Everything to do with ISIS

[visionary]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/24/us-mideast-crisis-airstrikes-idUSKBN0O90QB20150524

U.S., allies conduct 17 airstrikes against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq

 

The United States and its allies conducted 17 airstrikes in Iraq and 11 strikes in Syria since Saturday against Islamic State militants, the U.S. military said on Sunday.

 

The air strikes in Iraq included four near Ramadi, which was captured by Islamic State forces a week ago, the statement said.

 

In Syria, strikes hit Islamic State positions near Kobani and near Al Hasakah, the U.S. military said.

[PeterMP]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/23/world/middleeast/suicide-bombing-saudi-arabia-shiites-sunnis-yemen-mosque.html?referrer=&_r=0

 

If I were Shiite, I'd get out of Saudi Arabia.

[visionary]

http://www.straitstimes.com/news/world/united-states/story/us-launches-new-investigations-isis-daily-report-20150528

US launches new investigations into ISIS daily: Report

 

The United States now launches a new investigation into suspected sympathisers of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) almost every day, a senior official said on Wednesday, underscoring the increased threat posed by the militant group.

 

Pointing to a significant uptick in cases linked to militants who now control swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria, the official warned Congress of "brinkmanship" over intelligence gathering powers that put national security at risk at a sensitive time.

 

"We are opening new investigations daily, particularly the ISIL threat," said the senior administration official, using another acronym for the Islamic State group.

 

"They have a strategy now of encouraging anyone, essentially, to take arms and commit a terrorist attack inside the United States," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

[China]

ISIS burns woman alive for refusing 'extreme sex act,' UN official says

 

 

Slavery, rape, forced prostitution and fiery death are among the fates that await women and girls abducted by ISIS, the United Nations's special representative on sexual violence in conflict says.

 

"The countries I have worked on include Bosnia, Congo, South Sudan, Somalia and Central African Republic; I never saw anything like this. I cannot understand such inhumanity. I was sick," Zainab Bangura told the Middle East Eye, an independent regional news site, after investigating ISIS sex crimes in Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon.

 

"They are institutionalising sexual violence; the brutalization of women and girls is central to their ideology," she said.

 

"They use sexual violence as a 'tactic of terrorism' to advance key strategic priorities, such as recruitment, fundraising, to enforce discipline and order — through the punishment of dissenters or family members — and to advance their radical ideology. They commit rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution and other acts of extreme brutality."

 

What happens when ISIS conquers a village?

 

ISIS splits the men from the women and executes boys and men over 14, Bangura says. Girls are taken from their mothers, stripped naked, tested for virginity and examined for breast size and attractiveness.

 

Young, pretty virgins are sent to the ISIS stronghold and Raqqa, where they serve as sex slaves for militants.

 

"We heard one case of a 20-year-old girl who was burned alive because she refused to perform an extreme sex act. We learned of many other sadistic sexual acts."

 

The girls who don't meet ISIS's standards are sold at auction, as are the girls militants later grow tired of.

 

Do they ever escape?

 

Sometimes they get out with the help of their families, or even their captors' empathetic wives.

 

"We heard few stories of wives who helped the slaves to escape," Bangura said. "Some are released when a ransom is paid."

 

Others try a more extreme method of escape.

 

"When IS discovered girls used their headscarves to hang themselves, they forced them to remove them. I learned of three girls who tried to commit suicide by drinking rat poison, which had been left in a room. They started vomiting and were rushed to hospital and washed out. When they came back, they were brutally attacked."

 

What happens to the survivors?

 

Bangura met with ISIS escapees in Iraq's Kurdish zone, where officials are already dealing with a massive influx of refugees from ISIS and Iraq.

 

"I met one woman who was in shock -- most of her family had either been taken or killed. She was looking after her four-year-old son and trying to track down her 15-year-old daughter, who was taken by IS. She was so traumatized that she insisted her husband was missing, although he was dead," Bangura said. "Women like her need qualified medical and psycho-social support that is not readily available."

[ExoDus84]

Just the religion of peace being peaceful.

 

At this point, I'm thinking we just wall off the entirety of the Middle East, give a bunch of guns to Sunni's and Shiites, and just let them have at each other until one side wins. It's really a civil war that's going on anyway. As much as I despise the frothing excrement that is ISIS, only other arabs/arab nations can solve that dilemma. The west cannot.

[visionary]

Just the religion of peace being peaceful.

 

At this point, I'm thinking we just wall off the entirety of the Middle East, give a bunch of guns to Sunni's and Shiites, and just let them have at each other until one side wins. It's really a civil war that's going on anyway. As much as I despise the frothing excrement that is ISIS, only other arabs/arab nations can solve that dilemma. The west cannot.

Keep in mind that a lot of members of ISIS come from outside the Middle East. 

[visionary]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/29/world/middleeast/isis-alternates-stick-and-carrot-to-control-palmyra.html?ref=middleeast&_r=0

ISIS Alternates Stick and Carrot to Control Palmyra

 

Hours after they swept into the Syrian city of Palmyra last week, Islamic State militants carried out scores of summary executions, leaving the bodies of victims — including dozens of government soldiers — in the streets.

 

Then, residents say, they set about acting like municipal functionaries. They fixed the power plant, turned on the water pumps, held meetings with local leaders, opened the city’s lone bakery and started distributing free bread. They planted their flag atop Palmyra’s storied ancient ruins, and did not immediately loot and destroy them, as they have done at other archaeological sites.

 

Next came dozens of Syrian government airstrikes, some killing civilians. That gave the Islamic State a political assist: Within days, some residents had redirected the immediate focus of their anger and fear from the militants on the ground to the warplanes overhead.

 

In Palmyra, the Islamic State group appears to be digging into power in a series of steps it has honed over two years of accumulating territory in Iraq and Syria.

 

But Palmyra presents a new twist: It is the first Syrian city the group has taken from the government, not from insurgents. In Raqqa, farther north, and in Iraq, the group has moved quickly and harshly against anyone perceived as a rival.

 

The Islamic State alternates between terrorizing residents and courting them. It takes over institutions. And it seeks to co-opt opposition to the government, painting itself as the champion of the people — or at least, the Sunnis — against oppressive central authorities.

 

That method has helped the group entrench itself in the cities of Raqqa, Syria, and Mosul, Iraq, and is now unfolding in Palmyra

 

The Palmyra takeover was detailed by half a dozen residents of the city, including supporters and opponents of the government, via phone or electronic messaging. All asked not to be fully identified, to avoid reprisals from the government or from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh. Most cast themselves as caught between the threats of government airstrikes and ISIS beheadings or other killings.

 

On Wednesday, for example, several residents reported that the Islamic State had killed 20 army soldiers in an ancient amphitheater. Others recalled seeing the bodies of soldiers burned alive or beheaded by militants.

 

“They slaughtered many,” a cafe owner exclaimed about ISIS, then switched to the subject of air raids that he would later blame for the deaths of several friends: “God knows what they’re bombing, it’s so scary!”

[visionary]

http://news.yahoo.com/truck-bombs-islamic-states-air-force-222500105.html?soc_src=mediacontentsharebuttons&soc_trk=tw

Truck bombs: the Islamic State's 'air force'

 

They're easy to drive and hard to stop, can be made on a farm and destroy a city block: the Islamic State group's monstrous truck bombs are reshaping the battlefield.

 

The jihadists used about 30 explosives-rigged vehicles in the Iraqi city of Ramadi this month, blasting their way through positions government and allied fighters had managed to hold for more than a year.

 

IS fighters have used looted armoured personnel carriers, pick-ups, tankers and dump trucks. They pack them with tonnes of explosives and weld steel cages around them.

 

When a position is too well defended for a more conventional advance, a suicide driver steers a truck bomb, protected by the makeshift armour, through enemy fire and straight to his target.

 

"They are protected from 12.7mm (heavy machinegun) fire and even some RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades). There's so much explosives (inside) that it's still effective at 50 metres (yards)," an Iraq-based military expert said.

 

Videos of the truck bomb attacks, which IS has also used in the battle of Kobane in northern Syria and on other fronts, show huge explosions that are visible from miles away.

 

"The damage is bigger than that of a half-tonne bomb dropped by a fighter jet," the Western expert said. "Truck bombs are their air force."

 

Responding to US accusations that his troops dodged battle in Ramadi, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi defended them by saying the impact of a truck bomb blast was akin to that of "a small nuclear bomb".

[visionary]

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadians-who-travelled-abroad-to-fight-isil-get-little-scrutiny-upon-return-suggesting-canada-isnt-keen-on-stopping-them

Canadians who travel abroad to fight ISIL get little scrutiny upon return, suggesting Canada isn’t keen on stopping them

 

Brandon Glossop wasn’t sure what to expect when he landed at Vancouver International Airport two weeks ago. The former oil sands worker had just spent three months in northern Syria, where he had fought with Kurdish forces against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

 

But when he got to Canada Customs and explained what he’d been up to, the officer simply shook his hand, he said in an exclusive interview. Border officials searched his luggage but quickly sent him on his way. They never found the ISIL flag he had hidden in his sleeping bag.

 

The flag is a black pendant with white Arabic lettering and frilly trim. A Kurdish fighter captured it in a Syrian village. Glossop wanted it so badly he traded a pair of combat pants and sunglasses for it. Since returning home to Vancouver Island, he’s been posing for pictures with it.

“It’s a big hit,” he said.

But interviews with two volunteer fighters who have returned to Canada after battling ISIL on the frontlines suggest the federal government is not really trying to stop them, nor do those who have participated in the conflict face much in the way of scrutiny once they get home.

 

During his journey back from Syria, Glossop said he was detained overnight by Iraqi police and held for two days by British immigration officers. But he sailed through Vancouver airport on May 15 and has not been approached by the RCMP, he said.

 

Likewise, when Dillon Hillier landed at Toronto’s Pearson airport in January and acknowledged he’d been fighting ISIL, he was asked only if he had anything to declare. Two Mounties later visited him in Perth, Ont., but they mostly wanted to know if he’d seen any Canadians fighting with ISIL.

 

 

http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/syria/310520152

Kurds and Syrian opposition announce Kobane operation to liberate countryside

 

Kurdish and other opposition forces in Syria announced operation "Euphrates Volcano" on Friday, whose aim is to liberate remaining villages and countryside around the city of Kobane that are still controlled by the so-called Islamic State (ISIS).

 

The special operation involves the Shams al-Shimal, Siwwar al-Reqa and Syrian Free Army (FSA), fighting under the leadership of the Kurdish Peoples’  Protection Units (YPG).

 

The forces intend to push the militants out of areas around Kobane that have remained under ISIS control since the Kurdish victory in Kobane in late January.

 

Mission commanders called on civilians to keep away from war zones where the operation is being launched.

The “Euphrates Volcano” operations were kicked off at a formal ceremony  Friday south of Kobane.

The first stage aims at logistical degradation of ISIS by cutting off all road links to its fighters.  The goal is to liberate the region of "Til Ebyad" (Gre Spi in Kurdish), and put in place an administration comprised of all the different minorities and sects.

 

Abu Issa, commander of Siwwar al-Reqa, told Rudaw  that his force will work hard to create a regional council from all minorities which would enable protection of the region.

 

A YPG commander said that the most important element of the operation was to have cooperation among all the forces, Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian and all other minorities, in an effort to arrive at peaceful coexistence.

[visionary]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/05/31/uk-mideast-crisis-syria-turkey-idUKKBN0OG0LR20150531

Islamic State drives back Syria insurgents near Turkey

 

Islamic State fighters advanced against rival insurgents in northern Syria on Sunday, capturing areas close to a border crossing with Turkey and threatening their supply route to Aleppo city, fighters and a group monitoring the war said.

 

Islamic State captured the town of Soran Azaz and two nearby villages after clashes with fighters from a northern rebel alliance, which includes both Western-backed rebels and Islamist fighters.

 

Islamic State will now be able to move along a road leading north to the Bab al-Salam crossing between the Syrian province of Aleppo and the Turkish province of Kilis, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

 

The town's loss is a blow to rebels grouped in the so-called Jabhat al-Shamiyya alliance (Levant Front), because it sits on an important supply route to bring weapons into eastern Aleppo, two fighters said.

 

"The main supply line between Turkey and Aleppo will be severely affected," Abu Bakr, an alliance field commander, said in a online message.

The Levant Front was created in Aleppo in an effort to forge unity among factions in Syria that have often fought each other as well as the Syrian army and hardline jihadist groups, undermining the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad.

 

Rebels said the Islamic State gains had upset plans for a wider offensive that was being prepared ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan to seize government-controlled parts of Aleppo.

 

Residents in eastern Aleppo said convoys of rebel fighters were heading back to areas in the Soran countryside to repel Islamic State. Government forces hold the west of the city.

 

U.S-led coalition forces bombing Islamic State in Syria and Iraq carried out their latest raids near the city of Kobani close to Turkey and Syria's northeastern Hasaka province, but did not hit Aleppo and surrounding areas.

 

"(Islamic State) are heading to the Turkish border...If this happens I don't know who will be able to explain why the coalition is not bombing (them)," said Abo Abdo Salabman, a member of a rebel brigade which is not part of Levant Front but is fighting in the area.

 

"It's one thing that they don't bomb the regime because of some international circumstances they need to take into account. However, failure to bomb ISIS on that particular front is not going to go down well with the rebels," he said, warning that people were more likely to join hardline groups as a result.

[visionary]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/31/key-rebels-ready-to-quit-u-s-fight-vs-isis.html?via=twitter_page

Exclusive: Key Rebels Ready to Quit U.S. Fight Vs. ISIS

 

They were ready to accept American guns and training. But a key rebel group can’t accept the Obama administration’s insistence that they lay off Syria’s dictator.
A centerpiece of the U.S. war plan against ISIS is in danger of collapsing. A key rebel commander and his men are ready to ready to pull out in frustration of the U.S. program to train a rebel army to beat back the terror group in Syria, The Daily Beast has learned.

 

The news comes as ISIS is marching on the suburbs of Aleppo, Syria's second-largest city. Rebels currently fighting the jihadists there told The Daily Beast that the U.S.-led coalition isn't even bothering to respond to their calls for airstrikes to stop the jihadist army.

 

Mustapha Sejari, one of the rebels already approved for the U.S. training program, told The Daily Beast that he and his 1,000 men are on the verge of withdrawing from the program. The issue: the American government's demand that the rebels can't use any of their newfound battlefield prowess or U.S.-provided weaponry against the army of Bashar al-Assad or any of its manifold proxies and allies, which include Iranian-built militias such as Lebanese Hezbollah. They must only fight ISIS, Washington insists.

 

“We submitted the names of 1,000 fighters for the program, but then we got this request to promise not to use any of our training against Assad,” Sejari, a founding member of the Revolutionary Command Council, said. “It was a Department of Defense liaison officer who relayed this condition to us orally, saying we’d have to sign a form. He told us, ‘We got this money from Congress for a program to fight ISIS only.’ This reason was not convincing for me. So we said no.”

 

Sejari's possible departure wouldn't just mean the loss of a few fighters for the anti-ISIS army the U.S. is trying to assemble. It could mean a fracturing of the entire program—a cornerstone of the Obama administration's plan to fight ISIS in Syria. (The Pentagon was unable to respond to requests to comment for this article.)

 

"The train and equip program will be structurally impaired for as long as those taking part in it are asked to target jihadists first and the regime second," Charlie Winter, an ISIS specialist at the London-based Quilliam Foundation, told The Daily Beast. "It would be naïve to think otherwise: no opposition group will take kindly to being told that they can only be assisted if they focus their efforts on 'terrorists' and not the regime that got Syria to this position in the first place."

 

Even worse, Sejari added, is that by openly aligning with the United States as a counterterrorism proxy, his troops will have a bullseye painted on its back for all comers, al Qaeda, the regime, Iran and Hezbollah. That force, the al-Ezz Front, broke off from Saudi-backed umbrella opposition group that was routed by Jabhat al-Nusra, the al Qaeda affiliate, in northern Syria in March.

As approved by Congress, the Syrian train-and-equip program would be overseen not by intelligence officers but by the American military—definitely in Jordan and Turkey, and likely also in Saudi Arabia and in Qatar. But Ankara and Washington have never agreed on the remit of the mission, with Turkey insisting that these rebels be given air support given that they’ll be targets of the regime’s fighter jets and attack helicopters. Although U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter has floated the idea of American air support for the rebels publicly, the administration hasn’t committed to that and likely won’t. According to the Wall Street Journal, Obama worries that if any of his built-up Arab strike teams go after the regime in Syria, then Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps-Quds Force will instruct its Shia militias to turn their guns on U.S. personnel in Iraq.

 

The original goal was to graduate 5,000 battle-ready rebels per year, although the program has suffered numerous setbacks and delays since its inception. In early May, Carter told reporters at a Pentagon press conference that just 90 rebels were being put through the first round of training in Jordan. Col. Patrick Ryder, a spokesman for CENTCOM, claimed that 3,700 Syrians had volunteered in total, but of that number just 400 were approved with another 800 were being processed. This followed from an earlier announcement, in April, that Major General Michael Nagata, the man tapped by Obama spearhead train-and-equip, was stepping down for unknown reasons. It doesn’t inspire confidence, Sejari said, that he didn’t know who was in charge of the program he wants nothing to do with anymore. “We don’t know what happened to Gen. Nagata. No one tells us anything,” he added.

 

Sejari said that even if he were to sign up, he doesn’t think the result would greatly alter the balance of power in Syria or further stated U.S. objectives. “If anyone with any military knowledge examines this program, he will realize this program is not designed to make an impact or support the Syrian people. It will only contribute to dragging out this conflict much longer,” Sejari said. “We’ve been fighting for four years. Program, no program— we’ve been fighting for four years. If the Americans don’t change this precondition, we will carry on fighting.”

[visionary]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/opinion/whos-willing-to-fight-for-iraq.html?smid=nytcore-ipad-share&smprod=nytcore-ipad&_r=0

Who’s Willing to Fight for Iraq?

 

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s recent assessment of Iraqi security forces was impolitic and true, and rarely voiced by senior officials. After the devastating loss of the Iraqi city of Ramadi to the Islamic State in May, he told CNN that while Iraqi troops vastly outnumbered the brutal extremists, they “just showed no will to fight.”

 

Mr. Carter’s stark judgment once again raises the question of how long the United States should continue arming and training Iraqis and dropping bombs on targets related to the Islamic State, a Sunni Muslim group also known as ISIS or ISIL. If the Iraqis don’t care enough to defend and sacrifice for their own country, then why should the United States?

 

The American strategy is based on building up local security forces that can back up American airstrikes by recapturing territory and then holding it. Presuming ISIS is ever defeated, no peace can be sustained if Iraqis aren’t committed to preserving it.

 

It was no surprise that Iraqi leaders reacted angrily to Mr. Carter’s remarks, prompting Vice President Joseph Biden to call Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi last Monday to reassure him of continued American support.

The Americans are also considering training a cadre of Iraqi special forces to help pinpoint targets to carry out airstrikes more quickly and expanding the training of regular Iraqi forces. The United States has 3,000 military trainers and advisers in Iraq, but there is no serious discussion of adding ground troops overtly desginated for combat — nor should there be.

 

The best chance of quickly responding to the Islamic State would be to get weapons and training directly into the hands of Sunni tribal fighters in Anbar. But the Shiite-led central government, which wants to control the weapons, has resisted that, just as it has resisted integrating those Sunni units into a provincial-based, government-paid national guard. It has instead relied increasingly on Shiite-based militia, some backed by Iran, to fight against ISIS, thus worsening the country’s sectarian divisions and expanding Iran’s influence. Given the urgent threat, the Americans should consider working more directly with the Sunni tribes if Baghdad continues to refuse.

 

After the Ramadi debacle exposed more weaknesses in the regular Iraqi security forces, American officials say they will have to rely more heavily on a combination of elite Iraqi units, Kurdish forces, the Sunni tribes and some Shiite militias to fight ISIS.

[visionary]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/islamic-state-militants-open-major-new-offensive-in-aleppo/2015/06/01/9b834f64-085c-11e5-951e-8e15090d64ae_story.html

While nobody was looking, the Islamic State launched a new, deadly offensive

 

Syrian rebels appealed for U.S. airstrikes to counter a new offensive by the Islamic State in the northern province of Aleppo that could reshape the battlefield in Syria.

 

The surprise assault, launched over the weekend, opened a new front in the multi-pronged war being waged by the extremist group across Iraq and Syria, and it underscored the Islamic State’s capacity to catch its enemies off guard.

 

The push — which came on the heels of the miltants’ capture of the Syrian city of Palmyra and the western Iraqi city of Ramadi late last month — took them within reach of the strategically vital town of Azaz on the Turkish border.

 

The offensive reinforces the impression that the Islamic State is regaining momentum despite more than eight months of U.S. led-airstrikes.

 

Rebel groups rushed reinforcements to the farmland north of the contested city of Aleppo after the Islamic State seized five villages. As rebel fighters in jeeps and pickup trucks hurtled toward the front lines, civilians fled in the opposite direction, seeking refuge closer to the Turkish border.

 

Videos posted on social media accounts allied with the Islamic State showed the group in control of checkpoints in the small town of Sawran. One image showed four decapitated heads tossed into the back of a truck.

 

Azaz controls access to one of the most important border crossings between Syria and Turkey. If the town were to fall, the supply lines to Aleppo city would be cut and the entire rebel presence in the province would be jeopardized, rebel commanders said.

 

“Automatically, the Islamic State would gain control of Aleppo city,” said Abu Mohammed, the nom de guerre of a leader of the rebel group Thuwar al-Sham, based in the Turkish town of Gaziantep. “The situation is dire.”

 

If the Islamic State seized the area, it would also extend its reach along the Turkish border, amplifying its capacity to secure supplies and smuggle in foreign fighters at a time when Turkey’s government has imposed severe restrictions on travelers along its 580-mile border with Syria.

[visionary]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/03/world/middleeast/new-battles-aleppo-syria-insurgents-isis.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

New Battles Rage Near Aleppo Between Syrian Insurgents and ISIS

 

Syrian insurgents rushed reinforcements into combat on Tuesday against rival Islamic State militants who have seized crucial territory near the northern city of Aleppo in recent days, building on the momentum the group has achieved in other battlefield successes in Syria and Iraq.

 

Amid increased fears that Aleppo could be the next big prize to fall to the Islamic State in the latest twist to the four-year-old Syrian civil war, Syrian opposition leaders accused the government of essentially collaborating with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, by bombing other rival insurgent groups, even though the government and Islamic State say they are enemies.

 

Khaled Khoja, the president of the main Syrian exile opposition group, accused the government of President Bashar al-Assad of deploying his warplanes “as an air force for ISIS.”

 

The new fighting, reported by non-Islamic State insurgents in Syria, came against a backdrop of frustration that the American-led coalition formed to fight the Islamic State last year had not come to their aid with airstrikes.

 

The new fighting also was happening as a strategy meeting of anti-Islamic State countries in Paris ended on an indecisive note, with members agreeing only that more needs to be done as the militants outmaneuver them to grab more land.

 

The Twitter account of the long-closed United States Embassy in Syria made its strongest statement yet, supporting what President Assad’s adversaries have long contended: that the government and ISIS were collaborating against relatively moderate rebel groups.

 

“Reports indicate that the regime is making airstrikes in support of #ISIL’s advance on #Aleppo, aiding extremists against Syrian population,” the embassy said in a series of Twitter posts, adding in another that government warplanes were “not only avoiding #ISIL lines, but, actively seeking to bolster their position.”

[PeterMP]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/03/world/middleeast/new-battles-aleppo-syria-insurgents-isis.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

 

Makes sense if you are Assad.  If you can eliminate the other possibilities, the west is going to embrace him over ISIS.

[visionary]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/05/opinion/the-separation-strategy-on-iraq.html?_r=0

The Separation Strategy on Iraq

 

In 2006, Joe Biden, Les Gelb and many others proposed plans to decentralize power in Iraq. Biden, then a United States senator from Delaware, Gelb and others recognized that Iraqi society was fracturing into sectarian blocs. They believed that governing institutions should reflect the fundamental loyalties on the ground.

 

According to the Biden plan, the central Iraqi government would still have performed a few important tasks, but many other powers would have been devolved to regional governments in the Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish areas.

 

The administration of George W. Bush rejected that federalist approach and instead bet on a Baghdad-centric plan. The Iraqi prime minister at the time, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and his band of Shiite supremacists enflamed sectarian tensions even more, consolidated power, excluded rivals, alienated the Sunnis and Kurds and drove parts of the opposition into armed insurrection.

 

The Obama administration helped oust Maliki and replace him with a group of more moderate and responsible leaders. But that approach is still centralized and Baghdad-focused. The results are nearly as bad. The Sunnis continue to feel excluded and oppressed. Faith in national institutions has collapsed. Sectarian lines are hardening. Over the last several years, the number of people who tell pollsters that they are Iraqis first and foremost has plummeted.

 

Vastly outnumbered fighters for the Islamic State keep beating the Iraqi Army in places like Ramadi because the ISIS terrorists believe in their lunatic philosophy while the Iraqi soldiers no longer believe in their own leadership and are not willing to risk their lives for a dysfunctional, centralized state.

 

This attempt to impose top-down solutions, combined with President Obama’s too-fast withdrawal from Iraq, has contributed to the fertile conditions for the rise of ISIS. Obama properly vowed to eradicate this terrorist force, but the U.S. is failing to do so.

 

That’s largely because, mind-bogglingly, the Iraqi government has lost the battle over the hearts and minds to a group of savage, beheading, murderous thugs. As Anne Barnard and Tim Arango reported in The Times on Thursday, ISIS is hijacking legitimate Sunni grievances. Many Sunnis would apparently rather be ruled by their own kind, even if they are barbaric, than by Shiites, who rob them of their dignity.

[visionary]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32831854

Inside Mosul: What's life like under Islamic State?

 

Exclusive footage from Iraq's second city of Mosul reveals how Islamic State wields power over people's everyday life, a year after it was captured.

 

Secretly filmed videos obtained by the BBC's Ghadi Sary show mosques being blown up, abandoned schools, and women being forced to cover up their bodies.

 

Residents said they were living in fear of punishment according to the group's extreme interpretation of Islamic law.

They also described IS preparations for an expected government offensive.

 

The fall of Mosul marked the start of a lightning advance across the north that saw the army routed and hundreds of thousands of people forced to flee their homes.

[visionary]

http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/181587

U.S. Weighs Expanded Training for Iraqi Forces, Sunnis

 

The Pentagon is drawing up plans to expand the training of Iraqi forces and Sunni tribal fighters in a step that could mean deploying more U.S. troops, officials said Tuesday.

 

The review of possible options comes in the wake of the Islamic State group's damaging defeat of Iraqi troops in the western city of Ramadi and after President Barack Obama said he was waiting for a Pentagon proposal to beef up training efforts.

 

"We've determined it is better to train more Iraqi security forces. We are now working through a strategy on how to do that," Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steven Warren told reporters.

"Because the forces we've trained are performing better than expected, we feel it's in everyone's interest to train more," he said.

 

Warren acknowledged that an expanded training effort could require additional American troops deploying to Iraq, beyond the current force of roughly 3,000 advisers and trainers.

The effort  could also include direct U.S. training of Sunni volunteers in western Anbar province for the first time, Warren said.

 

Until now the Baghdad government has overseen training of Sunni tribal fighters and Washington has been frustrated at what it considers the slow pace of the program. 

 

Although the U.S. military was considering broadening its training effort, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's government has had difficulties providing enough recruits to be trained and ensuring units show up properly equipped, officials said.

 

"We'd like to see ... more Sunnis come into the pipeline and be trained," Warren said. "This is what we have urged Abadi to help solve."

[visionary]

http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/181591

IS Claims Capture of Libya's Sirte

 

The Islamic State group claimed to have seized full control Tuesday of the Libyan city of Sirte from the Fajr Libya militia, including a power plant, according to a U.S. monitor.

 

SITE Intelligence Group said the jihadist group had published photographs of "IS fighters engaged in clashes, sitting atop heavy guns, exploring the power plant and town, as well as bodies of dead Fajr Libya fighters."

 

The claim comes nearly two weeks after IS overran the airport in Sirte -- the home town of slain strongman Moammar Gadhafi -- in the group's first such military gain in Libya.

 

SITE quoted a report in which an IS division that calls itself "Tripoli Province" said "soldiers of the caliphate" seized control of the last locations of Fajr Libya gunmen in Sirte.

 

The report said Sirte would now "be the coastal city linking the east and west of Libya under full control of the Islamic State (group) fighters."

 

It said the capture of Sirte came after clashes that erupted at dawn saw the Fajr Libya fighters lose all entrances to the city and the power plant, as well as the al-Jallit military camp and al-Qardhabiyah base.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/13/us-mideast-crisis-syria-idUSKBN0OT0F120150613

Syrian Kurds push deeper into Islamic State stronghold

 

The Syrian Kurdish YPG militia said it began an advance towards an Islamic State-held town at the Turkish border on Saturday, thrusting deeper into the jihadists' stronghold of Raqqa province in a campaign backed by U.S.-led air strikes.

 

Redur Xelil, the YPG spokesman, told Reuters the YPG and smaller Syrian Arab rebel groups fighting alongside it had begun the move towards Tel Abyad after encircling the Islamic State-held town of Suluk 20 km (12 miles) to the southeast.

 

The advance raises the prospect of a battle at the Turkish border between the well-organized YPG militia and Islamic State. Tel Abyad is important to Islamic State as the nearest border town to its de facto capital of Raqqa city.

 

Fighting near the border has already forced more than 13,000 people to cross into Turkey from Syria. Some 1,500 more are waiting to cross. Turkish soldiers sprayed water and fired into the air when some of them approached the border fence on Saturday, a security source said.

 

The YPG has made a determined push into Raqqa province from neighboring Hasaka where, with the help of the U.S.-led alliance, it has driven Islamic State from wide areas of territory since early May.

 

https://twitter.com/brett_mcgurk

ISIL terrorists increasingly on the run in northern Syria as Kurdish & FSA fighters close in on main supply routes to Raqqa.

 

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/06/isil-setbacks-reported-syrian-provinces-150613130240904.html?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed

ISIL setbacks reported in two Syrian provinces

 

A Syrian alliance has forced fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group away from one of its key supply routes on the border with Turkey, according to a UK-based monitoring group.

 

The opposition coalition captured al-Bal village in northern Aleppo from ISIL on Friday, in a major advance towards the Bab al-Salama border crossing, which is just 10km away, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

 

The village's recapture came after heavy fighting, which killed at least 14 opposition fighters and 15 ISIL members, Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory, said.

 

Further south, fighters were battling to defend the town of Marea, on the road between the crossing and the opposition-held eastern sector of Aleppo city.

 

Activists said the opposition forces were simultaneously launching their own attacks on ISIL positions in the area.

 

"The ultimate goal for ISIL is to cut off this crossing," Abder Rahman said.

 

Mamun Abu Omar, the head of a local opposition press agency, said "ISIL is trying to surround the town by occupying the villages all around it."
The opposition fighters are battling both ISIL and government forces in Aleppo province.

 

Meanwhile, in the eastern part of the country, the Syrian Kurdish YPG group, backed by other Syrian opposition groups, have reportedly pushed further into ISIL's stronghold of Raqqa province, in an attempt to capture a strategic town.

 

Redur Xelil, the YPG spokesman, told Reuters news agency the YPG and smaller Syrian Arab groups fighting alongside it have begun on Saturday to move towards Tel Abyad, situated near the Turkish border.

 

 

 

on the other hand:

 

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/13/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-idUSKBN0OT0BA20150613

Militants attack government forces near Iraq's Baiji refinery

 

Islamic State militants attacked government forces and their Shi'ite militia allies on Saturday, killing 11 near the city of Baiji as part of the battle for control of Iraq's biggest refinery, army and police sources said.

 

Four suicide bombers in vehicles packed with explosives hit security forces and the local headquarters of the Shi'ite militias in the area of al-Hijjaj, 10 km (6 miles) to the south of Baiji town, near the refinery, sources at the nearby Tikrit security operations command said.

 

Iraqi government forces and powerful Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias face Islamic State on several fronts in Iraq, a major oil producer and OPEC member.

 

They include areas around Baiji refinery, north of Baghdad, and the city of Ramadi west of the capital, seized last month by Islamic State, the ultra-hardline Sunni group that poses the biggest threat to Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

 

Ramadi is the provincial capital of Anbar Province, Iraq's Sunni heartland.

 

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama ordered the deployment of 450 more U.S. troops to Anbar to advise and assist fragile Iraqi forces being built up to try to retake territory lost to Islamic State.

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/13/us-libya-security-idUSKBN0OT0P420150613

Suicide bomber kills three in Libya's Derna: residents

 

A suicide bomber blew himself up in the Libyan city of Derna on Saturday, killing at least three people and wounding five more as rival militants fought on the streets, local residents said.

 

Officials could not confirm the blast in Derna, which is at the center of internecine fighting between Islamic State militants and a rival brigade of Islamist groups battling for control of the city.

 

Residents said Islamic State loyalists and Islamist umbrella group Majlis al-Shura had been fighting since last week.

 

Islamic State has thrived in the North African oil producer since two rival governments began fighting for control, leaving a security vacuum four years after the civil war that ended the rule of Muammar Gaddafi.

 

European states have grown particularly alarmed at Islamic State's expansion beyond its strongholds in Iraq and Syria to a chaotic country just over the Mediterranean.

 

Nine suspected Islamic State members were killed during separate clashes on Friday with other Islamist groups, a source in one of those movements said.

 

Seven people were also shot dead on Friday at a protest against Islamic State. Demonstrators, angered at foreign fighters coming in to join the militant group, started marching towards its main base when gunmen opened fire into the crowd, several residents told Reuters.

 

The fighting in Derna, a long-time gathering point for jihadists, erupted last week after a Majlis al-Shura leader was killed. The group, which is linked to former rebel groups who fought Gaddafi and enjoys local support going back to the revolution, responded by declaring holy war against Islamic State in the city.

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http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/17/world/middleeast/map-isis-attacks-around-the-world.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

Where ISIS Has Directed and Inspired Attacks Around the World

 

 

https://twitter.com/CharlieKayeCBS

Source confirms to @CBSNews Staten Island, NY man arrested by @FBI after allegedly attacking agents with knife during ISIS-related probe.
2:28 PM

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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/06/13/269821/ethnic-cleansing-charged-as-kurds.html

Ethnic cleansing charged as Kurds move on Islamic State town in Syria

 

After receiving a crush of 13,000 Syrian refugees in less than a week, Turkey on Saturday closed a key border crossing to Syria and complained that a combined U.S.-Kurdish offensive against the Islamic State was driving Arabs and Turkmens out of Syria.

 

With Kurdish forces reported closing on Islamic State-controlled Tal Abyad, the Syrian town across from Akcakale, Turkey, the apparently successful offensive against the extremists has laid bare the clash of interests that has vexed the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State in Syria.

 

On Thursday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in one of first public appearances since his party lost its majority in parliamentary elections, accused “the West” of killing Arabs and Turkmens in Syria, and replacing them with Kurdish militia affiliated with the banned Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK by its initials in Kurdish.

 

“The West, which has shot Arabs and Turkmens, is unfortunately placing the PYD and PKK in lieu of them,” Erdogan said.

 

The PYD, or Democratic Union Party, is a Syrian Kurdish political party affiliated with the PKK, which has been declared a terrorist group by both Turkey and the United States. The PYD’s armed wing, the People’s Protection Unit, or YPG, is credited, along with an intensive U.S. bombing campaign, with holding off the Islamic State at Kobani after a four-month siege.

 

Arabs and Turkmen who’ve fled Syria use more caustic terms to condemn the Kurdish offensive, which also is backed by U.S. airstrikes. They charge that YPG militias have stolen their homes and livestock, burned their personal documents and claimed the land as theirs.

 

“They forced us from our village and said to us ‘this is Rojava’,” the term the YPG uses to describe a swath of territory it claims across northern Syria, said Jomah Ahmed, 35, a member of the al Baggara tribe. He arrived from the village of al Fwaida with dozens of members of his extended family before Turkey closed the border.

 

“They said ‘Go to the al Badiya desert, go to Tadmur, where you belong’.” Tadmur, captured last month by the Islamic State, is more than 100 miles to the southeast of Tal Abyad.

But the push on Tal Abyad by Kurdish forces with U.S. assistance is exacerbating long held ethnic resentments. Kurdish residents of northern Syria have long accused the government in Damascus of taking their land to accommodate Arab settlers. As long as two years ago, Kurdish activists who took power when the government of President Bashar Assad withdrew vowed to push the Arabs out.

 

Non-Kurdish Syrians say that campaign is now under way. They say that the Kurds are trying to create an autonomous state in northern Syria and that the United States is helping.

 

“They told us ‘We have been here 20,000 years. You came only recently from the desert. Go back to your desert,’ ” said Ibrahim al Khider, an Arab prince who leads a tribe of 16,000 in Deir el Zour province.

 

Equally bitter, Tarik Sulo, the spokesman for the Syrian Turkmen community in northern Syria, said the U.S. bombing support and the YPG ground forces “are changing the demography of the area in an ethnic cleansing.” He said Turkmen, an ethnic Turkish minority in Syria, “are losing lands where they have been living for centuries.”

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http://news.yahoo.com/sells-42-yazidi-women-fighters-syria-monitor-191940141.html?soc_src=mediacontentstory&soc_trk=tw

IS sells 42 Yazidi women to fighters in Syria: monitor

 

The Islamic State group on Thursday sold 42 Iraqi women it had abducted from the Yazidi religious minority to its fighters in eastern Syria, a monitor said.

 

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the women were being treated as "slaves" by the jihadists and were sold "for between $500 (447 euros) and $2,000 dollars (1,785 euros)".

 

The women were kidnapped last year in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq where IS had launched a wide offensive, the Britain-based monitor said.

Earlier this month they were brought to the IS-held town of Mayadeen in Syria's eastern Deir Ezzor province.

 

"Some were abducted with their children but we do not know their fate," said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.

 

The Yazidis, a religious minority which lives mainly in Iraq's Sinjar region, are neither Muslims nor Arabs and follow a unique faith. They are considered infidels by the jihadists.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/27/world/middleeast/mass-killings-by-isis-fighters-in-syrian-kurdish-town.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

Mass Killings by ISIS Fighters in Syrian Kurdish Town

 

Islamic State fighters who sneaked into the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani on the Turkish border killed more than 150 people there and in nearby villages, Kurdish activists and a monitoring group said Friday.

 

If that toll is confirmed, the attack would be one of the largest mass killings by the jihadists in Syria since they started seizing territory there for their self-declared caliphate, which stretches over the border into Iraq.

 

Kobani, known as Ayn al-Arab in Arabic, carries heavy symbolism both to the Islamic State and to some of the forces fighting against it in Syria. For months last year, Kurdish fighters defended the town from repeated attacks by the Islamic State, while a military coalition led by the United States heavily bombed the group’s fighters from the air. In January, the Islamic State finally lost, in what was considered a blow to its effort to portray itself as invincible.

 

But this week, ISIS struck back, when a group of fighters disguised as local rebels sneaked into the town at dawn on Thursday, setting off car bombs and shooting civilians in the street.

 

Kurdish militias responded, killing dozens of Islamic State fighters. Residents began to collect and bury their kin on Friday.

 

“The Daesh attack was a suicide mission,” said Redur Xelil, a spokesman for the Kurdish militiamen, told Reuters, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. “Its aim wasn’t to take the city but to create terror.”

 

Activists in the town on Friday described the painful process of finding dead bodies in the streets and going from house to house to collect others for burial.

 

“From yesterday morning at 4 a.m., Daesh sneaked in and started killing in their silent way,” said Simyar Sheikhi, a Kurdish fighter reached by phone.

 

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict from Britain through contacts in Syria, said that at least 138 bodies had been found in Kobani and 26 others nearby. Dozens of Islamic State fighters were killed, too, the group said.

 

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/b2469842777b4149be8da679483de5f6/report-gunmen-kill-19-attack-tunisian-coastal-resort

Report: Islamic State claims credit for attack in Tunisia

 

The SITE Intelligence Group is reporting that the Islamic State group has claimed credit for the attack at a Tunisian resort that killed at least 37 people.

The group says in a news release that the militant group made the claim on its Twitter account Friday and identified the gunman as Abu Yahya al-Qayrawani.

 

Witnesses say a young man pulled a Kalashnikov from a beach umbrella and sprayed gunfire at European sunbathers at the resort town of Sousse. killing at least 37 people. The attack was one of three from Europe to North Africa to the Middle East that followed a call to violence by Islamic State extremists.

[visionary]

Oh Jesus....

 

Hmm, actually this article is pretty interesting to see how they go about recruiting some followers.

Kind of scary though.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/world/americas/on-isis-terms-courting-a-young-american.html?smid=tw-nytimesworld

On ISIS’ Terms: Courting a Young American

 

lex, a 23-year-old Sunday school teacher and babysitter, was trembling with excitement the day she told her Twitter followers that she had converted to Islam.

For months, she had been growing closer to a new group of friends online — the most attentive she had ever had — who were teaching her what it meant to be a Muslim. Increasingly, they were telling her about the Islamic State and how the group was building a homeland in Syria and Iraq where the holy could live according to God’s law.

 

One in particular, Faisal, had become her nearly constant companion, spending hours each day with her on Twitter, Skype and email, painstakingly guiding her through the fundamentals of the faith.

 

But when she excitedly told him that she had found a mosque just five miles from the home she shared with her grandparents in rural Washington State, he suddenly became cold.

 

The only Muslims she knew were those she had met online, and he encouraged her to keep it that way, arguing that Muslims are persecuted in the United States. She could be labeled a terrorist, he warned, and for now it was best for her to keep her conversion secret, even from her family.

 

So on his guidance, Alex began leading a double life. She kept teaching at her church, but her truck’s radio was no longer tuned to the Christian hits on K-LOVE. Instead, she hummed along with the ISIS anthems blasting out of her turquoise iPhone, and began daydreaming about what life with the militants might be like.

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/27/us-mideast-crisis-airstrikes-idUSKBN0P70RU20150627?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews

U.S., allies target Islamic State in Syria with 14 air strikes

 

U.S. and coalition forces launched 14 air strikes against Islamic State targets in Syria and seven in Iraq on Friday, the U.S. military said, amid reports the militant group killed 145 civilians in the town of Kobani.

 

Four air strikes near Kobani, on the border with Turkey, hit three Islamic State tactical units and destroyed two boats, a fighting position and a vehicle, the Combined Joint Task Force said on Saturday.

 

Five air strikes near the militant stronghold of Raqqa destroyed five excavators, a vehicle and a remotely piloted aircraft. The task force said other strikes in Syria hit near Aleppo, Tal Abyad and Hasaka, where the militant group pressed a separate assault on Friday to capture government-held parts of the city.

 

In Iraq, the air strikes targeted militants near five cities: Baghdadi, Al Huwayjah, Baiji, Habbaniyah and Tal Afar. They destroyed buildings, weapons and vehicles and hit Islamic State tactical units, the task force said in a statement.