By Scott Taylor
On Sunday October 10, Iraqi citizens went to the polls to elect a new parliament. Given that this coincided with Thanksgiving, it is no surprise that this story garnered barely a mention in the Canadian media.
This was unfortunate as this election result should concern Canadian citizens for the simple reason that the military is authorized to have up to 850 personnel deployed in the region on a mission known as Operation Impact.
As well as supporting security operations in Lebanon and Jordan, the Liberal government’s objective for Op Impact states that it is “in support of the Global Coalition and NATO [to] improve Iraqi security forces’ capabilities.” These efforts help Iraq to achieve long term success in keeping its territory and people secure.”
That sounds like a noble gesture, but the long and the short of it is that we are training Iraqi troops to prop up the government therefore we Canadians should probably pay attention to who is leading that government.
To date, Iraq’s attempt to establish a functioning democracy after the U.S invaded and toppled dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003, cannot be described as a resounding success.
There have been five parliamentary elections staged since the American occupation in 2003. The 2018 election was a garbled farce. When the Iraqi officials could not determine a verifiable result, a full recount was ordered. But before that could happen the central warehouse containing the ballots was burned to the ground.
The result has been an inefficient Iraqi government in the interim, rife with corruption and unable to deliver basic utilities to an ever more impatient populace. In the months leading up to the latest parliamentary election, there have been a number of violent demonstrations across Iraq calling for an end to the corruption.
With the early result tabulated, it appears that the big winner of the election – taking 73 of 329 seats – is a chap named Muqtada al-Sadr.
If that name sounds vaguely familiar it is because during the U.S. occupation he was listed as America’s “public enemy number one.”
He is a Shiite fundamentalist cleric who doubled as an anti-American warlord. When his fanatical followers rose up against the U.S. forces in 2004 al-Sadr taunted the Americans with billboards adorned with his giant portrait and the slogan – in English – “All men belong to me.”
So he is just a little crazy.
His militia are known as Sadrists and they were mobilized in 2014 when Daesh (aka ISIS or ISIL) burst into Iraq from Syria and the U.S. trained Iraqi government army simply melted away.
As part of that Global coalition deployed to counter Daesh, Canadian troops were in fact in a loose alliance with these Sadrists.
Following the successful defeat of Daesh in the City of Mosul in 2017. Shiite militiamen, including Sadrists were accused of war crimes. Canadian military trainers were subsequently shown videos of these crimes being committed.
In an official DND document it was noted that “these acts included violence pertaining to rape, torture and execution.” The report further detailed that the videos included “raping a woman to death; the torture and execution of a line of bound prisoners whereby they were beaten to death by what appeared to be a rebar steel bar; and the execution of a man by hanging him from the barrel of a [main battle tank]”
The Canadian instructors raised this issue with their superiors in theatre because the men committing these crimes were the very Iraqi recruits whom they were training. The immediate response from the Canadian chain of command was to carry on with the training and to stop watching the videos.
Now that it appears Muqtada al-Sadr will form the next coalition to rule Iraq. It would seem that, like Afghanistan, the U.S. effort in Iraq has produced a far from desirable result.
As a fierce nationalist, Sadr has repeatedly stated that he wants foreign troops off Iraqi soil.
Rather than keep flogging a dead horse and maintaining Operation Impact to its next parliament-approved deadline of March 2022, Canada should get our troops out of there now. It was a mission that never had a clear objective once Daesh was defeated in 2018. Like Afghanistan, there will be no victory parade when the war in Iraq finally peters out.
We did our bit. Now bring our troops home. The Sadrists can prop up their own leader without our assistance.
