Iran assumes key role in fight to retake Iraqi city

BAGHDAD -- American commandos are on the front lines in Syria in a new push toward the Islamic State militant group's de facto capital in Raqqa, but in Iraq, it is Iran, not the United States, that has become the face of an operation to retake the jihadi stronghold of Fallujah from the militant group.

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On the outskirts of Fallujah, tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers, police officers and Shiite militiamen backed by Iran are preparing for an assault on the Sunni city. Iran has placed advisers, including its top spymaster, Qassim Suleimani, on the ground to assist in the operation.

The battle over Fallujah has evolved into another example of how United States and Iranian interests seemingly converge and clash at the same time in Iraq. Both want to defeat the Islamic State. But the United States has long believed that Iran's role, which relies on militias accused of sectarian abuses, can make matters worse by angering Sunnis and making them more sympathetic to the militants.

While the battle against the Islamic State straddles the borders of Iraq and Syria, the United States has approached it as two separate fights. In Syria, where the government of President Bashar Assad is an enemy, America's ally is the Kurds.

But in Iraq, where the United States backs the central government and trains and advises the Iraqi army, it has been limited by the role of Iran, the most powerful foreign presence inside the country.

That U.S. dilemma is on full display in Fallujah as the fighting intensifies.

Inside the city, tens of thousands of Sunni civilians are trapped, starving and lacking medicine, according to activists and interviews with residents. Some were shot dead by the Islamic State as they tried to flee, and others died in buildings that collapsed under heavy military and militia artillery bombardment in recent days, according to the United Nations.

The few civilians who have made it to safety have escaped at night, traveling through the irrigation pipes.

In a statement Wednesday, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's pre-eminent Shiite religious leader, who lives in Najaf in southern Iraq and is said to be concerned by Iran's growing role in his country, urged security forces and militia to restrain themselves and abide by "the standard behaviors of jihad."

Fallujah's starving Sunni civilians, trapped in a city surrounded by a mostly Shiite force, provide the backdrop to a final assault that Iraqi officials have promised will come soon.

The United States has thousands of military personnel in Iraq and has trained Iraqi security forces for nearly two years, yet is largely on the sidelines in the battle to retake Fallujah. It says its air and artillery strikes have killed dozens of Islamic State fighters, including the group's Fallujah commander. But it fears that an assault on the city could backfire -- inflaming the same sectarian sentiments that have allowed the Islamic State to flourish there.

As the army and militiamen battled recently in outlying areas, taking some villages and the center of the city of Karma to the northeast, the fight has taken on sectarian overtones.

Before firing their artillery shells at Fallujah, militiamen have plastered them with the name of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a Shiite cleric close to Iran whose execution this year by Saudi Arabia, a Sunni power, deepened the region's sectarian divide.

A Shiite militia leader, in a widely circulated video, is seen rallying his men with a message of revenge against the people of Fallujah, whom many Iraqi Shiites believe to be Islamic State sympathizers rather than innocent civilians. Fallujah is also believed to be a staging ground for suicide bombers targeting the capital, Baghdad, about 40 miles to the east. The decision to move on the city was made after several recent attacks in Baghdad killed nearly 200 people.

"Fallujah is a terrorism stronghold," said the militia leader, Aws al-Khafaji, the head of the Abu Fadhil al-Abbas militia. "It's been the stronghold since 2004 until today."

He continued, "There are no patriots, no real religious people in Fallujah. It's our chance to clear Iraq by eradicating the cancer of Fallujah."

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who has stressed that civilians must be protected in the operation and ordered that humanitarian corridors be opened to allow civilians to leave the city safely, disavowed the militia leader's comments.

Information for this article was contributed by Falih Hassan, Omar Al-Jawoshy and Nick Cumming-Bruce of The New York Times.

A Section on 05/29/2016

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