The media reporting on 1 August of the breaking of the siege of Amerli in northern Iraq was heartwarming. Brave besieged citizens had held out for a couple of months against brutal and well-armed ISIS fighters who certainly intended to slaughter all the townspeople from the Turkoman minority.
Young boys and even elderly women had carried guns on the front line, defending their families against heavy shelling and constant attacks. It was no small miracle that the town had held out all this time and a catastrophe had been avoided.
However, the factor that really attracted the attention of the media was that the siege had been relieved by a mixture of Shia militias, Iranian support, US firepower and a more modest role for the Iraqi army.
The US and Iran fighting on the same side against a common enemy – along with Shia militias who had been responsible for the killings of hundreds of US soldiers just a few years ago – was certainly a remarkable phenomenon.
However, there is a real danger in believing that such an alignment of interests can “liberate” the parts of Iraq in ISIS hands.
The Turkoman citizens of Amerli were mainly Shia, and many soldiers in the forces used to retake the town were Shia from that same locality. But what could we expect if these Shia militias – once again backed by US and Iranian support – were unleashed against Sunni majority towns like Tikrit, Mosul, Al-Fallujah and Tal Afar?
On 22 August, a Shia militia attacked a Sunni Mosque in the Diyala province and massacred over 40 worshippers. During the peak of the sectarian violence in Iraq between 2005-2008 these same militias were used to carry out acts of ethnic cleansing of Sunnis in certain areas of the country. Many of these militias controlled extensive prisons where thousands of unspeakable acts of torture took place.
After widely-circulated images of ISIS executing prisoners from the Iraqi army, these same Shia militias are hungry to exact revenge. Therefore, we can expect reprisal attacks if Sunni areas are recaptured, which are as brutal or even more brutal that the crimes against humanity perpetrated by ISIS.
Iran has spent the last few years exploiting its control of Iraqi Shia politicians to marginalize Sunnis from the Iraqi political process and ensuring a pro-Iran Shia hegemony. This is why Sunnis are so alienated by the parliamentary process in Baghdad. These pro-Iran politicians like Nouri Al-Maliki and his successor Haidar Al-Abbadi leading figures from groups like the Da’wah Party that control many of the Shia militias.
There is little to indicate that such sectarian and compromised figures could conceive of a national campaign to rescue Sunni communities from the grip of ISIS and effect a genuine campaign of reconciliation.
The Amerli operation seems to have been a great success, as have other recent operations to protect non-Sunni minorities and roll back the grip of ISIS. However, if these Shia militias are allowed to continue moving west into Sunni areas with American air cover and Iranian back-up, the result could be bloody sectarian war and human rights violations on a massive scale.
We do not want to go back to the bad days that followed the 2003 US invasion when Iraq faced all-out sectarian war and hundreds of Iraqis died each day in attacks and reprisals. The only constituency which can win back Sunni Iraq are the Sunnis themselves who have suffered for a long time under the extremism of ISIS and its affiliates.
Iran-backed Shia militias are not a means for America to wage war on the cheap. Iran does not share the West’s vision for a strong, united and democratic Iraq. In order to weaken ISIS, the US and others must think carefully about who their allies really are.