Category Archives: Iraq

America’s alignment with Iranian interests is undermining the fight against ISIS

Left Foot Forward: ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan, is brilliantly easy to read. Concise yet thorough the book charts the history of a group, “[a]t once sensationalized and underestimated,” that is simultaneously a terrorist organisation, mafia, conventional army, sophisticated intelligence-gathering apparatus, propaganda machine and the remnants of the Saddam Hussein regime which controls an area the size of Britain in the heart of the Middle East.

The book begins with an underemphasised point: neither the Islamic State (ISIS) nor its governing method – extreme violence coupled with distributing stolen oil revenue and extortion – is new. The United States battled ISIS, then known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), as the US tried to stabilise and democratise Iraq in the last decade. Moreover, ISIS is built out of the ruins of the Saddam regime.

In the late 1980s, Saddam launched the Faith Campaign and “Islamised his regime”. The campaign pushed a hardline Salafism combined with a cult of the leader, and involved setting up of elaborate networks of patronage, informants, militias and weapons to control the religious institutions and prevent a renewed Shi’a uprising as followed Saddam’s eviction from Kuwait in 1991. In tandem, Saddam’s deputy, Izzat Ibrahim ad-Douri, to this day an important insurgent, set up smuggling networks into neighbouring States. These networks would come under ISIS’ control as the Ba’athist-Salafist remnants of the regime fused with foreign al-Qaeda forces in the post-Saddam insurgency.

ISIS was initially led by a Jordanian drug-taker and street-thug turned religious militant named Ahmad al-Khalaylah. Khalaylah had arrived in Afghanistan in time to see the Red Army leave, and then been imprisoned when he tried to take jihad home. In prison, Khalaylah gained status over his mentor, al-Qaeda ideologue Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, and migrated to Taliban Afghanistan in 1999, where he was given start-up funds for a terrorism camp by Osama bin Laden. The world would come to know Khalaylah as Abu Musab az-Zarqawi, and his group would become AQI in 2004. Zarqawi’s supporters would brand him the “Shaykh of the Slaughterers” because of his fondness for decapitating prisoners on film.

While AQI primarily stayed in Iraq, Zarqawi often targeted the homeland he fled: the first attack of the Iraqi insurgency was against the Jordanian Embassy in August 2003; and there was a massive attack against hotels in Amman in November 2005

In post-Saddam Iraq, many Sunni Arabs joined the insurgency to thwart Shi’a power, and others joined because they were made jobless by the disbanding of the army. If the insurgents were not radicalised beforehand they were after time in American prisons, which were “little more than social-networking furloughs for jihadists”.

“If you were looking to build an army, prison is the perfect place to do it,” one expert says. “We gave them health care, dental, fed them, and, most importantly, we kept them from getting killed in combat.” AQI also actively infiltrated the US prisons to help make them jihadist production facilities. [Continue reading…]

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Shiite militia drives back ISIS, but divides much of Iraq

The New York Times reports: At their victory rally, the Shiite militiamen used poetry, song and swagger to sweeten their celebration of an ugly battle.

More than a hundred fighters from the militia, the Badr Organization, had been killed in the farms and villages of Diyala Province in recent fighting against the Sunni extremists of the Islamic State. During the battle, thousands of residents had been forced from their homes — including Sunni families who accused Shiite paramilitary groups like Badr of forced displacement and summary executions.

But the militias had pushed the Islamic State back from key areas in a crucial battle. So on Monday, the Badr Organization convened in a mosque at Camp Ashraf, its base in Diyala, to celebrate its “liberation” of the province — and to serve notice that it was the vanguard force battling the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

Speaking at the rally, to an audience that included giddy fighters barely past their teens, the head of the Badr Organization, Hadi al-Ameri, boasted of the towns his men and allied militias had set free. “These were big operations that others must learn lessons from,” he said.

But even as Mr. Ameri was fishing for broad support and recognition, his group stands among the most divisive in Iraq, accused of atrocities against Sunnis and known for its close ties to Iran. The new government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, which has promised to rule inclusively, has been under pressure to distance itself from retaliatory attacks against Sunnis by both Shiite and Kurdish militiamen. [Continue reading…]

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Vian Dakhil: Iraq’s only female Yazidi MP on the battle to save her people

Abigail Haworth reports: The young Yazidi woman in a blue headscarf says her name is Hana. She is 18. She is standing in the muddy courtyard of her new temporary home – an abandoned, unfinished building outside the Iraqi-Kurdish town of Zakho. Beside her is Vian Dakhil, a politician from the same religious minority. Hana is speaking rapidly and clutching Dakhil’s hand as though she’s terrified this local heroine has something far more important to do than listen to her story.

Hana was abducted by Islamic State (Isis) last August. Heavily armed, black-clad militants stormed her village and shot dead her father, four brothers, two uncles and six cousins. They then separated her from her older female relatives. “They drove me away in a truck with other unmarried girls. Two fighters took me and held me prisoner in their house. They beat me and gave me scraps to eat.” After 36 days, Hana escaped when one of her captors left a window unlocked. “It was like a suicide mission, but I didn’t care. I ran for three days and nights to get away.”

Dakhil, a slim woman with long auburn hair, is not going anywhere. She listens intently as her two armed bodyguards stand at a discreet distance. “How is your health? What else did the men do to you?” she asks.

Blood rushes to Hana’s cheeks. Her eyes, locked on to Dakhil’s, well up with tears. They look at each other in silence. “It’s OK, I will help you, I will help you,” says the politician eventually, freeing her hand from Hana’s grip to pull the girl into a hug.

Vian Dakhil is one of only two Yazidis in Iraq’s parliament. It seems obvious that it’s a lonely job; she’s also the only woman from the besieged minority in an assembly that is three-quarters male. (The other Yazidi politician, a man, is so inactive that few people seem to know he exists.) But I don’t realise how lonely her job is until I’ve spent a 14-hour day with her in northern Iraq, visiting Yazidi survivors of Isis carnage. It’s a relentless marathon of inhaling dust, kissing babies and comforting catastrophically traumatised, grief-wracked refugees like Hana. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS resorts to forced conscription and pointless suicide attacks after losing 2,000 fighters in Kobane

Reuters reports: Islamic State’s defeat in Kobani and other recent setbacks in Syria suggest the group is under strain but far from collapse in the Syrian half of its self-declared caliphate.

Islamic State’s high-profile defeat by Kurdish militia backed by U.S.-led air strikes capped a four-month battle that cost Islamic State 2,000 of its fighters, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the war.

Further from the spotlight, Islamic State has also lost ground to Syrian government and Syrian Kurdish forces elsewhere. Its foes have noted unusual signs of disorganization in its ranks, while reports of forced conscription may indicate a manpower problem as the group wages war in both Syria and Iraq.

There is a long way to go before the tide turns decisively against the group in Syria, where it has faced less military pressure than in Iraq. Islamic State still has a firm grip over its Syrian stronghold in Raqqa province and territory stretching all the way to the other half of its caliphate in Iraq.

The group faces no serious challenge to its rule over those Sunni Arab areas, where it has violently crushed all opposition.

It may yet respond to the Kobani defeat by opening new fronts in Syria. And its capacity to wage psychological warfare was amply demonstrated by this week’s video showing the group burning to death a captive Jordanian pilot.

Yet the Kobani defeat marks the first significant setback for Islamic State (ISIL) in Syria since the rapid expansion of its territorial grip there last year following its capture of Iraqi city of Mosul in June. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS has built near-impregnable base and mass appeal

AFP reports: The Islamic State group has learned from the mistakes of past jihadist movements and established a near-impregnable base of support within Iraq and Syria with spectacular appeal to many of the world’s Sunni Muslims, a new book has warned.


The authors of ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, published this month in the US, spoke to dozens of fighters and members of the group to understand its allure and how it justifies its brutal tactics.

In a telephone interview with AFP, one of the authors, Syrian-born journalist Hassan Hassan, said it was vital to understand that some of the group’s core religious beliefs were widely shared.

“It presents itself as an apocalyptic movement, talking about the end of days, the return of the caliphate and its eventual domination of the world,” said Hassan, who lives in Abu Dhabi where he works as a researcher for a think tank.

“These beliefs are not on the margins — they are absolutely mainstream. They are preached by mosques across the world, particularly in the Middle East.

“ISIS takes these existing beliefs and makes them more appealing by offering a project that is happening right now,” he said, using an alternative name for IS.

Hassan’s research along with co-author Michael Weiss — a US-based journalist — gave them a rare insight into IS training camps for new recruits, which vary in length from two weeks to one year.

“Recruits receive military, political and religious training. They are also trained in counter-intelligence to avoid being infiltrated,” said Hassan.

“After they graduate, recruits remain under scrutiny and can be expelled or punished if they show reservations, or sent back to the camps to ‘strengthen their faith’.”

IS uses certain texts and in-house clerics to provide religious justification for their violence, particularly a book called “The Management of Savagery“, which argues that brutality is a useful tool for goading the West into an over-reaction. [Continue reading…]

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As a curfew is lifted, Baghdad is at long last partying again

The Washington Post reports: The Iraqi government on Thursday abolished the nighttime curfew imposed on Baghdad by U.S. troops in 2003, heralding another small milestone in the city’s recent — and surprising — revival.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced that the curfew will end at midnight Saturday, as well as a series of other measures aimed at normalizing life in the long-blighted capital, even as much of the rest of the country is consumed by war.

He declared four neighborhoods as “demilitarized zones,” in which unauthorized gunmen will be prohibited. He also vowed to start removing the blast walls and barricades that have blocked streets, sealed off neighborhoods and endowed the capital with the air of a militarized zone for much of the past decade.

Similar moves have been promised in the past, only to founder on waves of bombings and violence or repression by government security forces­.

But these days, Baghdad feels different.

Since Islamic State fighters overran much of the north and west of the country in the summer, a paradoxical sense of calm has taken hold. The initial panic that followed the militant onslaught has abated, and as residents have come to realize that the capital is not at risk of falling, Baghdad has sprung to life.

Nightclubs have proliferated, liquor stores dot the streets, and families pile into cars every evening to eat at one of the many new restaurants or stroll in the glitzy new mall. A glittering riverboat plies the Tigris River every night, serving dinner on one deck and coffee on another. A pink neon palace called the Barbie Clinic pampers women with beauty treatments late into the evening.

For those who can’t afford such venues, there are impromptu parties along the bridges and banks of the Tigris, where young men gather with cans of beer to talk, socialize and, after the drink has taken effect, dance in the streets.

The merriment comes to an abrupt close as midnight approaches, triggering a mad dash through the streets to make it home in time.

“Now we will be able to stay until the morning,” Khaled Faisal, 28, said as he sat on a wall beside the river sipping beer with two friends. He welcomed the lifting of the curfew. “It’s good news. It means Baghdad is safe,” he said.

Whether Baghdad is safe is in question. [Continue reading…]

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Jordan’s foreign fighter problem

Huffington Post reports: As Jordan reels from the horrific killing of one of its fighter pilots by Islamic State militants, the death also highlights how inextricably involved the country has become in the conflict in Syria.

Jordan shares an extensive border with Syria, and the proximity has made it one of the main recipients of refugees from the country, as well as a host for covert U.S.-led training of Syrian rebels. While this flow of Syrians into Jordan has raised concerns over security and strain on resources, there’s also worry over the significant number of Jordanians who have become foreign fighters in Syria.

Out of the countries adding to the militants in Syria and Iraq, few are in the same league as Jordan. According to the most recent figures by The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence, Jordan has an estimated 1,500 citizens fighting in Syria and Iraq. Only Saudi Arabia and Tunisia are believed to have contributed higher numbers of militants, with high-end estimates of 2,500 and 3,000, respectively.

Both of these countries have millions more citizens to draw from as well, giving Saudi Arabia a fighters per capita ratio of 107 per million and Tunisia 280 per million, Radio Free Europe reports. Jordan’s ratio is reported as 315 per million, putting them as the top contributor of foreign fighters to Iraq and Syria per capita. [Continue reading…]

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4,000-strong Christian militia formed to fight ISIS in Northern Iraq

Jack Moore reports: Thousands of Iraqi Christians have established their own militia and are training to fight the Islamic State (ISIS) in the Nineveh Plains of northern Iraq.

The Nineveh Plains Protection Units (NPU) has 3,000 Christian men registered to be trained, while another 500 are already training for combat. The militia was founded by the Iraqi political party, the Assyrian Democratic Movement.

Another 500 volunteers from the group are already situated in Assyrian villages in northern Iraq, the majority of which were captured by ISIS when they marched across the country last summer. Approximately 30,000 Christians have since fled the Nineveh Plains for fear of falling into the hands of the radical Islamists. [Continue reading…]

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U.S., allies plan tough battle to retake Mosul from ISIS

The Los Angeles Times reports: Working from this sun-scorched desert base, U.S. and allied commanders are beginning perhaps the most perilous phase of their fight against Islamic State: an attempt to recapture Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, from the entrenched militant forces.

Military officers here say a barrage of airstrikes over the last two weeks helped sever two crucial routes that the extremist militants used to funnel fighters and supplies from the Syrian border to Mosul, their self-declared capital in Iraq and most significant battlefield prize.

U.S. commanders who help oversee the air war say the joint offensive with Iraqi Kurdish ground forces pushed back the Sunni Islamists’ defensive line west of Mosul, recapturing territory and removing a key obstacle, at least for now, as military planners consider tactics for retaking the congested city as early as this summer. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS surprises Kurds in Iraq, killing a commander in a day of attacks

The New York Times reports: Exploiting a foggy night as cover, Islamic State militants launched a surprise attack on Iraqi Kurdish positions on the outskirts of Kirkuk early Friday, killing a senior Kurdish commander and at least five of his men, security officials in the city said.

The assault was one of the most aggressive undertaken against Kirkuk in months by the Islamic State, the jihadist group that straddles a large stretch of Iraq and Syria. The city, in northern Iraq, is an oil hub that is seen as central to the aspiration of Iraqi Kurdish leaders and that poses an attractive strategic target for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

Families fled their homes as the fighting intensified, and at one point, the militants stormed an abandoned hotel in the Kirkuk city center.

The deadly foray on Friday demonstrated the continued ability of Islamic State fighters to harass Iraq’s cities, despite a punishing monthslong campaign by Iraqi forces backed by United States airstrikes to dislodge the extremists. [Continue reading…]

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Does defeat in Kobane mark the beginning of the end for ISIS?

Al Jazeera reports: Losing Kobane after more than four months of intense fighting is a significant propaganda blow to ISIL. The group invested extensive military resources to capture the isolated town on the border with Turkey.

“Daesh [ISIL] took most of the places it wanted in Syria and Iraq but could not capture Kobane,” said Anwar Muslim, the prime minister of the self-ruled administration of Kobane, referring to the organisation by its Arabic name.

“This victory marks the beginning of the end for Daesh.”

Kurdish forces have so far taken control of at least three villages in the southern surroundings of Kobane. It will be a highly challenging task for them to expel ISIL from the dozens of villages that dot the plains around the agricultural town. [Continue reading…]

Robin Wright writes: Stuart Jones, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, told Al Arabiya last week that more than six thousand militants, including many top commanders, have died in Iraq and Syria since launching their blitz last summer. Some are apparently no longer so keen on martyrdom. The senior Administration official also said that the human toll may be demoralizing to ISIS. “We track quite closely the over-all attrition of its ranks, its vehicles, and the dissension it has caused within the organization,” he said. “We understand that a lot of its fighters now are simply refusing to go to Kobani, and the fighters refusing to go to Kobani are being assassinated by ISIL.”

The campaign has been expensive for the West. The U.S.-led coalition ran more than six hundred airstrikes on Kobani — eighty per cent of all its bombings in Syria — which cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Kobani has certainly paid a price. Fighting and bombings have destroyed half the city, which now has no economy, let alone electricity. There is little left for the forty thousand residents who fled; many may remain refugees for some time.

Kobani’s fate could have little impact on how the rest of Syria fares. It may be true, as the senior Administration official told me, that in areas of northern Iraq where ISIS’s command and control is broken down, “its ability to direct fighters to certain areas of the front — where, whenever fighters go there, they never return — is not nearly what it was four months ago.” But the Islamic State nevertheless appears capable of recruiting more men. Twenty thousand foreigners have now gone to fight in Syria and Iraq. It is “the largest mobilization of foreign fighters in Muslim countries since 1945,” the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence, at King’s College London, reported on Monday.

The total number of foreign fighters now exceeds that of foreigners mobilized during the ten-year war against the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan, which was the genesis of extremist movements like Al Qaeda. Unlike the situation in the eighties, though, nearly a fifth of today’s fighters — some four thousand — are residents or nationals of Western European countries, the I.C.S.R. reported. The largest numbers come from France, Britain, and Germany. Others come from Ukraine, China, and New Zealand. [Continue reading…]

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Turkey won’t accept Iraq-style Kurdish rule in Syria, says Erdoğan

Today’s Zaman reports: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has ruled out any possibility of accepting an autonomous Kurdish government in northern Syria similar to the one in northern Iraq, saying a government like this would cause major problems in the future.

In his remarks to reporters on his way back to Turkey after an African tour, Erdoğan criticized the United States’ policy on Syria, which doesn’t involve toppling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“[The US] doesn’t want to make moves that target the [Syrian] regime. It says [toppling the government] is not among its targets. If it doesn’t take place, there won’t be any solution. What would happen? The same thing that happened in Iraq will happen. We don’t want a new Iraq. What is this? Northern Iraq… [We don’t want] a northern Syria to appear! It is not possible for us to accept this,” Erdoğan said.

“I know the burden on Turkey is heavy. We have to keep our stance [firm] on this issue. Otherwise, after a northern Iraq, there would be a northern Syria. These formations will cause big problems in the future,” he concluded.

Erdoğan also pointed to the three Kurdish autonomous administrations formed by Syrian Kurds in January 2014, and once more scolded the US for only placing importance on Kobani. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS said to execute 10 doctors in Mosul for refusing to treat wounded fighters

Rudaw reports: The Islamic State (ISIS) executed 10 physicians in Mosul for refusing to treat the group’s wounded fighters, well-placed sources in Mosul said.

They reported Monday that ISIS had shot the physicians over their refusal to treat jihadi fighters wounded in clashes or shelling.

“Because of extensive attacks and shelling on ISIS, the hospitals of the city (Mosul) are filled with ISIS wounded fighters,” said a source in Mosul. “ISIS has evacuated all other patients in the hospitals in order to treat its own wounded fighters,” he added. “Medical equipment is only being used to treat ISIS fighters.” [Continue reading…]

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ISIS wants to swap this woman for Japanese hostage

Al Jazeera: The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has reportedly demanded the release of an Iraqi woman detained in Jordan in exchange for a Japanese national they have held captive.

In a video recording posted online on Saturday, Kenji Goto, a freelance Japanese journalist abducted while reporting on Syria’s civil war last year, spoke of ISIL’s demand for a prisoner exchange to guarantee his release.

“They are just demanding the release of their imprisoned sister Sajida al-Rishawi. It is simple. You give them Sajida and I will be released,” Goto says in the video.

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Mosul residents describe ‘hell’ of ISIS occupation as Kurdish fighters close in

The Guardian reports: Few people dare talk to the media, and those who do speak only on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals against themselves and their families. Only a trickle of information comes out of Mosul besides Isis’s own slick propaganda.

Civilians inside the city – from taxi drivers to housewives, students to shopkeepers – paint a gloomy picture of life there. “All I can say is that life under Daesh [Isis] is hell, not heaven as they claim,” said Tariq, who used to study at a technical institute before Isis took over. “We can’t study and we don’t know what the future holds for us.”

A shopkeeper near Nabi Yunus mosque, which was destroyed by Isis last July, said he was weary of life under Isis but saw no way out. “If you want to leave Mosul you need three people to guarantee that you will come back after five days. If you don’t return, you put their lives at risk.”

The shopkeeper said many militants killed or injured fighting in Sinjar had been brought back to Mosul. “I have been forced to give blood three times,” he added. [Continue reading…]

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Can Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi hold Iraq together?

Christian Science Monitor reports: The challenge facing Abadi was always going to be herculean: how to overcome years – even decades – of sectarian divisions in Iraq, made worse by the unabashedly Shiite-first policies of his predecessor, Nouri al-Maliki.

“I think everybody now, in the political spectrum and the country, recognizes this is the last chance for Iraq to survive as we know it,” says Vice President Ayad Allawi, himself a former prime minister. And yet that realization, he adds, hasn’t focused Iraq’s political minds enough.

“Until now, this inclusivity is theoretical rather than actual,” says Mr. Allawi, a secular Shiite who served as interim prime minister from 2004 to 2005 and whose Iraqiya bloc has included top Sunni politicians.

“In parallel with this military effort, we need a political effort, which is not existing until now,” says Allawi. The areas where IS is operating need to be “immunized” by ensuring equal citizenship for Sunnis and mobilizing them to fight IS themselves, “not to be disenfranchised, ignored, and punished. And unfortunately this is not happening.” [Continue reading…]

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Air strikes killed 6,000 ISIS fighters, says U.S. ambassador to Iraq

Al Arabiya: The U.S.-led airstrikes have “taken more than half” of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group’s leadership, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Stuart Jones told Al Arabiya News Channel in an interview aired Thursday.

Jones described the airstrikes as having a “devastating” effect on ISIS after Baghdad criticized Washington for not doing “enough” to eliminate the Islamist group.

“We estimate that the airstrikes have now killed more than 6,000 ISIS fighters in Syria and Iraq,” Jones said.
The U.S. ambassador added that the airstrikes have “destroyed more than a thousand of ISIS vehicle inside Iraq.”

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Kurdish troops advance on Mosul on three sides

The Washington Post reports: Kurdish forces claimed to have pushed back Islamic State militants from a 300-square-mile area of northern Iraq on Wednesday and said they cut one of the extremist group’s key supply lines to the occupied city of Mosul.

The multi-pronged operation, which began in the early morning, involved about 5,000 Kurdish soldiers, known as peshmerga and was backed by U.S.-led airstrikes, according to a statement from the government of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region.

The offensive came amid speculation that Iraqi forces are preparing for an assault on Mosul, one of Iraq’s biggest cities, which was seized by Islamic State extremists in June as they swept across the north.

Under pressure from airstrikes and paranoid about informants, the militants have cut phone lines and Internet connections to the city in recent months. [Continue reading…]

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