ISIS/ISIL conflict in Syria/Iraq (No OpEd, No Politics)

BY ISRA' AL-RUBAI'I
BAGHDAD Mon Aug 4, 2014 9:59am EDT (Reuters) - Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered his air force for the first time to back Kurdish forces against Islamic State fighters after the Sunni militants made another dramatic push through the north, state television reported on Monday.

Kurdish peshmerga fighters, who cut their teeth fighting Saddam Hussein's troops, were regarded as one of the few forces capable of standing up to the Sunni insurgents who faced almost no opposition from Maliki's U.S.-trained army during their lightning advance through the north in June.

Then on Sunday the Islamic State inflicted a humiliating defeat on the Kurds with a rapid advance through three towns to reach the Mosul Dam, acquiring a fifth oil field to fund its operations along the way.

State television and witnesses said that the Islamic State had seized Iraq's biggest dam. Kurdish peshmerga officials said they have pushed militants from the dam area and were in control of it. This could not be immediately confirmed.

Despite predictions from Kurdish commanders that their forces would launch a successful counter-offensive, one senior Kurdish official urged the United States to step in and provide weapons "for the sake of fighting terrorism".

Maliki has been at odds with the Kurds over budgets, oil and land, and tensions deepened after the Islamic State seized control of large swathes of land in the north and west of OPEC member Iraq.

In July, the Kurdish political bloc ended all participation in Iraq's national government in protest over Maliki's accusation that Kurds were allowing terrorists to stay in Arbil, the capital of their semi-autonomous region known as Kurdistan.

Opponents accuse Maliki of being an authoritarian ruler with a sectarian agenda whose alienation of Sunnis fuelled the insurgency. Currently ruling in a caretaker capacity after an inconclusive election in April, he has defied calls by Sunnis, Kurds and even some fellow Shi'ites to step aside to make room for a less polarising figure.

Maliki seems to have put aside his hostility with the Kurds for now to try to prevent the Islamic State, which has threatened to march on Baghdad, from making further gains.

"The general commander of the armed forces has ordered the air force command to provide backup for the Kurdish peshmerga forces against the terrorist gangs of the Islamic State," state television quoted Maliki's military spokesman Qassim Atta as saying.

A senior Kurdish official said the Kurds had been overstretched and the Islamic State had overwhelming firepower.

"The Islamic State had also been intimidating people by carrying out beheadings," he said.

After thousands of Iraqi soldiers fled their initial advance in June, the group then known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seized tanks, armoured personnel carriers, anti-aircraft guns, mortars, artillery and vehicles.

"It is a very dangerous situation for the region. Something needs to be done soon," said the senior Kurdish official, asking not to be identified.

Despite the odds, Kurdish commanders were talking tough.

One colonel said the Kurdish withdrawal was tactical and forecast that several Kurdish brigades would take back all territory lost on Sunday and even win back Mosul, Iraq's biggest northern city which is firmly in the hands of the Islamic State.

"We will attack them until they are completely destroyed we will never show any mercy," he told Reuters. "We have given them enough chances and we will even take Mosul back. I believe within the next 48-72 hours it will be over."

(This version of the story corrects the day of the week to Monday in the first paragraph.)

(Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Peter Graff)

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BAGHDAD (AP) — Sunni militants from the Islamic State group seized Iraq's largest hydroelectric dam on Thursday, giving them control of enormous power and water resources and leverage over the Tigris River that runs through the heart of Baghdad.

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ARBIL Iraq (Reuters) - Islamist militants surged across northern Iraq towards the capital of the Kurdish region on Thursday, sending tens of thousands of Christians fleeing for their lives, in an offensive that prompted talk of Western military action.

Reuters photographs showed what appeared to be Islamic State fighters controlling a checkpoint at the border area of the Kurdish semi-autonomous region, little over 30 minutes' drive from Arbil, a city of 1.5 million that is headquarters of the Kurdish regional government and many businesses.

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Broccoli said:

And Islamic State keeps on going...


Iraqi militants seize country's largest dam

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ISIS Exterminating Minorities in Iraq

Michael J. Totten

Kurdish members of Iraq’s Yezidi religious minority in Sinjar are being massacred by ISIS [1] if they refuse to convert to Islam. They’re ancient fire-worshipers with roots in Zoroastrianism and they long predate the Koran.

More than 300 of them so far have been murdered for their religion alone.

Killings of this sort on a large scale are called genocide.

Islam is a proselytizing religion, but converting these people at gunpoint and executing those who refuse will not fly with the Kurds who are Muslims, and not just because the Yezidis are their fellow Kurds.

The Yezidi religion is part of the Kurdish identity. Iraqi Kurdistan’s flag eschews the crescent moon so common on the flags of Islamic countries and opts for fire imagery from the Yezidi religion instead. Many years ago I interviewed the president of Duhok University in Iraq Kurdistan and he seemed to speak for the majority when he professed his affection for these people and their ancient religion. “I am a Muslim,” he told me. “But I love the Yezidis. Theirs is the original religion of the Kurds. Only through the Yezidis can I speak to God in my own language.”

Sinjar is a Kurdish town, but it’s in Nineveh province outside the Kurdish autonomous region. The armed Kurdish Peshmerga forces operating there ran out of ammunition and had little choice but to retreat in the wake of the ISIS assault. Tens of thousands of civilians fled the area and are stranded atop a remote mountain [2] without food, water, or shelter.

Eight years ago I visited the Yezidi “Mecca” in Lalish, Iraq, inside the Kurdish autonomous region a ways south of Duhok. This is where the Yezidis believe the universe was born. Eternal flames burn forever in little shrines. Baba Sheik, their leader, showed me around and took me into their temple.

“All people in the world should be brothers,” he said. “You are welcome here for the rest of your life.”

Baba Sheik wanted to include Muslims in his proclamation of universal brotherhood, but he didn’t entirely trust them. The Yezidis have been persecuted relentlessly in the past and he knew perfectly well that they could be persecuted again, especially considering the precarious state of Iraq. And he was right. Ruthless persecution—this time by ISIS—is on.

I asked my Muslim translator and guide Birzo Abdulkadir if he was offended by Baba Sheik’s comments and he said, “Of course not. Kurds don’t get upset about religion. We aren’t like Arabs. We believe in arguments based on reason, not emotion. If people don’t agree with me about something, I’m not going to get mad at them. We will just have different opinions.”

The Kurds do, however, get mad, so to speak, at the likes of ISIS. And they’re gearing up for a counterattack. Another front in the great Middle East war is about to be opened.

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Islamic State pulls down church crosses in northern Iraq as 200,000 flee
Islamic State, the jihadist group formerly known as Isis, have occupied churches in Iraq, removing crosses and destroying manuscripts, witnesses report, having overrun Kurdish troops forcing 200,000 to flee

Barney Henderson By Barney Henderson, and agencies6:42PM BST 07 Aug 2014 Comments1104 Comments
Islamic State jihadists who took over large areas of northern Iraq overnight have forced thousands of Christians to flee and occupied churches, removing crosses and destroying manuscripts, Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako has said.
“(The Christians) have fled with nothing but their clothes, some of them on foot, to reach the Kurdistan region,” Patriarch Sako told AFP.

An Iraqi man carrying a cross and a Koran attends a mass at Mar Girgis Church in Baghdad (Reuters)
“This is a humanitarian disaster. The churches are occupied, their crosses were taken down,” said Sako. He added that up to 1,500 manuscripts were burnt.
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The United Nations put the number of people who have fled as high as 200,000, and said that many thousands of people trapped by the militants on Sinjar mountain had been rescued in the past 24 hours.
“We’re just receiving the information right now. We’ve just heard that people over the last 24 hours have been extracted and the UN is mobilising resources to ensure that these people are assisted on arrival,” David Swanson, a spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told Reuters.
It is a “tragedy of immense proportions”, he said.
Iraq's ethnic mix
Pope Francis called on the international community to protect Iraq's Christian community.
A statement delivered by his spokesman said the Pope joined the urgent appeals for peace from bishops in the Middle East and called on the international community to "ensure the necessary help" reaches people fleeing fighters from the Islamic State.
The US denounced the jihadist offensive, warning the situation for civilians driven from their homes threatens to become a "humanitarian catastrophe".
"It is a situation that that we are looking at very closely," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, following reports that President Barack Obama was actively considering military intervention.
Islamic State militants overran Qaraqosh, Iraq’s largest Christian town, after pushing back Kurdish troops across a large area of the north of the country, fleeing residents and Christian clerics said.

Displaced Christians wait for humanitarian aid at a church in Hamdaniya town, east of Mosul (Reuters)
Jihadists moved in overnight to claim several Christian towns, forcing tens of thousands of people to flee, having pushed back Kurdish peshmerga troops, who are stretched thin across several fronts in Iraq.

Graffiti with the letter "Noon", the first letter of the world "Nasara", the word used in the Koran for Christians, tagged on the wall of a church (top L and bottom R) and on houses in the Iraqi city of Mosul
“I now know that the towns of Qaraqosh, Tal Kayf, Bartella and Karamlesh have been emptied of their original population and are now under the control of the militants,” Joseph Thomas, the Chaldean archbishop of Kirkuk and Sulaimaniyah, told AFP.
“It’s a catastrophe, a tragic situation. We call on the UN Security Council to immediately intervene. Tens of thousands of terrified people are being displaced as we speak, it cannot be described,” the archbishop said.
The Islamic State group posted a statement online later om Thursday, confirming that they had taken control of Mosul Dam - Iraq's largest dam - and vowed to continue "the march in all directions," adding that it will not "give up the great Caliphate project".
The group added that it has seized a total of 17 cities, towns and targets - including the dam - over the past five days. The statement could not be verified but it was posted on a site frequently used by the group.
The overnight advance came after the Sunni militants inflicted a humiliating defeat on Kurdish forces in a weekend sweep in the north.
Several residents contacted by AFP confirmed that the entire area in northern Iraq, home to a large part of the country’s Christian community, had fallen to the Islamic State jihadist group.
Tal Kayf, the home of a significant Christian community as well as members of the Shabak Shiite minority, also emptied overnight.
“Tal Kayf is now in the hands of the Islamic State. They faced no resistance and rolled in just after midnight,” said Boutros Sargon, a resident who fled the town and was reached by phone in Arbil.
“I heard some gunshots last night and when I looked outside, I saw a military convoy from the Islamic State. They were shouting 'Allahu akbar’ (God is greatest),” he said.

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The Islamic State, led by troops loyal to Chechen commander Omar al Shishani took control of a Syrian Army artillery base in the eastern province of Hasakah. The jihadist group seized a large amount of military hardware and munitions, according to a video tour of the base.

The Islamic State's Hasakah Division released an eight-minute video on its YouTube account on Aug. 5 showing Islamic State fighters touring Regiment 121's headquarters. The video [above] was tweeted by the Islamic State's Al Bakara News Twitter account and other accounts related to the group.

In the video, the cameraman walks through Regiment 121's base and documents the Islamic State's spoils of war. The video shows numerous artillery pieces and crates of shells, trucks for hauling artillery and rounds, a tank, a truck-mounted anti-aircraft gun, and what appear to be BM-21 Grad rocket launchers with several rockets yet to be launched. The vehicles seem to be undamaged and operational, but the Islamic State fighters do not drive the vehicles or fire the weapons.

When the cameraman goes indoors, he shows crates filled with AK-47 assault rifles and accompanying magazines, RPGs and rounds, and what appear to be shoulder-fired anti-tank launchers.

Additionally, a video of Omar al Shishani's fighters [below] at the base was distributed on YouTube six days ago. His fighters are bantering with other jihadists as fires burn behind them.

Shishani leads what are essentially the Islamic State's mobile shock troops. Shishani's forces have appeared at key hotspots in both Iraq and Syria as his forces are considered to be some the best in theater.

Regiment 121 "is considered one of the most important [units] for the Syrian army in the region, and performs an important role of targeting the headquarters and emplacements of militants in Hasakah's southern countryside, being deployed on high ground, which give it control by fire of large swaths of land," according to Al Monitor.

The Islamic State considered Regiment 121 to be a threat to its recent gains in Hasakah and Deir al Zour provinces, and launched its offensive to take the base on July 24. The Islamic State claimed it killed more than 100 Syrian soldiers during the fighting, but the group did not display the bodies of any dead soldiers.

The Islamic State has maintained offensive operations in both Iraq and Syria for the past two months. While the jihadist group and its allies have taken control of much of northern and Western Iraq since the beginning of the year, it has also fought the Syrian Army and jihadist and other rebel groups to seize control of most of Deir al Zour and Hasakah provinces, and has advanced into Aleppo and Homs as well.

Omar al Shishani's fighters at Regiment 121:




Correction: the second video shows fighters loyal to Omar Shishani; the Islamic State leader was not in the video.

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1 The Long War Journal: Islamic State leader who defected from al Qaeda reported killed in Mosul



Written by Bill Roggio on August 6, 2014 12:45 AM to 1 The Long War Journal
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The Iraqi military claimed that an Islamic State leader who is from Pakistan was killed in an airstrike in Mosul. The commander is thought to be one of nine mid-level al Qaeda commanders who publicly defected from the global jihadist group to join the Islamic State.

Abdul Rahman al Amjad al Pakistani and five Islamic State fighters were killed after Iraqi warplanes "directly hit one of [the Islamic State's] strongholds in Mosul" on Aug. 5, Ministry of Defense spokesman General Mohammed al Askari told Al Shorfa.

"Al Pakistani was a prominent [Islamic State] leader who recently split from al Qaeda," Al Shorfa reported.

The death of al Pakistani has not been confirmed. The Islamic State has yet to announce his death. And the Iraqi military has often released inaccurate information since the Islamic State and allied insurgent groups launched their offensive on June 10 and took over much of Ninewa, Salahaddin, Diyala, and northern Babil provinces. The Islamic State has been in control of large areas in Anbar since the beginning of January.

Al Pakistani is also known as Abdullah al Punjabi, a former al Qaeda commander who vocally rejected al Qaeda and joined the Islamic State. He and eight other commanders, led by Abu al Huda al Sudani, released a statement on March 31 that announced the reasons for their split from al Qaeda and for joining the Islamic State.

In that statement, the al Qaeda defectors accused al Qaeda of embracing the Arab Spring and Muslim Brotherhood leader and former Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi, sidestepping sharia or Islamic Law, and rejecting the establishment and expansion of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, among other criticisms.

The other seven al Qaeda leaders who signed the statement, in addition to al Pakistani and al Sudani, are listed as "Abu Obeida al Lubnani, Abu al Muhannad al Urduni, Abu Jarir al Shamali (Abu Tha'ir), Abdul Aziz (Brother of Sheikh Abu Muhammad al Maqdisi), Abu Yunus al Kurdi, Abu A'isha al Qurtubi, and Abu Musab al Tadhamuni," according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which obtained and translated the statement.

The nine al Qaeda defectors addressed their letter to al Qaeda's branches in Yemen (al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula), Somalia (Shabaab), and North Africa (al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb), as well as the Islamic Caucasus Emirate, the Mujahideen Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem, and "all who are concerned, from the jihadi factions in the lands of the Muslims." An al Qaeda ideologue responded to the letter in May, dismissing the criticisms cited by the nine commanders. Abdul Aziz's brother, Abu Muhammad al Maqdisi, an influential jihadist ideologue, has openly denounced the Islamic State.

Al Sudani and the eight other al Qaeda commanders likely hoped that their defection would lead other members of al Qaeda to join the Islamic State. But few al Qaeda leaders have followed them. Since the statement was released, al Qaeda's branches as well as the Islamic Caucasus Emirate have come out in support of Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qaeda's emir.

If al Pakistani is confirmed to have been killed in Mosul, it indicates that jihadists are easily traveling from the Afghan-Pakistan region to Iraq and Syria. Al Pakistani and his cohorts were thought to be based in northwestern Pakistan at the time they signed their statement.

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ahho said:

I wonder what equipment the ISIS have in Iraq. I heard news that Kurdish citizen are buying AK47 rifles to protect themselves, but they said it would be useless. Unless ISIS is picking off their enemies from a long range, small arms IMO should be still effective

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Franklin said:

BREAKING NEWS FOLKS ! The US has started airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq. The action is for now quite limited and is only meant to prevent ISIS from marching towards the city of Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. The strike has been carried out by 2 F/A-18 Super Hornets on a ISIS artillery position. If those are Super Hornets it means that they must have come from carriers. Or does the US have land based Super Hornets in the region ?

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