Islamic State attack in Iraq provokes conflict between neighbors

Islamic State gunmen opened fire on a group of seven young men — four cousins, three friends — as they smoked nargilah pipes on a warm evening, residents of the mostly Shiite Muslim village said. Then the militants waited in the dark until a rescue party arrived and turned the guns on them too.

Within hours, Shiite tribesmen had crossed the stream that separates Rashad from its Sunni Muslim neighbors and were going house to house. Families cowered in the foliage. An old man was shot in his bed. By midnight, at least nine more villagers were dead, and the sky burned red as fires ate up their homes.

The initial attack claimed by Sunni extremists of the Islamic State group and the reprisal it provoked underscores how fragile Iraq’s peace remains in some areas four years after the militants’ caliphate was ousted and highlights their enduring potential to stir sectarian violence.

A member of Iraq’s U.S.-trained counterterrorism force said that a similar recent attack in the same province, Diyala, had left five people dead. “ISIS doesn‘t use car bombs there now,” he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk with the media. “Instead they have snipers and night-vision goggles.”

Jihadist groups such as the Islamic State have historically been active in Diyala, where they’ve tried to capitalize on the grievances of Sunni communities that feel politically marginalized and taken advantage of rugged terrain offering protection from counterinsurgency operations.

The rise of Islamic State militants in 2014 transformed Diyala, a mostly rural province that borders Iran. After fighters of the Badr Organization, an Iraqi Shiite movement aligned with Iran, helped push back the Islamic State militants, Badr consolidated its control in the province. In areas such as Diyala’s Muqdadiya district, where Rashad is located, Sunni residents displaced by the war have been allowed home.

“But there are no guarantees of peace to civilians in these areas,” said Zmkan Ali Saleem, director of research at the Institute of Regional and International Studies in Iraq. “Security is provided through informal agreements that could collapse at any minute.”

With bullets still flying on that October night, the area’s governor, Muthanna al-Tamimi, a member of Badr, arrived with Iraqi security forces. Members of the governor’s security detail said he had tried to stop the reprisal attacks on Sunni homes.

But villagers who came under assault later said they had seen little evidence of that.

“The security forces were there, but they told us to just go,” said one of the survivors, Salima Abed el-Jabouri, 67, who had left with nothing but the clothes she was wearing. “ ‘Run,’ an officer shouted at us. ‘Go!’ ”

The young men of Rashad had finished dinner early on that evening and snuck out to a spot on the edge of a field that they had called their own for years, where they laid out blankets. The sounds of their laughter carried on the breeze to nearby homes, villagers said.

Soon, so did their screams.

“We just ran out there,” Faleh Hassan, 28, said last week as he nursed a bandaged wound on his forearm. “They started firing as we picked up the bodies.”

“They shot Sajad in the driver’s seat, and then kept firing as he curled up and cowered in the back,” Ali Abbas, 26, recalled, as several relatives of the dead sobbed. “It was targeted. It was cruel.”

In its later claim of responsibility, the Islamic State made clear it had been targeting Shiites.

Across the stream in Nahr al-Imam village, vengeance was quickly sought for the Islamic State massacre. Residents of that village said they had been sleeping when the Shiite tribesmen arrived.

One family described how the gunmen entered every room of the house, hitting a 14-year-old boy with their rifle butts as they demanded to know where to find his father, a village elder. Another teenager said he had recognized one of the attackers as a man who drove a local taxi.

Saleem, the research director, said no one wants to oppose the armed “gangs” in Diyala. “They are very powerful,” he said.

The killings prompted an exodus of Sunni villagers. Nahr al-Imam is empty now, aside from police officers on patrol or standing guard outside scorched buildings.

Almost 2,000 people have sought shelter in surrounding towns, sleeping in mosques or packed into homes, according to aid groups.

In an interview, the governor, Tamimi, insisted that the number was half that. He attributed the discrepancy to people who had already been planning to leave the area but now blamed their exodus on the attack.

In the city of Baquba, Ahmed Saad Kadhim, a student volunteer, said the families had arrived ragged with fear. “Women were sobbing, men were hallucinating,” he said, sitting in a mosque courtyard as aid workers circulated with clipboards and forms. “They didn’t believe anywhere was safe.”

With the trauma still fresh, displaced families say they are struggling to sleep and few believe they can go home any time soon.

Sitting on the rickety frame of a wooden bed, 14-year-old Othman Fares eyed the aid workers with a frown. “We’ve been displaced so many times, we are tired,” he said. “We won’t believe the authorities will look after us again, even if they say they will provide us security.”

A man interjected. “We had five security units by our village that night. Wasn’t that meant to bring security?”

Muqdadiya is so small that it seems everyone knows at least one person who died. In Baquba, the residents of Nahr al-Imam scrolled through cellphone photographs on their phones of their slain loved ones while waiting for news of where they could stay in the coming weeks, listless and worried beneath the midday sun.

Ali Abdulhamid, a man in his early 30s, stopped at the photograph of a 3-year-old victim and looked away. “He was just a child,” he said. “How can you pull a child into your fight?”

Meanwhile, residents of Rashad also agonized over details of the initial attack. As they did, the 6-year-old son of one of the victims stood in the doorway of his home miming as if he were pumping bullets into a pile of shoes.

“He wasn’t like that before,” said Walid Khalid, a relative. “This whole place feels crazy. No one has slept since that night.”

Source: MSN