Shiite militias in Iraq have tortured and killed thousands of Sunni men and boys from Fallujah since the city was liberated from the Islamic State group in June, a Reuters investigation revealed Tuesday.
The investigation, which is based on months of interviews with survivors, Western diplomats and Iraqi officials, said that at least 700 Iraqi Sunnis have gone missing since June.
The U.S.- and Iranian-backed Shiite groups have snubbed repeated calls by Washington and Ayatollah Ali Sistani alike to end the abuses against the Sunnis in the city, despite threats of suspending the military and air support, the report said.
The militias are often trained by Iran and provided U.S. weapons courtesy of the Iraqi government, some of which—including rocket launchers and armored vehicles—these militias have used in neighboring Syria on behalf of Bashar Assad’s government.
In Iraq, militia fighters killed at least 66 Sunni males and abused at least 1,500 others fleeing the Fallujah area, according to interviews with more than 20 survivors, tribal leaders, Iraqi politicians and Western diplomats, the Reuters investigation said.
Witnesses said men were shot, beaten with rubber hoses and in several cases beheaded. A 32-year-old man, one of six survivors Reuters interviewed, said he was packed into a room with dozens of other captives, his hands tied behind his back.
Reports of those abuses have been surfacing regularly over the past few months, however, U.S. officials have repeatedly attempted to downplay the seriousness of the problem.
Brett McGurk, the special U.S. envoy for the Washington-led coalition against the Islamic State group, expressed concern to reporters at a June 10 briefing for reporters on what he called “reports of isolated atrocities” against fleeing Sunnis.
Three days before the briefing, Gov. Sohaib al-Rawi of Anbar Province informed the U.S. ambassador that hundreds of people detained by Shi’ite militias had gone missing around Fallujah.
By the time of the White House briefing, Iraqi officials, human rights investigators and the United Nations had collected evidence of scores of executions, the torture of hundreds of men and teenagers, and the disappearance of more than 700 others.
But in fact the Obama administration has made the brutality of those militias a “central topic” when planning and discussing the offensive to retake Mosul, the Islamic State group’s largest base of power, which it captured in June 2014.
“Virtually every conversation that we have had internally with respect to planning for Mosul—and virtually every conversation that we’ve had with the Iraqis—has this as a central topic,” a senior Obama Administration official told Reuters.
The battle against the Islamic State group is worsening the sectarian conflict between Iraq’s Shiite majority and Sunni minority, which was unleashed by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
The intervention ended decades of Sunni dominance under Saddam Hussein and brought to power a series of governments dominated by Shiite parties that have received military and diplomatic support from the U.S. amounting to more than US$20 billion since 2005.
Iraq’s main Shiite militias emerged during the 2003-2011 U.S. occupation and have grown in power and stature. There now are more than 30 Shiite militias whose members receive government salaries. The major groups have government posts and parliament seats.
The brutal militias are using much of the military equipment and aid provided by the United States to the Iraqi government, including armored personnel carriers, trucks, Humvees, artillery and even tanks, according to U.S. officials, independent experts and pictures and videos militia members have posted on the internet.
— source telesurtv.net