The Islamic State Thread

IRAQ SHIITE MILITIAS RUSH TO DEFEND OIL-RICH KIRKUK FROM IS
By VIVIAN SALAMA and BRAM JANSSEN

Shiite prayers billow from a mosque loudspeaker at a sprawling Iraqi military base on the fringes of the northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk as Shiite militiamen, most of them in mismatched military fatigues, shuttle back and forth to nearby front-lines, eager for a taste of victory against the Islamic State group.

When the IS militants blitzed across northern and western Iraq last year, tens of thousands of Shiite men answered a call-to-arms by the country's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to defend the nation against the Sunni extremists.

Now the Shiite militiamen have arrived in Kirkuk, long one of Iraq's most hotly disputed territories, and have made a string of bases just 10 kilometers (six miles) from the city their home. A marriage of convenience has since emerged with Iraq's strained Kurdish forces, which had been exclusively in charge of the city since last year when they repelled IS advances.

As they face a common enemy, the unexpected and often uncomfortable alliance between the Kurdish and Shiite rivals is on display. The friction is feeding the combustible inter-ethnic competition over who will ultimately get control of the city.

The Shiite fighters, officially known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, were instrumental in helping the Iraqi military - which dissolved in the face of the militants' initial onslaught in northern Iraq - stall the IS push outside Baghdad. They have also teamed up with Kurdish peshmerga fighters in a number of battles, breaking the siege of the northern Shiite-majority town of Amirli in August, and recently, driving Islamic State militants out of a string of towns in Diyala province, northeast of the Iraqi capital.

But their arrival in Kirkuk, 290 kilometers (180 miles) north of Baghdad, has provoked deep-rooted sensitivities. Kurdish forces claimed control of Kirkuk just days after the Islamic State group swept across northern Iraq, seizing major cities, including Mosul and Tikrit. Kirkuk, located along the fluid line that separates Kurdish northern Iraq from the rest of the country, is home to Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen, and all have competing claims to the area. The Kurds have long wanted to incorporate the city into their semi-autonomous region, but Arabs and Turkmen oppose this.

The Kurdish troops held their ground, but the IS attempted a comeback. With what the Kurds say was assistance from a Sunni sleeper cell in the city, Islamic State extremists stormed an abandoned Kirkuk hotel last month, then staged a surprise attack on a Kurdish peshmerga outpost, killing a top commander and several of his troops.

The apparently coordinated attack was a blow to the Kurds and underscored their tenuous hold on the city, while the semi-autonomous Kurdish government appealed for more weapons and training from the U.S.-led coalition forces.

Since then, thousands of fighters from a handful of militias such as the powerful Iran-backed Badr Brigades, have flooded into Kirkuk and the surrounding Tamim province.

Kirkuk Governor Najmaldin Karim welcomed the Shiite forces but Massoud Barzani , the president of the Kurdish regional government, insisted that the Shiite militiamen would be "prohibited under any circumstances" from entering the city.

"We are already in Kirkuk," Mullah Mohammed Yousseff, a Badr Brigades spokesman, roared with laughter as he sat behind his desk inside a trailer at the Taza Batallion base during a recent visit by The Associated Press.

"We have to fight," Yousseff added. "Our religion legitimizes it."

The Badr Brigades commander, Hadi al-Amiri, came to Kirkuk last week to deliver truckloads of weapons to Shiite fighters and vowed during a meeting with senior Kurdish officials to send thousands more from his militia to reinforce the area - much to the Kurds' consternation. At least 2,000 fighters have arrived at the Taza base alone since al-Amiri's visit. Several militia commanders in Kirkuk estimate that as many as 5,000 Shiite fighters arrived in the region this month alone.

"I'm here because ... al-Sistani called on us to protect our country," said 24-year-old Shiite fighter Amir al-Qassim, who came to Kirkuk from his native Baghdad in January.

A former minister in the Kurdish regional government, Jafar Moustafa, insisted that the reports of Shiite militia presence in Kirkuk are "far from reality," and that the governorate is firmly in the hands of the Kurdish peshmerga forces.

But only a few kilometers (miles) away from where Moustafa spoke to the AP, religious Shiite flags mark the battlefield, while billboards with al-Amiri's picture and that of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr are hoisted alongside Shiite outposts just south of the city.

"Run Daesh, run, by the orders of al-Sistani," chanted a group of Shiite fighters after a recent clash, firing their Kalashnikov rifles into the air in celebration. Daesh is an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.

Less than 50 meters (yards) away, Kurdish fighters stood guard along the same front line. They did not engage with the Shiite militiamen and refused to be interviewed.

Sunnis living in Kirkuk also have much at stake, and many are viewed with suspicion, deemed guilty by association - simply for being Sunni like the IS militants. The Shiite militias have been repeatedly accused of severe brutality against Sunni communities as they push IS back.

A report released Sunday by Human Rights Watch accuses the Shiite fighters of forcing Sunni residents from their homes, kidnappings, and in some cases, executions.

Such sectarian fears hang over the streets of Kirkuk, and at the outdoor bazaar in the heart of the city, many echoed concerns over the Shiite militias' brutal record.

"They act like gangsters and we are afraid of that," said Yassin Ahmed, 24, a Sunni resident of Kirkuk. "But the most important thing is that they have to take care of the people and provide us with security."

For many of the city's Kurds, Kirkuk can only be Kurdish.

"Kirkuk is a Kurdish area," said 48-year-old Ali Karim. "Only the peshmerga must be in control."


Source : Sapa-AP /dm
Date : 17 Feb 2015 15:53
 
So sad that the Mideast peoples and factions cannot unite. This create breeding grounds for the ilk like ISIS.
 
OBAMA VIEW OF US ROLE IN ARAB WORLD CHALLENGED BY CRISES
By JULIE PACE

President Barack Obama's view of the U.S. role in the Middle East and North Africa is being challenged by deepening crises in the very countries he has seen as models for his approach to the volatile region: Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya.

After making good on his pledge to end large-scale American ground wars in the region, Obama has inched the military back into Iraq.

The targeted counterterrorism campaigns Obama prefers to ground combat have weakened some extremists, but done little to quell the chaos in which terror groups thrive, or ward off the formation of new factions, like the Islamic State group.

And Obama's calls for regional governments and local security forces to take the lead for stabilizing their own countries has often only exposed the weaknesses of those institutions.


Source : Sapa-AP /aw
Date : 18 Feb 2015 08:24
 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-31502863
Islamic State militants 'burn to death 45 in Iraq'
Jihadist militants from Islamic State (IS) have burned to death 45 people in the western Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi, the local police chief says.

Exactly who these people were and why they were killed is not clear, but Col Qasim al-Obeidi said he believed some were members of the security forces.

IS fighters captured much of the town, near Ain al-Asad air base, last week.

Col Obeidi said a compound that houses the families of security personnel and local officials was now under attack.

He pleaded for help from the government and the international community.

The fighting and poor communications in the area make it difficult to confirm such reports.

Earlier this month, IS published a video showing militants burning alive a Jordanian air force pilot, whose plane crashed in Syria in December.

Siege

Al-Baghdadi had been besieged for months by Islamic State fighters before its fall on Thursday.

It had been one of the few towns to still be controlled by the Iraqi government in Anbar province, where IS and allied Sunni Arab tribesmen launched an offensive in January 2014.

Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm John Kirby told reporters on Friday that al-Baghdadi's capture needed to be put in perspective.

He said it was the first time in the last couple of months that the jihadist group had taken new ground.

However, Ain al-Asad air base, where about 320 US Marines are training members of the Iraqi army's 7th Division, is only 8km (5 miles) away.

The base was itself attacked by IS militants, among them several suicide bombers, on Friday. The militants were eventually repelled by Iraqi troops backed by US-led coalition aircraft.

In a separate development on Tuesday, the influential Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr announced he was withdrawing his forces from an umbrella group of Shia militia fighting IS alongside the Iraqi army.

He cited what he called the bad behaviour of other militia within the Popular Mobilisation Forces, whom he accused of "wreaking havoc through murdering, kidnapping and violating sanctuaries".

Shia militia have been accused of kidnapping and killing scores of Sunni civilians since Islamic State launched an offensive in northern Iraq last June that saw it seize large swathes of the country.
Click to expand...
 
Western volunteers rally to Iraq militia to protect Christians from the Islamic State

Decked out in his US army-issued fatigues and a lip stud shining from his mouth, the young American fighter cuts an unusual figure in the northern Iraqi town of Al-Qosh.

He served in the US army in Baghdad in 2006-2007 and has now returned to fight the Islamic State jihadist group with Dwekh Nawsha, a Christian militia whose name is an Assyrian-language phrase conveying self-sacrifice.

The 28-year-old, who goes by the pseudonym Brett, has become the figurehead of an emerging movement of foreigners coming to Iraq to support Christian groups.

Bearing a tattoo of a machinegun on his left arm and another of Jesus in a crown of thorns on his right, Brett jokingly refers to himself as a “crusader”.

IS never captured Al-Qosh — but it came close enough for its mostly Christian population to flee to the neighbouring autonomous region of Kurdistan, together with tens of thousands from Mosul and the Nineveh plains.

“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” Brett says, speaking from a Dwekh Nawsha base in the Kurdish city of Dohuk.

“But here we’re actually fighting for the freedom of the people here to be able live peaceably, to be able to live without persecution, to keep the church bells ringing.”

The mass exodus that took place in mid-2014 has put the continued existence of one of world’s oldest Christian communities into question.

With Kurdish peshmerga fighters now clawing back land around Mosul, some Christians are keen to take up arms for their survival and Dwekh Nwasha is only one of several recently formed groups.

- ‘Foreign fighters’ battalion’ -

Also acting as a recruiter, Brett says he wants to establish a “foreign fighters’ battalion”.

In his first week in charge, he brought in five volunteers from the United States, Britain and Canada, all of whom he says have military or contracting experience.

The foreign contingent is tiny compared to the thousands of foreigners who have joined IS, but interest is growing and Brett says he has 20 more volunteers already lined up to join.

Brett’s first recruit was Louis Park, a mild-mannered Texan who retired from the Marines in December.

“I did not adjust well at peace time,” he said with dipping tobacco tucked in his lip. “I wanted to get back out here.”

After serving in Afghanistan, Park says he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder “and some other things” that barred him from combat deployments.

As early as October 2014, he began saving money to join the fight against IS.

Park says he travelled to Iraq to continue defending his country, even though Dwekh Nawsha — with barely a few hundred fighters in its ranks — sees little frontline action.

“I’m patriotic as hell,” he says. “If my government won’t fight them I will.”

The growing contingent of foreign recruits have a variety of reasons for joining Dwekh Nawsha.

Andrew, an older man from Ontario, Canada, came because he heard about “slaughterhouses” where IS allegedly cuts people up for organ trafficking.

There is no evidence that such places exist but the rumour has been widely circulated by evangelical and anti-Islam organisations, especially in North America.

A video showing the beheading of 21 Coptic Christians by IS in Libya released on Sunday and entitled “A message signed with blood to the nation of the cross” sparked a fresh surge of calls on social media for tougher Western action.

- ‘Internet cowboys’ -

One seven-year US army veteran called Scott says he was planning to join the Syria-based Kurdish “Popular Protection Units” (YPG) until he found out they were “a bunch of damn Reds”.

Other foreigners in Dwekh Nawsha say they were turned off by what they see as the socialist streak in the YPG, an affiliate of Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party whose months-long battle against IS in Kobane attracted many volunteers.

Alan Duncan, a prominent British foreign fighter and veteran of the Royal Irish Regiment, recently left the YPG for similar reasons.

He told AFP that an exodus of foreign fighters from the YPG has begun, naming several well-known volunteers currently fighting for the group he says plan to leave in the coming days.

Jordan Matson, a former US soldier who has become the poster boy of YPG foreign fighters, argued that some volunteers may have lost their bottle when confronted with the intensity of the fighting in Kobane.

“Most of the Internet cowboys have come to realise this isn’t a normal deployment,” he told AFP. “So they lose the stomach to come or stay.”

Young American fighters are among the Western recruits who have returned to Iraq to fight the Islamist State jihadist group alongside Dwekh Nawsha, a Christian militia.
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US IDENTIFIES 1,200 SYRIAN OPPOSITION FIGHTERS FOR TRAINING

The Pentagon said Wednesday it has identified 1,200 moderate Syrian opposition fighters who have "potential" for training to fight against the Islamic State in Syria.

The individuals are not yet being trained, and must undergo further screening, Rear Admiral John Kirby said. Eventually they will be equipped to "go back and defend ... their citizens," he said.

No decision has been made about providing US air or other support to such troops when they return from training, but "we recognize that we're going to have some responsibilities" after that training is complete, Kirby said.

Such troops would only be intended to fight against Islamic State forces in Syria, not against the Bashar al-Assad regime, he said.

It's been five months since US President Barack Obama announced his intention to start training moderate Syrian fighters to stand up to Islamic State. The numbers announced Wednesday were among the first concrete details that have emerged about the programme.

Congress in September approved the money and plans for the training.

The Pentagon said in September it thought it could train 5,000 moderate Syrian opposition fighters within a year, but the challenges are daunting.

Saudi Arabia and Turkey are both being considered as hosts for the training. Kirby indicated months ago that the training itself would not take a full year.

Fear of aligning with the wrong forces in Syria paralysed US policy during three years of the bloody civil war. The escalation of Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq prompted US plans to start training opponents.

One of the main problems, the Pentagon has pointed out, is that the Syrian opposition is not a monolithic group or a recognized military force.

Even when the training is completed, the process of making an impact on the conflict will be slow as the conflict and the carnage grind on, officials have said.


Source : Sapa-dpa /avb
Date : 19 Feb 2015 01:59
 
ISLAMIC STATE EXECUTES 150 CIVILIANS IN WESTERN IRAQ, OFFICIAL SAYS

The Islamic State militant group executed 150 civilians in western Iraq, where it is fighting to control the town of al-Baghdadi near a US airbase, a local official said Friday.

Malallah al-Oubeidi, the head of al-Baghdadi's local council, said the victims were mostly members of the Albu Oubeid tribe, which is fighting alongside government troops against Islamic State.

According to al-Oubeidi, the 150 people were killed Thursday after the militants seized them days earlier.

The central government in Baghdad did not comment.

Al-Baghdadi - located 5 kilometres from the Ain al-Asad airbase, where US Marines are training Iraqi soldiers - has been besieged by Islamic State for more than a week.

Last week, the base came under artillery and rocket fire by Islamic State forces.

Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Ali al-Sisstani, on Friday urged the government to move to break the jihadists' siege of al-Baghdadi and prevent a "tragedy" among local residents.

Islamic State, an al-Qaeda splinter group, controls territory in western and northern Iraq.

Backed by Kurdish fighters and a US-led aerial campaign, Iraqi government troops have in recent months launched counterattacks to dislodge the militants from the country.

A US military official said an operation to retake Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, from Islamic State fighters will begin in April or May if Iraqi and Kurdish forces are trained by then.

The offensive will involve 20,000 to 25,000 troops, a military official from US Central Command in Tampa, Florida, said Thursday.

The US military had previously said an offensive was being planned but had not given details.

Five Iraqi brigades will be trained ahead of the offensive, which will go forward only when the units are ready, the official said on the condition of anonymity.

From 1,000 to 2,000 Islamic State fighters are holding Mosul, which was captured in June when Iraqi troops laid down their arms and fled. It is strategically important because of its oil refineries.

The radical Sunni militia also controls considerable areas in neighbouring Syria, and there are reports it has established a foothold in chaotic Libya.


Source : Sapa-dpa /nsm
Date : 20 Feb 2015 14:14
 
NEW ZEALAND TO SEND TROOPS TO IRAQ TO TRAIN LOCAL FORCES

New Zealand plans to send a small number of troops to Iraq to help train local forces in their battle against the Islamic State group.

Prime Minister John Key on Tuesday told lawmakers the country would deploy up to 143 military personnel. He said the troops would be based "behind the wire" training Iraqi security forces and would not be involved in combat missions.

He said most of the troops would likely be based in the Taji military base north of Baghdad as part of a joint mission with Australia. He said the two-year deployment would begin about May and would be reviewed by the government after nine months.

Key said New Zealand was one of 62 nations that were part of an international coalition battling the Islamic State group.


Source : Sapa-AP /avb
Date : 24 Feb 2015 03:53
 
OBAMA OPEN TO CHANGES TO MILITARY AUTHORITY AGAINST IS
By NEDRA PICKLER
Associated Press

The White House is calling on lawmakers to work out their divisions over an authorization to use military force against Islamic State militants and says President Barack Obama is open to changes to his initial proposal to achieve a compromise.

Obama wants authorization to pursue the violent extremist group across international boundaries, but would be willing to accept amendments to much of the rest of his draft, the White House says. That includes his proposed three-year time limit on U.S. military action and the most contentious language over the use of American troops.

After a weeklong holiday break, Congress returned to Washington on Monday and the White House is arguing it's up to lawmakers to work out their disputes now that the president has made his offer. "It's their turn to take the lead and to walk it through the legislative process," said White House press secretary Josh Earnest.

Some Republicans say Obama's proposal is too restrictive for the mission to succeed. On the other side, some Democrats want more limitations on Obama's authority so the United States doesn't sign on for another open-ended war.

Republican Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker plans to hold hearings on the legislation over the next couple of weeks and said he's keeping options open on the best way to proceed. He said options include amending Obama's proposal or to "start whole cloth from a clean fresh beginning."

Obama argues he doesn't need a new authorization to pursue Islamic State terrorists legally - and he's been launching strikes against them for months based on authorizations given to President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. But critics say Obama's use of those authorizations is a stretch at best, and the White House has taken a new position that makes it clear it doesn't see reliance on that authority as ideal, either. White House officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the negotiations on the record.

The White House now says if a new authorization is signed into law, Obama will no longer rely on the authority approved in 2001 to pursue the Islamic State group and instead solely rely on the new powers. A White House official said Congress could make that clear within the statute by adding that limitation to the authorization. The official said if they do not add such language but still pass a new authorization, Obama will consider it his sole basis for operations against the militant group.

Obama has said he wants to refine and ultimately repeal the 2001 authorization. But besides the Islamic State campaign, the president also is using the law as the legal basis for the continued operation of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and attacks on militants in Yemen and elsewhere.

Obama's proposal includes a three-year limit that would require the next president to come back to Congress and ask for renewal - if, as Obama predicts, the fight against the Islamic State is still ongoing. He also proposes a ban on "enduring offensive combat operations" as an attempt to bridge the divide in Congress over the role of ground troops.

Obama said the language gives him the ability for rescue missions, intelligence collection and the use of special operations forces in possible military action against Islamic State leaders. "It is not the authorization of another ground war, like Afghanistan or Iraq," Obama said as he announced the proposal Feb. 11.

But White House officials say they are open to alternatives to that language as long as they maintain the president's flexibility to send in ground troops for targeted missions when needed.

---

Follow Nedra Pickler on Twitter at twitter.com/nedrapickler


Source : Sapa-AP /avb
Date : 24 Feb 2015 03:00
 
ACTIVISTS: IS MILITANTS KIDNAP DOZENS OF CHRISTIANS IN SYRIA
By RYAN LUCAS
Associated Press

Islamic State militants have abducted at least 70 Christians, including women and children, after overrunning a string of villages in northeastern Syria, two activist groups said Tuesday.

The Sunni extremists, who follow a radical interpretation of Islam, have repeatedly targeted religious and ethnic minorities in Syria and Iraq since seizing control of large swaths of both countries. The group's fighters have ransacked churches, demolished Shiite and Sunni Muslim shrines, and enslaved women of the Yazidi community, a tiny sect they consider heretics.

The latest assault began before dawn on Monday, when the militants swept through the villages nestled along the banks of Khabur River near the town of Tal Tamr in Hassakeh province. The area is predominantly inhabited by Assyrians, an indigenous Christian people who trace their roots back to the ancient Mesopotamians.

During the raids, the militants took between 70 and 100 Assyrians captive, said Nuri Kino, the head of the activist group A Demand For Action, which focuses on religious minorities in the Middle East. He said some 3,000 people managed to flee the onslaught and have sought refuge in the cities of Hassakeh and Qamishli.

Kino said his organization based its information on conversations with villagers who fled the attack and their relatives.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported the abductions, but put the number of Christians held by the Islamic State group at 90. The Observatory relies on a network of activists inside Syria.

Both activist groups said that most of the captives come from the village of Tal Shamiram, located some 85 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of the provincial capital of Qamishli.

An Assyrian Christian woman from Tal Shamiram who now lives in Beirut said she has been scrambling to find out what has become of her parents as well as her brother and his wife and kids.

"Land lines have been cut, their mobiles are closed," she told The Associated Press. "Have they been slaughtered? Are they still alive? We're searching for any news."

She spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of endangering relatives believed to be held by the militants.

"My family visited me last month and returned to Syria. There were clashes but it was normal, nothing exceptional. I feel so helpless, I cannot do anything for them but pray," she said by telephone, her voice breaking.

The Islamic State group's online radio station, al-Bayan, said in a report Tuesday that IS fighters had detained "tens of crusaders" and seized 10 villages around Tal Tamr after clashes with Kurdish militiamen. IS frequently refers to Christians as "crusaders."

It was not immediately clear what the Islamic State group planned to do with the Assyrians.

The militants have a long history of killing captives, including foreign journalists, Syrian soldiers and Kurdish militiamen. Most recently, militants in Libya affiliated with the Islamic State group released a video showing the beheading of 21 Egyptian Christians.

But the Islamic State group also could use its Assyrian captives to try to arrange a prisoner swap with the Kurdish and Christian militias it is battling in northeastern Syria. There is a precedent: the extremists have released Kurdish school children as well as Turkish truck drivers and diplomats after holding them for months.

The fighting around Tal Tamr has coincided with heavy clashes between Kurdish militiamen and Islamic State militants about 90 kilometers (55 miles) to the east near the Iraqi border. Kurdish fighters from the People's Protection Units, or YPG, launched an offensive over the weekend, quickly seizing some 20 villages from the extremists.

The fighting continued through Tuesday, as the YPG has captured another 10 villages, the Observatory said.

---

Associated Press writers Maamoun Youssef in Cairo and Zeina Karam in Beirut contributed to this report.


Source : Sapa-AP /gm
Date : 24 Feb 2015 14:33
 
FATE OF ABDUCTED CHRISTIANS UNCLEAR, SYRIA CLASHES CONTINUE

Kurdish and Christian militiamen battled Islamic State militants on Wednesday in northeastern Syria, where the extremist group recently abducted at least 70 Christians after overrunning a cluster of villages.

Hassakeh province which borders Turkey and Iraq has become the latest battleground for the fight against IS. It is predominantly Kurdish but also has populations of Arabs and predominantly Christian Assyrians and Armenians

In pre-dawn attacks, the group on Monday attacked communities nestled along the Khabur River, seizing dozens of people, many of them women and children. Thousands of others fled to safer areas.

The fate of those kidnapped, almost all of them Assyrian Christians, remained unclear on Wednesday two days after they were seized. The abduction added to fears among religious minorities in both Syria and Iraq, who have been repeatedly targeted by the Islamic State group. During the group's bloody campaign in both countries, where it has declared a self-styled caliphate, minorities have been repeatedly targeted and killed, driven from their homes, had their women enslaved and places of worship destroyed.

The Assyrians are indigenous Christian people who trace their roots back to the ancient Mesopotamians.

"We are watching a living history and all that comprises disappear," wrote Mardean Isaac of A Demand for Action, an activist group that focuses on religious minorities in the Middle East.

He called for further airstrikes by American and western powers to assist those Assyrian and Kurdish forces fighting the militants in Syria. The United States and coalition of regional partners are conducting a campaign of airstrikes against the group.

In its first comments on the subject, the Syrian state-run news agency SANA said around 90 civilians had been kidnapped by IS. It said that the militants burned people's homes and stole their properties, adding that those kidnapped were taken to Shaddadi city.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and a Christian group called the Syriac Military Council said heavy clashes against IS militants in the area were continuing. The group, which is fighting alongside Kurds and Arab militiamen, said they were fighting to "push back the barbaric attacks against the freedom fighters."

The Islamic State group has a history of killing captives, including foreign journalists, Syrian soldiers and Kurdish militiamen. Most recently, militants in Libya affiliated with the extremist group released a video showing the beheading of 21 Egyptian Christians.

The extremists could also use the Assyrian captives to try to arrange a prisoner swap with the Kurdish militias it is battling in northeastern Syria.


Source : Sapa-AP /mjs
Date : 25 Feb 2015 14:11
 
IRAQI KURDS CLAIM SEIZURE OF KEY ISLAMIC STATE SUPPLY ROUTE

Kurdish Peshmerga forces have gained control of a major supply route for the Islamic State militants in northern Iraq, a Kurdish official said on Wednesday.

Colonel Serbest Mustafa told dpa that the route had been used by the jihadist militia to get supplies between the militant-held Iraqi city of Mosul and Syria.

He said the Peshmerga, the troops of Iraq's autonomous area of Kurdistan, had also retaken two border outposts near Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, which was overrun by Islamic State fighters in June.

He added that the advance had been backed by US-led airstrikes, forcing the extremists to retreat into Mosul.

The claims could not be independently verified.

Last week, a US military official said a planned operation to retake Mosul from Islamic State would begin in April or May, if the Iraqi and Kurdish forces were ready by then.


Source : Sapa-dpa /mjs
Date : 25 Feb 2015 14:34
 
Quite enjoyed this piece. Feel quite sorry for the failed suicide bomber. :(

Isis is losing in Iraq

The Iraqi city of Mosul was taken over by Islamic State last summer – but now the government forces are pushing back.

Twelve years have passed since the terrible decision to invade Iraq in 2003. When I add up all my visits to Baghdad during that time I find I have spent two full years of my life here. That’s a long time to observe so much bloodshed and misery. But now, for the first time, I am starting to wonder whether things are changing.

The other night I wandered around the main shopping street in Karada, the Kensington of Baghdad. The lights blazed out from every shop along the way and half the pavement space was taken up with goods for sale: shoes, handbags, sweets, jackets, scarves. A river of people wandered in both directions along the street, past the cafés and restaurants where diners leaned back in their plastic chairs and gave themselves over to the pleasures of eating, drinking tea and talking. The laughter drowned out the blaring horns from the slow-moving, nose-to-tail cars, and children played and danced and tried to drag their parents over to look at the toys on show. There was a certain amount of beer-drinking going on. It was a Thursday night, and everyone was determined to have a good time. They had something to celebrate, you see: this was the first weekend since the nightly curfew had been abolished.

Iraq’s new prime minister, the short and bouncy Haider al-Abadi, is a British-trained engineer who, as an exile from Saddam Hussein, used to run a highly successful business in London building lifts and designing transportation systems. It was his decision to lift the curfew in order to show people in the most practical way that things were getting better. His predecessor and rival Nouri al-Maliki, more gloomy and bitter than ever after being pushed out of office last summer, argued strongly against it. Still, it seems to be working. The people of Baghdad are being given a glimpse of what life might be, if only Iraq could free itself from terrorism.

Inevitably, Islamic State staged a couple of suicide bombings to remind everyone how short and cruel life can be here. There might have been a third suicide attack to mark the end of the curfew, but the bomber who was to have carried it out was captured just as he was getting ready for his mission. A few days later my team and I were allowed into a top-security interrogation centre near Baghdad Airport to meet the suicide bomber who had failed.

A sign on the wall showed that this was known as Camp Cropper during the American days. At that time it was known, inevitably, by an acronym: it was an HVD, or “high-value detention site”. There were three of these sites worldwide: Guantanamo; Abu Ghraib, in another part of Baghdad, where the American soldier Lynndie England took her pornographic selfies with pyramids of naked, traumatised prisoners, and where the guards laughed as they set their dogs on them; and Camp Cropper. This is where Saddam Hussein was held before his execution. God knows what else used to happen here.

It has been expanded since those days; well over a thousand prisoners are now held at Cropper, mostly from al-Qaeda and Islamic State. A smiling senior officer with more trophies and statuettes on his shelves than Manchester United, plus a framed certificate from MI6 behind his desk, explained that the new guards don’t torture or ill-treat prisoners. Then we were taken to a conference room and set up our camera. There was a shuffling sound in the corridor and a slight figure in bright yellow overalls, blindfolded and handcuffed, was ushered in. His guard was all in black, and wore a black balaclava. The sight of them was a shock: it was a reversal of all those disgusting IS videos of people in brightly coloured overalls being led to their death by men in black. The difference here was, the prisoner in front of us had been groomed by Islamic State to murder ordinary people in a Shia mosque.

The guard took off the prisoner’s blindfold. He blinked in the sudden light and looked uncomprehendingly at the camera and at me, sitting a few feet away from him. It certainly didn’t look as though he had been ill-treated; he was so passive, I don’t imagine it would have been necessary. And he was painfully young: 17, though he looked even less than that. My two colleagues and I, each of us a father of a son, felt a sharp stab of pity for him.

His name was Zakariya al-Rawi, and his story was sad and squalid. He had run away from home after rowing with his parents and gone to a nearby town that was occupied by Islamic State. An IS loudspeaker van drove up and down the streets constantly, calling on people to volunteer to serve Islam. That filled Zakariya with a new sense of purpose. He joined up, together with friends.

The recruiters gave him some basic military training but it is clear what they wanted: suicide fodder. They must have detected his weakness of character, his uncertainties, his innocence, and they started to work on him, telling him that Shia Muslims were heretics who had to be extirpated, the enemies of Sunni Muslims like Zakariya and his friends. He believed them.

“They promised me I’d go straight to heaven, without being judged.”

You didn’t ask them why, if being a suicide bomber was so wonderful, they didn’t want to do it themselves?

“No.”

Were you scared?

“Yes, very.”

How old were the others who decided to volunteer?

“Most of them were like me, or younger.”

How young?

“Fourteen, 15, 16.”

I asked him what his father and mother would have thought about what he had become. Tears came to his eyes: he suddenly stopped being a terrorist. Now, he was just a kid who had upset his parents and didn’t know how to get home.

His IS minders took him to Baghdad, put him up at a safe house, and taught him how to use an explosive vest. He had to keep his thumb on the trigger of the bomb. Directly he raised it, the bomb would go off. And at that instant, they said, without needing to go through the process of having his life and actions judged, he would find himself in paradise. It might not have been particularly good theology, but it worked.

They gave him a pistol, in case the guards at the Shia mosque tried to stop him. He was to shoot them, then run over to where the crowd of worshippers was thickest and detonate the bomb.

You were fully prepared to kill women and children, as well as men? I asked.

“Yes, sir.”

His voice was scarcely audible now and the tears were running unchecked down his face. His eyes were fixed on his manacled hands and he spoke in whispers.

Why are you crying?

“Because I’m so sorry for all this.”

You’re ashamed of what you were going to do?

“Yes, sir.”

Before he could leave for his mission, the safe house was raided and he was captured. He wasn’t beaten or threatened; there was no need. The interrogators treated him kindly and showed him that Shia Muslims were much the same as the Sunnis he had grown up with. He’ll get a short prison sentence; after that, he’ll be free to make something of his dysfunctional life. If he can.

Over these 12 years, things in Iraq have gone from bad to horrific to bad again. There’s never been anything approaching peace; and then, last year, Islamic State erupted into Iraq and captured its third most important city, Mosul. After that there was huge panic in Baghdad. IS volunteers came hurtling down the motorway southwards in the direction of the capital.

When I arrived a few days later, there were neat security notices on the walls of the office the BBC shares with the New York Times, calmly listing the places where we should take refuge if IS captured Baghdad. The notices are still there, but only because no one has bothered to take them down. Baghdad now seems much safer and IS is being pushed back on most fronts – especially in Diyala province, due north of the capital. IS came close here – not as close as it still is around Fallujah, to the west, but worrying all the same.

Last month, however, a brisk campaign drove IS out of Diyala altogether. Iraqi planes hammered IS positions in towns such as Muqdadiya and Mansourieh, and ground forces moved north out of Baghdad and simply rolled them up. The IS fighters hightailed it for the western Anbar province, huge and sparsely populated, where they have some support among the largely Sunni population.

But even though they have gone, they are still striking at the army and people in Diyala through the booby-trap bombs they left behind. We visited Mansourieh two weeks after IS had fled, but that day a roadside bomb went off, killing one person in a passing car and injuring the other occupants. When we got to the site of the explosion we spotted what seemed to be another bomb in a plastic container close by, with wires snaking away from it towards the road.
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Cntd...

Is the Iraqi army capable of defeating IS? On this showing, certainly. The disaster in Mosul last June was largely the result of a grave failure of judgement by the then prime minister, al-Maliki. As a Shia with a disturbingly sectarian approach, he sacked as many Sunni officers as he could and replaced them with less well-trained Shia equivalents; perhaps he was worried about a coup. His successor, Haider al-Abadi, is also a Shia, but directly he took over as prime minister in September he started bringing Sunni officers back into the army.

He is also tackling the problem of the Shia militias, which are sometimes accused of murdering Sunni civilians. He has had some success in setting up integrated units that mix Sunnis, Kurds and Shias indiscriminately. “Our only loyalty is to Iraq,” said one politician sententiously as 50 mildly shambolic figures marched across a parade ground for the benefit of our camera. It’s a start, though some Shia leaders are now threatening to pull their men out of the new units. In Iraq, small-time politics often cancels out the national interest.

In the next few weeks or months (he is too cautious to say when), Abadi will launch a military campaign to recapture Mosul. IS will fight hard to keep it. Mosul is Islamic State’s capital in Iraq, the place where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the city’s self-styled caliph, announced the establishment of his caliphate. Chased out of Mosul, IS in Iraq will be just a scattered gang of bandits.

The chances must be reasonably good that it will happen. IS’s strength lies in its total commitment and extreme savagery; it has no fallback position, no possibility of modifying its approach or compromising. In that sense, it is Hitlerian: Weltmacht oder Niedergang. If it can no longer paralyse its enemies with fear, the qualities that made it strong will start to weaken it. The fighting in Mosul may well be fierce, but with the help of western forces and the determination of the government in Baghdad, there should be only one outcome.

After 12 years in which the worst of any range of possibilities usually came about, it does feel as though Iraq could at long last be starting to turn the corner. That is certainly what people here in Baghdad, probably the most pessimistic city on earth, are now allowing themselves to hope. If it turns out to be true, they will deserve it more than just about any other group of people on earth.
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I know it shouldn't, but this annoys me more than the abductions and executions.

Video shows ISIS militants destroying antiquities in Iraq


Irbil, Iraq (CNN)—They take sledgehammers to statues with an uncommon gusto -- destroying in seconds what may have survived centuries.

New video released by ISIS shows militants smashing what they say are antiquities at a museum in Mosul, Iraq.

Men shove statues off pedestals, and use hammers and drills to destroy what's left.

An unnamed militant offers the following explanation: "These antiquities and idols behind me were from people in past centuries and were worshiped instead of God.

"When God Almighty orders to us destroy these statues, idols and antiquities, we must do it, even if they're worth billions of dollars," he says.



It's not clear from the footage how many of the pieces were originals, versus replicas. Experts are clear in saying, however, the video represents a clear loss.

"On repeated viewing of that very grainy video we now suspect that there (were) far more originals in the museum than I first thought," said Eleanor Robson, chair of the British Institute for the Study of Iraq. "Whilst there was indeed a program to relocate antiquities to safekeeping in Baghdad, it looks now as though it didn't reach that particular museum."

"I condemn this as a deliberate attack against Iraq's millennial history and culture, and as an inflammatory incitement to violence and hatred," said UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova.

"This attack is far more than a cultural tragedy -- this is also a security issue as it fuels sectarianism, violent extremism and conflict in Iraq," she said, calling for an emergency meeting of the Security Council to protect Iraq's cultural heritage.

How ISIS is run

CNN has extensively reported on ISIS' destruction of some ancient and deeply meaningful sites in that country. Officials there have said ISIS has blown up shrines such as the tomb of Jonah.

Its motive are not purely ideological, however; ISIS makes money off looting.

Qais Hussain Rashid, director general of Iraqi museums, has told CNN that ISIS sells stolen antiquities to criminals and antique dealers on the black market.

Everything to know about the rise of ISIS

The militant group also allows locals to dig at ancient sites as long as those people give ISIS a percentage of the monetary value of anything found, according to a September 2014 New York Times opinion piece written by three people who had recently returned from southern Turkey and interviewed people who live and work in ISIS-controlled territory.

ISIS' system of profiteering from antiquities thieving is very complicated, the three said, adding that for some areas along the Euphrates River, ISIS leaders encourage semiprofessional field crews to dig.

ISIS militant 'Jihadi John' identified

Ben Wedeman reported this story from Irbil. Dana Ford reported and wrote this story from Atlanta. CNN's Ashley Fantz also contributed to this report.

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/02/26/middleeast/isis-antiquities-vandalism/index.html
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