Shia Militias On The Battlefield In Syria | Syrian Civil War
Опубликовано 03 Янв 2014 г.
Iraqi Shiite militias have begun openly acknowledging they are fighting in Syria, in what they see as a worthy battle against rebels seeking to topple President Bashar Assad, especially his hardline Sunni opponents.
By recognising their role in Syria's war, Iraqi Shiite fighters may gain recruitment momentum to help Assad, whose Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shiite Islam, in a war that is splitting the region along sectarian lines.
The war has already pulled in Sunni Islamists from outside Syria to join rebel ranks. Syria, for its part, has begun sending militias loyal to Assad for training at a base in Shiite Iran, Assad's key ally, fighters say.
In recent months, Iraqi Shiite militants have said volunteers are crossing into Syria to fight, often alongside Assad's troops, or to protect the Sayyida Zeinab shrine on the outskirts of Damascus, a particularly holy place for Shiites.
Now though, Iraq's main Shiite militias, Asaib Al Haq and Kataib Hizbollah, which waged war on US troops, and former fighters from anti-US Iraqi cleric Moqtada Al Sadr's Mehdi Army, have started to acknowledge their role in Syria.
"Now Shiites have the feeling the battle in Syria is more legitimate and it does not matter if it is to protect Shiite shrines there or fight alongside Assad's soldiers," Abu Mujahid, a militant leader, told Reuters.
That shift have been motivated partly by the increasingly sectarian nature of Syria's conflict as Sunni rebels and Islamist fighters targeted holy Shiite sites.
Websites linked to Asaib Al Haq, the Mehdi Army and the Abu Al Fadhil Al Abbas Brigade, a militia unit of Iraqi, Syrian and Lebanese Shiite fighters which operates in Syria, show portraits of slain Iraqi militants wearing military uniform and carrying sniper rifles.
A caption on one says he was killed in Syria while defending the Sayyida Zeinab shrine in the south of the Syrian capital Damascus. Zeinab is the daughter of Imam Ali, the most important and symbolic figure for Shiite Muslims after the Prophet Mohammad.
The Syrian conflict is also invigorating Sunni Islamists tied to Al Qaeda in Iraq, which have stepped up their campaign of attacks on Shiite religious targets in an attempt to trigger a broader sectarian confrontation.
Security forces say Al Qaeda's local wing is gaining ground in the vast western desert of Anbar province bordering Syria, where many families share strong tribal ties across the remote frontier.
