U.S. and Asaib Ahl al-Haq Allies Against ISIS: Great Satan Shows Multiple Personalities

Something shifted in U.S. policy vis-a-vis Islamic State at the beginning of August. That is when ISIS took Mosul Dam from the pesh merga and it looked like the capital of Kurdistan, Erbil, was in danger of being overrun. ISIS was also targeting the Yazidis, scattering their communities and creating a humanitarian crisis on Mount Sinjar.

It was then that the United States shifted from basically ignoring Islamic State to suddenly sounding the alarm. The extent of this shift is on full display today in the frontpage article by Tim Arango and Azam Ahmed, "U.S. and Iran Unlikely Allies in Iraq Battle." U.S. air power operating in concert with Kurdish pesh merga, Iraqi Army and, most importantly, Iraqi Shiite jihadi militia broke the siege of Shiite Turkmen villages clustered around Amerli. The Shiite militias included Sadrists, Badr Ogranization and Asaib Ahl al-Haq:

The Obama administration has tried to avoid being seen as taking sides in a sectarian war, because the Shiite militias are especially feared by Iraq’s Sunnis.

But for the weekend at least, the realities on the ground appeared to override any concerns of effectively supporting the militias.

ISIS has been rampaging through Iraq, beheading prisoners, carrying out massacres of Shiites and expelling hundreds of thousands of residents. The Shiite militias have been accused of some recent abuses against Sunnis, but so far have avoided large-scale revenge killings.

Among the militias fighting for Amerli are Asaib Ahl al-Haq, considered the most fearsome of Iraq’s Shiite militias, and a group linked to the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, one of the Americans’ most unyielding enemies during the occupation. Those groups are supported by Iran. 

Asaib, a militia that was a particularly fierce opponent of the United States as it was winding down its military role in Iraq, was said to have taken on the most prominent role in the fighting for Amerli, in Salahuddin Province.

“I would like to thank the jihadists from Asaib Ahl al-Haq, as they are sacrificing their lives to save Amerli,” said Mahdi Taqi, a member of the provincial council in Salahuddin. 

Naeem al-Aboudi, the spokesman for Asaib, said, “today is a great happiness and victory for all Iraqis. Iraqi security forces, volunteers and resistance brigades have proved their ability to defeat ISIS.”

And what makes this ironic and signals a sea change in U.S. policy in Iraq, Syria and Iran is Asaib Ahl al-Haq is sponsored by Iran's Quds Force, an American bête noire akin to Vladimir Putin, Bashar al-Assad or Hezbollah.

The U.S. is denying coordination with the Iraqi Shiite militias, but, make no mistake, coordination is occurring. How it works is that the U.S. communicates through the pesh merga and the Iraqi Army who then communicate to the Asaib Ahl al-Haq, the Sadrists and Badr Organization:

As night fell Sunday, the fighting was still raging in Qaryat Salam, a village to the north of Amerli. At a makeshift forward base, set up amid half-constructed homes and the hulk of a new soccer stadium, Kurdish pesh merga forces fired a barrage of artillery, mortars and rockets. A line of trucks roared into the area, their headlights smeared with mud to dull the brightness. An assortment of Kurdish fighters, Iraqi Army soldiers and Shiite militia members, who seemed to be working together in a highly coordinated way, passed by. 

Several Iranian military advisers were also seen, according to a pesh merga fighter. 

“We are cooperating with the pesh merga and other military forces,” said Abd Kadum al-Mousaw, a militia fighter. “From each force there is a commander who is a member of a higher committee that makes decisions.” 

Pesh merga commanders said they had cleared about half of the village, but were facing stiff resistance from the militants, “who were fighting like madmen.”

Of course this has set off some hand-wringing in the Deep State, which, hitched as it is to Israel and Saudi Arabia, is addicted to Iran hatred. What better way to note this than have the disgraced former DCIA David Petraeus bleat the conventional wisdom?

David Petraeus, a former top American military commander in Iraq who led the United States troop surge in 2007, months ago warned against such possibilities as the Obama administration, reeling from the fall of Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul, weighed military action against ISIS. 

“This cannot be the United States being the air force for Shia militias or a Shia-on-Sunni Arab fight,” he said at a security conference in London in June. “It has to be a fight of all of Iraq against extremists, who do happen to be Sunni Arabs.”

There is a tendency on the anti-imperialist left to see a grand intelligence at the Deep State control board. What the U.S. turnabout on Islamic State shows is that there is not a monolithic master plan at work here.

In Iraq USG is working with a Quds Force proxy, while in Libya it is working with Sunni salafis backed by Qatar and Turkey in a proxy war against Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt. Then in Syria USG is working with the Saudis -- the Syrian National Coalition is a joint Saudi-U.S. front group.

It is not multi-dimensional chess being played by Great Satan; it is chaos.