ID Iraqis on their way back to their hometown. 4 October 2016. Cengiz Yar/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.The PMF is made up primarily of Shia Muslim groups, the strongest and most powerful of which are backed and controlled by Iran. In April 2015, the PMF was formally put under the command of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.
Toward the end of 2015 and throughout the spring of 2016, I was on the ground in Erbil, Iraq, speaking to internally displaced persons (IDPs) from different parts of the country. One group came from a city that had been freed by the Iraqi army one year earlier. These IDPs told me their stories; stories of harassment, kidnapping and killing of Sunni men and boys by Shia militias. Their reports stated that the reason these men and boys were targeted for abuse was due to their Sunni surnames and that the atrocities primarily occurred when IDPs were leaving from or returning to their home cities.
In the war against the so called “Islamic State” (IS), the first reports of harassment, killings, and houses blown up and burned down by Shia militias appeared in early 2015 and then again when the city of Tikrit was regained from IS in March and April of 2015.
