​​The battle between Iraqi forces and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) over the city of Mosul has already displaced over 35,000 civilians from inside the city and surrounding villages.

Many of those fleeing the city are Sunni Arabs, relieved to be free from ISIS, but deeply distressed. Over the last two weeks, dozens of families have told me they are concerned about what will happen to their homes while they are gone.

You would assume that they are concerned that the fighting might destroy their houses, but the fighting is only one of their worries.

In fact, in a previous round of the conflict, between the Peshmerga — the Kurdistan regional government's military, and ISIS in nearby provinces, Arab homes were destroyed largely after the fighting had moved on.

​On November 20, 2016, millions of Shiite Muslims will gather in Iraq’s holy city of Karbala to mark Arbaeen, a religious ritual that commemorates the end of the 40-day mourning period for the killing of Imam Hussein, Prophet Muhammad’s grandson. According to official sources, Arbaeen attracted nearly 17 million pilgrims last year, the majority of whom were Iraqis with close to one Million Iranians participating in the event. Some pilgrims march the 80 Km distance from the city of Najaf to Karbala.

As Arbaeen continues to grow as the most important religious ceremony in the world and a show of force for the Shiite community, the Iranian regime has been trying to gradually take the control of this event and utilizing it for its domestic and regional goals, specifically to solidify its influence in Iraq and dominate the Shiite world.

​Iraq, a strategic target for Iranian regime
In 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini, and a group of clergymen affiliated to him, seized power in Iran. From the onset, Khomeini’s regime utilized all means possible to establish its brand of fundamentalism in Iran and export it throughout the Islamic world. In order to consolidate their Shiite base, the Iranian leaders view neighboring Iraq as their prime target due to its majority Shiite population and the fact that the shrines of six Shiite Imams are located in the country, including the most veneered amongst them all, the first Imam Ali and his son Hossein who are buried in the cities of Najaf and Karbala.

Following the US invasion of Iraq and the fall of Saddam Hussein, the Shiite majority became the dominant political force in the country. This was a turning point for Iran who used its Iraqi proxies and allies to expand its influence in Iraq and dominate the country’s political and military apparatus.

MEMO has seen horrifying leaked footage that shows what appears to be Iraqi soldiers torturing a child and dragging him through the desert before placing him in front of a tank for him to be crushed. The incident occurred during the ongoing operations to recapture Mosul from Daesh militants.

The disturbing footage depicts ululating Iraqi soldiers towering over a clearly terrified child, named as Muhammad Ali Al-Hadidi by activists, who is covered in sand and is raising his hands in fear in a vain attempt to defend himself.

Muhammad is then dragged through the desert before being hurled in front of a US-made Iraqi tank as the soldiers appear to be shouting sectarian slurs against the child, a Sunni. Muhammad is placed head first in front of the tank’s left-hand tracks.

The soldiers then open fire in Muhammad’s general vicinity, before ordering the tank driver to move his vehicle over the defenceless child while telling each other, “Film me! Film me!”

​For months prior to the offensive, Iran, and its Iraqi proxies pressured the Iraqi government to accept the militias’ role in the Mosul offensive, a move that could give them a share of victory and provide them with a pretext to justify their activities long after the defeat of ISIS. That would secure Iran’s influence in Iraq that predominantly relies on these militias, a prospect that many believe to be the Hezbollah-ization of Iraq.

On October 29, the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) predominantly comprised of Iran-backed Shiite militias, joined the military offensive led by the Iraqi army, US and Kurdish forces to reclaim the Sunni-populated city of Mosul from the Islamic State (ISIS). The Shiite militias opened a new front in western Mosul, a trajectory that could cut off ISIS from their bases in Syria. While the Iraqi Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi had agreed to the militia’s role, there was no agreement on entering the city itself. 

According to press reports, Qassem Suleimani, chief commander of Iran Revolutionary Guards Quds Force is in Western Mosul commanding Shiite militias, and Hezbollah members are also present and assisting the militias.

The PMF’s chief commander Hadi Al Amiri and his deputy Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis have been members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Quds Force and commanders of the Badr Brigade in Iran, a militia group formed by the Revolutionary Guards in the 1980s to fight alongside Iranian forces against Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War. 
Following the fall of Saddam in 2003, the Badr Brigade changed to the Badr organization with an armed militia, which has become Iran’s key proxy force in Iraq.

​The Iraqi authorities must urgently investigate reports that fighters wearing Iraqi Federal Police uniforms tortured and extrajudicially executed residents in villages they captured south of Mosul, said Amnesty International.

Researchers from the organization visited several villages in the al-Shura and al-Qayyara sub-districts of Ninewa governorate, south-west and south of Mosul, and gathered evidence indicating that up to six people were extrajudicially executed in late October, apparently due to suspicions they had ties to the armed group calling itself the Islamic State (IS).

“Men in Federal Police uniform have carried out multiple unlawful killings, apprehending and then deliberately killing in cold blood residents in villages south of Mosul. In some cases the residents were tortured before they were shot dead execution-style,” said Lynn Maalouf, Deputy Director for Research at Amnesty International’s Beirut Regional Office.

“Deliberately killing captives and other defenceless individuals is prohibited by international humanitarian law and is a war crime. It is crucial that the Iraqi authorities carry out prompt, thorough, impartial and independent investigations into these crimes under international law, and bring those responsible to justice. Without effective measures to suppress and punish serious violations, there is a real risk that we could see war crimes of this kind repeated in other Iraqi villages and towns during the Mosul offensive.”

​A video surfaced this week which purports to show Lebanese Hezbollah fighters present on the outskirts of the Iraqi city of Mosul. The footage, published by Pan-Arab news site Al-Araby Al-Jaeed, was reportedly filmed in al-Zarka, approximately 30 miles southwest of Mosul, where thousands of Shiite militia fighters have assembled.

​Though the fighters, seen in the video training Iraqi Shiite militiamen to fire mortar shells, are not wearing their militia’s insignia, their distinct southern Lebanese accents betray their membership in the Lebanon-based Iranian proxy group.

According to the video’s accompanying report, an unnamed Iraqi Shiite militant said that the Hezbollah fighters arrived in the area days earlier to reinforce local Shiite fighters.

“[Hezbollah chief] Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah sent them to support us, for Syria and Iraq are all on one side,” he said.

Iraqi militia fighters are torturing men and boys in villages outside Mosul, in some cases locking them in cages or strapping them to car bonnets and parading them through the streets, according to Amnesty International.

The Sunni fighters, who are aligned with the Iraqi government, are accused of carrying out a campaign of vendetta attacks against villagers they say supported the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) but also using the chaos of the Mosul offensive to settle old scores.

The violence has led to calls for the Iraqi government to “rein in” its militia allies and raised fears about more sectarian bloodshed during the battle to recapture Mosul itself.    
​​
Residents of al-Makuk, a village on the the Tigres river, said fighters from the Sab’awi tribe began rounding up men and boys after they entered the town in October.

​​LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Although torn by civil war, Iraq is the world's most generous country towards strangers in need, according to a new global index of charitable giving.

Eighty one percent of Iraqis reported helping someone they didn't know in the previous month, in a global poll commissioned by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF).

For the first time since CAF began the poll in 2010, more than half of people in 140 countries surveyed said they had helped strangers - with many of the most generous found in countries hit hard by disaster and war.

Despite suffering instability and violence, Iraq has twice been ranked top in terms of helping strangers. Libya, with its own internal conflict, was second on the list this year and Somalia, embroiled in civil war for 25 years, fourth.

​​Hezbollah Brigades (also known as Kata’ib Hezbollah), an Iranian-backed Shiite militia in Iraq, is transporting forces, including troops and artillery, to participate in the operation to retake Mosul from the Islamic State. Hezbollah Brigades is a US-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization that is one of several Iranian-backed militias that operates in Iraq.

The convoy, which was seen in a video released by Hezbollah Brigades propaganda wings, was shown to include dozens of vehicles. At least 11 rocket launchers, four howitzers (including two US-made M198 howitzers), one American-made M1 Abrams, and one US M88 Recovery Vehicle were spotted. Several other vehicles transporting troops to Mosul can also be seen.

The Shiite militias, which are part of the Popular Mobilization Forces, are expected to fight the Islamic State in areas west of Mosul. A spokesman for the PMF said that the militias are moving towards Tal Afar and would launch an offensive against Islamic State forces entrenched there in “a few days or hours,” Reuters reported today.

​The Popular Mobilization Forces was established in June 2014 after the Iraqi military and police forces were overwhelmed by the Islamic State in northern, central, and western Iraq. Clerics put out the call for Iraq to support the collapsing security forces.