When it comes to explaining, for an Irish audience, the nature of the Popular Mobilization Forces, as Iraq’s Iran-backed Shia Muslim paramilitary force call themselves, it’s quite hard to know where to begin.
The first thing to say, probably, is that as an Iranian-backed, explicitly Shiite organisation, you have to be a Shia Muslim to join. And that they do not much like their Sunni Muslim neighbours, as their record would seem to attest:
For the second time in three days, the US denounced the Popular Mobilization Forces, known in Arabic as the Hashd al-Shaabi, for their assaults on other Iraqis and called on the Baghdad government to establish control over the rogue groups.
“The United States strongly condemns the massacre of innocent civilians by Iran-backed militias in [Salahuddin] governorate,” State Department Spokesperson, Morgan Ortagus, said in a statement issued on Monday.
There’s much more than that. These guys aren’t quite on the level of ISIS, but they have no compunction about using murder, mayhem, beheading, torture, and mutilation – not to mention rape – as a weapon of war. They are responsible for countless deaths, and dozens of alleged atrocities.
Clare Daly styles herself as a feminist. It’s very hard to square that with posing for photos with an organisation accused credibly of using the rape of women as an act of war.
The second thing to say about her new pals is that they did fight, long and hard, against ISIS. But that, again, can be explained largely by religion: ISIS were Sunni Muslims, these guys are Shia Muslims. While Sunni and Shia Muslims live happily and peacefully alongside each other in large tracts of the middle east, you will of course find absolute headbangers on both sides, eager to eradicate the other. This lot are, in layman’s terms, the armed wing of the Shia headbangers.
Which makes, of course, the decision by Clare Daly and Mick Wallace to head over to Iraq, where they either deliberately or accidentally took part in one of their propaganda video, hard to fathom.
Daly and Wallace, of course, are part of an Irish left which loves to scream and shout in opposition to free speech for “fascists” and the “far right”, and which regularly seeks to “de-platform” people who they agree with. And yet, at the same time, they’ll gladly head to the ends of the earth to meet with, and elevate people like this.
Note Daly’s dress in the photo above. You might think, if you were a casual viewer, that that’s simply how all women in Iraq dress these days, and she’s simply showing respect to Iraqi culture. That would be wrong though. Here, just yesterday, are some Iraqi women graduating from medical school. Daly isn’t required to dress like the mirror image of an ISIS bride. She clearly chose to:
Wonderful video. Watch the medical students of Baghdad celebrating their graduation. These are the future doctors of Iraq.
Congratulations 🥳🥳🥳@akhbarpic.twitter.com/GuNzq3cAYv
— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) April 8, 2021
Wallace and Daly, of course, won’t wear a suit or dress like professionals or submit to a dress code when they’re in Ireland. But they’ll don whatever robes these bozos tell them to.
What benefit, incidentally, accrues to the people of Dublin, in Daly’s case, and Ireland South, in Mick Wallace’s case, from this visit? What benefit accrues to the people of Iraq? Given the choice between visiting the ordinary people of Iraq, and visiting an armed group with a string of atrocities to its name, the pride of Ireland chose to throw their lots in with the murderers. And, as the Journal reports, their visit was of sufficient propaganda value that this gaggle of head-choppers are now using Daly and Wallace to promote themselves as people with international standing.
Daly has recent form, of course, for bizarre foreign policy stances. Earlier this year she gave a speech in the European Parliament denouncing imprisoned Russian dissident Alexei Navalny as a fascist, and siding with Vladimir Putin. Now she’s off in Iraq with (and, as her host saw it, endorsing, however much she might protest) an Iranian-backed armed group. As always with these people, it appears to be a simple case of “the enemy of America is my friend”.
And of course, what’s the official line that they both take? That American interference in Iraq is wrong. And so, the only logical thing for them to do, then, is to go and endorse…Iranian interference in Iraq.
Both of them should be run out of office – run out of it – by the voters of Ireland at the first available opportunity. That probably won’t happen though. When election time comes, they’ll be back over here pretending that the interests of Irish people are their number one priority. It’s hard to look at this little outing, though, and believe that.