ISIL, Shia Militia Atrocities

"Because of the acts of a criminal cousin, me and some of my relatives will be killed or displaced."
"We have nothing to do with Daesh [Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham], but I think that nobody will listen when payback time comes."
Mohammed Younis, Sunni Iraqi, Mosul

"We don’t see daily assassinations and bombings which used to happen when the Americans and later the Iraqi army were running Mosul. Sunni leaders outside the city exaggerate or even invent their support."
Kurdish observer

Mr. Younis has reason to fear a combined Iraqi military, Shia militia assault on his city, now occupied by Islamic State. A city which Islamic State will not surrender readily, since its lightning-swift takeover in July when the Iraqi military scampered away without resistance, leaving the city, its banks, its military equipment and its Sunni population in ISIS hands, enabled it to declare its caliphate.

When the largely Shia Iraqi military occupied Mosul during the American occupation, its Sunni population had reason to feel a foreign occupying power was oppressing them.

The reputation of the sectarian Shia militias, numbering roughly 120,000 men under arms has preceded them in the quality of their merciless treatment of Sunnis. Wherever Sunni towns and villages have been taken around Baghdad by the Shia groups the residents have been viewed as ISIS sympathizers and enablers, irrespective of their actual sympathies or allegiance, seeing young Sunni men detained, tortured and killed; a sectarian mirror reflection of the atrocities committed by ISIS against those who resist them.

Innocent of cooperation with the Islamic State's capture of his city and certainly having nothing to do with its mass killing sprees, its beheadings and other symbols of its barbaric advance, there will be no intervention from any source to spare him and others like him once ISIS is driven out of Mosul and the Iraqi military with its helpful Shia militias enter the city to re-take command. Residents have already received warning of what fate has in store for them.

In this June 16, 2014 file photo, demonstrators chant pro-Islamic State group slogans as they carry the group's flags in front of the provincial government headquarters in Mosul.

A group naming itself the Freemen of Mosul have left notes on doorsteps warning that "vengeance is coming", with threats of eye-for-an-eye retribution. As the Shiite militias accompanying Iraqi forces; Shia themselves; gradually move from Baghdad into the Sunni heartland of the country there are fears that the ISIS retreat will spell a new round of bloodshed. Younis feels he is a target because his cousin is a militant with Islamic State.

The offensive launched this month at Tikrit, known as the hometown of Saddam Hussein, has another goal as well, to convince the Sunni tribal leaders to join the Iraqi regime and the military in routing the Islamic State to reunite the country. Since the Shia-led government defaulted on the agreement under U.S. occupation to have Shias, Sunnis and Kurds equally administer the affairs of Iraq, and began their persecution of Iraqi Sunnis, that remains a fond, unrealized and unrealistic hope.

Past offensives where powerful Sunni tribes have been persuaded to fight alongside the Iraqi military have seen the onset of threats followed by vicious sectarian reprisals. New York-based Human Rights Watch once again called on the Iraqi government for the protection of civilians in Tikrit, noting "numerous atrocities" committed by pro-government forces against Sunni civilians. Actions ranging from "summary executions, revenge killings, or other abuses", were noted.

Just as the Islamic State group has posted grisly videos online to boast of their barbaric exploits and raise their profile among impressed Islamist recruits, Shiite militias too have done the very same. In one video a fighter clothed in Shiite militia fatigues can be seen holding up the head of a bearded man beside a decapitated body. "Why don't you burn him?" suggests another militiaman, while a third states: "You already beheaded him."