"'Dirty Brigades': US-Trained Iraqi Forces Investigated for War Crimes" ABC News

 "U.S.-trained and armed Iraqi military units, the key to the American strategy against ISIS, are under investigation for committing some of the same atrocities as the terror group, American and Iraqi officials told ABC News. Some Iraqi units have already been cut off from U.S. assistance over "credible" human rights violations, according to a senior military official on the Pentagon's Joint Staff.

The investigation, being conducted by the Iraqi government, was launched after officials were confronted with numerous allegations of “war crimes,” based in part on dozens of ghastly videos and still photos that appear to show uniformed soldiers from some of Iraq's most elite units and militia members massacring civilians, torturing and executing prisoners, and displaying severed heads.

The videos and photos are part of a trove of disturbing images that ABC News discovered has been circulating within the dark corners of Iraqi social media since last summer. In some U.S. military and Iraqi circles, the Iraqi units and militias under scrutiny are referred to as the "dirty brigades."

“As the ISF [Iraqi Security Forces] and militias reclaim territory, their behavior must be above reproach or they risk being painted with the same brush as ISIL [ISIS] fighters,” said a statement to ABC News from the U.S. government. “If these allegations are confirmed, those found responsible must be held accountable.""  ABC News

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"No Americans are shown in the images or footage ABC News has found, nor have any Americans been implicated in any of the alleged atrocities."  ABC News

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"Officials from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International who reviewed the library of horrors assembled in the ABC News investigation said it is rare to see so much visual evidence of human rights abuses.

"Usually when forces commit such crimes they try to hide them. What we are seeing here is a brazen, proud display of these terrible crimes," Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East Executive Director at Human Rights Watch, said in an interview as she and the group's lead investigator in Iraq, Erin Evers, surveyed the carnage."  ABC News

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General Martin Dempsey has repeatedly stated that if the largely Shia forces (army, police troops and militias) use their counter-offensive efforts to conduct a campaign of ethno-religious cleansing then "the game is up."  

He is correct.

 

The old (pre-2003) Iraq was a post colonial construct that existed as a compromise among various ethnic (Arab, Kurd, Turkoman, Assyrian, etc.) groups and the sectarian populations (Sunni Shia, Christian, Yazidi, etc.) that intersect in membership with these ethnicities.

Britain launched Iraq as an experiment in state building in 1925. From that time until the US invasion of 2003 and under varying governments of varying character the essential theme in Iraqi history was always the attempt to create a new kind of person, "Iraqi Man," humans with a modernizing bent who sought national integration.  The school system curriculum, the military conscription system, recruitment of all the groups into the officer corps of the military, the inclusion of all groups in the civil service; all these things were intended to drive national integration at the most basic level.  Until 2003 this effort was moderately successful and was widely seen as a work in progress that produced more and more secularized nationalist Iraqis while moving toward smaller and smaller numbers who thought themselves to be apart from Iraqi nationhood.   This general trend was ignored and indeed lied about in the Bush/Cheney/neocon propaganda drive towards war with Iraq. (See my article "Drinking the Koolaid" in Middle East Policy - cited below)

The neocon inspired "Iraq in the Year Zero" policy adopted by the Cheney/Bush crew sought to reverse the social order in Iraq by placing the Shia Arabs in charge.  It was expected by this crew that destruction of the Iraqi state apparatus and disruption of society would trigger revolution leading to westernization across the Islamic World.  This kind of expectation was nothing new in circles yearning for a more "friendly" ME.  

There were two results from adoption of this US policy:

- Revolution occurred in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrein, Libya, Syria and was attempted in Iran in 2009.  The results of these revolutions have not yet played themselves out.  

- A prolonged civil war was fought in Iraq between the newly triumphant Shia Arabs and their American supporters on the one hand and Iraqi Arabs supported by increasing numbers of foreign Sunni jihadis on the other hand.  The American government (as opposed to its military's) attitude was clear.  Paul Bremer is quoted as saying then that the time of the Sunnis was ended.  the Sunnis did not accept that and the war was fought with maximum effort and violence for a very long time until mute geniuses among the Sunni tribesmen decided that AQ in Iraq was even worse than Shia rule and rose against the jihadis.

That was a close call on the part of the Sunni tribes.  The US sponsored "government" had taken the opportunity provided by US sponsorship to create special police units that had only one purpose  that was mass murder committed against Sunni Arabs and ethnic cleansing directed against all resistance to the power of returned Shia exiles like the Da'wa and Badr militias.

The US left Iraq in the context of lies and deception on the part of  the Maliki regime as to its intentions toward the Sunni population, both Arab and Kurd.  In its desire to believe in its own success, the US government has repeatedly indulged in internal group think and wishful thinking about human nature in the context of the ME.

Now, the Shia murder squads are back, empowered once again by the US and led by their coreligionists from Iran.   

We are surprised that sectarian murderers murder?

Dempsey knows the answer to the implied question he has posed.  The game is "up" in Iraq.  Civil war will be unending.

The Leahy Law will eventually become a vehicle for cessation of aid to the Shia government.

The Leahy Law - "a U.S. human rights law that prohibits the U.S. Department of State andDepartment of Defense from providing military assistance to foreign military units that violate human rights with impunity."

 pl

 

http://abcnews.go.com/International/dirty-brigades-us-trained-iraqi-forces-investigated-war/story?id=29193253

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/drinking-the-kool-aid.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leahy_Law

Comments

[Swami Bhut Jolokia]

I look forward to the day when the Leahy Law is applied to the IDF.

[Dubhaltach]

I would be very very surprised indeed if the Badr component were not the prime movers in this.

Dubhaltach

[john v]

And what is the chance of shia militias not engaging in dirty war tactics? zero? Less than zero. Revenge? Of course they want revenge. And it will be bloody and sweet revenge too, fully sanctified.

I guess if you think region-wide religious civil war is good for business, then this is a positive turn of events. Otherwise, it shows USA should refrain from engaging in further colonial wars for the time being, as its empirical management skills are clearly found wanting.

[turcopolier]

john v

"what is the chance of shia militias not engaging in dirty war tactics? zero? Less than zero." Some of you need to read more real literature so that you can recognize things like rhetorical questions. pl

[turcopolier]

Swami

So do I. pl

[john v]

american psycho not real literature? at any rate an apt metaphor for present predicament perhaps.

[ISL]

Dear Colonel,

Only slightly off topic, but, from Al Monitor:

"IS tried to delay the progress of the Iraqi army and al-Hashid al-Shaibi — volunteer forces supporting the army — until the arrival of military supplies, through carrying out a series of suicide attacks in Samarra one day before the operation to liberate Tikrit began....."

(Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/03/iraq-tikrit-islamic-state-army-war-of-attrition.html#ixzz3UGpkdFWv")

So the forces ran far ahead of their support.... seems poor strategic planning.

[The Virginian]

Ethno-sectarian cleansing has been occurring in Iraq since 2003, this is but the next evolution of what will go on for some time to come. In parallel, it is a competition for power amongst the Shia elites and their backers - this set of communal conflicts will also remain a fixture of the Iraqi landscape.

[turcopolier]

john v

i have no opinion of this book. pl

[Kyle Pearson]

I'm curious to hear what you think of this, Colonel - (and anyone else who would like to comment) -

http://m.france24.com/en/20150313-iraqi-sunnis-join-feared-shiite-militia-battle/?aef_campaign_date=2015-03-13&aef_campaign_ref=partage_aef&dlvrit=66745&ns_campaign=reseaux_sociaux&ns_linkname=editorial&ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter