Sunni Tribesmen Say ISIS Exacts Brutal Revenge
|
Version 0 of 1. Islamic State militants have been exacting harsh revenge against an Iraqi Sunni tribe that fought for months to keep the jihadists at bay, capturing and summarily executing scores of its members, tribal leaders and local officials said Thursday. The death toll among the tribe, the Albu Nimr, remains unclear; one account put it at more than 200 based on mass grave sites, though that could not be independently verified. But the reports mesh with the Islamic State’s pattern of methodical slaughter as it has consolidated its territorial grabs in Syria and Iraq. The killings also came amid meetings between Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Sunni tribal leaders to discuss how to enlist more tribes in the fight against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. American and Iraqi officials have said that it is vital to get more Iraqi Sunnis to cooperate with the government, after widespread hostility to the previous Shiite-led administration led many Sunnis to welcome the Islamic State’s advance in Iraq. But plans to formally incorporate Sunni tribes into the fight have been slow to develop, and many tribes that have resisted the Islamic State have faced brutal retribution from the militants. Members of the Albu Nimr tribe fought for months to keep the Islamic State from entering their area, near the Anbar Province town of Hit, about 90 miles west of Baghdad, according to tribal leaders. But with no support coming from outside, resupply was difficult, and tribal fighters and police officers were badly outgunned by the Islamic State, which captured many heavy weapons from armories in Syria and Iraq. The jihadists finally conquered Hit this month, and have since expanded their control of nearby areas. Each time the Islamic State seized an area, residents said, its fighters made a point of hunting down police officers or members of the Iraqi Army who had helped in the fight. “Anyone who was in the state, in the government or the security forces, is their enemy,” said Jalal al-Gaood, a tribal leader and businessman based in Jordan. If those targeted by the group had already fled, the jihadists would blow up their homes. “That sends a message to everyone else that this is what is coming for you,” Mr. Gaood said. One tribe member, Sabah al-Haditheh, said the Albu Nimr had called for military help and arms support from the government in Baghdad but had received nothing. “We put the responsibility on the government because they didn’t respond,” he said. “We were fighting ISIS with rifles, and it was fighting us with heavy machine guns.” A spokesman for Mr. Abadi’s office, Rafid Jaboori, said he could not comment on whether the tribe had asked for support. But he said that Mr. Abadi had met with Sunni tribal leaders several times in the past 10 days to discuss how they could be integrated into the fight against the Islamic State. “People are of course horrified at what happened,” Mr. Jaboori said. “But the easiest thing is to blame the government.” More than 40 members of the Albu Nimr were lined up and executed with gunshots to the head in Hit on Wednesday alone, according to Naem al-Gaood, a tribal sheikh related to Jalal al-Gaood. In a photo circulated online by Islamic State supporters and said to show the aftermath, dead bodies with deep head wounds lie in line, slumped on a curb. Reports emerged on Thursday of mass graves near Hit and elsewhere in Anbar Province that held the bodies of dozens of other members of the tribe, but photos of the bodies were not released and the reports could not be independently confirmed. Across the border in Syria, Islamic State fighters bragged of executing hundreds of members of the Shueitat tribe this year after it had tried to fight them. And Human Rights Watch said in a report Thursday that the Islamic State had systematically executed about 600 captives after taking over a prison near Mosul in June. The jihadists divided the prisoners by sect and gunned down the mostly Shiite prisoners as they knelt alongside a ravine, the New York-based organization said in the report, which was based on survivor testimonies. Also in June, the Islamic State carried out a similar mass killing of captured soldiers at a palace complex in Tikrit where Saddam Hussein once lived. The barbarity, size and multinational composition of the Islamic State and affiliated groups have increasingly alarmed counterterrorism officials around the world and have become a growing concern at the United Nations. On Thursday, a special Security Council committee that monitors sanctions on designated terrorist groups said in a report that roughly 15,000 fighters from more than 80 countries, including the United States and European Union members, had entered Syria and Iraq in recent months, echoing numbers reported by American intelligence officials last month. The threat is amplified, the report said, by “the very substantial resources now available” to the Islamic State and its “arsenal of modern military hardware.” The report reinforced fears that many of these fighters could return home and create havoc. “Even discounting those who have been killed and those who have returned,” the report said, “this is a problem on an unprecedented scale.” |