Tag Archive for: ISIS

Islamic Slaughters and Short Memories

/in , , /by

“We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.”

Obama said that on August 20, 2012 in remarks to reporters. Realizing that he was close to having to engage in some kind of military action against Bashar Assad, Syria’s dictator, he was bailed out by the Russians who stepped in to remove the stores of poison gas and then, except for the “red line” gaffe, everyone promptly forget about it.

The insurrection against Assad began in March 2011 and by September 2013 there were an estimated 120,000 dead Syrians and a million or more refugees. The conflict turned from local to regional as the extremist Islamic State (IS) emerged. It is backed by Iran and Turkey, but only for the purpose of defeating Assad, not for declaring itself the new caliphate.

IS is now in control of much of Syria’s northern region and has taken control of central Iraq, challenging Baghdad as well as its Kurdish sector. On Sunday Islamic State fighters overtook the Lebanese city of Arsal where 100,000 Syrian refugees had fled. There were attacks in Tripoli as well. There is no accounting for how many have been slaughtered by IS at this point.

On August 4, The Daily Star, Lebanon, reported “The jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) group executed seven members of a single family from the Ismaili minority in the central Syrian province of Hama overnight, state media and an activist group said Monday. ‘An armed terrorist group committed a massacre in the Mzeiraa area near the town of Salmiya, killing seven people, including two aged 13 and 15 years old,’ Syrian state news agency SANA said.”

Three days earlier Breitbart News reported “The Islamic State, formerly known as ISIS, told Palestine the terrorist group will join its fight against the ‘barbaric Jews’ but urged patience until ISIS is finished in Arab countries.”

So, according to the Islamic State, it is the Jews of Israel who are “barbaric” for defending themselves and their Arab citizens against rocket attacks from Gaza; land given to the Palestinians by Israel in 2005.

During the months when Hamas was firing thousands of rockets into Israel from Gaza there was a low level of coverage, but when Israel responded with Operation Protective Edge, it became front page news. Dead Palestinians always seem to be more important than dead Israelis even if they were forced by Hamas to serve as human shields for their rockets and their elaborate matrix of tunnels into Israel which exist solely to carry out its goal of destroying it.

Being Christian in the Middle East has proven to be deadly. When the Islamic State took control of Mosul, a city in which Christians had lived for centuries, they were given the choice of converting, paying a tax, or dying. The Islamic State has swiftly gained a reputation for murdering prisoners of war and anyone else they determine to be “hypocritical” or “apostate” Muslims. So being Muslim does not protect one from more fanatical Muslims and being Christian can be a death sentence.

In an August 4 Washington Post article, Ilias al-Hussani, 27, told its reporter, “They are savages. We’ve seen what they’ve done to people of their own faith. Imagine what they would do to us non-Muslims.” The article noted that Islamic State “now controls resources and territory unmatched in the history of extremist organizations.”

Who remembers the 246 girls kidnapped in April by Boko Haram in Nigeria and forced to convert? Or hears of their further attacks?

Despite having troops stationed in Afghanistan and having fought in Iraq, for Americans the Middle East is still someplace far away filled with people who are little more than statistics, but the Muslim jihad still poses a threat.

It is less far away for Europeans who have slowly awakened to the changes occurring and being demanded by the Muslims who emigrated there, many of whom to escape life in their own nations. As the Muslim population has grown in various European nations, it has begun to pose a threat to native-born citizens. Even so, the Israeli military operation unleashed a lot of Europe-based anti-Semitism and some showed up in the U.S. as well.

Does anyone know who the real enemy is any more?

There is going to be more news of slaughters in the Middle East because the Islamic State is going to challenge every nation there. Assad retains control over an estimated 40-60% of Syria. Iraq has been halved with just the south remaining. Lebanon will likely fall under IS control and that is bad news for the Christians who have lived there for centuries.

Jordan is girding for an attack. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States are watching the situation with increasing apprehension.

The present Syrian conflict began in 2011 with an effort to remove Bashar Assad as other Middle East nations, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, had done with their despots during the so-called Arab Spring. In addition to Syria’s Assad, Iran supports Hamas, but Iran is a Shiite nation and the Islamic State is Sunni. The Sunnis are the majority of the Middle East’s Muslim population.

ISIS flag and fighters

ISIS flag and jihadi terrorists.

The Islamic State has been officially designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S., the U.K, Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and the United Nations. It does not give much evidence of being concerned. It has access to millions in oil wealth and a growing military capability thanks in part to all the U.S. weapons that were abandoned by the Iraqis when they came under attack.

We cannot expect President Obama to engage the Islamic State. The term “Commander-in-Chief” has never been more misapplied to him than any President.

What we can expect is the continued expansion of the Islamic State and more news of the slaughter of Muslims and Christians.

Once Israel is through destroying Gaza’s tunnels and its store of rockets, it will have to turn its attention to the IS threat to Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and perhaps Turkey as well. It will make Gaza look like a picnic.

Recommended Reading: Palestine and Double Standards: The world is outraged by Israeli self-defense but only ‘concerned’ when Muslims kill Muslims – Wall Street Journal

© Alan Caruba, 2014

RELATED ARTICLE: Iraq Christians flee as Islamic State takes Qaraqosh

Back in Iraq? Foreign policy déja vù all over again by Doug Bandow

/in , , , /by

Little more than a decade ago, the United States invaded Iraq. The promised cakewalk turned out far different than expected. Today its government and entire state, created by Washington, are in crisis. Yet the same voices again are being raised calling for military intervention, with the promise that this time everything will turn out well.

Social engineers never seem to learn. It is hard enough to redesign and remake individuals, families, and communities in the United States. It is far harder to do so overseas.

Nation-building requires surmounting often vast differences in tradition, culture, history, religion, ethnicity, ideology, geography, and more. Doing so also requires suppressing people’s natural desire to govern themselves.

It doesn’t matter if Americans could do it better. With positions reversed they would insist that the foreigners, however well-meaning, leave them alone. Imagine if the French offered to—nay, insisted on—sticking around at the end of the Revolutionary War to “help” the backward colonials make a new nation. Guns would again be pulled down from fireplace mantles across the land!

Yet these days Washington continues to try to fix the world’s problems. In recent years the United States has deployed forces to Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Occupying these lands was in no case a military necessity. Nation-building has not turned out particularly well.

However, until now Washington at least has limited itself to one bout of society-molding per country. Reentering Iraq would be an attempted redo barely a decade after the first go. Rarely has a victorious war proved to be so fruitless and counterproductive so quickly.

Remember the original promises surrounding the Iraq operation? A quick, bloodless war would destroy dangerous weapons of mass destruction and “drain the swamp,” eliminating terrorism.The United States would guarantee a friendly, compliant government by imposing as president an exile who hadn’t lived in the country for decades. The new Iraq would implement democracy,eschew sectarian division, protect women’s rights, and even recognize Israel, while providing America bases for use in attacking neighboring states, including Iran, which with its Shia majority shared manifold religious, cultural, and personal ties with Iraq.

It was a wonderful wish list. Alas, it turned out to be pure fantasy. The conflict killed thousands and wounded tens of thousands of Americans, while killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and displacing millions more. The ancient Christian community was destroyed. The ultimate financial cost to the United States, including the expense of caring for those who sustained debilitating wounds, will likely run $3 trillion or more. The invasion stained the United States’s reputation, empowered Iran, and gave training to a new generation of terrorists.

Finally, Baghdad’s sectarian misrule wrecked national institutions and fostered the rise of an ugly Islamic totalitarianism. While the ISIL “caliphate” is likely to find it harder to actually rule than to claim to rule, the movement now calling itself the “Islamic State” seems capable of creating more than its share of human hardship along the way.

That’s quite an impact from that one little invasion so long ago. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

The obvious—indeed, only—policy for Americans is to run, not walk, away from the mess.

Yet many of the architects of the original disaster are back, advocating a second shot. Never mind the past, they argue. No need to cast blame, they assert. Everything was going swell before the new administration took over.

The President is putting in Special Forces. Many others advocate drone and air strikes. A few forthrightly call for boots on the ground. William Kristol and Frederick Kagan, for instance, want Washington to take on everyone: Defeat ISIL, force Baghdad government to include Sunnis, and make Iran withdraw its military aid. A three-sided war this time! What could possibly go wrong?

There’s no doubt that ISIL is a malignant force. But the United States should make clear to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that Americans will not bail him out after his policies led to the ongoing catastrophe. Without political reform it is hard to see how Iraq can be saved.

Part of the political response must be to engage Sunni tribes and former Ba’athists who allied with ISIL to oust the national government from Sunni areas of Iraq. It is unlikely that they want to go back to the seventh century; in fact, they already are chafing under the group’s ruthless Islamic rule, as well as increased economic hardship after being “liberated” by a pretend nation state. Iraq’s Shia majority needs to propose reforms that offer Sunnis a better option than remaining in caliphate hell.

In any case, Washington should drop its insistence that Iraq stay together. Kurds are moving toward a vote for independence. Sunnis are deeply alienated. Baghdad’s Shiite leadership remains committed to narrow sectarian politics. Extensive federalism/partition may be the only way to prevent endless killing.

The United States also needs to stop supporting Syria’s opposition. Instead, the priority should be stopping ISIL, which gained its first victories, along with access to financial resources and military material, in Syria. President Bashar al-Assad is odious, but his dictatorship is not dedicated to destabilizing the entire region. If Washington further undermines Assad, it will inevitably help ISIL. Arming the moderate opposition, which so far has lost ground and weapons to the radicals, might do little more than end up further empowering ISIL.

Finally, American officials should invite allies, friends, and even adversaries to cooperate to contain ISIL. The group’s professed ambitions cover much of the Middle East. Numerous nations have good reason to isolate, sanction, and even strike ISIL. Turkey has a first-rate military. Jordan has a capable though fragile government, and a powerful incentive to act: It has been destabilized both by Arab Spring sentiments and by a refugee tsunami from Iraq and Syria, andit  is in ISIL’s gunsite.

Iran, though no friend, shares Washington’s antipathy toward ISIL and wants to preserve rule by its co-religionists in Iraq. Lebanon is even more vulnerable than Jordan. The Gulf states,including Kuwait, the emirates, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, though mostly Sunni, also are targeted for subversion. Israel does not want to see a radical Islamist state, especially one that wrecks Jordan next door. These nations have different capabilities and interests, but all could help contain and ultimately roll back ISIL’s gains.

The Iraq war should have demonstrated beyond doubt that military intervention has unintended and unforeseen consequences, just like economic intervention. People devoted to individual liberties and limited government should be particularly skeptical of proposals to expand the state—after all, war is the biggest Big Government program—for the purpose of social engineering around the world.

The revival of civil war and veritable collapse of Iraq’s central state are tragedies, but not ones affecting vital American interests. The lesson from 2003 is clear: War truly should be a last resort, never just another policy tool to be used when convenient. The Iraqi imbroglio beckons the usual policy suspects, but the right response is to say, no, the Americans aren’t coming.

dougbandow3540ABOUT DOUG BANDOW

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of a number of books on economics and politics. He writes regularly on military non-interventionism.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is courtesy of FEE and Shutterstock.

“The Forces at Play” in the Palestinian Authority

/in , , , /by

‘Avenge’, ‘cycle’, ‘retaliation’, ‘disproportionate’.  Most media scripts of recent days could have been written by machines.  Three Israeli teenagers have been murdered, callously and ruthlessly.  Their abductions were barely covered by most of the non-Israeli press during the weeks in which they were missing.  But now that they have been confirmed dead the Western press really knows what to do and how to cover it.

As with the United Nations, and other international bodies, the story appears to start not when an outrage is perpetrated against Israelis but rather when Israel is thought to be considering a ‘response’.  So ‘calm’ was urged upon Israel by the UN while options were being ‘weighed up’.

And then we enter the period of ‘backlash’.

Unconnected to events in the West Bank, in recent days Israel has struck sites in the Gaza responsible for the ongoing barrage of rockets being fired into Southern Israel.  Does anyone other than Israel get accused of ‘pounding’ an enemy even when the action is targeted precision strikes?  Everything to do with Israel’s wars for security and survival is portrayed in this way.  And those in the West who are sanguine about this treatment when it is meted out to Israel need to reflect that this is the same situation in which they will find themselves when the time comes.

In the meantime, as we go through the latest replay of an endless media story it is all too easy to ignore the bigger movements which are going on behind this.  As we have often said here at HJS, the erasure of borders, the clarification of old alliances and revived fundamentalist hatreds are the real movements going on underneath the Middle East and North Africa region during this period.  And the events of recent days give a deep reminder of Israel’s long-term territorial questions.  ISIS – or the ‘Islamic State’ as it is now more simply known – is not only causing the Saudi Arabian army to mass on its own Iraqi border, but is attempting next to erase the borders of Jordan.  This should be a moment for specific clarity in a regional mess.

If the Palestinian Authority wants to achieve a state then it must show that its state would be law-abiding and peaceful.  In doing a unity deal with Hamas earlier this year, Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah showed that they were more interested in terror and annihilation than they were in peace. Fatah has tried to draw comparisons with the tragic murder of a Palestinian youth this week in Jerusalem to paint the Israeli government into a race to the bottom about which community should be more outraged. But this is nonsensical. Even if the worst fears are realised and extremist Israelis are found to have committed this act, the Israeli state cannot be held responsible for the acts of vigilantes. But the Palestinian Authority certainly can be for the behaviour of a constituent part of its leadership. And since Hamas is to blame for the killings of the Israeli teenagers, what does Fatah’s refusal to uncouple from it tell us?

Would a Hamas-Fatah state in the West Bank be a barrier to ISIS and ISIS-like organisations?  Or would it be a sponge for it?  Would it withstand the forces of the region or would it fall in step with them?  Given the responses of the Palestinian leadership in recent days, we have had an opportunity to stare into the future.  People often say that the window is closing on the two-state solution.  Unless something changes, this will become an inevitable conclusion.

Is ISIS Iran’s Proxy?

/in , , , , /by

Pinhas Inbari is an astute analyst of of Arab affairs and regional dynamics at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) in Israel. Periodically, we have published his analysis as it confounds conventional wisdom about the conflicts and actors in a multi-dimensional chess game of geo-politics in the region. Such is the case with his analysis of  the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) whose blitzkrieg has rent asunder the artificial map of both Iraq and the Middle East, “ISIS: Iran’s  Instrument for Regional Hegemony.” A Middle East map whose origins can be found in the secret Sykes Picot agreement of 1915 reflected in the Post World War I Mandates of the League of Nations dividing up the former Ottoman Empire awarded  the French and British at the San Remo Conference in 1920.  The Iraq that arose from the British Mandate was an amalgamation of former Ottoman Empire vilayets encompassing restive Kurds, Sunnis and Shia and minority Assyrian Chaldean Christians, Turkmen and Jews.  The latter were driven out after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

Inbari presents evidence to support a thesis that ISIS is really a creation of the Syrian Mukhabarat (Intelligence) and Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence with the dual purposes of  defeating the  rebel opposition in Syria and forcing the breakup of  Iraq. His key points are:

  • Immediately after ISIS emerged in Syria, sources in the Syrian opposition said, “We are familiar with the commanders of ISIS. Once they belonged to Assad’s intelligence, and now they are operating on his behalf under the name of ISIS.”
  • Why would Shiite Iran support a Sunni jihadist organization like ISIS? Iran wants to be certain that a strong Iraqi state does not emerge again along its western border.
  • The notion that Shiite Iran would help Sunni jihadists was not farfetched, even if it seemed to defy the conventional wisdom in Western capitals.
  •  It is unreasonable to expect Iran to fight ISIS. If Iran does so, it would be turning against a movement that has been a useful surrogate for Tehran’s interests.

Thus, to replace Iraq, Iran would use ISIS to forge a new alignment and map. There would be three sectarian entities, Kurdistan, a  southern Shia satrapy of Iran  encompassing  the holy sites of Karbala and Najif, Baghdad and Basra, as well as  a rump Sunni state comprised of the central and  western provinces.  Inbari’s analysis may explain why the Obama Administration has temporized about committing military assets in the Gulf region in support of the faltering Maliki regime in Baghdad. Moreover, the Administration does not wish to upset its outreach to Iran, especially with regard to the current round of nuclear discussions, while seemingly rejected the Islamic regime’s offer to assist in quelling the turmoil caused by the ISIS blitzkrieg in Iraq.

Inbari presents confirmation in the upending of the official Al Qaeda opposition in Syria, the Al Nusrah Front, and the ISIS siege in Deir al Zour that appears directed at destroying the Free Syrian Army and Islamic Front rebel opposition to the Assad regime.  Inbari presents similar views of prominent Gulf region media analysts corroborating his thesis. Further, he points out the existence of a cache of intelligence on the leaders of ISIS found in digital memory sticks obtained by Iraqi intelligence during the battle for Mosul in northern Iraq.

Inbari’s proposition would fit the Twelver Shia conception of creating turmoil to bring about the return of moribund twelfth Imam to lead the conquest of the Dar al Harb under the Islamic regime’s hegemony ruled under Sharia, Islamic law.  Hence the rise of a Caliphate under the ISIS banner bestride Syria and current day Iraq would fit the Shia theology.

The fact that Sunni supremacist ISIS is leading the charge for creation of a Caliphate under Sharia in the Middle East, as Inbari points, is entirely consistent with Iran’s behavior in the run up to 9/11.  Iranian Intelligence with the aid of the late Hezbollah terrorist mastermind Imad Mughniyeh facilitated the training and transportation of the 19 Egyptian, Saudi and Yemeni perpetrators of 9/11 Islamic terror attack in lower Manhattan, Southwestern Pennsylvania and  at the  Pentagon in northern Virginia,. The evidence of that was revealed in the New York Federal District Court “9/11 Iran Links Case”.

dark forcesThere is more to support Inbari’s thesis in a new book to be published next week by Ken Timmerman, Dark Forces: The Truth About What Happened in Benghazi:

  • The group that took credit for the Benghazi attack, Ansar al Sharia, was trained and equipped by the Quds Force.
  • Both the CIA and US Delta and Special Operations Forces in Tripoli were actively monitoring Iranian operations in Benghazi, and warned their chain of command- including the late US Ambassador Stevens- that the Iranian were preparing a terrorist attack on the U.S. Compound in Benghazi.

Timmerman further notes that the Obama Administration supplied weapons to fight Qaddafi in Libya and Assad in Syria knowing that many rebel leaders were Al Qaeda operatives.  Moreover that Qatar was deeply involved both funding and transporting these weapons and the diffusion of MANPADS throughout North Africa, the Middle East and even Afghanistan.

Timmerman, in an email to this writer, commented that he  found  “curious” the timing this week of  the seizure of Ahmed Abu Khattala on the streets in Benghazi, Libya  by US special forces with the aid of the FBI.   Khatltala was a leader of Ansar al Shariah attack on the Benghazi Legation on 9/11/12.  He hid in plain sight for past nearly two years, as Timmerman notes in his new book.  He even gave interviews to the media. Reports in the media tells of his telling the history of the terrorist group while slow steaming on the USS New York towards the US for possible detention and prosecution following his interrogation.  The irony is that the US navy vessel was built from the debris of the twin towers of the World Trade Center destroyed on 9/11 that Iran facilitated.

We will review Timmerman’s new book in the July NER.  This weekend we will be interviewing both Timmerman, and Daniel Diker, a colleague of Inbari at the JCPA, on The Lisa Benson Show on Sunday on KKNT960 at 4PM EDT in the US.

Inbari’s analysis of ISIS as the instrument of Iran Hegemony in the Middle East is both fascinating and timely.

RELATED ARTICLES:

ISIS jihadis celebrate Muslim DHS Adviser’s anti-American tweets
ISIS jihadis from UK and Australia call Muslims to wage jihad
ISIS jihadi from UK calls for jihad attacks on British civilians to avenge Muslima’s murder
“Jihad Cool”: Muslims from U.S. head to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS and “bring back the Caliphate”

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.

I’m sick of being labeled an Islamophobe for stating the truth

/in , , , , , /by

A week ago Barack Hussein Obama stated that the “world is less violent” during a Tumblr interview session – as his acolytes lapped it up. Is he really that clueless?

Islamic terrorist group al-Shabab proves it so. According to Yahoo News, Dozens of extremists (i.e. Islamic terrorists) attacked a Kenyan coastal town for hours, killing those who couldn’t answer questions about Islam and those who didn’t know the Somali language, officials and witnesses said Monday.

article-2658751-1ECEEF3D00000578-946_634x431-300x180At least 48 people were killed and two hotels were set on fire. The assault in Mpeketoni began Sunday night as residents watched World Cup matches on TV and lasted until early Monday, with little resistance put up by Kenya’s security forces. Cars and buildings still smoldered at daybreak.

Just as a reminder, this violence is brought to you by the same jihadists who attacked Nairobi’s Westgate Mall last year — 67 people were killed last September when four al-Shabab gunmen attacked the upscale mall in the Kenyan capital.

And just like those barbaric savages then, the Mpeketoni attackers gave life-or-death religious tests, a witness said, killing those who were not Muslim.

“They came to our house at around 8 p.m. and asked us in Swahili whether we were Muslims. My husband told them we were Christians and they shot him in the head and chest,” said Anne Gathigi. Another resident, John Waweru, said his two brothers were killed because the attackers did not like that the brothers did not speak Somali.

At the Breeze View Hotel, the gunmen pulled the men aside and ordered the women to watch as they killed them, saying it was what Kenyan troops are doing to Somali men inside Somalia, a police commander said.

The Interior Ministry said that at about 8 p.m. Sunday, two minivans entered the town. Militants disembarked and began shooting. Kenya’s National Disaster Operations Center said military surveillance planes were launched shortly afterward.

It’s come to a certain point where I don’t blame these animals anymore. I blame us. They sense weakness and only respect strength, power, and might.

You know what I’m sick of? I am sick of the apologists, weaklings, and coexist bumper sticker crowd who sit back and allow this to happen.

I am sick of people telling us to not offend Muslims and that these are just the actions of those who are perverting Islam. I’m sick of Barack Hussein Obama supporting Islamists. I’m sick of us allowing this theocratic-political totalitarian ideology to infiltrate Western Civilization and turn our laws against us as they masquerade as a religion. I’m sick of tolerance becoming a one-way street leading to our cultural suicide.

I’m sick of being labeled as an “Islamophobe” for speaking the truth. I am sick of hearing we are not at war with Islam, yet their actions tell me that it has been and continues to be at war with us — Dar al Islam and Dar al Harb.

I am sick of an American pastor, Saeed Abedini being held in Iran for being a Christian. I am sick of a Sudanese Christian woman, Meriam Ibrahim, who is married to a naturalized American citizen and mother of two American children being held in a Sudanese prison because of her faith — sentenced to 100 lashes and death. I’m sick of hashtag diplomacy and empty rhetoric as a response to Islamic terrorists kidnapping Christian Nigerian girls and burning boys to death.

I’m sick of reading about Christians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Copts, being slaughtered by the so called “religion of peace” — what utter bovine excrement.

I’m sick of the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliated groups operating freely in America and U.S. political officials allowing if not encouraging it. I’m sick of CAIR being able to wield political influence in our country and censor women like Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Brigitte Gabriel who have suffered under the intolerant hands of Islamism — and hearing nothing from liberal progressives who tout a “War on Women.”

I’m sick of people worrying about jihadists taken off the battlefield and held at a freakin’ five-star facility like GITMO with top notch medical treatment and cable TV while Americans captured by the enemy are brutally tortured, and ritually beheaded. I’m sick of cowards who release the enemy’s leadership and try to convince the American people they are not a threat.

I’m sick of these bastards believing they can taunt and threaten our nation while we sit back and fools like John Kerry talk about climate change being a global threat — and want to ask Iran for assistance in Iraq. Iran is the number one state sponsor of terrorism and has the blood of American troops on its hands.

Yep, I’ve had it and will be relentless in defeating Islamic totalitarianism. Sir Winston Churchill tried to warn England of the threat of Naziism — of course the country initially sided with Chamberlain. And so history is repeating itself. Warning to liberal progressive socialists: stand clear lest you find yourself declared an ally with these barbarians. I am looking for brave Americans to enjoin this battle. This is not about killing them all, just killing the ones who need killing — since that is all they understand.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on AllenBWest.com. The featured photo is courtesy of Militaryphotos.net.

Iraq on Brink of Disintegration: ISIS Blitzkrieg threatens Baghdad – Kurds Seize Kirkuk

/in , , , /by

The ISIS Jihad  blitzkrieg seized the oil-rich Northern Iraqi City of Mosul Wednesday, while the Iraqi Army fled. This leaving  nearly half a million civilians, Assyrian Christians among them,  to flee to rural areas of the province of Biblical Nineveh. ISIS is the Salafist –Jihadist Al Qaeda terrorist army, the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham,the Levant.

ISIS has looted nearly a half billion in cash and tons of gold bullion making the terrorist army perhaps the largest well funded Al Qaeda affiliate.  Add to that the significant oil fields and Iraq’s largest refinery in Mosul, the ISIS literally may have the fuel to follow through with their threat to attack Baghdad. Mosul  was festooned with the decapitated heads of  Iraqi policemen. This despite Prime Minister Nouri al- Maliki putting on a brave face calling upon his parliament to declare a state of national emergency. Now he has to rely on the loyalty of the US trained Iraqi army and militia from his Shia base to defend the capital.

Meanwhile, the Kurdish Regional Government  (KRG) in Irbil dispatched its peshmerga forces to take over what they couldn’t do by plebiscite, the oil rich city of Kirkuk.  A Kirkuk that the Kurds consider as “their equivalent of Jerusalem”.  Now, as one report cited, just a mound of dirt separates Kurdish peshmerga from ISIS jihadi.

At risk is the future of this artificial country created by the British from the Mesopotamian Mandate of the League of Nations following WWI.   Ironically the US surge strategy of General Petreaus nearly a decade ago used nation building and bribery to defeat the al Qaeda forces in the Anbar provinces and Mosul.  Given current developments the  refusal of the Al Maliki government to negotiate a status of forces agreement with may have contributed to this looming debacle.  That choice was up to Maliki.  Because of these missteps we have looming a possible  Sunni Caliphate stretching across neighboring Syria deep into Iraq.  Today the picture gets even murkier as Iran announced dispatch of battalions of its  Quds Force to bolster the defense of Nouri al-Maliki’s beleaguered capitol.  This episode may rival the legendary history of the  sweep of the first Grand Jihad over 14 centuries ago. The Washington Post in a report today on these rapidly deteriorating developments in Iraq quoted President Obama saying:

“I don’t rule out anything, because we do have a stake in making sure that these jihadists are not getting a permanent foothold in either Iraq or Syria,” Obama told reporters after a White House meeting with visiting Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

“I think it’s fair to say that . . . there will be some short-term, immediate things that need to be done militarily, and our national security team is looking at all the options,” he said. “But this should be also a wake-up call for the Iraqi government” about the need for political accommodation between the country’s Shiite Muslim majority and the Sunni minority, he added.

ISIS loots Mosul Central bank

The International Business Times (IBT)  wrote of how much booty the ISIS secured in the capture of Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul Seized: Jihadis Loot $429m from City’s Central Bank to Make Isis World’s Richest Terror Force. The IBT reported:

Nineveh governor Atheel al-Nujaifi confirmed Kurdish television reports that Isis militants had stolen millions from numerous banks across Mosul. A large quantity of gold bullion is also believed to have been stolen.

Following the siege of the country’s second city, the bounty collected by the group has left it richer than al-Qaeda itself and as wealthy as small nations such as Tonga, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and the Falkland Islands.

The financial assets that ISIS  now possesses are likely to worsen the Iraqi government’s struggle to defeat the insurgency, which is aimed at creating an Islamic state across the Syrian-Iraqi border.

[…]

They also seized considerable amounts of US-supplied military hardware. Photos have already emerged of Isis parading captured Humvees in neighboring Syria where they are also waging war against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

What  is really worrisome is that the vast treasury that ISIS has seized that will enable them to  pay on average $600 a month to attract  thousands of  foreign jihadis, especially those in the West.

Just yesterday, ISIS forward elements seized Tikrit the ancestral home town of the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, putting it less than 95 miles from Baghdad. ISIS has also surrounded the city of Samarra less than 70 miles from the nation’s capital.

http://www.ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2012/11/kirkuk754.jpg

Kurdish peshmerga troops in Kirkuk. Source: ekurd.net.

Kurdish Peshmerga Seize Kirkuk

The autonomous KRG Peshmerga forces went into action today seizing a virtually defenseless Kirkuk. The KRG had been thwarted by the Al Maliki government from conducting a plebiscite to take back this resource rich original part of the Kurdish homeland.    The Guardian’s report conveys the sense of how rapidly Iraqi forces had abandoned the defenseless city,  Kurdish Peshmerga seize a chaotic victory in Kirkuk:

Capturing the city and its huge oil reserves, just outside the area controlled by the KRG, is a huge achievement. Yet victory looks far from glorious or orderly.

[…]

On Thursday Kurdish officials said they had stepped in to protect the city after government troops fled before advancing rebels from the Sunni jihadi group Isis.

Locals alleged that weaponry inside the K1 base had been seized by Kurdish Peshmerga forces belonging to both the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the two main political forces in the KRG. But in the confusion of Iraq’s deepening crisis it is hard to be quite certain.

[…]

“There are no security concerns at this moment and the situation is calm in the city,” said Dler Samad, the Kirkuk governor’s press officer. The governor, Dr Najmadin Karim, had visited Peshmerga forces near Hawija, just 3km away from ISIS units. But a minister responsible for regional security forces survived a bomb blast as he drove into Kirkuk.

Chaldean Archbishop Emil Shimoun Nona of Mosul, Iraq. Sourcs CNS Church in Need Service.

The ISIS threat to Christians in Nineveh

We have written extensively of the flight of the beleaguered  Assyrian Christians. A report by Nina Shea in the National Review On-line depicted the crisis that this ancient Christian community faces  in the midst of  the ISIS jihadist onslaught, The Cleansing of Iraq’s Christians Is Entering Its End Game.  Shea wrote:

Mosul’s panic-stricken Christians, along with many others, are now fleeing en masse to the rural Nineveh Plain, according to the Vatican publication Fides. The border crossings into Kurdistan, too, are jammed with the cars of the estimated 150,000 desperate escapees.

[…]

Since 2003, Iraq’s Christian community has suffered intense religious persecution on top of the effects of the conflict and, as a result, it has shrunk by well over 50 percent. Mosul, the site of ancient Nineveh of the Assyrians, who converted to Christianity in the first century, has become the home of many Christians who remained. Considered by Christians the place of last resort inside Iraq, Mosul and the surrounding Nineveh Plain has been home to many Christian refugees driven out of Baghdad and Basra.

ISIS on the march

Sources: The Institute for the Study of War, The Long War Journal. The Washington Post. Published on June 11, 2014, 9:37 p.m. For a larger view click on the map.

Who do you pin the blame on?

Earlier we  noted the failure of the Maliki government to conclude a status of forces agreement when the remaining US forces left three years ago. This was just as the civil war in Syria arose in bloody earnest that spawned ISIS’ terrorist Jihad in the region.  The Wall Street Journal cited Sen. McCain and  House Speaker John Boehner laying blame on Obama, while the Chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Service Committees, Republican Rep. Buck McKeon and  Democrat Sen.Carl Levin held differing views:

Several top Republican congressional leaders Thursday blamed President Obama for what they called policy failures leading to the collapse of Iraqi armed forces and the fall of major Iraqi cities to the control of Islamist militants.

[…]

“Now they’ve taken control of Mosul, they’re 100 miles from Baghdad. And what’s the president doing? Taking a nap,” Mr. Boehner said.

Mr. McCain said the administration’s decision to leave in 2011 was politically motivated.

“The trouble is, as the events of this week show, what the Americans left behind was an Iraqi state that was not able to stand on its own,” he said. “What we built is now coming apart.”

He said the U.S. must “take immediate action” to head off the militants’ advance, and reconsider the decision by Mr. Obama to wind down the U.S. presence in Afghanistan in 2016.

[…]

Rep. Buck McKeon (R., Calif.), who heads the House Armed Services Committee, told reporters that he opposed airstrikes and any additional involvement by the U.S. in a crisis that has seen Sunni militants and Kurdish military units make incursions around the country. Iraq’s government had a chance to sign a status-of-forces agreement with the U.S. but didn’t, Mr. McKeon said.

“We lost a lot of blood, a lot of treasure there and gave them an opportunity and they wouldn’t sign the agreement,” Mr. McKeon said, adding that any assistance would add another strain to the military when officials are trying to slim down budgets. “They all take money, they all take resources, they all put people at risk.”

Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.), chairman of the Senate armed services panel, blamed Iraq’s government for not doing enough to unify the country and stave off sectarian violence. He also questioned whether U.S. airstrikes would be effective given that Iraqi security forces, he said, have “melted away” in some places.

“While all options should be considered, the problem in Iraq hasn’t been so much a lack of direct U.S. military involvement, but a lack of reconciliation on the part of Iraqi leaders,” Mr. Levin said.

Fred Kaplan in Slate had views close to that of McKeon and Levin in an article, “If jihadists control Iraq, blame Nouri al-Maliki, not the United States”.  Kaplan is the author of The Insurgents and the Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. After reviewing the success of General Petreaus’ surge in the western provinces and Mosul, Kaplan concludes about the current debacle:

Maliki has his own political problems. His party won a plurality of votes in the recent election, but not enough to declare victory…. The threat from ISIS—and it’s now a dire threat—might move some factions to strengthen the nation’s leader, or it might move more to abandon all confidence in Maliki and turn to someone else.

One hope for Iraq is that ISIS might have gone one rampage too far. While stomping through Mosul, some of their militiamen stormed the Turkish consulate and kidnapped Turkish diplomats. Under international law, that amounts to an attack on Turkey, and it’s unlikely that the Turks will simply shrug. Iran, which has emerged as Maliki’s main ally, has no interest in seeing Sunnis regain power in Baghdad. A strange alliance among all three may come to life to beat back this equally strange insurgency.

With news today that Iran is sending battalions of its elite Quds Force to fight in Iraq, Kaplan’s views appear like grasping a thin reed. Supplying more US military aid and perhaps air resources by the Obama Administration may not even put a dent into the ISIS Jihadist blitzkrieg poised to possibly conduct a siege on the capital.  Iraq is for all intents and purposes a failed state. The world and we in America will pay for its possible demise with a spike in both oil and gas prices. Time for us to bolster the independence of Kurdistan and let the Shia provinces become veritable client states of Iran, while a Jihadist  Sunni Emirate arises. Saudi Arabia will doubtless consider its options with  the failure of Iraq further endangering the Gulf region and its oil fields. Could a regional war of global proportions be in the offing?

Will the US Embassy in Baghdad be evacuating before being overwhelmed? Stay tuned for developments.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Jihadist behind takeover of Mosul released from U.S. custody in 2009
Iraq Isis Crisis: Medieval Sharia Law Imposed on Millions in Nineveh Province
Obama: “The World Is Less Violent Than It Has Ever Been”
Decapitated heads of policemen and soldiers line the streets of Mosul as ISIS imposes Sharia

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.