Iranian general visits Baghdad to assist with defence of Iraq capital
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Version 0 of 1. An Iranian general arrived in Baghdad on Friday on a visit senior Iraqi officials said was aimed at leading the defence of the capital from a raging jihadist insurgency. Major General Qassem Suleimani, a powerful figure who plays significant role in Iraq's affairs, met with a series of militia leaders and Sunni tribal sheikhs in control of Baghdad's western approaches. He is believed not to have met with embattled prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, or Iraqi generals, whose military capitulated across the north of the country this week and remains besieged in the central city of Samarra. Iraq was braced on Friday for a return to a level of sectarian war last seen almost a decade ago as Shia fighters rushed to Samarra to confront Sunni insurgents and the country's leading Shia cleric called on his followers to take up arms to defend "their country, their people and their holy places" Convoys of fighters were seen early on Friday being escorted north by Iraqi police trucks from Baghdad to Samarra, the central city where insurgents – led by the Sunni militant group the Islamic State of Iraq in the Levant (Isis) – were in control after a lightning strike south. The volunteer Shia fighters were quickly assembled after Iraqi forces abandoned their positions in most of the area, leaving only a small number of troops to guard the Imam al-Askari shrines – the two shrines blown up by insurgents eight years ago, triggering the sectarian war that almost destroyed the country. Hours later a statement from Iraq's most influential Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, read to his followers at Friday prayers in Kerbala urged them to take up arms against the Sunni insurgents. "People who are capable of carrying arms and fighting the terrorists in defence of their country … should volunteer to join the security forces to achieve this sacred goal," the statement said. Samarra is the fourth northern city to have all but fallen out of government control. Maliki appears to have drawn battle lines further south in Taiji, hoping to defend Baghdad against insurgents who have occupied the north virtually unopposed. The fast-moving insurgency has emerged as the biggest threat to Iraq's stability since the US withdrawal at the end of 2011. Heavy clashes had broken out by late Friday morning on the outskirts of Samarra between the Shia volunteers and Sunni insurgents who had been trying to win over residents, some of whom appear to view the new arrivals as liberators. Witnesses said the shrines remained undamaged so far and that the insurgents had not been menacing residents. "Some of them have long hair and they are carrying black flags," said one man. "They are Arabs from other countries." The Samarra shrines were twice reduced to rubble in February and April 2006 in attacks that sparked a brutal two-year sectarian war across Iraq. Since then, Shia Islamic sites have remained key targets as Isis-led insurgent groups try to draw the Shia-led government back into the fight. Isis is also holding around 4,000 soldiers as prisoners in a warehouse near Tikrit and has summonsed a Sheikh to rule on what to do with them. "I implored them to give the men water and dates," an Iraqi official said. "I fear for their fate. Isis don't know what to do with them." Meanwhile, Iraqi officials who remained in the northern city of Kirkuk, which was seized by Kurdish peshmerga forces on Thursday, said the Kurds were consolidating their presence. The Kurdish control of Kirkuk, a city coveted by them for centuries, is one of the biggest shifts in a week that has starkly exposed the impotence of the government and the frailty of Iraq's borders. Officials in Baghdad have conceded that the country is at increasing risk of crumbling along ethnic sectarian lines. Isis has been handing out flyers in the towns it has seized assuring residents who have remained that it is there to protect their interests. The campaign for hearts and minds is gaining some traction, with some residents railing against perceived injustices at the hands of the Shia majority government. But on Thursday it said it would introduce sharia law in Mosul and other towns, warning women to stay indoors and threatening to cut off the hands of thieves. |