Author Archives: News Sources

Chemical weapons use ‘systematic’ in Syria

AFP reports: Chemical weapons such as chlorine have likely been used in a “systematic manner” in Syria, according to a report by a team from the world’s watchdog investigating alleged attacks there.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) mission said evidence “lends credence to the view that toxic chemicals, most likely pulmonary irritating agents such as chlorine, have been used in a systematic manner in a number of attacks,” according to a copy of the report obtained by AFP.

President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and rebels have both accused the other of using chemical agents, including chlorine, in the bloody uprising that began in March 2011 and in spite of Damascus promising to hand over all its chemical arms.

The OPCW team probing the allegations was attacked with a roadside bomb and gunfire on May 27, preventing them accessing the site of an alleged attack in the village of Kafr Zeyta.

“The attack on the team and the resulting denial of access prevents it from presenting definitive conclusions,” the report added.

Nevertheless, the allegations “cannot be dismissed as unconnected, random, or of a nature attributable to purely political motives,” the report said. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

In surprise vote, House backs NSA limits

The Hill reports: A proposal to block intelligence agencies from conducting warrantless and “backdoor” searches of U.S. communications passed in the House late Thursday night.

Adopted 293-123, with one member voting present, the amendment to the 2015 Defense appropriations bill would prohibit the search of government databases for information on U.S. citizens without a warrant. It would further cut off funding for the CIA and National Security Agency to build security vulnerabilities, or “backdoors,” into domestic tech products or services for surveillance purposes. Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) was the only member to vote present.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), the chief sponsor of the bipartisan amendment, said it would limit the controversial NSA spying.

“The American people are sick of being spied on,” Massie said. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Despite the explosion in online analytics, marketers still don’t know what they’re doing

Pando reports: We’re in the second decade of the advertising and marketing revolution brought on by the Internet, one that has ripped the heart out of the print media industry. Digital content is targeted and responsive now, offering marketers detailed insight into who clicked, who read, and who shared.

Except the sad thing is, as evidenced by Contently’s The State of Content Marketing Measurement report, a survey of 302 marketers across April and May, is that no one really knows if the new information on offer makes any sense.

The statistics are staggering: 91 percent of marketers Contently spoke to had some level of uncertainty to whether the content performance analytics they used were a good gauge of business impact. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The role the Baathists in Iraq’s Sunni insurgency

The New York Times reports: Meeting with the American ambassador some years ago in Baghdad, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki detailed what he believed was the latest threat of a coup orchestrated by former officers of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.

“Don’t waste your time on this coup by the Baathists,” the ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, chided him, dismissing his conspiracy theories as fantasy.

Now, though, with Iraq facing its gravest crisis in years, as Sunni insurgents have swept through northern and central Iraq, Mr. Maliki’s claims about Baathist plots have been at least partly vindicated. While fighters for the extremist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, once an offshoot of Al Qaeda, have taken on the most prominent role in the new insurgency, they have done so in alliance with a deeply rooted network of former loyalists to Saddam Hussein.

The involvement of the Baathists helps explain why just a few thousand Islamic State in Iraq and Syria fighters, many of them fresh off the battlefields of Syria, have been able to capture so much territory so quickly. It sheds light on the complexity of the forces aligned against Baghdad in the conflict — not just the foreign-influenced group known as ISIS, but many homegrown groups, too. And with the Baathists’ deep social and cultural ties to many areas now under insurgent control, it stands as a warning of how hard it might be for the government to regain territory and restore order.

Many of the former regime loyalists, including intelligence officers and Republican Guard soldiers — commonly referred to as the “deep state” in the Arab world — belong to a group called the Men of the Army of the Naqshbandia Order, often referred to as J.R.T.N., the initials of its Arabic name. The group announced its establishment in 2007, not long after the execution of Mr. Hussein, and its putative leader, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, was one of Mr. Hussein’s most trusted deputies and the highest-ranking figure of the old regime who avoided capture by the Americans.

Referring to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’s fighters, Michael Knights, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who has researched the Naqshbandia group, said, “They couldn’t have seized a fraction of what they did without coordinated alliances with other Sunni groups.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

How Arab backers of the Syrian rebels see Iraq

Marc Lynch writes: As the Obama administration debates whether and how to intervene in Iraq’s rapidly unfolding crisis, many advocates of intervention have argued that action in Iraq should be matched by action in Syria. Should the United States actually intervene militarily in support of the Iraqi government, however, it should know that it will be on the opposite side of many of the Arab networks that support the Syrian uprising.

That’s not because they support the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has been in a state of open warfare with most other Syrian rebel groups. They just mostly don’t see ISIS as the primary issue. Many of the most vocal Arab backers of Syria’s rebels support what they cast as an Iraqi popular revolution against an Iranian-backed sectarian despot. They equate the Iraqi uprising with the Syrian uprising, as a Sunni revolution against a Shiite tyrant, and actively oppose U.S. or Arab intervention against it. For just one example, the Kuwaiti Islamist preacher Hajjaj al-Ajmi, who has been one of the most prominent fundraisers for Syrian insurgency groups, has urged repeatedly against supporting “the moves by America and Iran to confront the Iraqi revolution.”

That seems to be a popular view, at least among those sectors of the Arab public most invested in supporting the Syrian insurgency. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Islamist group calls for Muslim states to protect Sunnis in Iraq

Reuters reports: Islamist scholars led by influential Qatar-based cleric Youssef al-Qaradawi urged Arab and Islamic states on Thursday to protect Sunni Muslims in Iraq, where sectarian war threatens after Sunni Islamist insurgents overran much of the country’s north.

Fighters from the radical Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seized a swathe of northern Iraqi towns last week in a southwards thrust towards Baghdad, stunning the country’s Shi’ite Muslim-led central government.

The United States is considering an Iraqi request to launch air strikes on ISIL and Iran’s president said on Wednesday his countrymen would not hesitate to defend Shi’ite shrines in Iraq.

Iraq’s energy-rich Gulf Arab neighbors, all Sunni monarchies, have condemned ISIL but blame the Baghdad government for the crisis by failing to share power with Iraq’s Sunni minority. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Turkey opposes possible U.S. strikes on militants in Iraq

Today’s Zaman reports: Turkey objected to possible US air strikes on militant targets in Iraq on Thursday, a day after the US announced that the Iraqi government has officially asked for such attacks to help it deal with a mounting insurgency that now threatens Iraq’s territorial integrity.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said any air strike on Iraq could cause considerable civilian deaths and that the US does not view such a strategy as favorable.

In his remarks in Ankara, before departing for Vienna on Thursday, Erdoğan indicated that Turkey, which has seen 80 of its citizens held captive by the insurgents of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Iraq more than a week ago, will not welcome an air attack on Iraq.

“America, looking at its stance and recent statements, does not view such attacks positively. Because the ISIL elements are mixed with the civilians there, such an operation could result in a serious number of civilian deaths,” Erdoğan said. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Maliki or ISIS? Neither looks good to Sunni Awakening veterans

Christian Science Monitor reports: The last time the Al Qaeda franchise raised its head in Iraq, its brutal tactics convinced many fellow Sunnis to take them on.

Back then, fresh-faced Abu Omar was a local leader of the US-backed “Sons of Iraq,” trying to put a lid on Sunni militancy.

But today, as Sunni jihadists of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) advance across the country, he sits at home in a dark blue polo shirt playing with his children, unable to stop a storm that he says is threatening to engulf Iraq again.

ISIS is one problem. The group has posted videos it claims show it massacring Shiite Iraqi Army troops, while promising “justice” and basic services on its turf.

But the stunning ISIS advance is riding what some top Sunni politicians – echoed by local players like Abu Omar – say is a much wider “revolution” against the unabashedly Shiite-first policies of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. And this raises the specter of a return to sectarian bloodshed in Iraq.

“If no solution is found very soon, no one will be able to stop ISIS; they are getting very strong with tanks and equipment and manpower,” says Abu Omar, who asked that only this nickname be used.

He reckons that 60 to 70 percent of Iraq’s Sunnis “welcome that revolution” and have been “brainwashed” about the true violent nature of a group they support. “I am expecting worse than 2006-2007, if there is not a quick solution,” he says, adding that ISIS and other Sunni extremist cells are already in Baghdad.

“Rivers of blood will be in the street. The killing we will not be in the air [as rumors], but live,” he warns. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Iraq’s Maliki: I won’t quit as condition of U.S. strikes against ISIS

The Guardian reports: A spokesman for the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has said he will not stand down as a condition of US air strikes against Sunni militants who have made a lightning advance across the country.

Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, on Wednesday made a public call on al-Arabiya television for the US to launch strikes, but Barack Obama has come under pressure from senior US politicians to persuade Maliki, a Shia Muslim who has pursued sectarian policies, to step down over what they see as failed leadership in the face of an insurgency.

Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the Senate intelligence committee, told a hearing on Wednesday that Maliki’s government “has got to go if you want any reconciliation”, and Republican John McCain called for the use of US air power but also urged Obama to “make very clear to Maliki that his time is up”. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

British embassy reopens in Tehran as Iraq crisis helps thaw Iran relations

The Guardian reports: William Hague has announced that the British embassy in Iran will be reopened as jihadist gains in northern Iraq have forced the west to reassess its relations with Tehran.

The foreign secretary said the circumstances were right to restore the diplomatic mission after a significant thawing in relations in recent months.

“Our two primary concerns when considering whether to reopen our embassy in Tehran have been assurance that our staff would be safe and secure, and confidence that they would be able to carry out their functions without hindrance,” Hague told MPs in a written statement. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Iraq’s Sunni insurgency

Hassan Hassan writes: The story of the ongoing events in Iraq is one of lost opportunities. By December 2013, many Sunni leaders had become tired of the jihadist group the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) actions, in their areas and on the other side of the border in Syria, and publicly supported the federal government’s military campaign against the group’s bases. At that time, the momentum against ISIS offered a renewed opportunity for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to work with these Sunni tribal and religious leaders to combat terrorism.

But instead, Maliki gave a speech in which he portrayed his planned military campaign in Anbar as an ancient war between “the followers of Hussein and the followers of Yazid”, a reference to a 7th century defining Shiite battle. The campaign in Anbar has been a disaster, and that failure is directly relevant to today’s crisis. The Iraqi forces failed to dislodge the jihadists and, even worse, Maliki took several steps that played into the hands of extremists. He foolishly shut down a popular protest camp in which thousands of Sunni Iraqis rallied for peaceful change for months, arrested powerful Sunni Member of Parliament Ahmed al-Alwani and killed his brother. Baghdad did not only miss a unique opportunity to move beyond the sectarian divide but made the situation in Sunni areas more favorable for jihadists.

Today, the simplistic portrayal by media and world politicians of the rebellion in Iraq risks making a similar mistake. Headlines as well as political statements focused on ISIS as the only force behind the takeover of several Sunni cities north of Baghdad. And although more recent coverage started to acknowledge the presence of other forces, the dynamics in Sunni areas are still far more complex. But regardless of the extent of its role, ISIS is only one faction in the insurgency. There are at least half a dozen groupings that took part in the offensive. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

ISIS’s hearts and minds campaign in Mosul

Reuters reports: It’s been a week since Sunni rebels took Iraq’s biggest northern city from the army and – with security forces still on the defensive – the fighters in Mosul are settling down and starting to govern their new territory.

Militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, al Qaeda’s wayward Iraqi offspring who spearheaded last week’s offensive across north and western Iraq, drive around Mosul in stolen police cars and station themselves at banks and government buildings.

Haitham Abdul Salam, a 50-year-old blacksmith, says he has resumed work in his shop as life readjusts itself. He says ISIL have removed the huge blast walls from the streets as well as checkpoints in an attempt to ease traffic in the city.

“ISIL treat us in a nice way. There is no harassment, even for women. Prices for foodstuffs are less,” he said, although he added that government salaries are not being paid.

The hearts and minds campaign in Mosul mirrors ISIL’s tactics in Syria, where it has exploited the power vacuum left by a three-year civil war in order to take ground.

In the Syrian city of Raqqa, ISIL moved in with other rebel battalions and started providing food and money to locals. It was only once ISIL had solidified its control of Raqqa did it open courts which imposed public executions and amputations.

Then it violently evicted the rebel groups that helped it take Raqqa and destroyed religious shrines.

In Mosul, unveiled women still walk through the streets and ISIL has stayed away from Christian churches, including the Tomb of Jonah.

However, militants razed the tomb of Ibn al-Athir, an Arab philosopher, according to eyewitnesses, and state television announced on Wednesday that ISIL had in fact threatened to demolish Jonah’s Tomb within three days.

ISIL are being aided by secular Baathists as well as Sunni groups that disagree with their vision of an Islamic Caliphate but share a deep hatred for the Shi’ite-led government in Baghdad.

A member of the Islamic Army, a smaller insurgent group, said ISIL had agreed to run the city in consultation with all Sunni groups through a military council and that all decisions would be consultative.

The different armed factions were debating who to nominative for governor of the city, he added. The favorites are thought to include several ex-generals from Saddam Hussein’s army. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Maliki ignored ISIS warnings before Mosul’s fall, says city’s governor

The National reports: The governor in charge of Mosul when it was overrun by Islamist militants has blamed Iraqi prime minister Nouri Al Maliki for the extremists’ military successes and warned that a counteroffensive would lead to untold bloodshed.

Atheel Nujeifi, who headed Nineveh province, accused the Shiite premier of causing widespread anger at the central government that allowed the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant to capture the provincial capital last week.

Seizing swathes of territory since then, the Al Qaeda-splinter group’s onslaught has edged towards Baghdad and threatens to trigger a sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites.

“He created the crisis,” Mr Nujeifi, who fled the city on June 10, said of Mr Al Maliki, describing the premier’s handling of the crisis as “very bad”.

He said Mr Al Maliki “never listened” to repeated warnings about the deteriorating security situation around Mosul. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

My Iraqi city is falling, but America’s occupation unraveled all hope for unity

Najim Abed al-Jabouri writes: My city was supposed to be the model for a better tomorrow in Iraq. Integrated security forces from all ethnic groups, restored cohesion among the many segments of Iraqi society – this was the hope amid the surge, back when I was the mayor in Tal Afar.

But that was nearly a decade ago, and now my city is a battleground again, as government security forces attempt to withstand the march of Sunni militants, as the incubator for an Islamic state has turned into sectarian chaos. The dream of a unified Iraq has not just been deferred but destroyed.

Isis was a sleeping giant, and to see what went so wrong, you have to follow the destructive path set out by the United States as an occupying power in my country, almost from the moment those first air strikes began.

Back in 2003, most Shia Muslims and a good number of Kurds welcomed the Americans. The Sunni population, meanwhile, was not of one mind: many of them were outright opposed to US control, while others were holding out for things to change for the better. Give the occupiers six months, argued Sunni scholars, to see what happens. Iraq had suffered so many calamities – so many wars and siege after siege – that a population suffering in poverty and destitution, no matter one’s ethnic background, seemed willing to hope together.

Then the American occupational authority, led by Paul Bremer, dissolved state institutions (including the Iraqi army), uprooted the Ba’ath party (by way of harsh de-Baathification laws) and, even worse, failed to give adequate Sunni representation in the “transitional” government (five Sunni Muslims sat on the original Governing Council, to 13 Shia representatives, five Kurds and one Turkoman). This was the beginning of the end of that better tomorrow for Sunni people in Iraq. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Three reasons why Turkey misunderstands ISIS

Mustafa Akyol writes: Many Turkish opinion leaders, especially those in the pro-government media, cannot accept ISIS, or its ilk, as extremist Islamist actors with genuinely held beliefs and self-defined goals. Rather they take it for granted that these terror groups are merely the pawns of a great game designed by none other than the Western powers.

For example, Abdulkadir Selvi, a senior journalist who has been quite vocal in the press and on television generally espousing a pro-government stance, wrote a piece last week titled “Who is ISIS working for?” This was his answer: “Al-Qaeda was a useful instrument for the US. To put it in an analogy, ISIS was born from al-Qaeda’s relationship with [the] CIA. The West gave its manners to al-Qaeda and now it designs our region through the hands of ISIS.” In short, al-Qaeda and its offshoot ISIS are both creations of the US Central Intelligence Agency and serve American interests.

Writing in the same pro-government daily, Yeni Şafak, the prominent columnist Yusuf Kaplan took a similar position. His culprit, however, was not the United States, but the United Kingdom. He wrote, “There is no such thing as ISIS. There is rather a heinous power called England … al-Qaeda was an instrument of the Americans, whereas ISIS is an instrument of the English.”

Yet another writer with strong pro-government views, Cemil Ertem, advanced a conspiratorial line in his column in the daily Star, but added a crucial element. ISIS, he argued, is “the product of the same center that also orchestrated Dec. 17” — referring to the day the corruption investigation, or “coup attempt,” against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan became public. Accordingly, that conspiratorial “center” first tried to topple Erdogan with a bogus corruption investigation, and when that failed, it reignited Kurdish tensions in the country and finally ordered ISIS to attack “Turkey’s political and economic assets in Iraq.”

I quoted just three writers, but there are many similar examples. It would not be unfair to say that this conspiratorial understanding of ISIS is a powerful, if not dominant, narrative within Turkey’s pro-government media. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Iraq crisis hits Turkish economy

Mehmet Cetingulec writes: After ISIS took control of Mosul and began advancing toward other towns, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry warned hundreds of Turkish companies and thousands of Turkish workers to leave Anbar, Baghdad, Basra, Diyala, Kirkuk, Mosul and Salahuddin. Two major Turkish banks closed their branches in Baghdad. As Turks began the evacuation, the fallout on commerce became alarming. More than 1,500 Turkish companies operate throughout Iraq, and when some of them hastily closed their offices after ISIS went on the attack, more than 2,000 trucks headed to Iraq had to turn back.

The surrender of Iraqi towns to ISIS also hit the Turkish markets. The Istanbul stock exchange had climbed to 81,600 points on June 10. After ISIS occupied Mosul, within four days, the index fell to 77,646, a 4,000-point loss. Foreign exchange parity rose, while interest rates and oil prices rose. The worst effect has been the added burden to Turkey’s energy bill.

Minister of Economy Nihat Zeybekci thinks, however, that Mosul will not adversely affect Turkey. In a statement to the daily Milliyet, he said there were no problems in places such as Sulaimaniyah and Erbil, and that events in Mosul were therefore unlikely to have any negative bearing on Turkish exports.

Parts of Zeybekci’s surprising statement also appeared accepting of a fragmentation of Iraq. He said, “Borders that were drawn superficially 60 years ago will be re-demarcated. Parts of the region will find their right places. There is so much diversity, with Arabs, Sunnis, Shiites, Turkmen and Kurds. Then there are plenty of radical groups. They all want to have a say. The region is so sick that all germs freely attack it.”

Although Zeybekci seems relaxed about the current situation, exporters are not. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The culture war between Khamenei and Rouhani

Akbar Ganji writes: Senior clerics, such as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Khamenei, believe in a moral mission for the state. They do not, however, believe in moral pluralism and people’s right to choose their own way of life. They also try to impose the Islamic teachings on the people using the state power, believing that it is their duty to send people to paradise. Critics, on the other hand, say that it is not the government’s mission to do so, and that one cannot create hell on Earth for the people, so that they can go to paradise after they die.

Responding to the critics May 13, in a speech to a group of people visiting with him, Khamenei said:

Sometimes, when there is a debate about teaching the people about religion, we hear some people saying here and there, ‘your Excellency, is it our mission to send the people to paradise?’ Yes, it is. That is the difference between an Islamic ruler and a non-Islamic one. An Islamic ruler wishes to rule in a way that people go to paradise [after they die]. Thus, he has to pave the way. We are not talking about using force and imposition, but about helping [the people]. People’s nature tends to want to go to paradise and we should open the way [for them]. This is our duty, the duty that Imam Ali [Shiites’ first Imam, and the Prophet’s son-in-law and cousin] considered his own also.

Responding to Khamenei, in a speech at a conference on public health on May 24 Rouhani said:

We should not futilely worry the people and make them concerned [about their divine fate]. Do not intervene so much in people’s [private] lives, even if it is with good intentions. We should let the people choose their own path [in life]. They cannot be sent to paradise through use of force and lashing. The Prophet did not have a lash in hand; he was a teacher and kind; we should emulate him.

Rouhani’s response angered the hardline and conservative clerics. Ahmad Alamolhoda, a leading conservative cleric and Friday-prayer Imam of Mashhad, the religious city in northeast Iran, angrily declared, “Not only will we use lashes, but also all of our power to stand up against those who block people from going to paradise.” Reactionary cleric Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi asked sarcastically, “Where did you [Rouhani] learn about your religion? In Feyzieh [seminary in Qom] or in Britain?” Another leading conservative cleric, Ahmad Khatami, said, “You [Rouhani] should not pave the path to hell by your speeches.” Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi reacted by saying, “We should not open the hell’s gates to the people.” The country’s prosecutor, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejehei, who has played a leading role in cracking down on the dissidents for years, said, “They say do not bother with people going to hell or paradise. Such statements are mocking the great work of senior clerics.”

Most recently, on June 12, the judiciary chief, conservative cleric Sadegh Larijani, said, “The root of the claim by those who say that we cannot force the people into paradise is in liberalism and [Western] modernity. Rouhani responded to Larijani almost immediately, “What have we said that has disturbed some people? We only said that culture belongs to the people and it is them that should [choose the] best path for their lives. Are we supposed to make pills of culture, write prescription for the people, and ask them to buy the pill at a pharmacy? It is as if some people are still living in the medieval age.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Why ISIS brags about its brutal sectarian murders

Aaron Y. Zelin writes: Over the weekend, dozens of pictures trickled out on one of the official Twitter accounts of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, the jihadist group currently setting off a panic in vast swathes of northern Iraq. The graphic photographs, according to ISIS, showed mass executions of Shiite soldiers who had fought in the Iraqi government’s military and security forces. In the images, ISIS fighters corral hundreds of individuals into trucks, forcing them to lie down in shallow graves with their heads to the ground, and then shooting them with Kalashnikovs.

ISIS claimed it had killed more than 1,700 people, though the pictures account for a few hundred at most. Though shocking, this level of brutality is hardly new for the extremist Sunni group, as it has attempted to provoke the Shiite population going back to last decade, when the volatile Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was its leader.

ISIS subscribes to takfir, a practice according to which it believes it is legitimate to kill a Muslim who has abandoned its hard-line interpretation of Islam. Last decade, when ISIS was under the control of Zarqawi and was then called Al Qaeda in the Land of Two Rivers (better known as Al Qaeda in Iraq, or AQI), it used takfir to justify the murder of not only the Shiite population of Iraq but also other Sunnis who did not follow AQI’s narrow and severe interpretation of Sharia, or Islamic law. (This broad use of takfir ended up backfiring against AQI, since most Iraqi Sunnis did not want to live under such an oppressive group.)

So ISIS, the latest incarnation of AQI, has religious reasons for massacring Shiites, all of whom it views as apostates. And there’s another motivation for it as well: old-fashioned vengeance. As ISIS’ official spokesperson noted in an audio message posted June 11, “It is true that between us revenge awaits … a long and heavy revenge awaits. However the revenge shall not be in Samara or Baghdad, but rather it shall be in Karbala the city made ?lthy, and in Najaf the polytheist city, so wait.” (Karbala and Najaf are important Shiite shrine cities.) So in ISIS’ estimation, its attacks on Shiites are merely retaliation for the Iraqi government’s actions against Sunnis.

But there’s also a strategic reason behind the executions — and the gruesome pictures posted online for all to see. ISIS’ goal is not only to scare Iraqi Shiites but to provoke them to radicalize, join Iranian-sponsored militias and then commit similar atrocities against Sunnis. ISIS then hopes to set itself up as the protectors of the Sunni population, helping to consolidate its hold on Sunni population centers. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail