Leaflets warn Baghdad residents to leave, stirring fearful memories as sectarian tensions rise

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BAGHDAD - The fliers began turning up at Sunni households in the
Iraqi capital's Jihad neighbourhood last week bearing a chilling
message: Get out now or face "great agony" soon.

The leaflets were signed by the Mukhtar Army, a new Shiite militant
group with ties to Iran's Revolutionary Guard. "The zero hour has come.
So leave along with your families. ... You are the enemy," the messages
warned.

Such overt threats all but disappeared as the darkest days of
outright sectarian fighting waned in 2008 and Iraq stepped back from the
brink of civil war. Their re-emergence now — nearly a decade after the
U.S.-led invasion — is a worrying sign that rising sectarian tensions
are again gnawing away at Iraqi society.

Iraqis increasingly fear that militants on both sides of the
country's sectarian divide are gearing up for a new round of violence
that could undo the fragile gains Iraq has made in recent years.

Members of the country's Sunni minority have been staging mass
rallies for two months, with some calling for the toppling of a
Shiite-led government they feel discriminates against them and is too
closely allied with neighbouring Iran. Sunni extremists have been
stepping up large-scale attacks on predominantly Shiite targets, and
concerns are growing that the brutal and increasingly sectarian fighting
in Syria could spill across the border.

Many Sunnis who received the Jihad neighbourhood messages are taking the warnings at face value and considering making a move.

"Residents are panicking. All of us are obsessed with these fliers,"
said Waleed Nadhim, a Sunni mobile phone shop owner who lives in the
neighbourhood. The 33-year-old father plans to leave the area because he
doesn't have faith in the police to keep his family safe. "In a lawless
country like Iraq, nobody can ignore threats like this."

Iraqi security forces have beefed up their presence in and around
Jihad. The middle-class community, nestled along a road to the airport
in southwest Baghdad, was home to Sunni civil servants and security
officials under Saddam Hussein's regime, though many Shiites now live
there too.

The Shiites, who are emboldened by a government and security forces
dominated by their sect, have made their presence felt in Jihad in
recent years. A Sunni mosque bears graffiti hailing a revered Shiite
saint. A billboard on a major road shows firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada
al-Sadr flanked by a fighter gripping a machine-gun.

Jihad was one of the earliest flashpoints in Baghdad's descent into
sectarian bloodshed. In July 2006, the neighbourhood witnessed a brazen
massacre that left as many as 41 residents dead and marked an escalation
in Iraq's sectarian bloodletting. In that incident, Shiite militiamen
set up checkpoints to stop morning commuters, singled out Sunnis based
on their names and systematically executed them in front of their Shiite
neighbours.

Residents now fear the events in southwest Baghdad could be the spark
for a new round of tit-for-tat killing. Two weeks ago, a Sunni and a
Shiite were each killed in separate attacks in Sadiyah, next to Jihad,
said a 30-year-old Sunni government employee living in the area who gave
her name only as Umm Abdullah al-Taie, or mother of Abdullah.

"Nobody dares to go out after dark," she said. "People have started to hear sectarian alarm bells ringing again."

The Mukhtar Army whose named appeared on the threatening leaflets was
formed by Wathiq al-Batat, a onetime senior official in the Hezbollah
Brigades. He announced the creation of the new militant group earlier
this month.

Hezbollah in Iraq is believed to be funded and trained by Iran's
elite Revolutionary Guard and was among the Shiite militias that
targeted U.S. military bases months before their December 2011
withdrawal.

Al-Batat told Iraq's al-Sharqiya channel that he formed the Mukhtar
Army to confront Sunnis who might attempt to topple the government in
the same way that Syrian rebels are trying to overthrow Bashar Assad's
Iranian-backed regime in neighbouring Syria. He said the group is
advised by Iran's hard-line Quds Force, which oversees external
operations of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. He declined to say
whether the group received any further support from Tehran.

Little is known about Mukhtar Army's size or capabilities. Abdullah
al-Rikabi, a spokesman for the group, boasted it has 1 million members
and described al-Batat as loyal to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government has issued an
arrest warrant against al-Batat, though he still walks free. In a speech
Saturday, the Shiite premier vowed to prosecute anyone who seeks to
incite sectarian strife.

The Mukhtar Army denies being behind the threats, which some Shiites
believe are a ruse to tar their sect and inflame sectarian divisions.

"We have nothing to do with the fliers," said al-Rikabi, the group's
spokesman. He accused members of Saddam's now-outlawed Baath party and
al-Qaida of making the threats in an effort to ignite civil war.

Even though they are busy hunting down the group's leader, Iraqi
authorities have their doubts about the Shiite militia's involvement in
the leaflets too.

Two senior security officials said intelligence agents have obtained
an al-Qaida hit list containing detailed names and residential
information about people — both Sunnis and Shiites — living in mixed
areas. They believe the group plans to target residents one by one,
alternating by sect, in an effort to spread panic and suggest an
atmosphere of retaliatory killings.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose information about security operations.

Threatening fliers from both Sunni and Shiite militias aimed at
members of the opposite sect also have begun turning up in Baqouba, a
former al-Qaida stronghold north of Baghdad that has a history of
sectarian violence, according to Diyala provincial council member Sadiq
al-Hussein.

For those living in areas where the threats turned up, their source matters less than what they portend.

Jafaar al-Fatlawi, a Shiite government employee who lives in the
Jihad neighbourhood, said he has started carrying a pistol with him just
to answer the door and takes his family to spend the night with
relatives elsewhere in the city.

"Everybody in the neighbourhood expects sectarian fighting to erupt
any minute," he said. "Our security forces weren't able to stop the
sectarian war before and now they'll fail again."
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