Advance of Iraqi insurgents slows

Sunni insurgents made new territorial gains in northern Iraq yesterday although their push towards Baghdad appeared to slow amid mounting resistance from Shia militias.

Insurgents from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (Isis) moved northwest into the town of Tal Afar, near the Syrian border, and said they had taken control of the town’s airport, which would be the fifth airport seized by the militants since Iraq’s second-largest city fell to them last Monday.

The new advances by Isis came as tens of thousands of Iraqi volunteers and Shia militia started to move north from Baghdad as the government sought to wrest back towns over-run by Sunni insurgents.

Stalemate

The fast-changing military movements raised the prospect of a stalemate, with insurgents meeting little resistance in Sunni areas but facing strong opposition as they approach the capital. However, the increasing activity also raises the chances of a full-blown sectarian conflict in the country.

A suicide bomb killed 14 and injured more at a busy market in the centre of Baghdad yesterday. Even as the militants’ advance towards the capital slowed, the city has been placed on a war footing.

Isis posted images on Twitter purporting to show the execution of hundreds of Iraqi soldiers, inflaming passions among the Shia community, although the pictures could not be verified.

Amid rising sectarian tensions in Baghdad, there were many as yet unsubstantiated rumours of reprisals against Sunni Muslims.

Young men have been flooding into recruitment centres in the capital and other Shia- majority cities, such as Karbala, as they heed a call from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country’s most senior cleric, to enlist in the state’s security forces but to refrain from inflaming sectarian divisions. Leading Shia politicians are imploring their constituents to take up arms.

‘Ready to die’

“We are ready to die,” said Ali, a young recruit brandishing a green Shia banner outside a recruitment centre in Baghdad. “We don’t want Isis in Iraq – no mercy for terrorism.”

Amid fierce debates in the West about what prompted the new violence, Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, has rejected suggestions the US-UK Iraq invasion was to blame for the current insurgency in Iraq, arguing the crisis was the “predictable” result of the West’s failure to intervene in Syria.

Renewing his call for military action against extremist fighters across the Middle East, Mr Blair wrote in an essay on his website: “We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that ‘we’ have caused this. We haven’t.”

The US moved an aircraft carrier into the Gulf on Saturday as President Barack Obama weighs whether to launch air strikes to try to halt the advances of the Sunni insurgents. The debate in Washington is splitting largely along party lines, with Republicans urging Mr Obama to intervene while many Democrats remain reluctant for the US to take new military action in Iraq.

Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, said the US should co- operate with Iran in order to help Iraqi forces hold Baghdad. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2014)