Iraqi officials have tried to downplay the importance of Shi’ite militias in recent days, as international concerns grow about their tendency to lynch Sunnis in retaken cities, and loot shops.
The massive losses in Ramadi are bringing the Shi’ite militias back into focus, with the lack of such militias seen playing a big role in how quickly the Iraqi military has been overrun by ISIS.
Iraq has been keen to make a push into Anbar after taking Tikrit, but is trying to do it with little support from the Shi’ites.
This has been a problem for Iraq for awhile now, as the reality is they don’t seem to be able to win meaningful battles without the militias doing the heavy lifting, but also don’t seem to be able to keep the militias from carrying out bloody sectarian attacks of their own after they win a battle.
So far, the Iraqi government has tried to take care of this by insisting the reports of abuse are all lies, and promising investigations that never pan out. Even the US has been pushing them to rein in the militias, however, and there seems to be no way Iraq can do that without risking alienating their most important allies on the ground.
“Even the US has been pushing them to rein in the Shi’ite militias”
Quite the reverse, for the main purpose of our ten years of occupation was to permanently dismantle the Sunni government that ruled Iraq for many hundreds of years. For all of the Iraq military was Sunni, most all of the politicians were Sunni and what the US occupation did was turn Iraq into a nation without a government, an organism without a brain and like a chicken with it’s head cut off do the Shi’ite tribes run riot chopping the heads off of every Sunni they can get their hands on.
Not to say that the Sunny tribes are any better, for the exact same genocide did they perform on the Shi’ite tribes when Saddam Hussein was President. Root cause of such corruption being the wealth of oil and how the more wealth a man has, all the more must he fight to protect his wealth and to kill anyone who dares to take his wealth. The perfect solution being for everyone to become a pacifist, an impossible thing when you have wealth to protect.