Cleric urges Iraqis to take up arms as Obama rules out ground troops
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LEADING Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani yesterday urged Iraqis to take up arms against Sunni extremists marching on Baghdad, as thousands volunteered to bolster the capital’s defenses.
Sistani’s call to defend the country against the offensive spearheaded by the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant came as US President Barack Obama said he was exploring all options, short of sending in ground troops, to save Iraq’s security forces from collapse, but warned the country must heal its own divisions.
“We will not be sending US troops back into combat in Iraq, but I have asked my national security team to prepare a range of other options that could help support Iraqi security forces,” Obama said yesterday.
He said Iraq would need “more help from the United States and from the international community” to bolster security forces Washington spent billions training and equipping before its 2011 withdrawal.
The United Nations reported a spate of summary executions by ISIS fighters in a campaign which began with the capture of Iraq’s second city Mosul on Tuesday, before spreading south toward Baghdad.
“Citizens who are able to bear arms and fight terrorists, defending their country and their people and their holy places, should volunteer and join the security forces to achieve this holy purpose,” Sistani’s representative announced during weekly prayers in the Shiite shrine city of Karbala.
“He who sacrifices for the cause of defending his country and his family and his honor will be a martyr.”
The elderly Sistani, who rarely appears in public, is highly influential in the Shiite Muslim world and adored by millions.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani pledged his government’s full support against “terrorism.”
Despite their many differences, Tehran and Washington are united in their determination to prevent Iraq following its western neighbor Syria into civil war.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari likened the performance of security forces in the face of the militant offensive to the collapse of Sunni Arab leader Saddam Hussein’s army in 2003.
They “took off military uniforms and put on civilian clothes and went to their houses, leaving weapons and equipment” behind, he said.
The interior ministry has adopted a new security plan for Baghdad, spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan said. “We have been in a war with terrorism for a while, and today the situation is exceptional.”
North of Baghdad, militants were gathering for a new attempt to take Samarra, home to a revered Shiite shrine whose 2006 bombing sparked a deadly sectarian war.
Witnesses in the Dur area, between militant-held Tikrit and Samarra, said they saw “countless” vehicles carrying gunmen.
Militants have already mounted two assaults on Samarra, one was on Wednesday and the other late last week, both of which were thwarted after heavy fighting.
UN human rights chief Navi Pillary condemned reports of summary executions by ISIS and the displacement of thousands of people in northern Iraq.
The UN said that it had received reports of women committing suicide after being raped or forced to marry ISIS fighters and the summary execution of people believed to have worked for the police.
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