An Iraqi Shi'ite fighter fires artillery during clashes with Islamic State militants near Falluja, Iraq, May 29, 2016. REUTERS/Staff/File Photo
Shi’ite militias in
Iraq detained, tortured and abused far more Sunni civilians during the
American-backed capture of the town of Falluja in June than U.S. officials have
publicly acknowledged, Reuters has found.
More than 700 Sunni
men and boys are still missing more than two months after the Islamic State
stronghold fell. The abuses occurred despite U.S. efforts to restrict the
militias' role in the operation, including threatening to withdraw American air
support, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.
The U.S. efforts had
little effect. Shi’ite militias did not pull back from Falluja, participated in
looting there and now vow to defy any American effort to limit their role in
coming operations against Islamic State.
All told, militia
fighters killed at least 66 Sunni males and abused at least 1,500 others
fleeing the Falluja area, according to interviews with more than 20 survivors,
tribal leaders, Iraqi politicians and Western diplomats.
They said men were
shot, beaten with rubber hoses and in several cases beheaded. Their accounts
were supported by a Reuters review of an investigation by local Iraqi
authorities and video testimony and photographs of survivors taken immediately
after their release.
The battle against
Islamic State is the latest chapter in the conflict between Iraq's Shi’ite
majority and Sunni minority, which was unleashed by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
The war ended decades of Sunni rule under Saddam Hussein and brought to power a
series of governments dominated by Shi’ite Islamist parties patronized by Iran.
Washington’s
inability to restrain the sectarian violence is now a central concern for Obama
administration officials as they move ahead with plans to help Iraqi forces
retake the much larger city of Mosul, Islamic State’s Iraqi capital.
Preliminary operations to clear areas outside the strategic city have been
under way for months. Sunni leaders in Iraq and Western diplomats fear the
Shi’ite militias might commit worse excesses in Mosul, the country’s
second-largest city. Islamic State, the Sunni extremist group, seized the
majority-Sunni city in June 2014.
"CENTRAL
TOPIC"
U.S. officials say
they fear a repeat of the militia abuses in Mosul could erase any chances of
reconciling Iraq’s Sunni and Shia communities. "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," said a senior Obama Administration official.
In public, as
reports of the abuses in Falluja emerged from survivors, Iraqi officials and
human rights groups, U.S. officials in Washington initially played down the
scope of the problem and did not disclose the failed American effort to rein in
the militias.
Brett McGurk, the
special U.S. envoy for the American-led campaign against Islamic State,
expressed concern to reporters at a June 10th White House briefing for
reporters about 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 Falluja, the governor told Reuters. 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.
Nearly three weeks
later, on June 28, McGurk struck a measured tone during testimony to the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee. He said reports of abuses had been received in the
early days of the operation, “many of which have turned out not to be credible
but some of which appear to be credible.”
McGurk declined a
request for an interview. Mark Toner, the State Department’s deputy
spokesperson, said American officials had expressed “concern both publicly and
privately” about reported atrocities. “We find any abuse totally unacceptable,”
Toner said, and “any violation of human rights should be investigated with
those responsible held accountable.”
Militia leaders deny
that their groups mistreated civilians. They say the missing men were Islamic
State militants killed in battle.
EXACTING REVENGE
Iraqi government
officials also challenged the reports of widespread violence against civilians.
In an interview, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi’s deputy national
security adviser, Safa al-Sheikh, said there were a few incidents, but added:
“There are a lot of exaggerations, and some of the reports didn’t have any
basis.”
Iraq’s main Shi’ite
militias, trained and armed by Tehran, emerged during the 2003-2011 U.S.
occupation and have grown in power and stature. After helping the government
defend Baghdad when Islamic State seized Mosul in 2014, the militias became
arms of the Iraqi government. Islamic State has slaughtered thousands of
Iraqis, of all faiths.
There now are more
than 30 Shi’ite militias whose members receive government salaries. The major
groups have government posts and parliament seats.
Their might has also
been enhanced by some of the more than $20 billion in military hardware the
United States has sold or given to Iraq since 2005. Their weaponry includes
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.
Collectively, the
Shi’ite militias are known as the Hashid Shaabi, or Popular Mobilization Forces
(PMF). The militias officially answer to Abadi. In reality, the main groups
answer only to themselves, display their own flags and emblems, and are advised
by the Quds Force - Iran’s elite foreign paramilitary and intelligence service.
The Falluja
offensive began on May 22. For more than a year, American officials had warned
Iraqi officials repeatedly that the United States would suspend air support in
areas where militias were operating outside the Iraqi military’s formal chain
of command. The policy was designed to prevent American planes from
inadvertently bombing Iraqi forces and to restrain militias from entering areas
considered sensitive to Sunnis, according to U.S. officials.
In the first two
days of the Falluja offensive, reports emerged of militiamen separating males
from fleeing families. American, Western and U.N. diplomats pressured Abadi,
other top Iraqi officials and militia leaders to stop the abuses.
Abadi and other
political leaders publicly called for protection of civilians.
"DON'T BE
TREACHEROUS"
The Americans'
influence was hindered by the fact they had no forces in Falluja and couldn’t
observe specific abuses, according to the Western diplomat who tracked the
campaign.
On May 26, Ayatollah
Ali Sistani, Iraq's leading Shi’ite cleric, pleaded with combatants to protect
civilians. Aid agencies estimated at the time that as many as 100,000 people
remained inside Falluja.
“Don't be extreme
... don't be treacherous. Don't kill an old man, nor a boy, nor a woman. Don't
cut a tree unless you have to,” Sistani said, citing sayings of the Prophet
Mohammed.
Sistani’s pleas and
the American threats fell on deaf ears.
The first known
instance of systematic abuse by the militias in the Falluja offensive occurred
May 27 northeast of the city, in the farming region of Sejar. Militiamen and
security forces stopped a group of fleeing Sunnis, pulled aside somewhere
between 73 and 95 males aged 15 and older and took them away, according to Gov.
al-Rawi of Anbar Province and a Western diplomat who monitored the offensive.
Women and children were freed.
“We are still in
contact with women and children who were handed to government people,” said the
Western diplomat. “They still don’t know where the men are.”
On May 29,
militiamen just west of the farming areas of Sejar, separated 20 men from a
group of fleeing Sunnis and “started killing them,” said the Western diplomat.
“The police arrived when there were three left alive. The police took the three
and dumped them” in a camp east of Falluja for people displaced by the civil
war.
Terrified that the
militias would storm the camp and kill them, the trio arranged protection for
themselves in Baghdad, the diplomat said. Gov. al-Rawi confirmed this account.
A Sunni academic
said he spoke to three survivors of the alleged massacre, two brothers and
their cousin. The men said the killings occurred during fighting between Iraqi
federal police forces and Islamic State, according to the academic.
SURVIVOR ACCOUNTS
The three survivors
told the academic that they were among some 50 people who had sought shelter in
a house when they saw federal police raise the Iraqi flag at a nearby school.
The group waved white cloths and was directed to leave the house by the police.
When the group
emerged, the three said, the police separated the men from their families. One
officer then opened fire and killed 17 men, the academic quoted the survivors
as saying, adding that the three were spared when another officer intervened.
The shooter was arrested, according to the Anbar governor.
Worse was to come.
Shi’ite militiamen seeking vengeance against Islamic State rounded up Sunnis on
June 3 from the town of Saqlawiya, according to witnesses interviewed by
Reuters, U.N. workers, Iraqi officials and Human Rights Watch.
According to these
accounts, more than 5,000 Sunnis, mostly members of the al-Mohamda tribe, left
Saqlawiya, a farming community five miles northwest of Falluja. The Sunnis made
their way toward what they thought was the safety of government lines marked by
Iraqi flags. A gray-haired man described the scene in a video recorded by local
officials after he and 604 other men were freed two days later.
“When we arrived
there, we discovered they were the Hashid,” the Shi’ite militias, the witness
said.
U.N. High
Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad al-Hussein, two senior Iraqi officials,
and a 69-year-old survivor interviewed by Reuters identified the militiamen as
members of Kataib Hezbollah. One of the most powerful Shi’ite paramilitaries,
Kataib Hezbollah was organized by and retains close ties to Iran’s Quds Force.
Both are deemed to be terrorist groups by the United States.
Kataib Hezbollah
denied being involved in abuses in Falluja. "They make these claims based
on accusations from politicians that ISIS is depending on," said Kataib
spokesman Jaafar al-Husseini. "They are trying to keep us far from the
operations of Anbar and Mosul."
The militiamen
separated out an estimated 1,500 males aged 15 and older and moved them in
groups to different locations, including warehouses and an Iraqi base called
Camp Tariq, according to survivors, U.N. investigators and Human Rights Watch.
"FISTS, KNIVES
AND CABLES"
The survivors
described being crammed into small rooms and halls and denied food and water,
straining to breathe in the stifling heat. Militiamen using sticks, pipes and
hoses beat the detainees and declared that they were taking revenge for Camp
Speicher – a June 2014 massacre by Islamic State of 1,566 Shi’ite and other
non-Sunni air force cadets.
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.
“They started
hitting us with their fists, knives and cables,” he said. “When people fainted,
we yelled they were going to die, and the guards told us that’s what they
wanted.”
The guards, the
survivor said, told the captives they were avenging the deaths of hundreds of
Iraqi soldiers killed in fighting around Falluja since 2014.
In a video recorded
by local officials, another survivor told how men craving water were given
bottles in which to urinate and told to drink their own waste.
A 47-year-old
survivor described how he watched militiamen repeatedly beat his 17-year-old
son and carry off the corpses of 15 men who appeared to have been beaten to
death. The man was one of the 605 survivors released on June 5. His son was not
among them, he said; the boy hasn’t been seen since.
“We want to know the
destiny of our sons,” the man told Reuters. “We consider the Americans
responsible for everything that has happened.”
UNACCOUNTED FOR
In all, militiamen
killed at least 49 men who were detained in Saqlawiya, four of whom were
beheaded, according to the U.N.'s Zeid.
The brutality ended
without explanation for some 800 detainees after two days. But 643 Saqlawiya
detainees remain unaccounted for. Their names are recorded on a list circulated
by local officials to the United Nations, Human Rights Watch and government
investigators and reviewed by Reuters.
On June 7, Sheikh
Ali Hamad, a leader of the Mohamda, a Sunni tribe, decried on television what
he called “a genocidal crime” and the deaths of “tens of our sons.”
The same day, the
Anbar governor informed U.S. Ambassador Jones that hundreds of Sunni men were
missing. U.N. envoy Zeid issued a statement citing “extremely distressing,
credible reports” of abuse, including summary executions of men and boys by
militiamen.
On June 9, the day
before McGurk’s White House briefing, Human Rights Watch issued a report on the
alleged atrocities in Sejar and Saqlawiya.
The regular Iraqi
security forces, including the U.S.-trained Counter-Terrorism Service,
eventually established safe corridors and guided civilians out of the city.
Some 100,000 civilians escaped as a result.
A PIECE OF THE
ACTION
Today, the Shi’ite
militias are clamoring to join the Mosul offensive, fired by zeal, a desire for
revenge and hopes of burnishing their political standing within their sect.
“They will want a
piece of the climactic battle,” said Kenneth Pollock, a former CIA analyst now
with the Brookings Institution, a Washington policy institute.
Ryan Crocker, a
career diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 2007 to 2009, said
the Obama administration has downplayed abuses by both militia and Iraqi
forces. “This administration is so determined to be able to declare victory
over ISIL (that) they don’t really care about any of the rest of it,” said
Crocker.
Over the disapproval
of the Mosul provincial government, Abadi and militia leaders have said that
militias will participate in the campaign to liberate the city.
The chief PMF
administrator is Jamal Ibrahimi. Known by the nom de guerre Abu Mahdi
al-Mohandis, he is on the U.S. international terrorist list.
U.S. officials say
Ibrahimi is the leader of Kataib Hezbollah, the militia that Iraqi officials,
Western diplomats and others hold primarily responsible for the atrocities
committed in the Falluja offensive.
Ibrahimi and the
militia deny that he heads Kataib Hezbollah.
Abadi’s office has
announced that a committee will investigate allegations of rights abuses in
Falluja. It is uncertain if the inquiry will find anyone responsible beyond a
handful of low-level suspects whose arrests Abadi reported on June 13.
(This version of the
story has been refiled to remove word "new" from headline)
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