(MENAFN- Arab Times) A campaign led by Shi'ite paramilitaries to drive Islamic State militants from Iraq's Sunni heartland was rebranded on Wednesday after criticism that the name chosen for the push was overtly sectarian.
The move was a response to fears that Iraq's reliance on Shi'ite paramilitaries to defeat Islamic State fighters, instead of the disordered and demoralised national army, could alienate Sunni Iraqis and deepen the region's sectarian divide.
The United States said it was "unhelpful" that the militias had dubbed the operation to retake Iraq's western province of Anbar "Labeyk Ya Hussein." The name translates to "At your service, Hussein," in honour of one of the most revered figures in Shi'ite Islam.
The name also provoked complaints from Iraqis in Anbar. "This is extremely sectarian," said unemployed resident Salam Ahmed, 41. "We have no more trust in them (the paramilitaries). They follow a foreign, Iranian agenda." State TV said the paramilitaries had renamed the campaign "Labeyk Ya Iraq" (At Your Service Iraq) on Wednesday. A spokesman for the paramilitary groups, known as Hashid Shaabi, said both names had "the same meaning." "Now we have opted for 'Iraq' and there is no problem," Karim al-Nouri said. Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has been reluctant to send Iran-backed Shi'ite militias to Anbar, concerned they could provoke a sectarian backlash from the province's predominantly Sunni population. But he was forced to deploy thousands of Shi'ite militiamen to Anbar after Islamic State insurgents overran the provincial capital of Ramadi on May 17, his government's biggest military setback in almost a year.
Meanwhile, Islamic State extremists unleashed a wave of suicide attacks targeting the Iraqi army in western Anbar province, killing at least 17 troops in a major blow to government efforts to dislodge the militants from the sprawling Sunni heartland, an Iraqi military spokesman said Wednesday. The attacks came just hours after the Iraqi government on Tuesday announced the start of a wide-scale operation to recapture areas under the control of the IS group in Anbar.
Brig. Gen Saad Maan Ibrahim, the spokesman for the Joint Military Command, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the attacks took place outside the Islamic State-held city of Fallujah late the previous night. The militants struck near a water control station and a lock system on a canal between Lake Tharthar and the Euphrates River where army forces have been deployed for the Anbar offensive, he said.
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