollah Khomeini's version of "Welayat e-Faqih" (a regime of religious scholars) – the Shiite Islam's response to the caliphate. The two sides are equally ruthless and brutal in their conduct and beliefs – this is a choice between plague or cholera. Should Norway really make this choice? The same militias killed nearly 4500 U.S. soldiers between 2003 and 2011. From 2010, Sunni Muslims protested peacefully against government forces in Baghdad, but were brutally crushed by Shiite militias. The support for IS is a reaction to this. If we are to fight IS, we must see that they are motivated and driven by precisely the war crimes committed by the militia-dominated Iraqi government, and that both parties are growing strong on each other.
Are Brende and Søreide planning to take over the Shiite militias after IS is neutralized? In that case, it is very naive. Hezbollah in Lebanon did not allow itself to be disarmed after the last war with Israel, nor did the Shiite militias in Iraq after the war against the United States. We know from experience that only the Sunni clans can resist IS. It is these clans and the Kurdish peshmerga who must get our support, if we are to interfere at all.
Al Obaide is a writer and public debater.
tea.yezen@gmail.com.
