Iraq asks Australia to step up military assistance in ISIL fight

Australian prime minister Tony Abbot visited Baghdad on Sunday to discuss bilateral cooperation between the two countries.

Iraqi prime minister Haider Al Abadi (R) and Australia's prime minister Tony Abbott (L) address the media in Baghdad on January 4, 2015. Iraqi Prime Minister Media Office/Handout via Reuters

BAGHDAD // Iraqi prime minister Haider Al Abadi on Sunday asked Australian counterpart Tony Abott to step up military assistance to aid Baghdad’s fight against ISIL militants.

Australia is part of a US-led coalition carrying out air strikes against ISIL, which spearheaded an offensive that overrun swathes of Iraq, and has also deployed special forces to assist Iraqi troops.

Mr Abbot visited Baghdad on Sunday to discuss bilateral cooperation between the two countries.

Mr Al Abadi “called on the Australian side to increase the arming and speed up the training and distribution of what is needed by the Iraqi forces to decide the battle and eliminate the (ISIL) organisation,” his office said.

The ISIL -led offensive in Iraq began last June, and the group’s rapid expansion and brutality in areas it controls in Iraq and neighbouring Syria eventually sparked an international campaign against it.

Australia was one of the first countries to confirm its support for the US-led campaign of air strikes against the group.

Dozens of Australians are fighting for Islamist militant groups overseas, raising fears that they could return home and carry out attacks.

On Saturday and Sunday morning, the anti-ISIL coalition carried out seven air strikes on the group in Syria and Iraq. Six of the air strikes hit ISIL positions near Kobani, Syria, and one struck near Mosul, Iraq.

Meanwhile, Iraqi vice president Nouri Al Maliki, who was widely criticised for sectarian policies during his time as premier, said on Sunday that politicians are to blame for the country’s Sunni-Shiite strife.

“There is no problem between the Sunnis and the Shiites as communities, but rather between us the politicians — we think as Sunnis and Shiites, and we are driving people toward this doom, for which we will bear responsibility before God,” he said.

Mr Al Maliki himself pursued policies that marginalised and angered members of Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority, especially during his second term as premier.

Sunni suspicion of the Shiite-led government was heightened by heavy-handed security operations in Sunni areas, and the arrest of senior Sunni politicians or their employees.

Sunni anger led to anti-government protests, which were targeted by security forces on multiple occasions, most disastrously in late December 2013 when the largest protest camp, located near Anbar provincial capital Ramadi, was demolished.

The destruction of the camp, which Mr Al Maliki asserted was serving as an Islamist militant headquarters, sparked clashes and set off a series of events that saw parts of Ramadi and all of Fallujah, to its east, seized by anti-government fighters.

Then ISIL — which benefited from Sunni disenchantment with Baghdad — began its take over of large parts of Iraq in June.

Mr Al Maliki’s government turned to Shiite militias, members of which were responsible for sectarian killings in past years, for support against ISIL, before he was replaced as prime minister.

Pro-government forces, now backed by a US-led campaign of air strikes, have regained some ground, but significant territory, including three major cities, remains under ISIL control.

Also on Sunday, police said mortar shells slammed into several houses in the Shiite village of Sabaa Al Bour, about 30 kilometres north of Baghdad, killing four people and wounding seven.

Elsewhere, police said a bomb blast on a commercial street killed two people and wounded six in western Baghdad.

On Saturday, ISIL freed 162 out of 170 men it had seized while searching for people who burned its flag in north Iraq, officials and residents said.

A 39-year-old from Al Shajara who was among those detained said that they were taken by pickup truck to an open area where they were bound and questioned about who burned ISIL’s flag earlier in the week.

He and other detainees were kept overnight in houses with five to 10 people per room, after which all but eight were released, the man said.

A resident of Al Shajara confirmed that dozens of people had returned to their homes in the area.

ISIL has previously turned to mass detentions as it seeks to quell resistance in the swathes of territory in Iraq that it has overrun since June.

It seized 50 people in Kirkuk province after residents burned one of their positions and flag in September, and 20 more the following week for allegedly forming a resistance group.

But the group has also executed thousands of people in areas it controls in Iraq and Syria, sometimes in grisly beheadings it videotapes and posts online.

* Agence Framce-Presse, Reuters