The US government, along with its European allies, have condemned the storming of Sweden’s embassy in Baghdad by hundreds of Iraqi protesters who demonstrated against Stockholm’s sanctioning of Quran burning events. The incident, coupled with a fallout between the Iraqi Presidency and a pro-Western Christian leader, is making headway in Western mainstream and social media. Yet, the planned deployment of 2,500 US troops to Iraq has gone under-reported, as the supposedly concluded combat mission there clearly continues.
Sweden drew the ire of the Muslim world, during the recent Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha, after the Swedish police green-lit the burning of Islam’s Holy book, the Quran, outside of a Mosque in Stockholm. Muslims launched their own protests across the world, gathering to condemn the behavior of the Swedish authorities. In addition to this, governments of various Muslim nations lashed out, as some Christian majority nations like Russia made it clear that such acts would be punishable by prison time. Russian President, Vladimir Putin, announced that those who are caught burning the Muslim Holy book, will serve their jail sentence in the Muslim-majority Republic of Chechnya.
In the collective West, the issue of Quran burning has become a freedom of speech debate; anti-Muslim activists have claimed that they have the right to do this under freedom of speech laws, while others have maintained that this amounts to a hate-crime, due to the act’s physical nature. The Swedish authorities have again given the mandate to another Quran burning event, allowing anti-Muslim protesters to voice their hatred of Islam through provocatively destroying the Muslim holy book. However, outside of the West, in the Muslim majority country of Iraq, a group of protesters that are said to be linked to the popular Shia cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, decided to organize their own demonstration to pre-empt the burning of the Quran.
A few hundred Iraqi demonstrators managed to break into the Swedish embassy site, allegedly setting a fire next to the structure, and were later repelled by Iraqi security forces. Iraqi Prime Minister, Mohammad Al-Sudani, declared the storming of the embassy to be a security breach and vowed to protect diplomatic missions. Later, however, the Iraqi government decided to expel the Swedish ambassador over the planned Quran burning event that Stockholm has green-lit. Iraqi State TV also reported that the nation had suspended the working permit of Sweden’s Ericsson on Iraqi soil.
Commenting on this issue, during a speech to mark the third day of the Muslim holiday period known as Muharram, Hezbollah leader, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, remarked that the man responsible for initiating the Quran burning events was working on behalf of the Israeli Mossad, in order to sow division. Nasrallah elaborated to explain that the key goal of the Quran desecration, which has been committed in front of a mosque and the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm, by an Iraqi immigrant from a Christian background, was encouraged to stir sectarian hatred in Iraq.
A Conspiracy To Stir Christian-Muslim Tensions In Iraq?
The infamous Quran burner in Sweden is an Iraqi refugee named Salwan Momika. Salwan decided to begin burning the Quran and became a prominent anti-Islam influencer just months after he was denied citizenship by Stockholm. What is interesting here is that it is a quite common tactic for refugees to burn or desecrate the Quran like this, in order to give them a stronger asylum case and to make the argument that denying them asylum could lead to their death. Yet Momika’s act of burning the Quran was not just aimed at offending all Muslims, as it did, it was specifically targeted at Iraqi Shia Muslims, particularly those who are followers of Iran’s supreme leader, Seyyed Ali Khamenei; whose picture Momika desecrated in front of the Iraqi embassy in Sweden.
Salwan Momika is no ordinary refugee, as he created and led a Christian militia group inside Iraq, the Syriac Falcons Forces, which adhered to its political wing named the Syriac Democratic Union Party. An investigative report by France24 verified videos of Momika leading armed men as part of the Syriac Falcons Forces, who were at the time affiliated with the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units (PMU). The report also revealed that Momika had been sentenced to community service while in Sweden for threatening to kill someone with a knife and had links to an ultra-nationalist party in the country. France24 then reached out to the Swedish authorities to ask why someone who has an alleged criminal past — as the PMU are under sanctions from many Western nations due to war crimes said to have been committed against Daesh fighters — would be granted asylum in Sweden, to which there was no real answer.
The PMU were officially formed in 2014 to fight the Daesh insurgency and were established under the supervision of the Iranian Quds Forces. The groups that form the PMU were from multi-faith backgrounds and adhered to different political leaders — although the majority were and are Shia Muslims — with a later splintering impacting the formation of militias. The Syriac Falcons Militia has been linked to the Imam Ali Brigades, however, a simple search through Arabic media revealed that not only did the Syriac Falcons, of Salwan Momika, fall out of the graces of the PMU and create a rivalry with the most popular Christian forces of Rayan al-Kaldani, but they actively opposed them.
In an article that was published in the Arabic-language outlet, Al-Quds Al-Araby, it was reported that Salwan Momika was arrested by the PMU, after an armed clash between his Syriac Falcons forces and al-Kaldani’s Babylon forces in February of 2017. A number of injuries were reported, coming as a result of the armed clash in the town of Baghdida, south of Mosul city, when the Babylon Christian forces attacked the Syriac Democratic Union Party headquarters. Salwan Momika was accused of attempting to overcome Rayan al-Kaldani’s faction and to become the prominent Christian militia and political force, which is allegedly why Momika was detained. The following year, in April of 2018, Momika arrived in Sweden, accusing the PMU of torturing him — later receiving residency there in 2021.
The Iranian Ministry of Security has accused Salwan Momika of being recruited by Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad, in 2019. Iran claims to have its own intelligence information that confirms Momika was contracted to supply information about the PMU. In return, it is speculated that the notorious militia man, turned anti-Muslim hate preacher, was aided by the Israeli intelligence agency that helped grant him his status in Stockholm and perhaps financially also.
Although, beyond the Iranian Ministry of Security’s allegations, we do not have physical proof to demonstrate that Salwan Momika was/is working on behalf of the Israeli Mossad. The fact that Sweden is notorious for being a location where the Mossad will offer residency for spies and informants, in exchange for their services, indicates a higher likelihood of this being true. In an investigative documentary, published by Al-Jazeera in January, audio and photographic evidence is presented of Israeli Mossad agents hiring Palestinian students in Turkey to work as informants. The investigative piece follows those who informed the Turkish authorities and were guided on how to deal with the Israeli agents; those who completed tasks for the Mossad were transferred cash funds.
Perhaps the most shocking piece of evidence presented in the investigative documentary, was the speed at which a student — who the Mossad thought they had recruited — received an entry visa to Sweden, from the Swedish embassy in Turkey. The Palestinian student was offered residency in Sweden by the Mossad agent and the visa issued by Stockholm was granted in record speed, which is especially rare when it comes to people coming from Turkey and even rarer for Palestinians. The Swedish embassy refused to supply any explanation when approached by Al-Jazeera’s investigative unit.
All of this information does not conclusively prove that Salwan Momika has taken to Quran burning on behalf of the Mossad, as Hezbollah leader Nasrallah has stated, however, there is a compelling case to be made, based purely upon the information we have publicly available.
Dividing Iraqi Christians and Muslims
The Quran burning events, carried out by Salwan Momika and his far-right Swedish colleagues, have stirred up further sectarian tensions around the world, not only inside Iraq. Widespread calls for all Muslim nations to break relations with Sweden over its sanctioning of Quran burning has further added to the crisis, which has been interpreted by anti-Muslim social media influencers as being part of a “Muslim invasion of the West” and demonstrating a so-called Islamic extremist current within the Muslim world.
Simultaneously the rhetoric coming from the West and the actions of the Quran burners brought a direct reaction against the Swedish embassy that turned violent. This has been paired with the statements of Cardinal Louis Sako, a top pro-Western Catholic leader that the Iraqi government recently decided to un-recognize as a Christian leader in the country, sparking condemnation from US State Department Spokesperson Mathew Miller. In response, the Iraqi government claimed that it is a democratic country and is separating religion and State, as to steer the nation away from theocratic practices and it summoned the US Ambassador to Baghdad. Louis Sako, the Iraqi Christian leader, claims that the move by the Iraqi authorities came at the behest of the Christian PMU-aligned militia, Babylon. Interestingly, Sako had condemned the PMU for its detainment of Salwan Momika in 2017, after Momika’s conflict with the Babylon militia.
The popularly accepted reason behind the Iraqi government’s decision to un-recognize Louis Sako, is related to a recent outpour of criticism that surfaced across social media against the Catholic Cardinal. The outpour came following an interview that Sako conducted with Kurdistan24, in which he lashed out at Rayan Al-Kaldani’s Babylon movement and its militia, stating that Al-Kaldani is “self-aggrandizing and wants to become a leader,” statements that were seen as provoking division. Louis Sako also complained about the current balance of Christian assigned seats in the Iraqi parliament, of which the Babylon movement occupies five.
To place this dispute in its proper context, Louis Sako is aligned with the West, and when the Iraqi government made its announcement, he fled to Iraqi Kurdistan in the north — known to be under the de-facto control of the US government and its allies, where the Kurdish-led Iraqi government is to an extent a Western proxy. On the other side, there is Rayan Al-Kaldani, who is sanctioned by the US government for his role in leading the PMU’s 50th Brigade and heads the Babylon movement and is said to maintain ties with Iran.
US Troops Head To Iraq & Immature Social Media Influencers
At this time, the US army is currently sending over 2,500 light-infantry troops from the 10th Mountain Division, who “are off to combat” in Iraq and Syria. This troop deployment, reported in local New York media, is already larger than the total number of US forces that are supposed to be stationed inside Iraq, according to the declaration of 2021 that claimed that the combat mission in Iraq is over. The current number of US service members on the ground should only be 2,500 altogether and the troop deployment plan released for this year clearly shows that there are plans for more than just the 10th Mountain Division to send forces.
Why are the US troops being sent there in seemingly larger numbers? To continue Operation Inherent Resolve, an active COMBAT MISSION ostensibly against Daesh that has been ongoing since 2014. CENTCOM released its own press updates monthly about what it achieved in their missions. The Turkish newspaper, Yeni Safak, has claimed that the large majority of these 2,500 US troops will be sent to back up the Kurdish fighters in North Eastern Syria; the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Although Operation Inherent Resolve is not supposed to be targeted at combating Iran and Russia in the Middle East, this is clearly what it has turned into at this point in time. The operation is only possible because of the 1991 and 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), both of which were invoked for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and continue to be invoked for whatever military action the US government chooses throughout the Middle East. In 2020 this was Donald Trump’s excuse for assassinating Iranian General Qassem Soleimani while he was on a peace mission in Baghdad. The US senate recently voted in favor of cancelling these AUMFs, however, we have yet to see whether they will go through with this decision.
As unaware and willfully ignorant mainstream, alternative, and social media personalities take turns at trying to score points against Muslims and blame them for all of their problems, they ignore US troops being shipped off to Iraq and Syria. They are also ignoring the fact that Swedish troops are currently in Iraq. Instead of looking into the politics of the current Quran burning crisis, it is a lot easier to sit back and point at the Muslim reaction to the burning and desecration of their holy book. In reality, there is evidently more than meets the eye when it comes to this case and this issue goes way beyond a simple freedom of speech debate.
