Gorilla’s Guides

Selected Extracts From The Report:

Shiite and Sunni Militias: Filling the Assistance Gap

Refugees International visited an office of the Sadr movement in the Ur district of Baghdad. The office provided locals with clothing, milk, oil, rice, sugar, clothes and fuel for heating and cooking when supplies are available. The central government does not play any role in that area. Locals even come to the Sadr office for the adjudication of legal disputes.

The office also provides stipends to displaced families and the families of slain or imprisoned Mahdi Army men.

Sunni militias play a similar role with displaced and other needy Sunnis. They too settle the displaced in homes that belonged to Shiites. There is less organized help for Sunnis, but the Islamic Party — the main Sunni political Party in the Government — is an important service provider, distributing food and non-food items, providing medical relief and supporting local NGOs. Sunni militias also handle the distribution of key items such as heating gas. As Sunnis in Baghdad get virtually no electricity or other services from the government, they rely on local militias and warlords to secure their areas and manage what services they can obtain.

The Government of Iraq: A Sectarian Approach to Assistance

The Government of Iraq is itself a party to the conflict and its security forces have facilitated displacement and sometimes carried it out themselves. Officers in the Iraqi Security forces complain that most of their men are loyal to the Mahdi Army and most of their commanders are loyal to the Mahdi Army or the Badr Militia. They and Sunni groups described incidents where Iraqi Security Forces opened fire on Sunni neighborhoods, protected death squads, or were directly involved in the kidnapping and execution of Sunni civilians.

Instability and the Threat of New Violence

The sustainability of the lull in violence that occurred in late 2007 is being questioned, especially in light of the March 2008 events in Basra, Sadr City and other areas of Iraq where Shiite militias battled each other. The temporary reduction of violence in 2007 was a combination of many factors. Muqtada al Sadr’s “freeze,” or ceasefire, on his powerful militia in August 2007 coincided with a Sunni militia ceasefire of sorts. Sunni militiamen began to cooperate with the American army against Al-Qaeda, because they were tired of fighting US forces with little results, afraid of losing control of all of Baghdad and desirous to counter Al-Qaeda’s reign of terror.

Like the Mahdi army, these Sunni militias also have political goals and are attempting to unite to become a larger movement that will be able to regain Sunni territory and effectively fight the Shiite militias and the Shiite dominated government, which they call an “Iranian Occupation.” In some ways their attitude is, “The Americans did not buy us, we bought them.”

Militiamen on both sides are chafing under the restrictions placed on them and growing increasingly frustrated. Conversations with individuals involved in the issue lead Refugees International and others to worry that absent a real political  reconciliation process and an efficient disarmament, demobilization and reintegration program, these groups will remain as armed militias with the same political agenda and strong grievances. In the very violent Diyala and Mosul governorates, this strategy of the US -backed Sunni militias has so far not succeeded.

The Reasons for Returns

According to a UN official, the Bush Administration is also putting enormous pressure on UN HCR to conduct a viability survey and declare Iraq safe for returns. Most international actors believe that Syria and Jordan, as well as the US , want Iraqis to return to their country as soon as possible to avoid any potential instability likely to be caused by a protracted crisis.

Obstacles to Return

Besides the fragility of the security situation, there are many other obstacles to return. According to assessments conducted by international and national aid agencies, refugees and IDPs who have returned need shelter, electricity, water, employment and non-food items. Humanitarian organizations have recently designed programs to target those needs. For instance, IOM designed a returnee food and non-food basket, and seeks to assist returning families by including them in its community assistance, water/sanitation, health and education programs

Despite this mobilization by the international community, the systems are currently not in place to handle a large number of returnees.

Since then, the Government of Iraq has taken some steps to respond to these concerns, but they have yet to be implemented and are insufficient.

Property Disputes

There is no unified process to deal with returning internally displaced persons or refugees. In particular, there is no body officially handling property disputes. As in the post-conflict Balkans, property disputes are likely to be a key issue in Iraq, and have already started surfacing, as many returnees were unable to go home since their houses are occupied by others. Property disputes will linger for many years to come and if not handled properly are likely to be a spark for renewed violence. For now, there is no judicial entity mandated with dealing with post-2003 property disputes. Instead, they are being handled on an ad-hoc basis, by a variety of actors.

Iraqis who have property claims dating after April 2003 have no other recourse today than to turn to the severely deficient Iraqi judicial system or local armed groups. The current situation in Iraq remains too violent to design and implement a large-scale effort to compensate and provide restitution to those who have lost their homes.

[Editor’s Note: see also : Gorilla’s Guides » 2nd May 2007, 03:27 pm » Displaced families fall victim to house sale scams ]

Conclusion:

The needs of the displaced, the returnees and Iraqi civilians in general continue to increase, as conflict has been affecting them for years now. The Government of Iraq is as fragmented as the country, and unable and unwilling to provide adequate assistance to those in need, offering a golden opportunity for various armed groups to fill the gap. 

Source: Refugees International | Uprooted and Unstable [PDF] The executive summary to the full report is below the fold.

See also posts on these related topics: Ethnic Cleansing, IDPs (Internal Refugees), Refugees.

Division has broken out also within tribes; many have now come to back Sadr, not because they like him, but because they hate the Badr militia of Hakeem’s SIIC and Maliki’s Dawa party.

“Our problem in the southern parts of Iraq and other Shia dominated areas is that all options are bad,” the chief of a major tribe in Basra who fled for Baghdad, told IPS on condition of anonymity. “Iranian controlled militias killed so many chiefs of tribes because they refused to support these division projects concealed under the flag of federalism.”

by Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail. Ali al-Fadhily, is IPS‘ correspondent in Baghdad, he works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, their U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region.