Category Archives: Iraq

Iraq and U.S. find some potential Sunni allies have already been lost

The New York Times reports: When the militants of the Islamic State entered the Sunni Arab area of Al Alam, they gave its tribal leaders a message of reconciliation: We are here to defend you and all the Sunnis, they said, so join us.

But after a group of angry residents sneaked out one night, burned the jihadists’ black banners and raised Iraqi flags, the response was swift.

“They started blowing up the houses of tribal leaders and those who were in the security forces,” Laith al-Jubouri, a local official, said. Since then, the jihadists have demolished dozens of homes and kidnapped more than 100 residents, he said. The captives’ fates remain unknown.

In the Islamic State’s rapid consolidation of the Sunni parts of Iraq and Syria, the jihadists have used a double-pronged strategy to gain the obedience of Sunni tribes. While using their abundant cash and arms to entice tribal leaders to join their self-declared caliphate, the jihadists have also eliminated potential foes, hunting down soldiers, police officers, government officials and anyone who once cooperated with the United States as it battled Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Now, as the United States and the Iraqi government urgently seek to enlist the Sunni tribes to fight the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, they are struggling to undo the militants’ success in co-opting or conquering the majority of them.[Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Yazidi girls seized by ISIS speak out after escape

The New York Times reports: The 15-year-old girl, crying and terrified, refused to release her grip on her sister’s hand. Days earlier, Islamic State fighters had torn the girls from their family, and now were trying to split them up and distribute them as spoils of war.

The jihadist who had selected the 15-year-old as his prize pressed a pistol to her head, promising to pull the trigger. But it was only when the man put a knife to her 19-year-old sister’s neck that she finally relented, taking her next step in a dark odyssey of abduction and abuse at the hands of the Islamic State.

The sisters were among several thousand girls and young women from the minority Yazidi religion who were seized by the Islamic State in northern Iraq in early August.

The 15-year-old is also among a small number of kidnapping victims who have managed to escape, bringing with them stories of a coldly systemized industry of slavery.

Their accounts tell of girls and young women separated from their families, divvied up or traded among the Islamic State’s men, ordered to convert to Islam, subjected to forced marriages and repeatedly raped. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The anti-imperialist and religious ideology of ISIS

Geneive Abdo and Lulwa Rizkallah write: For many in the West, it seems abhorrent that anyone would voluntarily join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). However, it is only through support from local Iraqi communities that the militants have been able to conquer cities, such as Mosul, while waiting at the gates of Baghdad.

In recent interviews with Iraqi Sunni tribal leaders, the ISIS appeal became more apparent. When ISIS began taking territory in Iraq, “Sunnis had no choice but between fleeing or getting killed or defending themselves. To defend themselves they could either possess weapons or turn to ISIS as an alternative because they had weapons, and followed Islamic thinking,” said one Sunni tribal leader, who travels to Iraq frequently from Jordan, and wished to remain unidentified for his own safety.

While much focus has been centered on the economic incentives ISIS provides, its powerful religious and ideological appeal to Iraqi communities, particularly the younger generation, is perhaps most luring. It is simplistic to dismiss the ISIS Caliphate as neither “Islamic nor a state,” as is often stated in the Arabic press. Among Western governments, the religious dimension of the ISIS appeal is downplayed for two primary reasons: Admitting religion as a role is an acknowledgement that little can be done to stop the spread of ISIS. And two, if ISIS is about religion, then how is it that the vast majority of Muslims condemn the movement?

While it is difficult to clearly state what branch of Islam ISIS follows, many have found commonalities with at least some precepts of the Wahhabi movement of Sunni Islam, founded in Saudi Arabia. Reference is made here to the concepts of takfir, or the rejection of those who are not Muslims, and jihad, waging war against those who are not Muslims, or who are Muslims, but are deemed to reject strict Islamic traditions. One is thus required to identify themselves first and foremost as a Muslim—but a Muslim according to ISIS’ definition, which is not uncontroversial. The duties they then perform are portrayed as religious. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Poll: Arab opinion strongly opposed to ISIS

Christian Science Monitor reports: The Arab public has an overwhelmingly negative view of the Islamic State and a clear majority of Arabs support the goal of the US-led coalition to “degrade and destroy” the extremist Islamist group – even though the same public sees the US and Israel as the biggest beneficiaries of the anti-IS fight.

Those are among the key findings of a poll carried out in seven Arab countries and among Syrian refugees, which the survey’s organizers say is the first serious attempt to gauge Arab opinion concerning IS, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

“We keep hearing there is fertile ground in Arab society for ISIL [but] there is no love lost for ISIL,” says Khalil Jahshan, executive director of the Arab Center of Washington, which conducted the poll, released today, with its parent organization, the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Doha, Qatar. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Forgotten Iraqis: Caught between ISIS and Shia militias

Erin Evers writes: The 30-mile highway from Kifri to Tuz Khurmatu in northern Iraq is a no-man’s-land dotted with motley gatherings of thousands of displaced families, caught between the cruelty of ISIS forces and targeted by militias backed by Iraq’s government.

In August, these people lived in towns around Tuz and Amerli, at the epicenter of fighting in which the militias, Iraqi security forces and Kurdish Peshmerga, assisted by U.S.-led airstrikes, supposedly drove ISIS forces (ISIS calls itself the Islamic State) from the area. No one stayed to protect civilians from the aftermath; their homes were looted and burned by militias, they say, after ISIS pulled out.

Now, several thousand families from this region, about 90 kilometers south of Kirkuk, are eking out an existence in makeshift shelters along the road, caught between contested territory and the mountains leading to the relative safety of Iraq’s Kurdish region. At a defunct chicken factory, I met some 40 families who said they had been living there for two months without a visit, let alone any assistance, from humanitarian organizations or government officials. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

U.S. forces carry out most strikes against ISIS

AFP reports: US forces have carried out the overwhelming majority of airstrikes against Islamic State jihadists since August, with American warplanes conducting about 85 percent of the raids, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

Arab coalition partners have carried out 56 out of 393 airstrikes over Syria, and Western allies have conducted about 70 out of more than 470 bombing raids in Iraq, Col. Patrick Ryder, spokesman for US Central Command, told AFP.

President Barack Obama’s administration frequently touts the vital role of coalition partners in the air war, particularly four Arab states, but the numbers convey how the Americans are bearing most of the burden of the campaign.

Since launching airstrikes on Aug. 8 on IS jihadists in Iraq, and later extending it to Syria on Sept. 23, US forces and allied aircraft have carried out roughly 9,020 flights, including thousands of surveillance and refueling runs, according to the military’s latest tally.

The overwhelming majority of the intelligence and refueling flights also have been conducted by US aircraft, defense officials said.

After more than 800 airstrikes over about three months, US and coalition aircraft have unloaded about 2,400 bombs and missiles, defense officials said. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Obama seeks new Syria strategy review to deal with ISIS and Assad

CNN reports: President Barack Obama has asked his national security team for another review of the U.S. policy toward Syria after realizing that ISIS may not be defeated without a political transition in Syria and the removal of President Bashar al-Assad, senior U.S. officials and diplomats tell CNN.

The review is a tacit admission that the initial strategy of trying to confront ISIS first in Iraq and then take the group’s fighters on in Syria, without also focusing on the removal of al-Assad, was a miscalculation.

In just the past week, the White House has convened four meetings of the President’s national security team, one of which was chaired by Obama and others that were attended by principals like the secretary of state. These meetings, in the words of one senior official, were “driven to a large degree how our Syria strategy fits into our ISIS strategy.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

ISIS chief promises victory in purported audio

Bloomberg News reports: Islamic State is still advancing in the face of intensified military action against it, the group’s leader said in a purported audio message released a few days after reports he had been injured or killed.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi said the recent campaign against his group has been “one of the toughest so far, but it is one of the most failed ones,” according to an audio message posted on social media networks.

“The Crusader air strikes and continuous bombing day and night on the locations of Islamic State have not stopped its advances,” al-Baghdadi said. “The Crusaders will be defeated and Muslims will be victorious.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

U.S. military considers sending combat troops back to Iraq

The Guardian reports: The top-ranking officer in the American military said on Thursday that the US is actively considering the use of American troops directly in the toughest upcoming fights against the Islamic State (Isis) in Iraq, less than a week after Barack Obama doubled troop levels there.

General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, indicated to the House of Representatives armed services committee that the strength of Isis relative to the Iraqi army may be such that he would recommend abandoning Obama’s oft-repeated pledge against returning US ground troops to combat in Iraq.

Retaking the critical city of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest, and re-establishing the border between Iraq and Syria that Isis has erased “will be fairly complex terrain” for the Iraqi security forces that the US is once again supporting.

“I’m not predicting at this point that I would recommend that those forces in Mosul and along the border would need to be accompanied by US forces, but we’re certainly considering it,” Dempsey said. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

In shake-up, Iraqi premier replaces 36 commanders

The New York Times reports: The recently installed Iraqi prime minister removed 36 military commanders in a sweeping shake-up on Wednesday, in his first public attempt to put his mark on the Iraqi security forces battling to retake territory from Islamic State militants.

Despite receiving more than $25 billion in American training and equipment over the past 10 years, the Iraqi military buckled, and thousands of troops fled, in the face of the Islamic State’s rapid advance across Iraq this summer. Only half the remaining units are considered fit to fight, according to American officials.

But even as Iraqi and American officials are racing to expand the security forces and turn their losses around, they are having to struggle with a widespread perception of the Iraqi Army as a hopelessly corrupt and incompetent institution. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The fighters of Iraq who answer to Iran

Reuters reports: Among the thousands of militia fighters who flocked to northern Iraq to battle militant group Islamic State over the summer was Qais al-Khazali.

Like the fighters, Khazali wore green camouflage. But he also sported a shoulder-strapped pistol and sunglasses and was flanked by armed bodyguards. When he was not on the battlefield, the 40-year-old Iraqi donned the robes and white turban of a cleric.

Khazali is the head of a militia called Asaib Ahl al-Haq that is backed by Iran. Thanks to his position he is one of the most feared and respected militia leaders in Iraq, and one of Iran’s most important representatives in the country.

His militia is one of three small Iraqi Shi’ite armies, all backed by Iran, which together have become the most powerful military force in Iraq since the collapse of the national army in June.

Alongside Asaib Ahl al-Haq, there are the Badr Brigades, formed in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War, and the younger and more secretive Kataib Hezbollah. The three militias have been instrumental in battling Islamic State (IS), the extremist movement from Islam’s rival Sunni sect.

The militias, and the men who run them, are key to Iran’s power and influence inside neighboring Iraq. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The Kurds can’t afford to leave Iraq

Luay Al Khatteeb and Ahmed Mehdi write: The federal government in Baghdad believes the Kurds have been playing a double game by demanding their share of federal oil revenues while also signing a string of independent contracts with international oil companies and midsize wildcatters and then pocketing the oil export profits after bypassing Baghdad.

In the past, Iraq and the Kurds have always come back to the negotiating table. This time could be different.

Despite Mr. Barzani’s calls for an independence referendum, K.R.G. officials are still counting on Baghdad to send them money. However, this double strategy is precarious — and the threat doesn’t come from Baghdad, but from Basra in the south.

There is a real risk that Iraq’s southern Shiite provinces — which produce over 90 percent of Iraq’s oil — could copy the Kurds in their call for autonomy. Basra’s political elites do not see why a share of their oil profits should go to the K.R.G. government in Erbil if those funds are only helping to subsidize Kurdish independence ambitions.

The Kurds face a hard choice: either they become part of a viable federal oil revenue sharing system or go their own way. And for the K.R.G., losing revenues from the central government would be irreversible and disastrous. That’s because an independent Kurdistan would make less than $7 billion per year — almost a third less than they received when given just 12 percent of Iraq’s total oil revenues. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

War on ISIS: Only one of every four strike missions result in airstrikes

The New York Times reports: More than three months into the American-led air campaign in Iraq and Syria, commanders are challenged by spotty intelligence, poor weather and an Iraqi Army that is only now starting to go on the offensive against the Islamic State, meaning that warplanes are mostly limited to hitting pop-up targets of opportunity.

Weekend airstrikes hit just such targets: a convoy of 10 armed trucks of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, near Mosul, as well as vehicles and two of the group’s checkpoints near the border with Syria. News reports from Iraq said the Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had been wounded in one of the raids, but American officials said Sunday that they were still assessing his status.

In Iraq, the air war is tethered to the slow pace of operations by the Iraqi Army and Kurdish forces. With relatively few Iraqi offensives to flush out militants, many Islamic State fighters have dug in to shield themselves from attack.

The vast majority of bombing runs, including the weekend strike near Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, are now searching for targets of opportunity, such as checkpoints, artillery pieces and combat vehicles in the open. But only one of every four strike missions — some 800 of 3,200 — dropped its weapons, according to the military’s Central Command. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Mosul resident: ‘Anybody would be better than ISIS, even the Israelis’

The Independent reports: “It is like a terrible dream,” says a man who has just fled Mosul for Irbil, describing conditions in the city five months after Isis captured it in June.

He adds that “from the day they started to blow up the mosques people hated them”, referring to the destruction of the Mosque of Younis (Jonah) and other mosques denounced by Isis “as places for apostasy not prayer”.

The man, a small businessman who had been an army officer under Saddam Hussein and is now on a pension, was very nervous that anybody should learn his name. Some of his family have stayed on in Mosul to prevent their house being confiscated by Isis. Its officials check house-to-house demanding to see documents proving that the occupant is the owner. If they discover that the real owner has left the city, he is given 10 days to return or his house is confiscated by Isis.

He said actually crossing from Isis-controlled territory to that under the authority of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) had not been difficult. He had taken the road between Mosul and Kirkuk that was guarded by “a couple of 15- or 16-year-olds with guns” at a checkpoint. A Kurdish friend sponsored him to enter the KRG. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

U.S. airstrike on ISIS convoy killed leader’s key aide

The Guardian reports: A key aide to the leader of Islamic State (Isis) was killed in a US strike on a convoy near the Iraqi city of Mosul that destroyed 10 vehicles carrying a number of the group’s top militants.

Abdul Rahman al-Athaee, also known as Abu Saja, is known to have died in the attack on Friday. A key aide to the Isis leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, he travelled frequently with the group’s top leadership.

Colonel Patrick Ryder, a spokesman at US central command, said on Saturday: “I can confirm that coalition aircraft did conduct a series of air strikes yesterday evening [Friday] in Iraq against what was assessed to be a gathering of Isil [Isis] leaders near Mosul. We cannot confirm if Isil leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was among those present.”

Iraqi officials were also unable to confirm whether Baghdadi was among the 50 casualties. Isis did not immediately issue any statement on the strikes.

The news came as Britain’s chief of the defence staff, General Sir Nick Houghton, warned on Sunday that the Isis leadership would regenerate itself even if Baghdadi had been killed.

In a sign that the UK believed there was a strong chance Baghdadi died in the air strikes, Houghton spoke of “potential death” as he said it would take some days for the US to confirm whether the Isis leader was alive or not.

Speaking on the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1, the general said: “I can’t absolutely confirm that al-Baghdadi has died. Even the Americans themselves are not yet in a position to do that. Probably it will take some days to have absolute confirmation.”

But Houghton warned that Isis would fight back if its leader had been killed. He said: “What I wouldn’t want to do is rush to the sense that the potential death of one of their totemic leaders is going to create some strategic reverse within Isis. They will regenerate leadership … because of the current potential attractiveness of this warped ideology. Unless we get the political dimension of the strategy in place then Isis has the potential to keep regenerating and certainly regenerating its leaders.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Sunni tribes join Shiite militias in battle for Iraqi town, a rare show of sectarian unity

McClatchy reports: Sunni Muslim tribesmen, Shiite militia fighters and Iraqi security forces set out Saturday to recapture a key city in Anbar province and stop Islamic State atrocities against a local tribe in an extraordinary coalition that could stir sectarian tensions or potentially serve as a model for future cooperation against the militants.

The operation to liberate Hit, about 90 miles west of Baghdad, could reshape the situation in Anbar in a way that would impact the mission of U.S. troops who are being deployed to the province from among the additional 1,500 U.S. military advisers the Pentagon said it is sending to Iraq at the end of the year.

“This is a dramatic change,” said Hisham al Hashimi, a prominent Iraqi defense analyst. “We have the Sunni Arab tribes fighting hand in hand with the Shiites.”

The move was preceded by U.S. airstrikes against Islamic State positions on the route of the advance, which was moving slowly because of numerous roadside bombs, according to two tribal leaders reached by telephone. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

ISIS leader said to be ‘critically wounded’ in U.S.-led airstrikes near Mosul

Al Arabiya News reports: The leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was “critically wounded” when a U.S.-led air strike targeted the western Iraqi border town of al-Qaim, tribal sources told Al Arabiya News Channel on Saturday.

CNN reports: Col. Patrick Ryder, in a statement Saturday, said he could not confirm that top ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was in the convoy.

Ryder issued that information in response to news reports indicating the ISIS leader may have died or been injured.

“I can confirm that coalition aircraft did conduct a series of airstrikes yesterday evening in Iraq against what was assessed to be a gathering of ISIL leaders near Mosul, destroying a vehicle convoy consisting of 10 ISIL armed trucks,” Ryder said, using another acronym for ISIS.

ABC News (Aus): Witnesses said IS fighters had cleared a hospital so their wounded could be treated, and used loudspeakers to urge residents to donate blood.

Residents said there were unconfirmed reports Islamic State’s local leader in the western Iraqi province of Anbar and his deputy were killed.

Facebooktwittermail