Thousands of Iraqi Shiites answer urgent call to fight militants

Thousands of Shiites from Baghdad and across southern Iraq answered an urgent call to arms Saturday, joining security forces to fight the Islamic militants who have captured large swaths of territory north of the capital and now imperil a city with a much-revered religious shrine.

The mobilization, urged by the nation’s top Shiite cleric, took on a sectarian dimension that threatened to intensify Sunni-Shiite strife in a nation already ripped by religious fervor after the militants’ battlefield successes.

In Baghdad, fallout from the stunning advance in the north was beginning to affect daily life for the city’s 7 million inhabitants.

Some food prices rose dramatically. Army troops went house to house searching for militants and weapons in neighborhoods close to vital government installations. The streets of the capital were quieter than usual, and military and police checkpoints made extra efforts to check cars and passenger IDs.

The price hikes were partly the result of transportation disruptions on the main road linking Baghdad with provinces to the north, but they might also be a telltale sign of a nervous city.

“We were not prepared for this sudden spike in the prices of foodstuff, vegetables and fuel,” said Yasser Abbas, a government employee from Baghdad’s sprawling eastern district of Sadr City.

“I do not know how the poor people in Baghdad will manage their life in the coming days. God be with them until this crisis is over because hunger is as dangerous as bullets,” Abbas said.

In the meantime, dozens of men climbed into the back of army trucks at volunteer centers, chanting Shiite religious slogans, hoisting assault rifles and pledging to join the nation’s beleaguered security forces to battle the Sunni militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS.

“By God’s will, we will be victorious,” said one volunteer, Ali Saleh Aziz. “We will not be stopped by the [ISIS] or any other terrorists.”

The volunteers were first taken to an assembly center in eastern Baghdad, where they were handed military uniforms, and later went to Taji, home of Iraq’s largest military base north of Baghdad, to undergo basic training. State-run television aired video of the volunteers being drilled, still in their civilian clothes.

The mobilization unfolded against a backdrop of religious and nationalist fervor. State-run television aired a constant flow of nationalist songs, clips of soldiers marching or singing, as well as interviews with troops vowing to crush the militants. Other broadcasts included archival clips of the nation’s top Shiite clerics and aerial shots of Shiite shrines.

Shiite cleric and political leader Ammar Hakim was shown on television networks donning camouflaged military fatigues as he spoke to volunteers from his party, although he still wore his clerical black turban that designates him as a direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad.

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, a Shiite widely resented by Sunnis for his perceived sectarian policies, denied that the call by the Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani was directed against Sunnis, saying it was in fact meant to protect the country and its holy shrines.

“Talk of Sunnis and Shiites must be dropped,” he said, calling for the unity of all Iraqis.

Many volunteers, however, said they had enlisted to protect their faith and shrines at risk in the city of Samarra north of Baghdad and elsewhere. The militants have threatened to march all the way south to the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, home to two of the most revered Shiite shrines.

Maliki himself appeared to give the standoff with ISIS a sectarian color, paying a surprise visit to Samarra on Friday and appearing on state-run television while praying there. The shrine was badly damaged in a bombing blamed on Sunni extremists in 2006. That attack sparked a wave of bloodletting between Sunnis and Shiites that lasted two years. The violence ebbed in 2008 after the increase of U.S. troops, a revolt by moderate Sunnis against the militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq and a Shiite militia cease-fire.

The TV video seemed clearly aimed at rehabilitating Maliki’s reputation in the eyes of Shiites as a protector of the faith and its followers. He also declared that Samarra would be the assembly point for the march north to drive out the militants, another apparent religious incentive to Shiites.

On Saturday evening, a dozen armed militiamen got off a bus on a main central Baghdad road and chanted Shiite slogans before driving away.

Fighters from ISIS, an Al Qaeda splinter group drawing support from Saddam Hussein-era figures and other disaffected Sunnis, have made dramatic gains in the Sunni heartland north of Baghdad after overrunning Iraq’s second-largest city of Mosul on Tuesday. Soldiers and policemen have melted away in the face of the lightning advance, and thousands have fled to the semiautonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq.

On Saturday, insurgents seized the small town of Adeim in Diyala province after Iraqi security forces pulled out, said the head of the municipal council, Mohammed Dhifan. There was no official confirmation of the loss of the town about 60 miles north of Baghdad.

Jawad Bolani, a lawmaker and former Cabinet minister close to Maliki, said a military offensive was underway Saturday to drive the insurgents from Tikrit, Hussein’s hometown north of Baghdad, although fighting in the area could not be confirmed.

Maj. Gen. Qassim Moussawi, spokesman for the Iraqi military’s commander in chief, said Iraq’s armed forces had “regained the initiative” in the north and northeast, blunting ISIS advances and regaining control of some localities.

As President Obama considers possible military options for Iraq, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered the aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush to move from the northern Arabian Sea into the Persian Gulf. The carrier was to be accompanied by two guided-missile ships.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Saturday that his Shiite-dominated was ready to help Iraq if asked, adding that it had “no option but to confront terrorism.”

He said Iran would “study if there is a demand for help from Iraq” but that no specific request for assistance had been made.

Entry of Iranian forces into Iraq “has not been raised so far,” and “it’s unlikely that such conditions will emerge,” he added.

Iran has built close political and economic ties with Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion toppled Hussein’s Sunni-led regime.