In mass exodus, thousands of Syrians flee to Iraq

By SINAN SALAHEDDIN and ZEINA KARAM
Associated Press

 

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds swarmed across a bridge into neighboring Iraq's northern self-ruled Kurdish region over the past few days in one of the biggest waves of refugees since the rebellion against President Bashar Assad began, U.N. officials said Monday.

The sudden exodus of around 30,000 Syrians amid the summer heat has created desperate conditions and left aid agencies and the regional government struggling to accommodate them, illustrating the huge strain the 2 1/2-year-old Syrian conflict has put on neighboring countries.

The mostly Kurdish men, women and children who made the trek join some 1.9 million Syrians who already have found refuge abroad from Syria's relentless carnage.

Iraq seeks help from US amid growing violence

By LARA JAKES
AP National Security Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A resurgence of violence and a renewed threat from al-Qaida have recently revived flagging U.S. interest in Iraq, officials said Friday as Baghdad asked for new help to fight extremists less than two years after it forced American troops to withdraw.

Iraq premier warns of weapons smuggled from Syria

By SAMEER N. YACOUB
Associated Press

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Iraq's prime minister warned Saturday that weapons and fighters flowing into Syria are now making their way to Iraq, as a rising tide of violence sweeps across the country.

UN reports sudden wave of Syrians fleeing to Iraq

GENEVA (AP) -- The U.N. refugee agency says an unusually large wave of Syrian families has been pouring into Iraq's Kurdistan region this week.

Adrian Edwards, a spokesman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, says thousands of Syrians - mainly from Syria's largest city, Aleppo, and several poor northeastern Syrian regions - were part of a "sudden, massive movement" into northern Iraq.

Syrian refugees pour into Iraq at new crossing, U.N. says

GENEVA |(Reuters) - Thousands of Syrian refugees poured into the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq on Thursday, taking advantage of a new bridge along the largely closed border, the United Nations said on Friday.

Between 5,000 and 7,000 refugees followed a first group of some 750 people who crossed the pontoon bridge at Peshkhabour over the Tigris River, and more buses were seen dropping off families on the Syrian side, it said.

US: Iraq must stop weapons from flowing into Syria

By DEB RIECHMANN
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Secretary of State John Kerry told his Iraqi counterpart Thursday that Iraq must stop weapons from flowing through its airspace to arm the forces of embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Iraq will not become another Syria, says government, as car bombs kill 34

By Kareem Raheem

BAGHDAD | (Reuters) - Car bomb attacks killed at least 34 people in Baghdad on Thursday but the Interior Ministry said it would not allow al Qaeda, which it blames for a surge in sectarian violence, to turn Iraq into another Syria.

Militants kill 14 Shi'ites after checking ID cards in north Iraq

By Ghazwan Hassan

TIKRIT, Iraq | Wed Jul 24, 2013 6:35pm EDT

(Reuters) - Militants shot dead 14 Shi'ite tanker-drivers after checking their identity papers at a makeshift roadblock on the main route leading north from the Iraqi capital late on Wednesday, police said.
The killings took place near Sulaiman Pek, 160 km (100 miles) north of Baghdad, following clashes inside the town between militants and the police and army.
Sunni Islamist militants have been regaining momentum in their insurgency against the Shi'ite-led government in recent months, invigorated by the civil war in neighboring Syria, which has inflamed sectarian tensions in Iraq and the wider region.
"All the victims were Shi'ite tanker drivers who were coming from Baghdad to Kirkuk," Talib Mohammed, the town's mayor, told Reuters by phone. "Militants blocked their way near Sulaiman Pek, checked their IDs and executed them by shooting them in the heads and chest."
Earlier, gunmen ambushed a minibus in western Tikrit, 150 km (95 miles) north of the capital, shooting dead four soldiers who were travelling on the road from Baghdad to Mosul.
Nine policemen were also killed when militants riding on pickup trucks opened fire of a checkpoint in Shura, 50 km (35 miles) south of Mosul, Iraq's third largest city and capital of the Sunni-dominated Nineveh province.
The steady deterioration of security in Iraq was highlighted by a mass jailbreak near the capital on Sunday when around 500 convicts, including senior al Qaeda operatives, escaped after militants attacked two prisons.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which was formed through a merger between al Qaeda's Syrian and Iraqi branches, claimed responsibility for the raids and said it had freed its jailed comrades after months of preparation.
One security official told Reuters on Tuesday that some of the escaped inmates were heading to Syria to join the ranks of the mainly Sunni rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, whose Alawite sect derives from Shi'ite Islam.
Shi'ite fighters from Iraq have also joined the conflict on Assad's side, along with Lebanese militia Hezbollah.
Insurgents in Iraq have been recruiting from the country's Sunni minority, which increasingly resents Shi'ite domination since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003.
More than 720 people have been killed in militant attacks in Iraq so far in July, according to violence monitoring group Iraq Body Count.
Three roadside bombs in the volatile, ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk wounded several people and a car bomb explosion near a market in the town of Tuz Khurmato wounded three on Wednesday.
(Additional reporting by Ziad al-Sinjary in Mosul and Mustafa Mahmoud in Kirkuk; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Peter Graff and Mohammad Zargham)

Syria war widens rift between Shi'ite clergy in Iraq, Iran

(Reuters) - The civil war in Syria is widening a rift between top Shi'ite Muslim clergy in Iraq and Iran who have taken opposing stands on whether or not to send followers into combat on President Bashar al-Assad's side.
Competition for leadership of the Shi'ite community has intensified since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 toppled Saddam Hussein, empowering majority Shi'ites through the ballot box and restoring the Iraqi holy city of Najaf to prominence.
In Iran's holy city of Qom, senior Shi'ite clerics, or Marjiiya, have issued fatwas (edicts) enjoining their followers to fight in Syria, where mainly Sunni rebels are fighting to overthrow Assad, whose Alawite sect derives from Shi'ite Islam.
Shi'ite militant leaders fighting in Syria and those in charge of recruitment in Iraq say the number of volunteers has increased significantly since the fatwas were pronounced.
Tehran, Assad's staunchest defender in the region, has drawn on other Shi'ite allies, including Lebanese militia Hezbollah.
Hezbollah's open intervention earlier this year hardened the sectarian tone of a conflict that grew out of a peaceful street uprising against four decades of Assad family rule, and shifted the battlefield tide in the Syrian government's favor.
The Syrian war has polarized Sunnis and Shi'ites across the Middle East - but has also spotlighted divisions within each of Islam's two main denominations, putting Qom and Najaf at odds and complicating intra-Shi'ite relations in Iraq.
In Najaf, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who commands unswerving loyalty from most Iraqi Shi'ites and many more worldwide, has refused to sanction fighting in a war he views as political rather than religious.
Despite Sistani's stance, some of Iraq's most influential Shi'ite political parties and militia, who swear allegiance to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have answered his call to arms and sent their disciples into battle in Syria.
"Those who went to fight in Syria are disobedient," said a senior Shi'ite cleric who runs the office of one of the top four Marjiya in Najaf.
"SHI'ITE CRESCENT"
The split is rooted in a fundamental difference of opinion over the nature and scope of clerical authority.
Najaf Marjiiya see the role of the cleric in public affairs as limited, whereas in Iran, the cleric is the Supreme Leader and holds ultimate spiritual and political authority in the "Velayet e-Faqih" system ("guardianship of the jurist").
"The tension between the two Marjiiya already existed a long time ago, but now it has an impact on the Iraqi position towards the Syria crisis," a senior Shi'ite cleric with links to Marjiiya in Najaf said on condition of anonymity.
"If both Marjiiya had a unified position (toward Syria), we would witness a position of (Iraqi) government support for the Syrian regime".
The Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad says it takes no sides in the civil war, but the flow of Iraqi militiamen across the border into Syria has compromised that official position.
Khamenei and his faithful in Iraq and Iran regard Syria as a important link in a "Shi'ite Crescent" stretching from Tehran to Beirut through Baghdad and Damascus, according to senior clerics and politicians.
Answering a question posted on his website by one of his followers regarding the legitimacy of fighting in Syria, senior Iraq Shi'ite cleric Kadhim al-Haeari, who is based in Iran, described fighting in Syria as a "duty" to defend Islam.
Militants say that around 50 Iraqi Shi'ites fly to Damascus every week to fight, often alongside Assad's troops, or to protect the Sayyida Zeinab shrine on the outskirts of the capital, an especially sacred place for Shi'ites.
"I am following my Marjiiya. My spiritual leader has said fighting in Syria is a legitimate duty. I do not pay attention to what others say," said Ali, a former Mehdi army militant who was packing his bag to travel from Iraq to Syria.
"No one has the right to stop me. I am defending my religion, my Imam's daughter Sayyida Zeinab's shrine."
A high-ranking Shi'ite cleric who runs the office of one of the four top Marjiiya in Najaf said the protection of Shi'ite shrines in Syria was used as a pretext by Iran to galvanize Shi'ites into action.
"SHI'ITE PROJECT"
In the 10 years since Saddam's fall, Iran's influence in Iraq has grown and it has sought to gain a foothold in Najaf in particular.
Senior Iranian clerics have opened offices in Najaf, as well as non-governmental organizations, charities and cultural institutions, most of which are funded directly by Marjiiya in Iran, or the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad, local officials said.
The Iranian flag flies over a two-storey building in an upscale neighborhood of Najaf, which houses the "Imam Khomeini Institution", named after the Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
The Imam Khomeini Institution is one of many Iranian entities that have engaged in social activities in Iraq, focusing on young men, helping them get married, and paying regular stipends to widows, orphans and students of religion.
Some institutions also support young clerics and fund free trips for university students to visit Shi'ite shrines in Iran, including a formal visit to Khamenei's office in Tehran, Shi'ite politicians with knowledge of the activities say.
"We have a big project in Iraq aimed at spreading the principles of Velayet e-Faqih and the young are our target," a high-ranking Shi'ite leader who works under Khamenei's auspices said on condition of anonymity.
"We are not looking to establish an Islamic State in Iraq, but at least we want to create revolutionary entities that would be ready to fight to save the Shi'ite project".
(Editing by Isabel Coles and Mark Heinrich)