Al-Sadr says abstained from Mosul battles because Americans are involved

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) Influential Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has said his militias were not involved in the battles to retake the city of Mosul from Islamic State because U.S. forces were involved in the process.

Sadr, a central political and militant player, who for sometime following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq was branded an enemy to the United States, told NRT on Thursday that Saraya al-Salam militia, which he commands, did not partake in the three-month-old campaign for Mosul due to the involvement of “occupier” American troops, as he put it. “I do not deal with Americans,”he said.

The Iraqi army has to take the lead in Mosul, according to al-Sadr. “If Saraya al-Salam is to intervene in the Mosul battle, that will be with the consent of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and the city’s residents. We would liberate the city and hand it over to them,” he told his interviewer.

Sadr said his militia is more “disciplined” and “less bad” than al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units), the conglomerate of Shia militias which are already taking part in the battle and enjoying government support and recognition as a national force. He said some PMU members had already been sentenced to death and convicted of committing massacres at some region, which he did not name. On the contrary, Saraya al-Salam, he said, cooperate with the Sunni population and never encroaches upon them.

Sadr’s disbanded Mehdi Army had been partially linked to a wave of sectarian violence against Sunni Arabs in 2006 and 2007, and had been involved into a war with rival Shia militias.