Battle for Falluja: Not Shias versus Sunnis but Iraqis versus ISIS

Hayder al-Khoei is research director at the Centre for Academic Shia Studies and an associate fellow of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House. He is a member of the Atlantic Council Task Force on the Future of Iraq. The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

Marine gestures as his unit tries to push into the center of Fallujah, Iraq.

Iraq's ongoing military campaign to liberate the ISIS stronghold of Falluja is being sensationally framed in too much of the media coverage and commentary as a Shia versus Sunni war. Besides being inaccurate, this does a disservice to both the Shia and Sunni Iraqis working hand-in-hand to defeat ISIS.

A US Marine of the 1st division walks through the deserted western part of Fallujah, Iraq, Monday, Nov. 15, 2004.

Despite some attempts to portray the campaign in Falluja as Iran-led, it is being led by the Iraqis themselves with support from both Iran and the United States.

 

 The tip of the spear in Falluja is not an Iranian-backed paramilitary group but the U.S.-created Counter Terrorism Service and its elite U.S.-trained Special Forces known locally as the Golden Division. These forces, besides being a mixed Shia-Sunni unit, are led by a Kurdish commander.

 

Who is actually on the ground?

More importantly, alongside both the Iraqi security forces and Shia paramilitaries, there are thousands of Sunni tribal fighters who are officially part of the state-sponsored Popular Mobilization Forces -- crudely, and again inaccurately, referred to in much of the Iraq commentary as "Shia militias."

 

A flashpoint of the Falluja coverage has been the Shia paramilitary forces who played a key role in not just blunting ISIS offensives but also in liberating much of the territory that has been retaken by Iraqi forces since the army's humiliating defeat in June 2014. 

 

These Shia forces are on the outskirts of Falluja and are not expected to be part of a ground assault into the city. But exaggerated fears are nonetheless constantly raised over what would happen if Iraqi Shias enter a Sunni-dominated Iraqi city.

 

It will be difficult to prevent retribution in any post-ISIS scenario and indeed there have been documented cases of this elsewhere in the country. But to continue to portray and place this violence within a broader Shia versus Sunni narrative is a gross simplification of the realities on the ground.