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Iraqi cleric urges unity amid tension over U.S. strikes In fight for Tikrit, U.S. finds enemies on both sides of the battle lines
(about 5 hours later)
BAGHDAD — Iraq’s most senior Shiite cleric called for unity Friday among the array of armed factions fighting Islamic State militants in the country, after rifts surfaced in the wake of U.S.-led airstrikes on the city of Tikrit. BAGHDAD — As the United States opens another front of battle in Iraq, it finds itself on the same side as an array of armed groups that not only consider the United States an old enemy but also accuse it of actively supporting Islamic State militants they are fighting on the battlefield.
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani made his call a day after Shiite militia leaders expressed anger at international airstrikes on Tikrit, where they had been leading the offensive. One went as far as threatening to shoot down planes from the U.S. led-coalition. After the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State launched its first airstrikes in the city of Tikrit on Wednesday night, Kitaeb Hezbollah, which was responsible for numerous bombings and rocket attacks against U.S. soldiers during the Gulf War, was quick to say it would treat their planes as targets.
[Call to arms a reminder of the power of Iraq’s Ayatollah Ali Sistani] Since then, the threats have grown. Several Shiite militias accused coalition planes of bombing a headquarters for pro-government fighters at Tikrit University on Friday, promising retribution. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad released a statement rebutting the charge, saying no coalition airstrikes took place in the vicinity at the time. The Iraqi government also said no such attack to place.
The tension over the airstrikes has highlighted Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's challenge in controlling the largely Shiite factions fighting the Islamic State. Militia leaders, who also claim to control many of the popular mobilization fighters who answered a call from Sistani to take up arms against the Islamic State in June, said their men would not fight as long as U.S. planes are giving air cover. However baseless, the accusations highlight the United States’ precarious position of being considered an unwelcome guest for many groups on the ground as it attempts to assist in the battle against Islamic State militants. They feed threats that leave U.S. personnel and planes open to attack from both sides of the battlefield.
While the militia withdrawal suits the United States, which does not want to appear to be giving air support to Iranian-backed paramilitary groups, Abadi has been trying to quell the backlash. “We will respond with force while they are within our firing range,” Shibil al-Zaidi, a leader of the Kitaeb Imam Ali militia, said in a statement about the alleged strike. “We have the ability to face these American attacks.”
“Differing points of view lead to negative results in the military position,” Sistani said in a sermon given by his representative, Ahmed al-Safi, in the Iraqi city of Karbala. Iraqi Shiite militias balk at offensive if U.S. airstrikes are involved
On a visit to the front lines in Tikrit on Friday night, Abadi attempted to rally forces behind him. It comes after Kitaeb Hezbollah showed off surface-to-air missiles in a video earlier this month in what analysts said is likely an attempt by Iranian backed-militias to reduce the willingness of the international coalition to participate on the battlefield as the United States and Iran vie for influence.
“I don't distinguish the public mobilizations from the security forces,” he said. “The public mobilization is a part of the security forces.” “If the threats succeed in that goal, it would grant more responsibility and control for Iran and its proxies on the battlefields of Iraq,” Philip Smyth, a researcher at the University of Maryland specializing in Shiite militant groups, wrote in an analysis last week.
However, demonstrating the lack of control he has over the fighters, he admitted that they had “differences” over the status of the international coalition. But while enmity from the Shiite militias that fought the United States may be expected, it is also a view that permeates more widely after being regularly raised in parliament and in the Iraqi media, even reaching the highest ranks of the official armed forces that the United States is aiding.
The fight for the city, about 100 miles north of Baghdad, is considered a crucial test in the wider struggle to drive the Islamic State from strongholds in northern Iraq, including Mosul, which has been the center of Islamic State power in Iraq since the militants took it last summer. “Everybody knows that the Americans are dropping supplies to Daesh,” said Brig. Gen. Abed al-Maliki, a senior Iraqi army commander based in the city of Samarra, 80 miles north of Baghdad, using a term for Islamic State derived for its Arabic acronym.
After Islamic State fighters were penned up in the center of the city, the Iraqi offensive stalled, leading to a week-long stalemate that spurred the Iraqi government to request U.S. airstrikes. Call to arms a reminder of the power of Iraq’s Ayatollah Ali Sistani
[Iraqi Shiite militias balk at offensive if U.S. airstrikes are involved] He goes as far as to claim that in some the fiercest fighting around Samarra last year, U.S. Special Operations forces dropped in behind enemy lines to assist Islamic State militants in the battle.
“We will be ready to launch an offensive when the coalition forces stop bombing,” said Naim ­Abboudi, a spokesman for Asaib Ahl al-Haq, one of Iraq's most prominent Shiite militias. “We are suspending activities.” “They came in with parachutes and they were helping to bomb the city,” he said.
Citing the widely held belief in Iraq that the United States has been dropping supplies to Islamic State militants, Kitaeb Hezbollah said it would consider any plane from the U.S.-led coalition a target. U.S. airstrikes against the Islamic State, he contends, are likely just a cover for efforts to support the group.
"We have the capabilities to shoot them down," said Jafar ­al-Husseini, a spokesman for the group. “It’s just a show,” he said, sitting in the city’s army command headquarters. “If the Americans want to finish something, they will finish it. If they wanted to liberate Iraq, they could.”
Such accusations regularly appear in the Iraqi media, normally accompanied with an image from Islamic State video from Kobane in Syria last year, showing the militants showing off a load of weapons accidently dropped from a U.S. plane — an incident the U.S. admitted.
Visiting U.S. officials are left to fend off questions about whether they support the group. The topic was the first to be broached in questions when Gen. John Allen, special envoy for the coalition to counter the Islamic State, met with the local press in January.
“The story, I think, is that we’re supplying [the Islamic State],” he said. “And that, in fact, is not correct.”
The conspiracy theories are stoked by the U.S. involvement in the wider region, where Sunni states such as Saudi Arabia battle for influence against Shiite Iran. While the United States has backed the same side as Saudi in conflicts in Syria and Yemen, in Iraq it finds itself on the other side of the battle.
A wildly popular television trailer for a show launched last year mocking the Islamic State played off that popular conspiracy — showing the Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, hatching out of an egg after a marriage between characters representing Israel and America.
“The information that we have is that Daesh was created by the United States and Israel,” Maliki said.
Mustafa Salim contributed to this reportMustafa Salim contributed to this report
Read more:Read more:
Iraqi offensive for Tikrit stalls as casualties mountIraqi offensive for Tikrit stalls as casualties mount
Pro-government forces press further into TikritPro-government forces press further into Tikrit
Strains plague Iraqi, U.S. assessments of long-term fight against Islamic StateStrains plague Iraqi, U.S. assessments of long-term fight against Islamic State