Fighters from Iraq’s Shia militias celebrate before departing to Syria from Baghdad.
BAGHDAD/damascus: Among the Iranian pilgrims, foreign executives and tourists in the departure lounge at Baghdad airport, a group of young Iraqis prepare to wage religious war in Syria — not for the rebels trying to topple President Bashar Al Assad but against them.
Dressed in jeans, their hair cropped short, the 12 men awaiting their flight are Iraqi Shias, among hundreds heading for what they see as a struggle to defend fellow Syrian Shias and their holy sites from the mainly Sunni Muslim rebels.
Syria is splintering the Middle East along a divide between the two main denominations of Islam, becoming a battlefield in a proxy war between Assad’s main regional ally, Shia Iran, and his Sunni enemies in Turkey and the Gulf Arab states.
The conflict has already drawn in streams of Sunni Islamist fighters on the rebel side, while Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Hezbollah is openly fighting for Assad. Now the flow of Iraqi militiamen across the border is also casting doubt on the Shia-led Baghdad government’s official position of neutrality in the Syrian civil war that has killed 90,000 people in more than two years.
For Ali, 20, fighting for the Abu Al Fadhl Al Abbas militia brigade meant joining his father in Syria to protect a Shi’ite shrine near Damascus from the Sunni rebels.
“It is my legitimate duty to go there and fight to defend Sayyida Zeinab Shrine,” Ali saidjust before he left Baghdad last week. “Should we accept seeing Zeinab, the grand daughter of Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him), being captured again?”
As the Syrian war grinds into its third year, sectarian killings are increasing, while hardline Sunni clerics are declaring Jihad or holy war on the Shias of Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. All this is inciting Shia militants to fight back.
GOVERNMENT ROLE
Iraq was dominated by its Sunni minority until the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, but now has a government led by members of the Shia majority under Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki. For them, Syria’s upheaval is a nightmare; they believe a collapse of Assad’s government will bring to power a hostile Sunni regime that will inflame Iraq’s own Sunni-Shia tensions.
Already sectarian attacks are resurging as Al Qaeda’s local wing and other Islamist Sunni insurgents regain ground in the western desert bordering Syria. Nearly 2,000 people have died in violence since April, with bombings targetting Shia and Sunni mosques and neighbourhoods as well as the security forces.
Iraq says it has a policy of non-interference in Syria, and keeps channels open with Assad’s government and the opposition. But Western countries accuse Baghdad of turning a blind eye to support for Assad, such as allowing Iranian aircraft to use its airspace for flying military equipment to Syria.
Baghdad dismisses those charges and denies it is allowing Shia militants to travel freely to Syria or giving them any logistical support. “There has been an exaggeration of Iraqi brigades or units fighting in Syria. Really there has been a limited number of volunteers,” Iraq’s Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters in an interview. “These volunteers have gone there without any sanction or approval or support from the government or the Iraqi regime or the political leaders.”
But Iraq’s domestic politics are complex and some Shi’ite parties rely heavily on Iranian support, making them more sympathetic to Tehran’s position on Syria.
Privately, Shi’ite politicians, officials and militant leaders acknowledge support is provided to Assad, and that means allowing Shia fighters to flow into Syria.
“Shia politicians believe the best way to keep Sunni extremist fighters out of Iraq is by keeping them busy in Syria,” said a Maliki adviser, who talked in condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. “All the Iraqi government has done so far, is to look the other way to the militant movements from Iraq to Syria,” he said. Militants usually fly in small groups of 10-15 from Baghdad and the Shia holy city of Najaf, sometimes disguised as pilgrims. Their small bags may include uniforms, military equipment and sometimes pistols, militia fighters say.
Militia commanders say they have used their influence and the sympathy of Shi’ite officials in escorting fighters with their equipment through security checkpoints in Baghdad.
Most of those fighting in Syria are former members of the Mehdi army of anti-U.S cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, or from the Badr Organization - the armed wing of ISCI political party - and the Asaib al-Haq and Kata’ib Hezbollah militias. Most are loyal to the supreme Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as a religious authority, fighters and Iraqi politicians say.
Meanwhile, Fighters from Lebanon’s Hezbollah joined Syrian troops battling rebels near Damascus yesterday, monitors said, as President Bashar Al Assad’s regime kept up a push to cut off the insurgents’ supply lines. Reuters/AFP
