Baghdad: Even before a formal announcement, the deal for Australia to help Iraq battle the so-called Islamic State which now controls swaths of Iraq and Syria, drew sharp criticism from forces allied to the Baghdad government.
As Foreign Minister Julie Bishop was finalising the deal for Australian Special Forces to be deployed in Iraq to "advise and assist the government of Iraq in building up the capacity of the Iraqi security forces", it was condemned by senior figure in three of the Shiite volunteer militias that now prop up the Iraqi Army on the battlefield.
Ms Bishop was speaking in Baghdad, at the end of two days of meetings with Iraqi officials.
Haji Jaafar al-Bindawi, chief of training and logistics for the Imam Ali Brigades, told Fairfax Media that the 200 Australians on standby in the United Arab Emirates to deploy in Iraq "should go home".
Asked how his fighters would respond, were they to encounter American or Australian advisers embedded with units of the Iraqi Army, al-Bindawi responded in English, saying only: "Time will tell – whatever happens will happen."
Likewise, Adnan al-Shahmani, an MP who serves as a parliamentary and military liaison for several militia forces and who leads his own force in battle, said: "Foreign forces? Never! We don't need them ... in combat or as advisers.
"This is not about sovereignty. Some in Iraq want them, but not us."
The militias' objection to Australian and American advisers is part of a greater distrust of Western intentions, based in part on the US-led occupation of Iraq and its aftermath in the wake of the toppling of Saddam Hussein; and more recently, on what they perceive as the selective use of air strikes as part of an agenda that is more about containing Iran than defeating IS, also known as ISIL.
And that suspicion of a greater regional ambit as the US-led coalition continues to mount air strikes on IS forces across Iraq and in neighbouring Syria, is shared by some of the Sunni tribes of Iraq, whose co-operation is considered vital if IS is to be defeated.
Asked how the conflict would run, the Imam Ali Brigades' Haji Jaafar al-Bindawi said that victory would be declared when "the [IS] terrorists have been defeated and we have driven out the returned [US-led] occupation".
"We don't need air strikes – unless they are by the Iraqi Air Force.
"More foreign troops? No, we have a million heroes.
"Advisers? No."
By his book, the current campaign of air strikes, the presence of 1600 US advisers in the country and even the operation of Washington's huge Baghdad embassy amounted to an ongoing occupation. "We have to drive it out," he insisted.
Earlier, Fadil al Shairawi, Baghdad actor and poet who serves as the Imam Ali Brigades' spokesman, told Fairfax media: "I hope this new experience in Iraq for the Americans will not be a repeat of the last – we were a peaceful people with a full infrastructure, but the US destroyed that infrastructure and made us an aggressive nation."
Using the nom de guerre Dr Thafer, a spokesman for the Hezbollah Brigades claimed that his organisation refused to accept American or allied air cover and several times had withdrawn from the front line in protest.
Dismissing any good intentions on the part of the Obama-led coalition of which Australia is a member, he said: "They did Operation Iraqi Freedom [which toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein] in 23 days and they [ousted the Taliban in] Afghanistan in a month, but now they want a year to get ready to [liberate the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, which was taken by IS in June]?
"It's like a bad Hollywood film."
That deep suspicion of the West permeated an interview with the MP Adnan al-Shahmani. He argued: "We don't need a coalition of more than 40 nations to defeat IS, so what's going on here?
"Practically, the American advisers who are here already are not being used.
"We have more than enough manpower to fight and we are worried about the objectives of this American coalition.
"We don't need advisers. It's not complicated – we are at war with a gang of thugs and the Americans say they want to help, but they won't give us the weapons we need."
On the Sunni tribal side of the equation, a senior figure – Sheikh Abdul Hamid al Juburi – was derisive about the intent of coalition air strikes.
Claiming to speak for all of the Sunni tribes in central Salah ad-Din province, where IS now controls several major centres, the sheikh argued: "In the war in Yugoslavia, the US was able to use air strikes alone to end the war – why not here?
"They could do that here if they wanted to, so they must have their own calculations."
