Fallujah Updates: Following the people and the suffering

[Anthea]

Falluja 'humanitarian disaster' warning

A humanitarian disaster is unfolding in Falluja following a civilian exodus from the Iraqi city, aid workers warn.

Some 80,000 people have fled during a four-week government offensive to drive back so-called Islamic State fighters, says the UN.

A further 25,000 civilians are likely on the move, the organisation adds.

Aid workers are struggling to provide food, water and medicine to people who are sleeping in the open in hopelessly overcrowded camps outside the city.

"The overwhelming number of people that have come out of Falluja has actually overwhelmed our ability to respond to the people in need," said Nasr Muflahi from the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

"We implore the Iraqi government to take charge of this humanitarian disaster unfolding on our watch," he added.

Iraqi government forces have succeeded in retaking most of Falluja, but fighting continues in some parts of the city, which is just 50km (30 miles) west of Baghdad.

'Militants are still active' - BBC's Ahmed Maher in devastated city

We drove into Falluja on a road that snaked through what was once a wealthy suburb but is now deserted. Many homes have been destroyed.

By the side of the road, unexploded shells showed how dangerous these streets remain for civilians if they are allowed to return.

Many tell harrowing escape stories. Some have been caught in crossfire, others drowned in the Euphrates as they tried to swim to safety.

We heard the sound of artillery and gunfire wherever we went.

Many of those who fleeing the fighting have been forced to sleep in the open, and spend their days under the sun in temperatures set to reach 47C (117F) in the next few days.

Aid supplies are running dangerously low in overcrowded conditions. One newly opened camp, Amriyat al-Falluja, has only one latrine for 1,800 women, the NRC said.

The government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is already struggling to meet the needs of more than 3.4 million people across the country who have been displaced by conflict.

The IS group's self-styled Amaq news agency reported on Sunday that about 50 Iraqi troops had been killed and four army vehicles destroyed in "fierce fighting" with IS fighters near Falluja General Hospital in the north-east of the city.

Several civilians have been killed by militants while attempting to escape, including, on Monday, a two-year-old boy who was being carried by his mother.

Some residents were reportedly used as human shields by IS to slow the advance of government forces, who are being backed by air strikes from the US-led coalition.

IS militants had captured the northern city in January 2014 and held it for longer than any other city in Iraq or Syria - before the Iraqi army launched an operation to retake it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-36571226

[Anthea]

I CRY FOR THE PEOPLE OF FALLUJAH

It took the people many years to rebuild their city following the fall of Saddam and repeated attacks by Shia that flattened their homes

For 6 months or more, the people suffered immeasurable hardships due to a siege that prevented fresh food and medicine reaching them

The final straw was the imminent threat of Shia and coalition bombing

They fled in their thousands leaving their homes and all their possessions

Many risking their lives to swim across the river to what they thought would be safety

But there is NO safety in an area controlled by the barbaric Shia militia

Hundreds of innocent Sunni have vanished - I expect they have stopped counting

Innocent Sunni beaten raped murdered

This was never about freeing the inhabitants of Fallujah

In fact nobody asked the people of Fallujah if they wanted the Shia to take control of their city

This has been all about Shia vengeance and reprisals

This goes back to the time when Saddam (Sunni) tortured the Shia

When Saddam left office the coalition tried to leave Iraq in the hands of a united government

Unfortunately, that did not work as the Shia forced many Sunni out and started on a path of Sunni annihilation

The UN, NATO and the entire world totally ignored the horrors inflicted upon the Sunni - the worst being the imprisoning, beating, raping and murder of HUNDREDS of totally innocent Sunni women

In fact everyone had chosen to forget the Sunnis existed until the Islamic State emerged

[Anthea]

‘We are desperate’: Iraqis flee Fallujah, only to find another nightmare

HABBANIYAH, Iraq — Families fleeing the combat in the Iraqi city of Fallujah have been forced to sleep in the open desert for almost a week, with aid agencies warning that people are at risk of dying as supplies of tents and water run dangerously low.

More than 85,000 people have escaped the city and its surroundings in recent weeks as Iraqi security forces battle to recapture the city from the Islamic State. About 4.4 million people in the country are now internally displaced, one of the highest totals of any country.

The United Nations said the pace of new arrivals caught it off guard, even though tens of thousands of people were known to be trapped in the city before the operation began last month. The Iraqi government, meanwhile, under political pressure to launch an offensive quickly, appears to have prepared little assistance for the fleeing families.

In one hastily expanded camp 15 miles west of Fallujah near Habbaniyah, Mihal Adnan and her four children sat next to their meager belongings. It was their fourth day without shelter of any kind, exposed to dust storms and temperatures in excess of 110 degrees.

Adnan cradled her 13-year-old disabled son, massaging his cramping muscles as he cried in pain. He had soiled himself, but there were no latrines or water tanks installed that she could use to wash him. The family had missed out on a recent government tent delivery and complained that with supplies running low, priority is given to those with money or connections.

“We’ll sleep here tonight,” she said, indicating the one gray blanket they had between them. “What else can we do? We are desperate. We don’t have anything.”

Nearby, men scuffled over a pack of bottles of water as a truck drove around, throwing them out to families.

“We’ve been treated like dogs,” said 72-year-old Mohammed Jassim Khalil. “What’s my guilt in all this?”

His family had been sleeping out for six days and had just managed to get a tent.

“I wish a mortar shell had landed on my house in Fallujah and killed me,” added Ismail Mohammed Hussein, 51. “It’s better than living like this.”

The Norwegian Refugee Council said conditions in the camps are getting worse. Pregnant women, children, the elderly and those with disabilities are particularly vulnerable, with some collapsing from exhaustion, relief workers say.

“The situation is deteriorating by the day, and people are going to die in those camps unless essential aid arrives now,” said Nasr Muflahi, the organization’s director in Iraq. “What we’re seeing is the consequence of a delayed and heavily underfunded response with an extreme toll on the civilians fleeing from one nightmare and living through another one.”

The United Nations says it is severely underfunded as it deals with an unprecedented number of people displaced globally, with 1 out of every 113 people in the world unable to safely return home.

Iraq has claimed victory in Fallujah, but only a third of the city has been cleared of the militants, according to the U.S.-led coalition, and no one knows exactly how many people remain trapped inside. The United Nations has warned that more may flee as Iraqi forces advance, adding strain in the already underserved camps.

U.N. officials have appealed for $17.5 million in emergency funding.

Families arrive at the camps with harrowing stories of life under the rule of the Islamic State militants who controlled the city for nearly 2½ years.

Food supplies were low for months, with the city besieged by security forces and bombarded with artillery and airstrikes. The journey out was a perilous one; Islamic State gunmen initially shot at those leaving.

Falah Hussein Ali held up his arms to show the deep bruises that he said resulted from being whipped with electric cables.

He said he was in an Islamic State prison when the operation began and was freed by Iraqi security forces. He said he was arrested and held for 20 days as men in the Nazzal neighborhood were rounded up after an Iraqi flag was raised in the area overnight.

“We didn’t want [the Islamic State] there,” he said. “But they brought us from one death to another kind of death. What kind of life is this?”

Ghassan Abou Chaar, an emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, said that the toll in the camps is both physical and mental.

“People are at breaking point,” he said.

Adding to the stress for families is that all men of fighting age are detained for security screening, leaving women and children to cope by themselves until male family members are released.

Adnan’s husband and 17-year-old son are still in detention.

“If the government can’t help us, they should at least release our men,” said one woman from the Mualimin neighborhood of Fallujah, declining to give her name as she criticized the government response. “We ran away from Daesh, from the bombing, from the hunger, and we find this,” she said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.

Many complained that they are not allowed to leave Iraq’s Anbar province, even for medical treatment or even if they have family in Baghdad, 40 miles east. With residents from the largely Sunni province considered a security threat, access is severely restricted.

In a more established camp outside the nearby town of Khaldiyah, families are given a cooked meal each day, and there were limited latrines and water tanks.

Some families said that despite the hardships, life was better than it was under the Islamic State.

“Life here is like a prison,” said 94-year-old Mehdi Saleh Abed, sitting in the shade of a tent. “But living here in the dust is better than Daesh.”

An aid group was delivering 100,000 pounds of food supplies, with dust whipping through the barren rows of tents as people lined up to collect it — but families did not have basics such as portable stoves to make use of the sacks of flour and rice that were being handed out.

“It’s a complete disaster,” Jeremy Courtney, founder of the Preemptive Love Coalition, the aid group that was doing the distribution, said of the level of planning. “The government and the international organizations failed to do what they needed to do.”

Facing mass street protests against his government in Baghdad, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi unexpectedly announced a Fallujah operation in late May in what some analysts said was an attempt to distract from his political problems.

But despite the fact that the battle was launched as a “hasty face-saving exercise” that caught everyone off guard, it was obvious there would be mass displacement as soon the operation was announced a month ago, giving groups time to prepare, Courtney said.

Out of the 85,000 people who have fled, some 60,000 arrived in just three days last week, overwhelming aid agencies.

“No one can be prepared for such a magnitude,” said Bruno Geddo, the Iraq representative for the United Nations’ refugee agency. U.N.-administered camps can house just 16,830 people, he said. Though government camps and large temporary tents that sleep 30 families are making up some of the shortfall, 20 camps are still needed, he said.

On Saturday, three days after the influx began, Abadi said he had ordered a fleet of drinking-water tankers to the camps and asked the Ministry of Health to create an “accurate plan” for how to allocate medics to the area.

The slow response raises concerns about what will happen in the aftermath of a planned offensive to retake the much larger city of Mosul from the Islamic State. The United Nations expects between 600,000 and 1.2 million people to be displaced in that operation.

“I lose sleep over Mosul,” Geddo said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mi ... story.html

[Anthea]

Why The Iraqi Military Has Taken So Long To Defeat ISIS In Fallujah

It’s been two years, but the battle for Fallujah is not over.

After Iraqi security forces announced victory there last weekend, the U.S. said that only a third of the city, in Iraq's western Anbar province, had been cleared of Islamic State group militants. The main obstacle for a clean win is money — or a lack of it. The years of combat have taken their toll on the U.S.-backed coalition fighting the terrorist group, also known as ISIS. And at a cost of billions of dollars, it's one of the most expensive battles since the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011.

The fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria comes with a hefty price tag of $11.5 million a day. The U.S. alone has pledged $5.3 billion to fight ISIS in 2016, about 1 percent of the total defense budget, while the Iraqi economy is carrying the burden of a military outlay that makes up a fifth of its annual budget.

On the other side of the battlefield are ISIS fighters who are funded not only by the profits from captured oil fields in Iraq and Syria but also by wealthy Gulf businessmen, a 2015 investigation by International Business Times revealed.

A combination of money and willful blindness has ensured that Sunni businessmen in the Persian Gulf region who are funding ISIS through Sunni tribesmen intermediaries go almost unchallenged, Eissa al-Issawi, the head of Fallujah's local council, told IBT. The tribal leaders provide ISIS with intelligence, cash and weapons that help the group stave off U.S.-backed Iraqi military forces and maintain the upper hand in battle, he said.

Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq’s former national security adviser under then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said a number of the government offices in Anbar province’s cities, including Fallujah, transfer money directly to the militants.

Although it is difficult to know the precise sums that are flowing to the remaining militants in Fallujah, the Iraqi government knows it’s up against a cash machine with no foreseeable end, as long as ties between the Gulf and Anbar remain.

That's why the Iraqi military, advised by the U.S. government, is using its highly equipped, elite operation force to lead the Anbar campaign. Some 1,500 members of the counterterrorism unit are involved in direct combat, along with around 10,000 local soldiers and 8,000 members of the police force, many of whom are from local tribes.

The CT, as it is known on the ground, answers directly to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. The unit combines elements of the Iraqi army’s special operations forces with units of the interior ministry’s federal police. They are the most highly skilled and well-equipped soldiers in all of Iraq, which makes them the most valuable fighters on the battlefield.

In addition to receiving funding from coalition pledges and training from U.S. Marines, CT has access to a $19 billion fund that was established at the end of the Iraq war. But the losses of battle are costly — in Ramadi, Anbar's provincial capital, the force lost more than 200 armored Humvees, which cost $9.4 million to replace.

As the premier fighting unit, CT calls first dibs on cash coming in from the U.S. and the coalition, leaving the remainder — Shiite paramilitary forces, local tribesmen and the national police force — to divvy up the rest among themselves.

According to the U.S. 2016 Iraqi Train and Equip budget, CT has received $1.34 billion so far this year, more than 50 times that received by tribal forces in Anbar.

The money the coalition gives is transferred to the central government in Baghdad, which is supposed to distribute funds to its military branches across the country. But pro-government Sunni tribal fighters in Anbar told IBT the funds are not shared fairly, with money handed to those commanders who have fostered personal relationships in the finance ministry.

In 2014, Sunni tribal fighters in Anbar fighting against ISIS militants requested training and weapons support from the Iraqi government. Those weapons didn’t come until the end of 2015 and came only after the U.S. put pressure on the central government.

The lack of funding for tribal forces is a major problem, James Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told IBT. Winning the fight in Anbar, he said, is contingent on gaining the support of local Sunni tribesmen. "The Fallujah tribe has always been split [between those who support ISIS and those who support the government] because the authority of tribal leaders has been watered down [since] the invasion of Iraq in 2003," Jeffrey said.

If Iraqi forces wholly capture Fallujah, it will mark a turning point in the Iraqi fight against ISIS, he said.

“All in all, Anbar will be secured,” Jeffrey said. It just might take a while.

http://www.ibtimes.com/isis-iraq-why-ir ... ah-2385082

[Anthea]

A curious turn of events in battle for Fallujah shows the US needs Iran

Iran, the US and Iraqi militias are locked in a menage-a-trois that now defines the region's geopolitics.

While Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi recently declared victory in Fallujah, there are still pockets held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) in the city. Regardless of these final military operations, there are two significant political dynamics that have been established.

First, the United States has had an uneasy relationship with the Iraqi Shia militias, otherwise known as the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMUs), since it began its air campaign against ISIL, yet close to exactly two years into conflict, it is these Iranian-sponsored forces that have become integral to Washington's efforts.

Second, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, in his capacity as a respected cleric, has become embedded in Iraq's domestic politics. Yet the battle for Fallujah shows how he has leveraged his position to dictate military strategy and tactics.

Shia militias and the US

In June 2014, just a few days after the fall of Mosul, David Petraeus, the former commander of US forces in Iraq and architect of the "surge", issued a warning about the US siding with the Iraqi Shia militias.

I specifically recall the various headlines that emerged afterwards, such as, "Petraeus: US Must Not Become the Shia Militia's Air Force".

The reason that those headlines resonated with me was because back then I knew Petraeus' admonition would go unheeded.

In Washington's view, the PMUs' potential to alienate Sunnis in Fallujah took precedence over the military effectiveness of the militias.

The US air force would become the Shia militias air force because at that juncture there was no Iraqi air force or army to speak of. Given the US aversion to "boots on the ground" in Iraq, Washington would have to rely on the Shia militias, and the Shia militias would have to rely on the US Air Force. It was not exactly a match made in heaven, but a forced marriage.

The battle for Fallujah involved the regular Iraqi military and militias. To allay fears that the Shia militias would take the predominantly Arab Sunni city, Abadi announced that they would play a supporting role, and not participate in the assault on the city's centre.

The bargain was that if the militias were held back, the US would increase the tempo of its air strikes, as it did in the battle for Ramadi in December 2015.

In both cases, US air power was contingent on sidelining the Shia militias. In Washington's view, the PMUs' potential to alienate Sunnis in Fallujah took precedence over the military effectiveness of the militias.

Like in Ramadi, Iraq's Counterterrorism Forces and a thousand Arab Sunni tribal fighters led the assault into the centre of Fallujah, capturing ISIL's urban HQ.

Regardless of whether it might taken longer for Iraq's formal military to achieve this aim, or that it could result in burn-out for the overworked Counterterrorism Forces, Washington still prioritised the political value of having a national Iraqi national secure the urban centres of Ramadi and Fallujah.

Lesson from the Battle of Tikrit

Washington knows that the PMUs are central to any assault on an urban centre, whether they play a support role as in Ramadi, and now Fallujah, or took the city itself, as in Tikrit in April 2015.

Then the militias, most likely on Iran's order, boycotted the battle when the US was called in to conduct air strikes against well-entrenched ISIL positions.

The militias complained in public statements then that the US would steal their glory and victory. In fact, the militias' advance had stalled after three weeks and it was American air power that turned the tide in favour of the PMUs.

Before the US committed its air force to the battle for Tikrit, General Lloyd Austin, the head of US Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 26: "I will not, and I hope we never, coordinate or cooperate with Shia militias."

Yet just close to a week earlier, his bosses, Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, spent three hours in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee defending their management of the military campaign.

These officers, as well as the US Secretary of State John Kerry, repeatedly dodged questions from the senators about the length of time America’s commitment in the fight against ISIL would take. The consistent fear among policymakers and politicians has been the US commitment to a potentially open-ended campaign.

The Shia militias have become a pillar of the US achieving its war aims in a much shorter time span.

This debate within the Washington Beltway revolves around timing, and in this regard, the Shia militias have become a pillar of the US achieving its war aims in a much shorter time span. The Iraqi military, despite the US-led training effort that has spanned more than two years, is still not in a position to take urban centres without the support role of the militias.

The Shia militias are allowing this campaign to unfold a lot faster, which is most likely on the mind of the American generals squirming in their chairs in front of Congress.

The role of Sistani

Sistani already played a military role in Iraq, calling for volunteers to rally to the defence of Baghdad in June 2014. In an statement in May, he urged the militias to show restraint against the civilian inhabitants of Fallujah in order to stave off abuses that happened when Tikrit fell.

In a second statement, he reiterated this plea, saying that "saving an innocent human being from the dangers around him is much more important than targeting and eliminating the enemy."

Sistani is not a general, but a cleric dictating military discipline on the battlefield. It is easy to forget he is Iranian. Sistani has also demonstrated, albeit subtly, that he is wary of the preponderant influence of the Islamic Republic and thus Ayatollah Khamenei in Iraq, via their proxies, the PMUs. This is a struggle between two Iranian Shia clerics over a Sunni city.

In Fallujah, Iran and the militias learned their lesson on the need of US air support to defeat ISIL in urban combat. Iran and the PMUs will never admit this publicly, just as the US will not admit publicly that it owes a debt of gratitude to these militias.

Iran, the Shia militias, and the US are locked in a menage-a-trois to which they will never admit to, but has become part-and-parcel of the region's geopolitics.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinio ... 07236.html

[Anthea]

Iraq's Fallujah nearly cleared but aid effort flounders

Iraqi forces hunted jihadist fighters in their last Fallujah redoubts Wednesday as tens of thousands of displaced civilians massed in overcrowded camps around the city.

A month exactly after the offensive against the Islamic State group's bastion was launched, progress on the military front exceeded expectations but so did the scope of the ensuing humanitarian crisis.

"The northern and central parts of Fallujah have almost been cleared of Daesh," Lieutenant General Abdulwahab al-Saadi told AFP, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

"There are few IS fighters left, only in the Al-Muallemin and Jolan neighbourhoods in the north of the city," said Saadi, the overall commander of the Fallujah offensive.

"The militants in Jolan are offering some resistance but we're pushing back and we've killed a number of them," he said.

Operations against IS in northern Fallujah were being conducted by the elite counter-terrorism service and forces from the federal and provincial police.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi launched the offensive against the jihadist stronghold, 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Baghdad, a month ago.

After an initial phase of staging operations to encircle Fallujah, elite federal forces stormed the city centre and were able to gain the upper hand relatively quickly.

Abadi declared victory on June 17, saying only small pockets of IS fighters remained after Iraqi forces raised the national flag over the main government compound in the city centre.

Saadi and other Iraqi commanders have said government forces controlled at least three-quarters of the city.

Christopher Garver, the spokesman of the US-led coalition assisting Iraqi forces, said Tuesday that by the US military's definition, only a third of the city had been cleared.

US forces battling one of IS's previous incarnations in 2004 suffered some of their worst losses since the Vietnam War in Fallujah, despite huge numerical and technological superiority.

Iraqi forces who have been reconquering swathes of territory lost to IS two years ago had been expected to face their toughest battle yet and IS fighters to defend their emblematic bastion to the death.

After breaching the jihadists' defences in the south of the city, Iraqi forces moved relatively rapidly and despite persistent violence in northern neighbourhoods the outcome of the battle appears in no doubt.

- More aid agencies needed -

Tens of thousands of starving civilians, who had been living virtually besieged under IS rule in and around Fallujah, fled their homes and filled hastily expanded displacement camps.

The influx of families however caught the aid community flat-footed and relief organisations admitted the response was inadequate.

"We have to admit that the humanitarian community has also failed the Iraqi people," said Nasr Muflahi, Iraq head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, one of the organisations providing aid to people displaced from the Fallujah area.

"There are serious funding shortfalls, but there is no justification why there aren't more aid agencies helping the people of Fallujah," he said.

As already existing camps filled way beyond capacity, other camps were being set up but the newly displaced families arriving there often found nothing to sleep on or under, nothing to eat or drink.

At a camp in Khaldiyeh, on the shores of Lake Habbaniyah west of Fallujah, Intikha Mohammed and her three children had to share a two mattresses with 10 other people.

"We have nothing here, just the clothes we are wearing. My four-month-old son is sick, I don't have enough milk for him and there's no milk powder at the camp," she said.

Her tiny boy Ziad, lay all swaddled up on a piece of tarpaulin, sleeping with a baby bottle dangling from his lips as gusts of burning wind filled the tent with orange dust.

More than 80,000 people have been displaced since the start of the Fallujah offensive, bringing to more than 3.3 million the number of Iraqis forced from their homes by conflict since the start of 2014.

Nearly half of them are from the vast province of Anbar, which lies in the heart of the rapidly unravelling "caliphate" the Islamic State group proclaimed over large parts of Iraq and Syria two years ago.

Abadi has said the next target for his forces was Mosul, IS's defacto capital in Iraq and the country's second city.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/ar ... ander.html

[Anthea]

80 percent of Fallujah liberated

Military confrontations in Fallujah are ongoing as Iraqi army forces have made great strides against remaining Islamic State (ISIS) militants in the town and have retaken control of 80 percent of the city.

"I can say that more than 80 percent [of the city] is controlled by our forces," Lieutenant General of the Iraqi army, Abdulwahab al-Saadi, told AFP in Fallujah.

There are still some areas in the northern parts where ISIS is holding on but Saadi is sure that they soon "will all be eliminated, God willing."

Saadi said the main flashpoint was now the Jolan neighborhood in the northwestern corner of Fallujah.

Pockets of ISIS fighters also remained in the rural areas of Hosai and Azraqiyah, immediately to the west of the city.

Iraqi forces are now focusing on removing roadside bombs and booby traps.

The US Defense Department confirmed the successes of the Iraqi army, announcing on Sunday that 70 percent of Fallujah has so far been liberated from ISIS.

Peter Cook, a spokesperson of the US defense department, said that over the past five weeks, at least 100 airstrikes were carried out on ISIS positions inside Fallujah.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi praised the army’s victory and announced on Friday that the city centre was under army control. “Security forces have recaptured the centre of Fallujah city,” Abadi announced.

The Iraqi army and Shiite militia known as Hashd al-Shaabi launched an offensive to regain control of Fallujah on May 22nd.

Fallujah, 60 kilometres west of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, has been under ISIS control since June 2014. It was the first major centre the militant group seized control of in Iraq.

The Iraqi Prime Minister, who is also commander in chief of the Iraqi armed forces, said that Iraqi forces are cleaning up the remaining ISIS militants in the city so that those civilians who have fled can return to their homes.

“Mosul is our next target,” Abadi added

http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/250620162

[Anthea]

Fallujah mayor warns of “further destruction” of Sunni heartland by Shiite militia

The mayor of Fallujah city, Essa Al-Essawi on Saturday warned of “further destruction of civilian properties” in his hometown, which has long been viewed as the bastion of the Sunni insurgency in the country

Iraqi media outlets have published a series of video images allegedly showing fighters of the Shiite militia, known as the Hashd-al-Shaabi, setting fire on residential houses and demolishing buildings in what appears to be neighborhoods in Fallujah city which was retaken from ISIS militants last week.

“The destruction acts were perpetrated by undisciplined fighters of the Shiite militia known as Hashd al Shaabi who entered the town after its liberation,” Al-Essawi told Rudaw.

Speaking about the current conditions in Fallujah and the aftermath of the offensive, the mayor said “the town is now fully demolished due to the military operations.”

The spokesman of the Shiite militia, Kareem Noori, however, has categorically denied the allegations and said, “the images of burnt houses were either from Aleppo or Idlib” in Syria where clashes are still ongoing.

“Hashd al Shaabi troops are fighting in Southern Saqlawiyah and are not based inside Saqlawiyah or in any other liberated areas,” Noori told Rudaw.

“We are shocked by the recent charges since our forces managed to gain victory over ISIS in many other battles,” he continued.

Noori slammed the Iraqi media outlets for “attacking Hashd al-Shaabi” with what he described as “political intentions.”

Fallujah, 70km west of the Iraqi capital Baghdad has virtually been under ISIS rule since June 2014. It was the first major center the militant group seized control of in Iraq.

The Iraqi army and Shiite militia known kicked off an offensive to regain control of the city on May 22.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi officially announced last week that Fallujah had been recaptured from the Islamic State group.

Also in recent weeks, the governor of Anbar, where Fallujah is located, came out with a damning report on “killings, torture and imprisonment of Fallujah civilians by members of the Iraqi Shiite militia” who have been backing government troops in the battle for the city and demanded “the destruction of the predominately Sunni town should be stopped.”

“Through testimonies of survivors and those who were detained by Hashd al-Shabi we gathered that the abuses include assassinations, killings, torture and forceful lock-up,” governor Suhaib al-Rawi has said.

http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/25062016

[Anthea]

Fallujah freed, but thousands of its men in custody

Iraqi forces on Sunday declared the battle to retake Fallujah from ISIL over, but the humanitarian concerns continue as thousands of men who fled the city remain in detention amid allegations of torture and summary executions

A month-long campaign “is done and the city is fully liberated," said Lt Gen Abdul-Wahad Al Saadi, the commander of the counterterrorism forces fighting in Fallujah, after his troops entered Al Julan, the last neighbourhood held by the extremists.

While the fighting raged, the army, police and allied Shiite militia detained all men of fighting age who reached government lines after leaving the city, and their families watched helplessly as large groups were driven off to be screened for ISIL members.

According to Iraq’s joint operations command, about 20,000 men were taken away. Of these, 2,185 are suspected of being ISIL members, 11,605 have been released and about 7,000 are still being screened.

The women are stuck in makeshift refugee camps, prevented from entering nearby Baghdad. They have little more than the clothes they wear, and the food and water receive from struggling aid agencies is barely enough to keep them and their children alive in the scorching summer heat.

They are waiting anxiously for their men to return.

“My husband was taken away as soon as we reached the army. He has eczema and it had spread all over his body by the time we fled Fallujah. We want to get him out but we don’t even know where he is," said an elderly woman whose family was among an estimated 30,000 people who left the city after an ISIL retreat on June 16. Like most of the other women, she did not want to give her name.

Fallujah has been a hotbed of Sunni extremism since the US invasion in 2003, and Iraq’s Shiite-dominated security forces are suspicious of its population. The city was the first to fall to ISIL, and the terror group was welcomed by some residents angered by the sectarian politics of then prime minister Nouri Al Maliki.

Anthea: As I have asked MANY times did the inhabitants of Fallujah ask to be starved for weeks on end - have their city destroyed (liberated) - their home, businesses and entire way of life destroyed - family members beaten, raped, tortured and killed?

How many liberated corpses - how many missing?

There are legitimate security concerns about ISIL members mixing in with the fleeing civilians. According to Bassem Mohsen, a general with the federal police force fighting in Fallujah, about 150 insurgents have been fished out of the stream of people making their way to safety.

But it was not long after the assault on the city began on March 23 that the first allegations of human rights abuses surfaced.

According to a Human Rights Watch report, there is credible evidence of summary executions, torture and kidnappings by Shiite militia and federal police.

On June 4, prime minister Haider Al Abadi opened an official investigation into these abuses.

In the camps dotting the barren Anbar desert around Fallujah, the women are sick with worry.

Umm Hamid, who arrived with her children in a camp on June 16, gently chided another woman who was complaining about the dire conditions in the camp.

“Let’s not talk about these things, and focus on what is important: our men who are still imprisoned," she said.

Ahmed Khalid, one of the few men present in the camp of basic tents pitched in the sand near the bridge crossing the Euphrates into Baghdad governorate, flicked through his phone to show a video of men being hosed down in front of a building after their release.

“They were filthy, and smelled really bad," he said.

Other photographs on his phone show men with bruises on their faces and backs, and others with bandaged limbs.

Mr Khalid said these were some of the 600 men returned to their families after being detained by the Shiite militia in Saqlawiyah, a township on the outskirts of Fallujah, in the early stages of the campaign.

They were taken to Baghdad and beaten brutally for several days before being dumped in the Anbar desert, he said. Both the numbers and the accounts of torture are corroborated by the Human Rights Watch report.

Some men have been missing for several months, having been captured by military units that formed a cordon around Fallujah long before the offensive to retake the city began.

A woman in another camp said 11 of her male relatives have been in jail since 2014, arrested on charges of planting improvised explosive devices to ambush government forces.

“They were tortured into making a confession, and now face execution," said the woman, who has lived in the camp since ISIL came to Fallujah.

Three of her relatives were released, but were kidnapped as soon as they left prison, she said.

Others said they had been asked to ransom their husbands. One middle-aged woman said the captors had demanded US$20,000 (Dh73,463) for the release of the men of her extended family, without specifying whether they were detained by the militias, the police or army units. For families that had to leave behind everything on their dangerous flight from Fallujah, this is an impossible sum.

“I don’t have any money, I have no power and authority, I can’t go and tell them to release my husband," the woman said.

http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle- ... in-custody

Anthea: I say yet again - attacking Fallujah was wrong

[Anthea]

Fallujah’s Forever War

As the battle for the Islamic State stronghold still rages - the civilians are bearing the brunt of the horrors of war

Khalil Mahmoud left Fallujah in the back of an ambulance after burying his daughters in the garden of the deserted city hospital.

“We tried to leave, but when we reached the market a rocket landed on us,” he tells me, his voice still edged with panic as he crouched next to his wounded 10-year-old son. “My wife and three daughters were blown apart.”

I cannot begin to imagine what this poor man feels

Mahmoud took their bodies to the Fallujah hospital after the attack on Thursday. But Islamic State staff had fled, and the hospital and the morgue were deserted. So he buried two of his daughters in the garden and took his wounded son home.

This tells us ISIS used to care for the medicial needs of the civilian population

He starts to sob as he tells the story, covering his face with the sleeve of a grimy white robe. His son, burns visible on his face, is wrapped in a faded floral-print sheet and lies on a stretcher nearby. Traumatized women from Mahmoud’s extended family are crowded into the back of the ambulance.

“After that we couldn’t leave,” Mahmoud says, explaining they stayed in the city to care for the wounded boy as Iraqi forces moved in against the Islamic State.

Many thousands were trapped between in incoming 'liberators' and ISIS

For civilians like Mahmoud, urged by Iraqi forces to leave, there were no good choices. Tens of thousands of civilians have managed to flee unharmed, but now face another struggle for survival in makeshift desert camps without enough water or even toilets and where health care workers say they are treating over 1,000 undernourished people per day.

Their families, their homes, their businesses, their lives all totally destroyed - how many will survive this liberation

Marines and Army battled al Qaeda in the fiercest urban fighting by the U.S. military since the Vietnam War. The city was almost destroyed in the process. Fifty-four American troops were killed and more than 400 wounded in some of the worst U.S. losses of the conflict.

Nobody counted the numbers of dead civilians - bit like today

12 years later - the citizens of Fallujah have rebuilt their homes and their way of life only to have yet another FORCED LIBERATION

The city, and its residents, have suffered. Dozens of civilians were killed trying to flee the Islamic State – either drowning in the Euphrates River as they tried to evade Islamic State checkpoints or in artillery attacks after the Islamic State allowed them to leave.

'...in artillery attacks after the Islamic State allowed them to leave.' Those would be artillery attacks by the 'liberators'

At least 80,000 people stayed in Fallujah, and almost all of them are now under suspicion by security forces of supporting the Islamic State. As the families have escaped the city, Iraqi security forces have separated the men and older boys from their families, taking them away for screening. They spend days in an overcrowded warehouse with little food or water, where security forces lack the computers necessary to verify their identities.

Fallujah is a purely Sunni city - it should have been up to the inhabitants as to which set of barbaric murderers they wish to align themselves to

[Anthea]

The failure in Fallujah

As the Iraqi military announced (not for the first time) that it had finally routed the so-called Islamic State in Fallujah, the city’s former residents can be forgiven for not breathing a collective sigh of relief.

After 18 months under ISIS rule, a siege by Iraq’s armed forces that left food and medicine in dangerously short supply, and a perilous flight into the desert, many of the newly displaced are now living without tents, enough water, or latrines.

Humanitarians on the ground have said the response to the displacement of almost the entire city – between 60,000 and over 80,000 people depending on who is counting – has been disorganised, at best. Others are more brutal in their assessment. “Aid workers are running around like headless chickens,” said one worker recently returned from the new camps.

As they struggle to play catch-up and the long-awaited march on Mosul draws closer (Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Monday that the Iraqi flag will fly over the country’s second largest city soon), many humanitarians are worried that they are woefully underprepared for the challenge.

“When Mosul happens, God help us,” Karl Schembri, spokesman for the Norwegian Refugee Council, told IRIN.

“The entire humanitarian community has failed Iraq – from donors, to governments, to the implementing agencies on the ground,” he continued. “Fallujah has exposed all of our shortcomings with massive consequences for the tens of thousands of civilians displaced.”

There are between 800,000 and 1.5 million people in Mosul – again, it depends who you ask – numbers that dwarf the population of Fallujah.

IRIN has taken a closer look at the Fallujah aid operation and asked what went wrong and whether the civilians caught up in Iraq’s next battle will receive the aid they need and deserve.

To what extent do funding and security concerns excuse a weak and insufficient response to the displacement of civilians from Fallujah? And to what extent were deeper-rooted bad habits, poor coordination, and a culture of risk aversion really to blame?

Is it about the money?

Fallujah is only the latest in a series of mass displacements in Iraq that began in January 2014 when IS entered from Syria and met little resistance. According to the latest figures, more than 3.3 million Iraqis, around 10 percent of the population, are displaced inside the country.

The humanitarian system, led by the UN, has been struggling to cope. A team of senior UN and NGO officials was sent to Iraq to review the humanitarian operations in May 2015, and soon after produced an internal “Operational Peer Review” (OPR) report, obtained by IRIN, whose findings have not been previously reported.

The report stresses “the need for a scale-up in preparedness for what are almost certain increases in humanitarian needs as a result of further conflict; a preparedness which is hampered by a lack of funding.”

And it is funding that, according to Lise Grande, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, meant the system wasn’t fully ready for Fallujah.

Fallujah was long known to be high up on the Iraqi army’s list as it continued its battle against ISIS, with local militias and United States airpower on its side.

Indeed, in April – as it became clear that supplies were running low inside the city – Grande told IRIN that the UN was “in the process of expanding our footprint” in areas where displaced were expected to decamp to.

“We are getting more… camps and tents, and moving supplies in.”

But this didn’t happen as planned – some supplies were prepositioned and camps established – but not nearly at the level needed. Grande says this is because the money simply wasn’t forthcoming.

“The funding wasn’t there and therefore we were absolutely stuck,” she said.

The budgetary woes are real. Iraq’s UN-led humanitarian appeal has received only 36 percent of the $861 million it says it needs for 2016, (at least $36 million has been newly pledged).

While limiting, it is proportionally the best-funded major humanitarian appeal of 2016.

And with several humanitarian crises in the Middle East alone, donors are cash-strapped. Last April, senior European Union aid official Jean-Louis de Brouwer warned that money was a major worry for aid in Iraq.

"The needs are skyrocketing and the resources are not increasing," he said. "I'm afraid there is also — not donor fatigue — but donor exhaustion."

Individual agencies have funding concerns too. Their funding tends to come in short-term grants from governments. They are expected to spend it in that timeframe, making it difficult to set aside stocks of food, tents and supplies for clean water,and latrines.

Anthea: The coalition have money to kill people and destroy people's homes and lives but NEVER give money to save lives or rebuild the cities THEY have destroyed

“We all knew that Fallujah was about to happen,” Schembri said, but explained that the country’s chronic displacement crisis made it difficult to prepare (Fallujah was only one of the cities that was talked about as the Iraqi army’s next move).

“We have been hearing about [the battles of Fallujah] and Mosul for the last two years, so do you fill hundreds of warehouses with latrines while people elsewhere need them now?” he asked, rhetorically.

Playing it safe?

But there’s more to the problem than just funding.

Joel Charny, director at the NRC and an aid agency veteran, told IRIN that even if funding was low and aid agencies were surprised by the speed of the exodus (30,000 in a matter of days), that’s no excuse for the sluggish response.

Between late May, when the Iraqi government announced its assault on ISIS in Fallujah, and now, something could have been done.

“I insist that there was enough time to get something organised to avoid the chaos that we are seeing now,” Charny told IRIN.

Part of the difficulty may be the operating environment. Although only 60 kilometres from Baghdad, Fallujah is in western Anbar Province, Iraq’s largest, which also includes another former IS stronghold, Ramadi.

The 2015 OPR stresses that “the humanitarian response is concentrated in accessible areas and… it does not necessarily target those most in need.”

In the case of Iraq, accessible tends to mean the relatively peaceful semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, where many aid organisations have set up camp.

Little seems to have changed since the review. Indeed, Grande told IRIN that “one of the major constraints we have is that very, very few frontline partners are working in Anbar.”

For the sake of illustration, there are seven aid organisations (including the UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency) officially working on providing shelter in Anbar Province (although IRIN understands two of these are not involved in the Fallujah response), where – before Fallujah at least – there were 578,208 internally displaced persons.

In comparison, there were 48 agencies – nearly seven times as many – at work on shelter in Dohuk, a KRG province with 397,290 displaced.

Iraq: shelter aid agencies

There are grumblings that major organisations just haven’t stepped up in Anbar, at least not in time to help those displaced from Fallujah.

Oxfam, for example, has a Baghdad office but no presence in Anbar. It said it was concentrating its efforts in the (Kurdish-controlled) northeast of Iraq. An Oxfam spokesperson told IRIN by email that the charity is “very concerned by the situation in Fallujah at the moment, but, much as we might wish to be, Oxfam cannot be everywhere. We are currently grappling with the biggest emergency aid effort in our history – one which is largely driven by refugees and people fleeing their homes.”

Another major NGO, Save the Children, told IRIN that while it didn’t currently work in Anbar, it was carrying out a needs assessment in the camps around Fallujah with an eye to providing help there.

In their defence, even if organisations wanted to suddenly dash to Anbar to help with what has become an increasingly desperate situation, it’s not a simple undertaking.

There’s red tape to cut through in Baghdad, not to mention the time it takes for aid groups to establish a presence in the province, find staff, and establish trust with the local authorities and population.

The Danish Refugee Council is one group that has been working in Anbar this year. Stef Deutekom, acting Iraq country director, said the problem with the response was the lack of aid groups on the ground.

“Few international organisations were on the ground in Anbar only a few months ago, mainly due to the insecurity and lack of humanitarian access prior,” Deutekom told IRIN in an email.

“The challenges faced are multiple,” he said. “From an insecure environment; access to Anbar, as the [government-controlled] Bzeibiz Bridge has been closed at various moments in the past; to a lack of sufficient coordination at various levels.”

International Committee of the Red Cross spokesman Ralph El Hage also stressed the importance of maintaining a presence on the ground: “The principle we operate on is being extremely close to the people, because if you are not close you will not be able to respond quickly.” ICRC is not a formal member of the UN-led aid machinery but is active in Anbar.

The missing tents

It’s now been more than a month since the Iraqi army announced its battle on ISIS in Fallujah. It’s been more than 10 days since 30,000 people escaped in a matter of three days, with an estimated 32,000 in the weeks before that.

Every aid organisation on the ground says the response has been far from ideal. The UN had estimated there were 50,000 civilians inside the city; now it appears there may have been more than 80,000.

As Deutekom puts it, with “hundreds if not thousands of families living out in the open for multiple days without access to basic services, the humanitarian response has not been satisfactory.”

The NRC's Schembri is less measured. “What will distinguish us from ISIS if we abandon the very people who fled from them just at the moment they need us most?”

Anthea: You are worse than ISIS you starved innocent civilians for weeks on end - you made them leave their homes, jobs, way of life and all their belongings

One of the greatest complaints is that vulnerable civilians have been left to survive temperatures well above 45 degrees Celsius without so much as a tent to shelter them from the elements.

This could, and should, have been avoided.

With 30,000 exiting Fallujah in a matter of days and surprising aid workers, it may not have been feasible to have tents for all those waiting. But the length of the delay is hard to justify.

“We wanted more tents in Anbar, but everything that we could do under the existing budget was done,” said UNHCR’s Iraq representative Bruno Geddo.

At first, the Iraqi government – desperately short on funding itself – was providing tents to the newly displaced. So was the Saudi government. But when these were not sufficient, frontline agencies expected UNHCR to release many of the 10,000 tents it keeps at all times in Baghdad, or the 10,000 more in the KRG capital, Erbil. After all, they are warehoused for situations just like this.

But the tents still haven’t come. As of the end of last week, only 1,533 had been sent.

Why? No one seems to agree.

A high-ranking Iraqi employee at UNHCR, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the organisation was simply taken by surprise.

“When the [military] operations began and people started to leave, we were surprised by the number of families. It was much bigger than what we had planned for, and it confused us.”

He said that getting the tents across the Bzeibiz bridge required permission from the Iraqi authorities that was not forthcoming. For the most part, the UN can’t deliver supplies itself due to the security situation.

The same UNHCR employee said the company the UN has contracted is not paying the kickbacks at checkpoints, so these are “playing a major role in delaying the aid being delivered on time.”

Grande said the tents should now be moving. But the fact that it took so long is worrisome and points to gaps in coordination – exactly what the UN system is meant to be doing, and an issue highlighted by the 2015 review.

For her part, Grande recognised that coordination had been a problem. “I think that everyone who has been looking at the Fallujah situation realises that this was an operation which we have been scrambling to try to bring onto track, and we recognise there are many gaps in the response, in our operational footprint, and gaps in coordination as well,” she told IRIN.

Onwards and upwards?

Humanitarians were also remiss in making plans for Fallujah based on how events played out in Ramadi, another major ISIS stronghold, according to UNHCR’s Geddo.

“We were influenced by the situation of Ramadi. We thought the long-term siege on Fallujah would produce a situation similar to Ramadi, whereby manageable numbers of people would get out as they could,” he explained.

Some 40,000 people were displaced from Ramadi as the Iraqi army and its allies fought off ISIS for nearly eight months, but there was nothing like the sudden exodus that happened with Fallujah.

When that’s not what happened, a group of organisations that count emergency response as their business was remarkably slow to adapt.

Just as Fallujah turned out not to be at all like Ramadi, Mosul will likely present its own unique challenge for humanitarians. With up to 1.5 million residents and tall buildings, a different sort of warfare is likely to engulf the city.

“Mosul is going to make Fallujah look like nothing,” warned the NRC’s Charny.

Humanitarians say they are preparing, as much as possible. DRC’s Deutekom said that his group and others had been planning for Mosul for “quite some time now”.

“There is clearly the risk that if and when displacement out of Mosul will happen, the number of displaced persons fleeing in multiple directions is going to be a tenfold of what we have seen around Fallujah,” he said.

The UN’s Grande promised there is a plan for Mosul, one that takes in various possible scenarios. But ominously, she reiterated once again: “our ability to fund the humanitarian contingency plan depends on funding coming in.”

http://www.irinnews.org/analysis/2016/0 ... e-fallujah

[Anthea]

Fallujah: Winning the land, but losing the people

Last Sunday, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi arrived in Fallujah and raised the Iraqi flag over the city hall. After five weeks of tense fighting, a broad coalition of Iraqi forces, supported by intensive United States air cover, was able to expel Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) militants from the highly symbolic Iraqi city.

The role of the US was instrumental in Operation Inherent Resolve. The US military provided logistical and other multifaceted support in aid for the effort to defeat Daesh militants in Fallujah. Yet, initially, the US was reluctant to support any major offensive to retake Fallujah. After expelling Daesh militants out of Ramadi in December 2015, the US wanted the war effort to focus on Mosul. However, when some Iraqi political forces began an effort to bring down the Al Abadi government, Muqtada Al Sadr in particular, Al Abadi chose to divert the attention away from the political crisis, announcing the beginning of the battle for Fallujah in May 22.

The US administration of President Barack Obama, which expressed support for Al Abadi during the political wrangling in Baghdad, decided to go with the effort to retake Fallujah from Daesh. A victory in Fallujah was seen as instrumental in helping the ailing prime minister, hitherto seen as weak and lacking initiative, overcome a political crisis that has plagued him since last February. Yet, the support of the US was not unconditional. The US wanted the Shiite-dominated Popular Mobilisation Militia (PMM) to stay out of the battle for Fallujah.

Al Abadi knows that without US support, the war against Daesh will go nowhere. Indeed, it was US air support that enabled the Iraqi forces to expel Daesh militants out of Tikrit in March of 2015. As such, Al Abadi would have found it difficult to go against Washington’s will that the PMM should not take part in the battle for Fallujah. Yet, the Iraqi prime minister found it equally hard to resist the PMM’s insistence to participate in the fight for Fallujah, a city of unique strategic and symbolic value. Involvement in the battle to rid Fallujah of Daesh militants would give the PMM the political capital it needed to play a more active political role. A successful military campaign in Fallujah would also empower the PMM in its intra-Shiite political feuds.

Al Abadi tried to reach a middle ground between the US desire and that of the PMM. It was hence agreed that the PMM would be allowed to help in recapturing small towns in the environs of Fallujah, but would not be allowed to enter the city proper. Addressing the terms of this agreement, Hadi Al Ameri, head of the Badr Militia — the largest group within the PMM — stated that the PMM would only enter the city if a failure of government forces to take it back necessitated such a move. Even the US-led international anti-Daesh coalition was prepared to countenance the limited participation of PMM forces in military activities on the outskirts of Fallujah, as admitted by coalition spokesperson Col Steve Warren — who also claimed that the PMM would remain outside of the city limits.

Human shields

Once events began to unfold, however, it became clear that the role of the PMM was much bigger, and more sinister. The militia played a key role in the capture and detention of large numbers of Iraqi civilians who tried to flee the fighting. A number of international bodies had earlier estimated that the civilian population of Fallujah numbered between 50,000 to 90,000 people — many of whom were used as human shields by Daesh. Commenting on the situation, United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Zeid Ra’d Al Hussain expressed dismay at eyewitness accounts that “have described how armed groups operating in support of the Iraqi security forces are detaining civilians fleeing the fighting for ‘security screening’ ... [which] in some cases degenerates into physical violations and other forms of abuse, apparently in order to elicit forced confessions”.

The behaviour of the PMM forces in the battle for Fallujah has served to underscore the PMM’s image as primarily a sectarian warhorse. It has also worked to depict the present battle for Fallujah not as a confrontation between the Iraqi state and the terrorist group, Daesh, but rather as one of a series of pitched sectarian battles across the country. Indeed, Al Abadi, citing concern for the safety of civilians in Fallujah, had been at times forced to take measures to slow down the intensity of the battle.

More worrying, and with longer-lasting impacts, are the repercussions of these policies for those who yearn to get rid of Daesh. These people cannot be expected to warmly welcome Baghdad’s forces if they feel that these are forwarding a sectarian agenda. In short, unless the Sunni-Arab communities of Iraq can be convinced that their government is not out to further a vendetta of sectarian revenge, then neither the reconciliation of the Iraqi population nor victory against Daesh will be possible.

http://gulfnews.com/opinion/thinkers/fa ... -1.1855443

[Anthea]

Fallujah is liberated, now what?

What will the Iraqi government do with its hard-won military victory in Fallujah to make it politically sustainable?

After more than a month of encircling the city, the military campaign to retake Fallujah from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) made headway this week and the Iraqi government declared it fully liberated.

By any military standards, the battle for Fallujah, which has been an ISIL stronghold since its seizure in January 2014, must be an outstanding one. Many analysts had predicted it would not be easy to retake the city for the freshly overhauled Iraq army and the ragtag al-Hashed al-Shaabi, the Shia-controlled Popular Mobilisation Force (PMF).

While the human cost, including the vast urban destruction and the large population displacement, is devastating, taking the city of 4,600km and 300,000 residents from ISIL fighters remains highly significant.

Yet, the most pointed question remains: What will the government of Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi do with its hard-won military victory in order to make it politically sustainable?

Many analysts argue that the Iraqi government should provide a political plan for the morning after recapturing Fallujah that aims to achieve a full inclusion of Iraq's Sunnis in state apparatuses. Because without such a plan and an enduring counter-strategy to curtail the ISIL rebellion, the group might be able to resurge or some other - more extremist - groups will replace it.

While crucial political decisions must be made to move forward with the long-delayed state-rebuilding in Iraq, however, this will depend mainly on whether or not Abadi's government will act with a victorious - and hence vindictive - spirit after Fallujah or with an approach of reconciliation and national healing.

The Iraqi government has so far showed little sign of being able to jettison the mentality of "the majority rules" that has spurred alienation - and radicalisation - among Iraq's Sunni population since the overthrow of the regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

In many ways, the liberation of Fallujah, a Sunni majority city of the Anbar Province, rather seems to be emboldening Shia political groups that continue to resist attempts for power-sharing.

Meanwhile, Iraqi Shia leaders seem intent on tightening their grip on the cities and towns - mostly Sunni-dominated, recaptured from ISIL, underscoring their failure to accept political realities that reflect a new balance of power among Iraq's divided communities.

In order to create a new security order in Fallujah, the Shia-led government may also need to create a new demographic reality.

Putting aside the Iraqi government's discourse on "Fallujah returning to the homeland's embrace", there should be no doubt that Shia political and militia leaders will make every effort to pull Fallujah, and other liberated Sunni-populated cities, back under Baghdad's sphere of influence.

According to this plan, all Sunni-dominated areas that are being "liberated" by the Iraqi army and the armed militias will come under an overall security surveillance scheme. Such a move is likely to take place with the assistance of segments of the Sunni population, politicians and tribal leaders who have been working closely with the Iraqi government.

Iraqi media reported statements by Shia leaders that speak of the "costly sacrifices" invested in the war against ISIL, hoping this will make post-Fallujah Iraq different from the country it was before. Accordingly, like post-ISIL Diyalah and Salahuddin, two cities that were retaken from ISIL fighters some 18 months ago, the Iraqi government will ensure that Fallujah also remains under its firm grip.

For this to happen, Iraqi press reports say that a new military command will be set up in Fallujah to police the city after the army and federal police restore stability and leave. The new command will be designed on the model of the Samarra Operation Command which was established following the bombing of the Shia holy shrines in 2006 and comprised mainly security forces and Shia militias.

Effectively, this will give the security forces as well as the PMF full control over the city with assistance from local tribes that have contributed an auxiliary role in the fight against ISIL.

The goal would be to prevent ISIL from making a comeback and to block any new Sunni armed resistance from coming into being. Therefore it is highly unlikely that Fallujah will be policed by a local Sunni security force.

In order to create a new security order in Fallujah, located 60km from Baghdad, Abadi's government may also need to create a new demographic reality, as the majority of Fallujah residents have left and it is unclear whether or not they will be able to return to a city that has been largely devastated.

While there are so far no signs of planned demographic changes in the city, a decline in the Sunni population - for any reason - is likely to have a devastating effect on balancing communal interests.

If that happens, it will be a strategic game-changer that will put Abadi's government and the PMF in control of Anbar province, on the Iraqi western border with Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria.

Having the entire Anbar province in the hands of Iran-backed groups will not only protect the western entries to Baghdad, it will also establish "strategic depth" for the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

While for the short and medium terms this strategy will allow for more cooperation between Assad's army and the Iraqi army - backed by the militias - in their fight against ISIL, it will have geopolitical ramifications for the larger regional order.

The move will reopen the vast desert border areas with Saudi Arabia and Jordan, two countries that have never hidden their concerns about the rising power of the Shia-led militias and Iran's influence in Iraq.

Attention is now shifting to the long-awaited offensive to flush out ISIL from Mosul, the country's largest Sunni-populated centre and ISIL's last stronghold in Iraq. Winning the Mosul battle will certainly be tougher than Fallujah. But the world wants to see if Iraq can take back its last city from ISIL and - at the same time - deal a death blow to the group.

For this to happen, Baghdad should be prepared for peace while still at war, to quote China's greatest strategist Sun Tzu.

In essence, the Iraqi government does not need a short-term victory over ISIL that humiliates the large Sunni community. The more reasonable option would be to avoid making this war a zero sum game where the Shia leadership does not seek to gain popularity at the expense of a defeated Sunni population.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/06/i ... 25645.html

[Anthea]

WHOOPI FALLUJAH IS LIBERATED

Never mind the fact that the inhabitants of Fallujah welcomed ISIS as protectors from the barbaric Shia army that had been mercilessly and vengefully attacking and slaughtering Sunni unforgivingly ever since the fall of Saddam

Never mind the fact that the inhabitants of Fallujah did not ask to be starved, shoot at and bombed, have their families and friends killed, their homes, businesses and way of life completely destroyed

Never mind the fact that the Islamic fundamentalist inhabitants of Fallujah did not want their ISIS protectors to be attacked and forced into actions against the inhabitants themselves

Never mind the fact that the inhabitants of Fallujah did not ask their so-called liberators to beat, rape and murder them

Never mind the fact that the female inhabitants of Fallujah did not want their men taken from them, many never to be seen again

Never mind the fact that many THOUSANDS of the inhabitants of Fallujah have completely vanished since being in the hands of the 'liberators'

Never mind the fact that most of the inhabitants of Fallujah have been left to sleep on the desert floor without enough water, food, toilets, shelter or tents in 50c temp

The important thing is that the inhabitants of Fallujah can now burn in the searing heat, starve and die of thirst while being comforted by the knowledge that they are about to become

LIBERATED CORPSES

[Anthea]

Iraq's Shi'ite militiamen stir unease in Sunni Falluja

A highway overpass in central Falluja, from which Islamic State militants hanged a captured Iraqi soldier last year, bears the marks of the city's latest victors, including a slogan scrawled in green spray paint: "The state of (Imam) Hussein remains."

The overtly Shi'ite Muslim phrase, which appears to mimic Islamic State's own "Remain and Extend" motto, was left a week ago by one of the Shi'ite militiamen who helped drive Islamic State from the Sunni city it captured in January 2014.

With combat over, the militias are staying on, brushing up against army, police and counter-terrorism forces which have each staked out positions across Falluja, heavily damaged by the fighting and now almost completely empty.

The militias' continued presence in Falluja and their pledges to remain for an undefined period of time raise the possibility that nearly 300,000 displaced Sunnis may not feel safe returning home anytime soon.

Keen to avoid a repeat of systematic looting, blamed on militias, after the recovery of cities like Tikrit and Baiji last year, regular government forces and militia leaders themselves say they have managed to limit abuses in Falluja to a few isolated cases.

The government said it had arrested several perpetrators, including those suspected in the summary execution of dozens of fleeing residents.

But government efforts to keep the militias to outlying areas of Falluja have failed, part of continuing tensions over the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), a coalition of mostly Shi'ite militias that report to Iraq's Shi'ite Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi but are trained and armed by Iran.

Sunni politicians say what happened in Falluja shows the militias should be completely barred from a planned offensive on Mosul, the most important Islamic State bastion remaining in Iraq which the authorities want to retake this year.

LOOTING, ARSON

Before the military assault began on May 23, Iraqi officials had said the militias would be kept outside Falluja for fear of aggravating sectarian tensions with Sunni residents. The militias initially indicated they would cooperate.

But by mid-June, their fighters appeared on the battlefield and commanders bragged about their important contributions. Prime Minister Abadi later praised their role in the offensive, which was declared over on June 26.

A government spokesman said the forces deployed in Falluja are clearing it from mines and explosives and restoring basic services so that the population can return under the supervision of the local police that will take over the city.

"When the city is secured, the forces will leave," he said, referring to the units that don't belong to the city, without mentioning specifically the Shi'ite paramilitary.

"Popular Mobilization is part of the security forces and they are taking part in the military operations according to the plan set by the commander in chief of the armed forces," the spokesman added, referring to Abadi.

The militias were still present last week during several Reuters visits to Falluja, where plumes of dark black smoke billowed into the sky.

Two sources from the elite counter-terrorism service (CTS) said looting and arson had followed the end of combat. One of them blamed the PMF and showed Reuters three militiamen caught in the act.

At least two white pick-up trucks inside Falluja on Thursday were carrying what appeared to be washing machines and other home appliances, covered with blankets, but Reuters could not verify they had been stolen.

Many roads in the zone controlled by CTS have been blocked off with rubble and burnt-out cars. The second source said the barriers, which went up after Islamic State was routed, were meant to block other Iraqi forces.

"We do that to prevent any looting or violations in our area of operations," he said.

Security forces prevented a Reuters team touring Falluja on Thursday from approaching a large fire in a western district overlooking the Euphrates river.

Such fires were set by Islamic State militants to provide cover from airstrikes as they fled, many officials say, but some acknowledged pro-government forces are also partly to blame.

A spokesman for the Badr Organisation, one of the largest PMF factions, denounced the acts as isolated incidents.

"The (Popular) Mobilisation refuses these acts and will punish all those who those proven to have committed them," said Karim al-Nuri, adding that four or five PMF members had already been arrested.

FOR HOW LONG?

Abu Mahdi al-Mohandis, one of the PMF leaders and head of Kataib Hezbollah, a constituent militia, last week pledged his fighters would not leave their positions inside Falluja.

"The (Popular) Mobilisation will continue to hold its ground in every area. The armed forces still need the Popular Mobilisation," he said in an interview posted online on June 26.

Nuri, the Badr spokesman, said the PMF would leave "as soon as security returns", but could not specify how long that might take. The militias have remained in many other areas retaken from Islamic State, including predominately Sunni cities like Tikrit and Samarra.

Given Falluja's record of militancy, the threat of Islamic State attempting to return is not unrealistic but a long-term presence of Shi'ite forces could prove destabilizing.

The city emerged as the main bastion of the Sunni insurgency after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 and swiftly became an al Qaeda stronghold. U.S. forces that toppled Saddam Hussein suffered heavy losses there in two battles in 2004.

More than a decade later, Falluja is seen by many Iraqis as an irredeemable bulwark of Sunni unrest.

After declaring victory, the operation's field commander Lieutenant-general Abdul Wahab al-Saidi said the entire southern industrial district should be sealed off because, according to him, Islamic State used it to assemble car bombs sent to Baghdad.

However, bombings have continued to target Shi'ite districts of the capital, with Islamic State claiming the deadliest attack so far this year, targeting the shopping area of Karrada overnight Saturday as residents celebrated the fasting month of Ramadan.

The suicide truck bomb that hit Karrada killed at least 115 people and wounded more than 200, according to police and medical sources.

The U.S.-led coalition has trained about six battalions of police and several thousand tribal fighters to ultimately "hold" the city, a spokesman said, but two policemen told Reuters last week only about 700 police had so far been posted to Falluja.

More will likely be needed, as Iraqi forces continue to battle the insurgents in southern and western outskirts. Several hundred fighters apparently trying to slip out of the area to regroup were killed in a series of air-strikes last week.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-midea ... SKCN0ZJ0T2