By Walid Shoebat (Shoebat Exclusive)
Jihadists from the Islamic State group have executed at least 46 members of a tribe that fought against them in Iraq’s Anbar province, sources said.
ISIS jihadists have overrun large areas of Anbar, and the killings are likely aimed at discouraging resistance from powerful local tribes, who will be key to any successful bid to retake the province.
One picture shows a long line of more than 30 men in civilian clothes lying in the middle of a street with streams of blood running over the dusty ground, as young men and children look on.
The victims are barefoot and many are blindfolded, their hands bound behind their backs.
Iraqi security forces, Shiite militias and some Sunni tribesmen are fighting to push ISIS back, but have made only limited local progress so far.
Indiscriminately killing Sahawat tribes is not unusual:
In the video above, the poor Sahawat tribesman is being interrogated by a man with an Egyptian dialect from ISIS harassing the victim calling him a traitor for serving to defend his own country, Iraq.
He asks him to continue the sentence “the Islamic state is?”
He refuses to answer “baqiya” (staying). Its the ISIS slogan “The Islamic State is Here To Stay”.
So he dies.
Sahawat means “awakening”, which that ISIS dislikes and accuses it of being formed by Americans. The term “Sahawat” brought itself to the forefront when ISIS did not recognize borders to Damascus expanded; the organizations that are against it formed what is now called as Sahawat or “Sahwaji” for the members.
The jest of it all is that Islam in its purist form is anti-tribal since all Muslims are one tribe (nation). So many proud tribes resisted ISIS and worked with the U.S. prior to Obama’s pullout. Now they are accused of standing by the “filthy crusaders” and are butchered by ISIS.
Iraq’s Awakening Councils, drawn from among the country’s Sunni Muslims, have been seen as a key factor in reducing terrorism across the country since 2006. But since the U.S. pullout ISIS has captured almost all the cities and towns it did not already hold in Anbar province, a vast area in western Iraq that makes up a quarter of the country. It has captured Hit, Kubaisa and Ramadi, the provincial capital, which it had long fought for. Other cities, towns and bases on or close to the Euphrates River west of Baghdad fell in a few days, often after little resistance by the Iraqi Army which showed itself to be as dysfunctional as in the past, even when backed by US air strikes.
And so, the Sahawat are viewed as traitors by ISIS and are randomly executed in public squares to force people to think twice before working for the Americans.