Iraq: Shia militias move on Tel Afar airbase

Officials in the Shia-dominated Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) have confirmed that they are shortly about to begin their assault on an airbase close to the ethnic Turkmen town of Tel Afar, about 60 kilometres West of Mosul.

The Iran-backed PMF, a paramilitary force that is an official wing of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), are deployed in the arid region west of Mosul as part of a wider military campaign to retake the largest city under Daesh control in Iraq or neighbouring Syria.

The town of Tel Afar, and its airbase, are located on one of the highways leading from Mosul to Syria. The PMF claim that capturing these objectives would help cut Daesh supply lines between Mosul and its Syrian territories, and offer a base for the PMF’s stated plan to ultimately take their battle with Daesh into Syria.

But the advance by the mainly Shia force towards Tel Afar, a Turkmen town that is mostly Sunni, has raised fears of sectarian strife and alarmed neighbouring Turkey.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey was reinforcing its troops on the border with Iraq and suggested that they would respond if the Shia militias “cause terror” in Tel Afar.

“Now we are 25 kilometres from the Tel Afar airbase,” said Kareem Alewi, a commander of a PMF brigade and a member of the Badr Organisation, the most powerful force within the paramilitary alliance led by former Transportation Minister Hadi Al-Amiri.

“Tel Afar airbase has strategic importance for us considering that it’s on the Iraq-Syrian border, so it will be a general base for all factions of the [PMF] and it will be the launch pad for these forces to protect the Syrian-Iraqi borders,” he told Reuters.

He said it would be the first military base controlled by the PMF, whom other officials have confirmed would take their fight across the frontier once Mosul is taken. “If Iraq is liberated, no doubt our second goal will be to pursue Daesh inside Syria,” he said.

A spokesman for another Shia force in the PMF, the Kata’ib Hezbollah, confirmed that control of the airbase at Tel Afar was “one of our basic aims.”

Jafaar Al-Husseini suggested the base could then be handed over to the ISF rather than retained by the PMF. “The issue may be decided later, and we have many options,” he said. This despite the fact that the PMF is technically an official arm of the ISF.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi has sought to calm fears that the operation to recapture Tel Afar would ignite sectarian tension, or escalate problems with Turkey, saying the attacking force will reflect the town’s religious and ethnic make-up.

Tel Afar is predominantly a Turkmen town, the majority of whom are Sunni with a significant Shia minority. Observers have suggested that Al-Abadi’s comments could therefore be contradictory.

Zuhair Al-Jibouri, spokesman for a newly formed Sunni force known as the Ninawa Guards, said the government “should be aware of the sensitivity of Tel Afar.”

If the PMF entered the town, Al-Jibouri stated there would be “revenge atrocities against Sunni residents who are seen by the Shia militias, including the Shia Turkmen [PMF] groups, as pro-Daesh.”

That would give Turkey a pretext to intervene on behalf of Sunni Turkmen. “This will convert Ninawa into an arena of conflict between regional powers and push Iraq into a dark tunnel,” he told Reuters.

Amnesty International and other human rights organisations say that in previous campaigns the Shia militias have committed serious human rights violations, including war crimes against civilians fleeing Daesh-held territory.

The UN said in July it had a list of more than 640 Sunni men and boys who were abducted by a Shia militia in Fallujah and about 50 others summarily executed or tortured to death. These figures were confirmed by Governor of Anbar Sohaib Al-Rawi.