Islamist Wave 2015 - News & Discussion

10 posts

Marcus

Generally, the more the government is associated with religion, the more skeptical the populace becomes, look at how most Iranians are not observant Muslims.

Angocachi
Marcus
Iran is ~50/50 on the religious vs irreligious population ratio. It's mostly regional and ethnic. Istanbul and West of the Bosphorus are Secularist strongholds, the Kurds and Alevis are also Secularist. Turks in the interior and along the Armenian border are zealous by Turkish standards.
In Iran the urbanites and ethnic minorities are loaded with Secularists, but the religiosity is high beyond those demographics.
Your idea that a religious government causes irreligion to rise isn't sustained. The most religious governments in the world recognized by the UN have very zealous citizenry; the GCC. The most secular populations are those who experienced government enforced Secularization, Turkey, Albania, Bosnia, the former Soviet Union, China, France, etc.

Erdogan is phony Islamism in the way the American Republican Party teases Christians. Under such a government of mock theocrats the whole of Islamism is discredited without having been at the wheel.
Marcus

But isn't Egypt one of the most religious countries, after decades of secular rule? I think Iran has the lowest mosque attendance rate in region, though that could be ethnically delineated as you say.

Angocachi
Secular rule doesn't drop religiosity in the public unless it enforces irreligion. Egypt has been and remains under Secular rule but it was never Atta Turk or the Marxists. In one case religion is kicked out of government, in the other religion.is kicked out of the citizens.
Angocachi
ISIS Fighters Take Over Major Libyan Oilfields

Oilfield guards retreated after running out of ammunition

Fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) took over at least two oilfields in Libya and attacked another on Tuesday, according to oil and government sources.

Mashallah al-Zewi, the oil minister in the Tripoli-based government said ISIS attacked the Dhahra oilfield, before retreating. He told AP on Wednesday that the militants swept down from the central city of Sirte and attacked Dhahra oil field to the south, trading fire with guards and blowing up residential and administrative buildings before eventually retreating.

Colonel Ali al-Hassi, a spokesman for Libyan oil industry security told the BBC said the same fighters first took the oilfields at Bahi and Mabruk. “Extremists took control of the Bahi and Mabruk fields and are now heading to seize the Dhahra field following the retreat of the forces guarding these sites,” he said.

Images published online by the Libya Observer news organization showed smashed metal equipment and the charred wreckage of a pickup truck at the Bahi field.

The attacks came as Libya’s warring factions escalated their ongoing conflict. Forces aligned to the government in Tobruk and the rival Libya Dawn administration in Tripoli both staged air strikes on each other’s positions on Tuesday.

Libya has passed through several phases of turmoil since 2011 when its leader Muammar Qaddafi was overthrown in an armed uprising supported by NATO airstrikes. Today, two rival governments are vying for power in a country divided among multiple armed groups.

ISIS, which sent fighters from Iraq and Syria to Libya last year, has also emerged as force in Libya, attracting some support among local militias. Last month Egyptian fighter jets struck ISIS targets in Libya after the group released a video showing the execution of 21 Coptic Christian hostages.

The two oil fields, located south of the city of Sirte, have been shut down for weeks in part due to security concerns. An attack on the Mabruk field last month left at least 12 people dead.

Even if they were able to operate the fields, insurgents would find it difficult to export oil via the country’s Mediterranean ports. An attempt in 2014 by Eastern Libyan rebels to smuggle crude oil was stopped when U.S. special forces boarded the ship, the Morning Glory, off Cyprus .

Experts believe that large-scale oil smuggling from Libya is more difficult than in Iraq where ISIS has been able to export oil to Turkey, Jordan and Iran .

“There’s no way to smuggle oil in Libya,” said Jason Pack, a researcher on Libya at Cambridge University. “The difference from a place like Iraq is Iraq has a long tradition of oil from the Kurdish region going in trucks to Turkey. Libya has no such tradition.”

Analysts say ISIS’s advances in Libya have been made possible by the political conflict in Libya. This week’s escalation comes as the recognized government in Tobruk officially appointed Khalifa Haftar as its armed forces chief. Haftar’s military campaign launched last year against Islamist-leaning factions has further divided the country.

“There’s ISIS in Libya because there’s a lack of a state, and there’s the ability of every militia group to control territory because the major factions won’t work together,” says Pack. “The absolutely only way to eliminate territorial pockets in places like Sirte and Derna is if these groups are willing to work together against ISIS.”

http://time.com/3731406/isis-libya-oilfields/


U.S. Strategy in Iraq Increasingly Relies on Iran

WASHINGTON — At a time when President Obama is under political pressure from congressional Republicans over negotiations to rein in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, a startling paradox has emerged: Mr. Obama is becoming increasingly dependent on Iranian fighters as he tries to contain the Islamic State militant group in Iraq and Syria without committing American ground troops.

In the four days since Iranian troops joined 30,000 Iraqi forces to try to wrest Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit back from Islamic State control , American officials have said the United States is not coordinating with Iran, one of its fiercest global foes, in the fight against a common enemy.

That may be technically true. But American war planners have been closely monitoring Iran’s parallel war against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, through a range of channels, including conversations on radio frequencies that each side knows the other is monitoring. And the two militaries frequently seek to avoid conflict in their activities by using Iraqi command centers as an intermediary.

As a result, many national security experts say, Iran’s involvement is helping the Iraqis hold the line against Islamic State advances until American military advisers are finished training Iraq’s underperforming armed forces.

“The only way in which the Obama administration can credibly stick with its strategy is by implicitly assuming that the Iranians will carry most of the weight and win the battles on the ground,” said Vali R. Nasr, a former special adviser to Mr. Obama who is now dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. “You can’t have your cake and eat it too — the U.S. strategy in Iraq has been successful so far largely because of Iran.”

It was Iran that organized Iraq’s Shiite militias last August to break a weeklong Islamic State siege of Amerli , a cluster of farming villages whose Shiite residents faced possible slaughter. American bombs provided support from warplanes.

Administration officials were careful to note at the time that the United States was working in Amerli with its allies — namely Iraqi Army units and Kurdish security forces. A senior administration official said that “any coordinating with the Shiite militias was not done by us; it would have been done by the I.S.F.,” a reference to the Iraqi security forces.

It was also Iran’s Quds Force that backed Iraq’s Shiite militias and Iraqi security forces in November to liberate the central city of Baiji from the Islamic State, breaking the siege of a nearby oil refinery . (A month later, the Islamic State took back a part of the city.)

And last summer, when Islamic State militants first captured Mosul and got within striking distance of the Kurdish capital, Erbil, the head of Iran’s Quds Force, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, flew to Erbil with two planes full of military supplies, American and regional diplomats said. The Iranian move helped to bolster Kurdish defenses around Erbil, the officials said.

In Tikrit this week, Iranian-backed Shiite militia leaders said that their fighters made up more than two-thirds of the pro-government force of 30,000. They also said that General Suleimani, the Iranian spymaster, was helping to lead from near the front line.

Websites supporting the militias circulated photographs of General Suleimani on Wednesday drinking tea on what was said to be the front line, dressed in black and holding his glass in one hand and a floral patterned saucer in the other.

The presence of General Suleimani — a reviled figure in American security and military circles because he once directed a deadly campaign against American forces in Iraq — makes it difficult for the United States to conduct airstrikes to assist in the Tikrit operation, as it might like, foreign policy experts said.

“There’s just no way that the U.S. military can actively support an offensive led by Suleimani,” said Christopher Harmer, a former aviator in the United States Navy in the Persian Gulf who is now an analyst with the Institute for the Study of War. “He’s a more stately version of Osama bin Laden.”

But the United States strategy in Iraq can benefit from Iran’s effort to take back Tikrit from the Islamic State, even if it is not involved directly. Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the involvement of Iranian-backed Shiites in Tikrit could be “a positive thing” provided it did not exacerbate sectarian tension.

“This is the most overt conduct of Iranian support, in the form of artillery and other things,” General Dempsey said. “Frankly, it will only be a problem if it results in sectarianism.”

But that is a big worry. In the past — notably just after the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in 2011 — Shiite militias have been accused of atrocities against Sunnis. And in January, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordered an investigation into accusations that Shiite militiamen massacred 70 people in Diyala Province after pro-government forces expelled Islamic State militants.

This week, Republican lawmakers warned that Iran’s influence in Iraq would increase with the Tikrit offensive. “We share the president’s goal to degrade and defeat ISIL,” Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said in a statement Tuesday. “But success in this mission will not be achieved by capitulating to Iran’s ambitions for regional hegemony.”

Landon Shroder, an intelligence analyst for corporations in Iraq who was in Baghdad last summer when Mosul fell, countered that the worry that Iran will gain influence in Iraq ignores the reality that Iran’s Shiite government is already a key Iraqi ally.

“By this stage, everybody who observed what happened in Iraq with the Islamic State should know that the main influencer in Iraq is Iran,” he said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “That’s an unpopular perception in the United States, after spending so much money and lives lost in the conflict, but it’s reality.”

Mr. Shroder said that at the moment, the only force with the ability to bring Kurdish troops, the Iraqi Army and the Shiite militias together to fight the Islamic State is Iran.

Rafid Jaboori, the spokesman for Mr. Abadi, the Iraqi prime minister, said in an interview Wednesday that Iraq had urged the United States and Iran not to play out their bilateral conflict in Iraq’s battle against the Islamic State.

“So far in general there was no clash within the two,” Mr. Jaboori said.

He drew a comparison to World War II . “Countries with different ideologies, different priorities, different systems of government, cooperated to defeat the Nazis,” he said. “It’s foreseeable that we see countries which might not get along very well in terms of their bilateral relations working to help Iraq to defeat this threat.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/06/w...tegy-in-iraq-increasingly-relies-on-iran.html
Angocachi

While the US allies with Iranian-backed Shia theocrats to take back Tikrit and Kurdish Marxists to take back the Kobani Canton, all for Exxon contracts, ISIS captures major oilfields in Libya.

Fitz Antonius Blockhead President Camacho

Angocachi

While ISIS is slowly losing towns in Iraq and Syria it has expanded overseas considerably. ISIS has split the ranks of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has totally fractured in half the Al Qaeda-loyal Caucasus Emirate in Russia, has carried out attacks in the Sinai, and is currently seizing territory in Libya. Now it has added Boko Haram to its Caliphate.
Boko Haram administers large territory and a large population in Northeast Nigeria by shariah. They're mostly insane from the leadership down and show the same brutality and frequency of Jihadist attacks as ISIS.

ISIS Expands into Nigeria

Nigeria's armed group Boko Haram has pledged allegiance to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Reuters has reported quoting the monitoring group SITE.

The pledge, attributed to Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau, was made in an audio recording posted on the group's twitter page on Saturday, but it could not be immediately verified.

"We announce our allegiance to the Caliph ... and will hear and obey in times of difficulty and prosperity," SITE quoted Boko Haram as saying in a video purporting to be from the Nigerian rebel group.

The video script identified the Caliph as Ibrahim ibn Awad ibn Ibrahim al-Awad al-Qurashi, who is better known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIL, which controls large swaths of territories in Iraq and Syria.

Baghdadi has already accepted pledges of allegiance from other armed groups in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan and north Africa.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Boko Haram expert Aliyu Musa said: "It's not the first time Abubakar Shekau has done this - remember, when they started taking parts of Nigeria last year, he did proclaim support for ISIL."

"We've always know that they have connections with al-Qaeda and al-Shabab and others, but now the government should be more aware they are connecting with violent groups around the world."

Boko Haram has been waging a six-year military campaign to carve out an Islamic state in northern Nigeria.

On Saturday, three bomb blasts killed at least 51 people in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri in the worst attacks there since Boko Haram fighters tried to seize the town in two major assaults earlier this year.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/...-pledges-allegiance-isil-150307201614660.html


It is certainly worth noting that ISIS foes in Iraq and Syria can't advance against it without Western air power. In many places the Kurds and Shia can't hold the line against ISIS without Western air power. ISIS leadership demands expansion and across borders. It's probable Boko Haram will begin a campaign to seize Northern Cameroon and the rest of the Muslim north and its likely we'll see ISIS weapons and fighters shipped in from Libya and the Mashriq to make this possible. This will provoke airstrikes by Western countries.
We're rapidly approaching a situation in which every other Muslim country on the map is under aerial bombardment by the West.

Angocachi

A wonderful detailing of ISIS in Afghanistan.
Fitz Longface

[​IMG]

Ever since disaffected Afghan and Pakistani Taliban insurgents began pledging allegiance to the Islamic State during the summer of 2014, rumors and reports have emerged indicating how the Islamic State has expanded its presence throughout South Asia. A chronological narrative of the rise of the jihadist group in Afghanistan follows below and the above graphic depicts its emergence.

In late September 2014, fierce battles raged between Afghan security forces and insurgents reported to be associated with the Islamic State in the Arjistan district of Ghazni province. At the time, Afghan officials reported that the insurgents had raised the black flag of the Islamic State and were burning down homes and beheading captured security forces and local residents alike. The incident in Arjistan is mired in controversy, as local Afghan officials allegedly recanted their versions of events and admitted to embellishing the presence of Islamic State fighters as a ploy to obtain more resources, according to a report by The New York Times .

It should also be noted that in early February 2015, the Chief of Police for Ghazni denied that the Islamic State had created a presence in the area, stating that the insurgents fighting against the Afghan Government were local Taliban members.

In mid-October 2014, a small group of disaffected Pakistani Taliban commanders, including the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan’s Emir for Arakzai Agency, announced their initial pledge to the Islamic State. [See Long War Journal report, Discord dissolves Pakistani Taliban coalition ]

[​IMG]

In January 2015, the same disgruntled Pakistani Taliban leaders, this time joined by a few little-known disaffected Afghan Taliban commanders, published a propaganda video pledging allegiance to the Islamic State. Within days of the video’s release, the Islamic State announced its expansion into “Khorassan Province” and officially appointed Hafiz Saeed Khan as the Wali (Governor) of Khorassan. The Islamic State also appointed former Guantanamo Bay detainee and senior Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Rauf Khadim as Khan’s deputy. While Khan was primarily responsible for Islamic State activities in the tribal areas of Pakistan, Khadim was based in Helmand province, particularly in his native village located in Kajaki district. It did not take long before clashes broke out between Khadim’s supporters and their rivals belonging to local Taliban factions.

In southwestern Afghanistan, former Taliban insurgents who defected to the Islamic State established a training camp in Farah province in mid-January and were reportedly operating between Bakwa and Khak-e Safid districts. The Islamic State faction in Farah was reportedly led by two brothers, Abdul Malik, who was also known as Mansur, and Abdul Raziq, according to an in-depth report by Pajhwok Afghan News .

Also in mid-January, in northern Sar-i-Pul province, local officials reported that insurgents had raised the black flag of the Islamic State in Kohistanat district and other insurgents had begun recruitment activities on behalf of the jihadist group in the nearby Darzab district of Jawzjan province. Afghan security commanders in Jawzjan later estimated that some 600 insurgents had raised the black flag and were now fighting on behalf of the Islamic State in Jawzjan.

Similar reports emerged from Kunduz province, and the Kunduz governor estimated that nearly 70 insurgents affiliated with the Islamic State had “started activities” in Dasht-e Archi and Chaharadarah districts.

Afghan officials in Ghazni and Paktika Provinces announced in mid-January that hundreds of foreign fighters associated with the Islamic State had recently entered areas of eastern Afghanistan posing as refugees. According to the officials, some 200 foreign nationals had entered the Nawa and Gilan districts of Ghazni and raised the black flag, and 850 families, including Arabs, Pakistanis, and Chechens, had entered Pakitka and Zabul provinces disguised as refugees, some of whom later established households in the Nawbahar, Ab Band, and Shamulzai districts of Zabul.

On February 9, Khadim was killed in a drone strike in Helmand province. [See Long War Journal report, US kills Islamic State’s deputy emir for ‘Khorasan province’ in airstrike .]

A few weeks later, insurgents loyal to the local Islamic State emir for Logar province, Sa’ad al-Amirati, burned down the Khwaja Ali shrine in the Charkh district of Logar. The insurgents also stormed local homes and destroyed television sets, deeming them “unIslamic,” and reportedly killed a local Taliban commander named Abdul Ghani and three of his bodyguards during the same incident, according to Pajhwok Afghan News .

In Nangarhar province, also in mid-February, rival Taliban factions and Islamic State-affiliated insurgents clashed in what was widely reported to be a turf war between the two groups.

In late February, mysterious masked gunmen abducted 31 Hazara travelers in Zabul province. Local Afghan authorities attributed the attack to a wide range of culprits, including the Islamic State, although no group has publicly claimed credit for the attack. After the Afghan Government failed to secure the release of the hostages through negotiations, the Afghan National Army (ANA) launched a rescue operation which reportedly killed dozens of the suspected kidnappers, including foreign fighters from Kyrgyzstan, solidifying earlier reports that foreign fighters associated to the Islamic State had relocated from Pakistan to Zabul.

On March 5, ANA officials reported that a clash between rival Taliban and Islamic State factions in the Arghandab district of Zabul had killed seven Islamic State insurgents; however, further details about the clash could not be ascertained.

Many of the claims and reports concerning the presence of fighters in Afghanistan associated with the Islamic State cannot be easily verified, but the jihadist group’s creation of the “Khorasan Province” in mid-January demonstrates its willingness to expand operations into South Asia. While sectarian agendas among insurgent groups are rare, if not nonexistent, in Afghanistan, it remains unclear whether the Islamic State in Khorasan Province will adopt and implement the sectarian objectives glorified by the group in Iraq and Syria. Similarly, given the numerous clashes between the Taliban and the Islamic State-affiliated insurgents in Afghanistan, the Islamic State will likely continue to face considerable resistance from the spectrum of well-established local anti-state actors like the Taliban, who perceive their resistance to the Afghan Government and coalition forces as the primary and most legitimate alternative to the current political system.

In addition, the Taliban cannot recognize the existence of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as the Caliph, in part because Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Supreme Leader of the Taliban, had been deemed Amir ul-Momimeen (Commander of the Faithful Believers) in 1996, a position perceived by Omar’s supporters as superior to Badghdadi’s current role as Caliph. However, the Islamic State has challenged the Taliban and Omar directly, and Baghdadi has described Omar as an “illiterate warlord” and “fool” who does not deserve political or spiritual authority. Omar has not been publicly seen since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. These fundamental ideological conflicts will not be easily reconciled between the Islamic State and the Afghan Taliban.

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archi...gence-of-the-islamic-state-in-afghanistan.php

Angocachi
The US-Iranian War Against ISIS in Iraq

Take it from a man who knows: The Iraqi army’s first big attempt to roll back the Islamic State is going to be a violent mess.

Several months after thousands of American advisers showed up for training sessions, Iraqi troops still aren't ready for combat. Iranian-backed Shiite militias will do most of the fighting against the Islamic State (ISIS) militants in Tikrit and other largely Sunni towns and cities in Iraq, raising the chances of more sectarian slaughter. And even if the militias do manage to drive out ISIS, Baghdad doesn't have a viable plan to rebuild what’s likely to be a region reduced to rubble.

That's the grim assessment of a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general, James Dubik, who oversaw the training of Iraqi soldiers in the final months of the eight-year U.S. occupation. Those troops fled when ISIS showed up last summer, stripping off their uniforms and abandoning millions of dollars' worth of American weapons.

“Yup,” Dubik says with a dry chuckle, “those were my guys.”

The general, like other military experts, was watching closely last week as some 30,000 Iraqi troops launched a counter-offensive against ISIS in Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein. The attack is the first phase of a larger campaign to recapture Mosul, the country’s second-largest city and the de facto ISIS capital in Iraq.

For the past six months, U.S. special forces advisers have been training several Iraqi brigades for the battle. At first, U.S. military officials said the push would start as soon as April. Later, they backpedaled, saying they would leave it to the Iraqis to announce when the counter-offensive will begin. Dubik hopes they don't act prematurely. "The limits on their capacity and their logistics will force a culmination before the Mosul operation is complete," he tells Newsweek .

Trying to recapture Tikrit first makes sense, according to Dubik. "It’s a preparatory phase for the Mosul operation," he says. "Let’s see how the enemy defends. Let’s see how we do against them. Let’s see how our resupply and replacement systems work. If we’re successful, we’ll shorten the supply line between Baghdad and Mosul. We’ll also have a much closer jumping-off point for going to Mosul."

It’s what comes next that really worries the general, who received a Ph.D. in philosophy from Johns Hopkins and spent a year as a Catholic monk before joining the Army in 1975. In the unlikely event that the Iraqi troops take Tikrit and then Mosul, someone will still have to remain in control of the latter’s one million residents. Right now, that job will go to a brigade of roughly 5,000 Sunni policemen who escaped from Mosul and are now being trained in Kurdistan.

Dubik is skeptical of that aspect of the plan. “I'm doubtful that's going to be sufficient,” he says. “That approach has not worked to date. It's been tried a number of times in Iraq,” including when 100,000 U.S. troops, American airpower and an extensive intelligence network were there to support the Iraqis. “The police were inadequately trained and equipped,” he adds. “Same approach was tried in Afghanistan, where it failed miserably.”

First, of course, the Iraqis have to win the battle of Tikrit. Since last summer, they’ve tried and failed to recapture the city several times. Now, with Iraqi forces massing for another assault, ISIS defenders in Tikrit have erected formidable defenses, including tall concrete barriers placed at various entry points along with booby traps, car bombs and mortar and artillery positions to make it difficult to advance. "Tikrit is one big IED," says Jessica Lewis McFate, a former Army intelligence officer in Iraq and Afghanistan. She and others say there's no reliable intelligence about how many ISIS fighters are in the city.

The poor track record of Iraq's military forces has prompted several Iranian-supported Shiite militias to volunteer to dislodge the ISIS militants from Tikrit and Mosul. Accompanying them: a number of Iranian military advisers, including General Qassem Suleimani, commander of the the Revolutionary Guard Corps' elite Quds Force. He’s a hated figure within the U.S. military, which suffered substantial casualties from Shiite militia attacks directed by Suleimani during the U.S. occupation.

Iranian involvement has created an awkward situation for the Obama administration, which has been launching air strikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria since last August, effectively putting Washington and Tehran on the same side. Administration officials insist they don't coordinate air strikes with Tehran, but they acknowledge they consult with Iraqi commanders, who then make sure U.S. actions don’t conflict with those of the Iranians and the Shiite militias.

Iranian-backed Shiite militias like the Badr Brigade and K’taib Hezbullah say their fighters make up two-thirds of the 30,000-strong force that’s gathered near Tikiti. These Shiite fighters have been waiting for a battle with ISIS, which has called Shiites apostates and said they should be slaughtered. But the presence of Shiite fighters on a predominantly Sunni battlefield is cause for concern, says Dubik and other military analysts.

After U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq, they note, Shiite militias were involved in several instances in which atrocities were committed against Iraqi Sunnis. The government of Iraqi prime minister Haider al Abadi is investigating the latest incident, in which pro-government Shiite militiamen allegedly massacred 70 Sunnis in January when they drove ISIS fighters out of an area northeast of Baghdad.

"The real question is can you convince the Shiite militias not to do widescale ethnic cleansing in the fight against ISIS and then leave after Mosul is taken," said Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution. "I'm a little worried about that part. I'm not persuaded we can expect the Shiite militias to liberate Mosul and then leave."

Another element of the Iraqi counter-offensive that remains unclear: The role of the Kurdish peshmerga . Since ISIS swept into northern Iraq last summer, the well-trained and capably led Kurdish forces have blunted the group's advance into the Kurds' autonomous region and even recaptured some ISIS-held territory outside of their enclave. But any fight for Mosul will probably require bloody, house-to-house urban warfare, so Kurdish commanders are not keen on helping to take back the predominantly Sunni city. As a result, Kurdish officials have spoken of contributing a peshmerga force to block the areas to the north and west of Mosul to prevent ISIS supplies and reinforcements from reaching the city.

If Tikrit proves difficult to recapture, Dubik and other military analysts predict any battle to retake Mosul will be far more complex, even with U.S. air support. Baghdad must assume that ISIS will stage diversionary attacks in other parts of country to draw Iraqi forces away from the counter-offensive. In 2004, when the U.S. battled Al-Qaeda militants for control of Fallujah, a much smaller town in Iraq's Anbar province, it needed two brigades of highly trained Marines and nearly two months to secure the town. "Fallujah would be just one neighborhood in Mosul," says McFate. Unless ISIS fighters abandon the city, she predicts any battle will leave it in ruins.

Dubik is equally pessimistic. "This is D-Day,” he says, comparing the advance on Tikrit to the Allied invasion of France in June 1944. “What happens afterward? How does this fit into an overall operational campaign to re-establish the sovereign borders of Iraq and re-establish political sovereignty within those borders? I haven't heard boo about that aspect of the plan."

“Yup,” Dubik says with a dry chuckle, “those were my guys.”

The general, like other military experts, was watching closely last week as some 30,000 Iraqi troops launched a counter-offensive against ISIS in Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein. The attack is the first phase of a larger campaign to recapture Mosul, the country’s second-largest city and the de facto ISIS capital in Iraq.

For the past six months, U.S. special forces advisers have been training several Iraqi brigades for the battle. At first, U.S. military officials said the push would start as soon as April. Later, they backpedaled, saying they would leave it to the Iraqis to announce when the counter-offensive will begin. Dubik hopes they don't act prematurely. "The limits on their capacity and their logistics will force a culmination before the Mosul operation is complete," he tells Newsweek .

Trying to recapture Tikrit first makes sense, according to Dubik. "It’s a preparatory phase for the Mosul operation," he says. "Let’s see how the enemy defends. Let’s see how we do against them. Let’s see how our resupply and replacement systems work. If we’re successful, we’ll shorten the supply line between Baghdad and Mosul. We’ll also have a much closer jumping-off point for going to Mosul."

It’s what comes next that really worries the general, who received a Ph.D. in philosophy from Johns Hopkins and spent a year as a Catholic monk before joining the Army in 1975. In the unlikely event that the Iraqi troops take Tikrit and then Mosul, someone will still have to remain in control of the latter’s one million residents. Right now, that job will go to a brigade of roughly 5,000 Sunni policemen who escaped from Mosul and are now being trained in Kurdistan.

Dubik is skeptical of that aspect of the plan. “I'm doubtful that's going to be sufficient,” he says. “That approach has not worked to date. It's been tried a number of times in Iraq,” including when 100,000 U.S. troops, American airpower and an extensive intelligence network were there to support the Iraqis. “The police were inadequately trained and equipped,” he adds. “Same approach was tried in Afghanistan, where it failed miserably.”

First, of course, the Iraqis have to win the battle of Tikrit. Since last summer, they’ve tried and failed to recapture the city several times. Now, with Iraqi forces massing for another assault, ISIS defenders in Tikrit have erected formidable defenses, including tall concrete barriers placed at various entry points along with booby traps, car bombs and mortar and artillery positions to make it difficult to advance. "Tikrit is one big IED," says Jessica Lewis McFate, a former Army intelligence officer in Iraq and Afghanistan. She and others say there's no reliable intelligence about how many ISIS fighters are in the city.

The poor track record of Iraq's military forces has prompted several Iranian-supported Shiite militias to volunteer to dislodge the ISIS militants from Tikrit and Mosul. Accompanying them: a number of Iranian military advisers, including General Qassem Suleimani, commander of the the Revolutionary Guard Corps' elite Quds Force. He’s a hated figure within the U.S. military, which suffered substantial casualties from Shiite militia attacks directed by Suleimani during the U.S. occupation.

Iranian involvement has created an awkward situation for the Obama administration, which has been launching air strikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria since last August, effectively putting Washington and Tehran on the same side. Administration officials insist they don't coordinate air strikes with Tehran, but they acknowledge they consult with Iraqi commanders, who then make sure U.S. actions don’t conflict with those of the Iranians and the Shiite militias.

Iranian-backed Shiite militias like the Badr Brigade and K’taib Hezbullah say their fighters make up two-thirds of the 30,000-strong force that’s gathered near Tikiti. These Shiite fighters have been waiting for a battle with ISIS, which has called Shiites apostates and said they should be slaughtered. But the presence of Shiite fighters on a predominantly Sunni battlefield is cause for concern, says Dubik and other military analysts.

After U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq, they note, Shiite militias were involved in several instances in which atrocities were committed against Iraqi Sunnis. The government of Iraqi prime minister Haider al Abadi is investigating the latest incident, in which pro-government Shiite militiamen allegedly massacred 70 Sunnis in January when they drove ISIS fighters out of an area northeast of Baghdad.

"The real question is can you convince the Shiite militias not to do widescale ethnic cleansing in the fight against ISIS and then leave after Mosul is taken," said Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution. "I'm a little worried about that part. I'm not persuaded we can expect the Shiite militias to liberate Mosul and then leave."

Another element of the Iraqi counter-offensive that remains unclear: The role of the Kurdish peshmerga . Since ISIS swept into northern Iraq last summer, the well-trained and capably led Kurdish forces have blunted the group's advance into the Kurds' autonomous region and even recaptured some ISIS-held territory outside of their enclave. But any fight for Mosul will probably require bloody, house-to-house urban warfare, so Kurdish commanders are not keen on helping to take back the predominantly Sunni city. As a result, Kurdish officials have spoken of contributing a peshmerga force to block the areas to the north and west of Mosul to prevent ISIS supplies and reinforcements from reaching the city.

If Tikrit proves difficult to recapture, Dubik and other military analysts predict any battle to retake Mosul will be far more complex, even with U.S. air support. Baghdad must assume that ISIS will stage diversionary attacks in other parts of country to draw Iraqi forces away from the counter-offensive. In 2004, when the U.S. battled Al-Qaeda militants for control of Fallujah, a much smaller town in Iraq's Anbar province, it needed two brigades of highly trained Marines and nearly two months to secure the town. "Fallujah would be just one neighborhood in Mosul," says McFate. Unless ISIS fighters abandon the city, she predicts any battle will leave it in ruins.

Dubik is equally pessimistic. "This is D-Day,” he says, comparing the advance on Tikrit to the Allied invasion of France in June 1944. “What happens afterward? How does this fit into an overall operational campaign to re-establish the sovereign borders of Iraq and re-establish political sovereignty within those borders? I haven't heard boo about that aspect of the plan."

http://www.newsweek.com/iraqi-army-fight-against-isis-312105
Angocachi
Saud and Israel are dismayed that the United States has entered an alliance with Iran against ISIS in Iraq and that the US has opted not to oust Assad for fear of an ISIS takeover. This, presumably, is precisely why Saud and the Mossad created ISIS; to put their single greatest patron the United States in league with their existential threat Team Shia. The CIA must also be proud that it created ISIS, it has worked wonderfully in creating a rift with the two countries the US has pumped billions into over decades.
@Antonius Blockhead Fitz

Saud Warns on Iran in Iraq

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned on Thursday of Iran’s ‘destabilizing’ policies in the region and stressed on ensuring Tehran doesn’t acquire nuclear weapons.

In a strongly worded statement, al-Faisal told reporters during a joint conference with Kerry in Riyadh that “Iran is taking over Iraq.”

Kerry said the United States was keeping an eye on Iran's 'destabilizing' acts even as the two nations try to reach a deal on Tehran's nuclear program.

“Even as we engage in these discussions with Iran around this program, we will not take our eye off Iran's destabilizing actions” in the region,” he told reporters.

Kerry said Iran is still considered a state-sponsor of terrorism, adding that his country was aware of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani’s presence and activity in Iraq.

Soleimani is reportedly overseeing Shiite militias in the major offensive to expel Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants from the city of Tikrit.

Al-Faisal said Kerry had given him assurances that Washington would not forget about other Iranian behavior in the region while it pursued a nuclear deal.

The Saudi top diplomat said Tikrit is an example of what is worrying the kingdom.

Saudi Arabia and several Arab countries are part of the U.S.-led air-campaign targeting ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

During his press conference with Kerry, the Saudi foreign minister called on the coalition to fight the militants on the ground.

The kingdom “stresses the need to provide the military means needed to face this challenge on the ground,” al-Faisal said, adding that the Syrian crisis is providing shelter for terrorism, “with Assad’s blessing.”

Kerry, meanwhile, said military pressure may be needed to oust the Syrian president.

“He's lost any semblance of legitimacy, but we have no higher priority than disrupting and defeating Daesh... Ultimately a combination of diplomacy and pressure will be needed to bring about a political transition,” he told reporters, adding that “military pressure may be needed.”

Daesh is an Arabic acronym for ISIS, which has seized swathes of Syria and Iraq.

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/New...y-arrives-in-Saudi-Arabia-for-key-talks-.html

Netanyahu to Congress: With Iran and ISIS, 'The Enemy of Your Enemy Is Your Enemy'

(CNN) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the threat of terror in the Middle East, in his address to a joint meeting of Congress, saying that both the Islamic State and Iran are competing for the "crown of militant Islam."
"When it comes to Iran and ISIS, the enemy of your enemy is your enemy," Netanyahu said Tuesday.

http://www.erietvnews.com/story/28249714/urgent-netanyahu-the-enemy-of-your-enemy-is-your-enemy