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2019-10-18 Iraq
Iran-backed militias used snipers in Iraq to help quell recent protests – report
[IsraelTimes] Officials say groups decided to join state security forces without prior coordination to assist PM Abdul Mahdi.

Iran-backed militias deployed snipers to help Iraqi security forces quell a deadly wave of anti-government protests earlier this month that left over 100 people dead, Rooters reported Thursday.

Iraqi security officials said the militia leaders, who sometimes work in tandem with state security forces, decided on their own to assist Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, whose unwieldy government is propped up with the help of the Tehran-aligned groups.

"We have confirmed evidence that the snipers were elements of militias reporting directly to their commander instead of the chief commander of the armed forces," one of the Iraqi security officials told Rooters. "They belong to a group that is very close to the Iranians."

Another security official said the militias deployed snipers to rooftops in Baghdad on the third day of the protests, when the corpse count jumped from half a dozen protesters to over 50.

The source said the orders were given by the leader of the Hashed al-Shaabi, a powerful network of mostly-Shiite, pro-Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan, the abbreviation IRGC is a cognate form of Stürmabteilung (or SA), the term Supreme Guide is a cognate form of either Shah or Führer or maybe both, and they hate Jews Zionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
paramilitary units operating inside Iraq. He said Hashed leader Abu Zainab al-Lami was tasked with helping quash the protests by "other senior militia commanders."

A spokesperson for the Hashed on Thursday denied any of the Shiite militias took part in the bloody protests.

"No members were present in the protest areas. None of the elements of the Hashid took part in confronting protesters," the spokesperson told Rooters.

Iraq was gripped by anti-government protests between October 1 and 6, during which 110 people, mainly demonstrators, were killed in festivities with the security forces.

Abdel Mahdi has promised to address protesters’ demands. But the 77-year-old premier began his tenure last year facing a raft of accumulated challenges, including high unemployment, widespread corruption, dilapidated public services and poor security, and he has told protesters there is no "magic solution for all that."

The protests, when they started, quickly spread from Baghdad to the Shiite heartland in the south, including the flashpoint city of Basra. The government imposed a round-the-clock curfew and shut down the internet for days, in a desperate attempt to quell the protests.

The massive crackdown appears to have succeeded in whittling down the number of protesters for now, although sporadic festivities between demonstrators and security forces continue on a smaller scale, including an hours-long shootout last week near the volatile Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City.

Even before this latest wave of unrest, Abdel Mahdi headed an unwieldy government. His coalition includes Shiite populist holy man Moqtada Tater al-Sadr
... the Iranian catspaw holy man who was 22 years old in 2003 and was nearing 40 in 2010. He spends most of his time in Iran, safely out of the line of fire, where he's learning to be an ayatollah...
‐ who won the most seats in the last parliamentary elections ‐ and Fatah, the political arm of Hashed.

As protests peaked last week, Sadr called for the government he helped form to resign, while the Hashed took the opposite position, saying it was ready to crush the "conspiracy" aiming to bring down the government.

Since then state institutions have been paralyzed by division, effectively preventing concrete responses to protester demands for jobs, services and ending corruption.
Posted by trailing wife 2019-10-18 00:00|| || Front Page|| [1 views ]  Top
 File under: Govt of Iran Proxies 










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