Ethnic Cleansing in Iraq and Syria: Iran making the return of displaced Christians and Sunni Muslims nearly impossible
by Ezequiel Doiny
The Assyrian International News Agency published a list of Christian Institutions converted into mosques or destroyed by ISIS in Mosul, Iraq in 2014.
On April 11, 2019 Carl Anderson wrote in the Wall Street Journal ” Christian towns in Iraq increasingly look neither Christian nor Iraqi – but Iranian.
Since taking over Mosul on June 10, ISIS has destroyed, occupied, converted to mosques, converted to ISIS headquarters or shuttered all 45 Christian institutions in Mosul. At the bottom of this article is the complete list of the Christian institutions in Mosul, grouped by denomination.
The religious minorities persecuted under the ISIS caliphate remain in peril, thanks to the Iraqi government’s tolerance of Iranian influence.
With their towns liberated, displaced Christians hoped to return, rebuild and work for a better future. But as ISIS fell, Iranian-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces quickly took root in the devastated, previously Christian towns and have made life nearly unbearable for Christians attempting to return.
Iranian proxies now are conducting a program of colonization in the Iraqi sector – building homes and centers for Iraq’s Shiite majority in historically Christian towns.
The same way Iran is making it difficult for Christians to return home in Iraq, it is making it difficult for Sunni Muslims to return home in Syria. On January 13, 2017 the Guardian reported “…For the first time since the conflict broke out, people are starting to return. But the people settling in are not the same as those who fled during the past six years.
The new arrivals have a different allegiance and faith to the predominantly Sunni Muslim families who once lived there. They are, according to those who have sent them, the vanguard of a move to repopulate the area with Shia Muslims not just from elsewhere in Syria, but also from Lebanon and Iraq.
The population swaps are central to a plan to make demographic changes to parts of Syria, realigning the country into zones of influence that backers of Bashar al-Assad, led by Iran, can directly control and use to advance broader interests…”
On December 12, 2018 Tom Rogan wrote in the Washington Examiner “Seven more Islamic State mass graves have been found in Syria…the vast majority would also have been moderate Sunni Muslims, belonging to the Sunni Arab tribes of Deir ez-Zor province. So if these victims were Sunni Muslims, just like the ISIS fighters, why did the latter so brutally kill them?” https://www.
On July 2016 Brad Macdonald explained in the Trumpet “Like most national, tribal, ethical and religious relationships in the Middle East, the relationship between the Islamic State and Iran is not nearly as simple as many Westerners believe.
Evidence proves that Iran and the Islamic State are not archenemies. In fact, Iran is at least partly responsible for the Islamic State’s creation!
In his article “Iran Is More Deeply Tied to isis Than You Think,” Benjamin Decker provides a detailed explanation of Iran’s involvement in the creation of various Sunni terrorist organizations, including al Qaeda. He writes, “As the West continues to partner with Iran to ‘degrade and ultimately destroy’ the Islamic State, it is worth remembering that one of Iran’s highest-ranking terrorists was instrumental in founding al Qaeda, and that the split between Shia and Sunni jihadis is murky at best” (Tower, December 2015).
While the Islamic State was born out of Osama bin Laden’s global jihad against the West, many overlook the importance of another player in the equation—Iran.
“This may seem surprising given that Iran, the stalwart of the Shia Crescent, is currently embroiled in a regional war against the Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq. However, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, described as one of the ‘largest and most dynamic intelligence agencies in the Middle East’ by the Pentagon’s Irregular Warfare Support Program, has, over the past 20 years, provided financial, material, technological and other support services to aqi.”
This article explains in detail Iran’s history with grooming and training key Sunni terrorist leaders, and financing and supplying weapons and tactical assistance to various Sunni terrorist groups.
An article from the Tower’s website, “The Different Stages of Iranian Support for isis,” said, “Recent reports that Iran is supporting isis through its funding of Hamas are a reminder that the Islamic Republic has long backed the powerful jihadist group and its predecessors in a variety of ways.
“In 2012, the United States Treasury Department exposed the extensive financial ties between Iran and al Qaeda in Iraq” (Dec. 16, 2015).
…The April 2016 issue of Tablet contains an interesting interview with Abdul Halim Khaddam, former vice president and foreign minster of Syria. This man understands the way the Middle East works, and he understands Iran. In the interview, Khaddam revealed that Syrian strongman Assad—who is an Iranian proxy—and the Islamic State are partners.
“It is a fact that Daesh [an Arabic name for the Islamic State] does not fight the government in Damascus any more than the government in Damascus bombs Daesh,” he explained.
“Although it is Sunni, Daesh’s roots are in Iran—in a group of ex-officers of the Iraqi Presidential Guard that went to train in Iran and that Iran accepted because they thought they could use them later—and their calculation proved right. Daesh worked with Iran and with the Syrian regime to get the Americans away from Iraq.
The idea was to then share the territory between Sunnis and Shiites, an arrangement which the Iranians refused once the U.S. were gone.”
It is dangerous to assume that Iran thinks the same way about the Islamic State as the West does. The truth is, the Islamic State’s rise has proven enormously beneficial to Iran, the world’s top state sponsor of terrorism.
First, the Islamic State has distracted America and the West from Iran’s terrorist activities…
Second, the presence of the Islamic State gives Iran an opportunity to refashion its reputation in the region and globally. Iran’s leaders regularly deliver statements promising to defend the persecuted from the Islamic State and bring stability to Iraq and the broader region. Tehran is exploiting the violence and instability created by isis to cast itself as the region’s savior. Iran’s leaders have promised to rescue Iraq, as well as Christians and other isis victims. Compared to the Islamic State, Iran seems like a picture of moderation.
Third, the rise of the Islamic State has provided Iran with the opportunity to bolster its military presence in Iraq and Syria. Iranian officials, soldiers and intelligence personnel are setting up offices all over Iraq and Syria, all under the guise of fighting the Islamic State. If isis’s presence in Iraq and Syria diminishes, keep an eye on who fills the power vacuum. It will be Iran!
When you consider all the facts, it is obvious that the rise of the Islamic State has actually made Iran stronger. The isis threat has boosted Iran’s reputation in the international community. It has enabled Iran to extract concessions from America and the West. It has improved Iran’s strategic position in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. And it is undermining, both directly and indirectly, Iran’s primary opponents in the region, most notably Saudi Arabia…” https://www.thetrumpet.com/
First ISIS performed decapitations to frighten the West so Iran could pose as the “good guys” and have an excuse to invade Iraq and Syria to “save” Iraq and Syria from ISIS.
Iran then used ISIS to mass murder the Sunni Muslims that opposed its advances in Syria. When the press found the mass graves of Sunni Muslims in Syria, ISIS was blamed and Iran avoided war crime charges.
After it had completed the ethnic cleansing of Sunni Arabs ISIS has was no longer necessary, it could disappear (or be “defeated”) opening space for Iran to fill the vacuum and take over the territory. Iran used ISIS to ethnically cleanse the Sunni Muslim population from parts of Syria and then replaced it with Shia Muslims.
On November 1, 2017 Robert Windrem wrote in NBC news “A document seized the night Navy SEALs killed Osama Bin Laden suggests that Al Qaeda and Iran had a relationship more complicated and intimate than previously known — one that included threats and kidnappings, but also occasional cooperation. The document was among a massive trove of material released Wednesday by the CIA following a request by the Long War Journal, a website that has chronicled the U.S. war on terrorism…” https://www.nbcnews.com/news/
Obama had access to this information while he embraced Iran as an ally in the war against ISIS but admitting it would have prevented him from withdrawing US troops from Irak, signing the nuclear deal with Iran, embracing the view that Iran “should be a regional power”.
In an interview recorded in the video below on Jul 14, 2015 Obama said : “Iran Will Be And Should Be A Regional Power” (see video below) https://www.youtube.com/watch?
LIST OF CHURCHES
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
Hi, Adam. No problem. I’m glad Ezequiel got on board, and the two of you clarified matters.
I was most focused on the mention of Christians being driven out of the area — something which, to me, did not sound at all like a “conspiracy theory”, Muslims driving Christians out of Iraq and Iran has a long history.
@ Bear Klein: That is certainly true, Bear
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/13/irans-syria-project-pushing-population-shifts-to-increase-influence
@ Michael S: Michael, see my reply to Ezequiel. I agree that he is a legitimate author. Not everyone who formulates a conspiracy theory is illegitimate, because real conspiracies are committed every day all over the world.
I tend to distinguish between what I call ‘global conspiracy theories,” which maintain that a small group of people meeting in secret rule the world, have done so for hundreds of years, and are responsible for everything that goes wrong in the world (wars, depressions, higher taxes, gun control, etc.), and “specific” conspiracies theories, such as claims that a group of individuals conspired to murder one politician (e.g.. Abraham Lincoln). These conspiracy theories may be true in some cases.
In the middle-east it is common knowledge that Iran is replacing Sunnis & Christians with Shias in Iraq and Syria.
They have been paying Shias to move into locations vacated by the Sunni Arabs and Christians.
@ Ezequiel Doiny:
Ezekiel, when I described your thesis as a “conspiracy theory,” I did not intend to say it wasn’t true. Contrary to what the press would have you believe, real life conspiracies happen every day. There are hundreds of criminal statutes in the United States and nearly all countries in which the word “conspiracy” is used to describe certain kinds of criminal conduct. And in numerous perfectly legitimate criminal cases, the prosecution presents the jury with a conspiracy theory to explain the crime. This kind of conspiracy theory is known as “the theory of the case.”
The reason I said this “conspiracy theory” “seems far-fetched,” is that after all, the IS are Sunnis who have been at war with Iraq’s Shi’ite government, an Iranian ally, for several years now. Also, Sunnis and Shi’ites seem to hate each other throughout the Muslim world.
On the other hand, equally stranger-than-fiction alliances have certainly occurred historically, such as the Nazi-Soviet pact, and the British-American-Soviet allince during World War II. Winston Churchill hated Communism passionately, and yet he approved British arms supply shipments to the SU during WW2.
I agree that your news sources are legitimate.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
IRAN USED ISIS TO ETHNICALLY CLEANSE OPOSITION AND IS NOW REPLACING THE POPULATION WITH SHIA MUSLIMS.
Everything worked out too well for Iran to be a coincidence.
Looking in retrospective the exaggeration of the public decapitations make sense if you look at the end result, it was all a well planned script…
Everything worked out too well for Iran to be a coincidence.
Looking in retrospective the exaggeration of the public decapitations make sense if you look at the end result, it was all a well planned script…
IRAN USED ISIS TO ETHNICALLY CLEANSE OPOSITION AND IS NOW REPLACING THE POPULATION WITH SHIA MUSLIMS
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
The sources for this article are reliable :
The Assyrian International News Agency
NBC News
The Trumpet (which used information from The Tower)
The Washington Examiner
The Guardian
The Wall Street Journal
All links are provided in the article for your review.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
The sources for this article are reliable :
The Assyrian International News Agency
NBC News
The Trumpet (which used information from The Tower)
The Washington Examiner
The Guardian
The Wall Street Journal
All links are provided in the article for your review
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
Adam,
Doiny appears to be a credible author:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Author.aspx/1324
Why do you call him a “conspiracy theorist”?
A seemingly far-fetched conspiracy theory, but could be true.