ISIS – IRAQ - KURDISTAN : NEWS THREAD

[Anthea]

Breitbart

Daily Jihad: Exclusive--AEI's Michael Rubin on Assyrian-Kurd Rift

The Assyrian community and the Kurds of Iraq have staked a claim to areas throughout the region, including the Nineveh province in the State’s north. Due to the Islamic State’s surge through the country, geopolitical ramifications have caused both entities to make aggressive claims in hopes to secure particular lands for the future of their people and their progeny.

Breitbart News spoke with Dr. Michael Rubin, a renowned Middle East expert at the American Enterprise Institute, hoping to sort through and create a clearer picture of the Assyrian-Kurd dispute.

Geographical issues arise immediately when the it comes to finding a state for the Assyrian people. Rubin explains, “There are problems--perhaps insurmountable--to Assyrian demands to carve out a province or state of their own. First, the Assyrians are scattered around the area; there is no band of territory in which they form an absolute majority.”

Assyrian identity is a complicated matter in and of itself, Rubin explains, and the communities’ leaders do not share a consensus as to what it means to be Assyrian. “While Assyrian leaders often describe their community as a cohesive whole, there are serious questions as to identity,” said Rubin. “I have had Assyrians claim that they represent an ethnicity and not simply a religion, but then explain that any convert to Islam would simply become Kurdish,” he added.

He added that the Kurds, on the other hand, “have traditionally lived in half of Mosul, and also in areas stretching toward Jebel Sinjar, where the Islamic State recently massacred the Yezidis.

Kurdish leadership has in the past abused the Assyrian people, creating deep qualms between the two tribes. Rubin told Breitbart, “That said, Assyrians have reason to distrust the Kurdish leadership.” The AEI expert explained that corruption is rife within the upper echelons of Kurdish leadership, especially at the top. “Kurdish President Masud Barzani will protect Assyrians only so much as they subordinate themselves completely to his dictates,” he said. “When Assyrians disagree with Barzani, he simply creates fake “store front” political parties which he falsely claims represents Assyrians. Like any dictator, Barzani brokers no dissent.”

Rubin forecasts that the odds are strongly against the Assyrians when it comes to securing any independent land of their own in the near future. He explains, “Unfortunately, there will be no happy endings for the Assyrians. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei will travel to Jerusalem and celebrate Shabbat dinner with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before the Assyrians will get any territory of their own in Iraq despite the best efforts of the Assyrian diaspora.”

Michael Rubin is the author of the new book Dancing With The Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014 ... -Kurd-Rift

[Anthea]

National Review

Hello Kurdistan
By Daniel Pipes

The Kurds have proved to be, roughly speaking, the Swiss of the Muslim Middle East.



Before welcoming the emerging state of Kurdistan in northern Iraq, I confess to having opposed its independence in the past.

In 1991, after the Gulf War had ended and as Saddam Hussein attacked Iraq’s 6 million Kurds, I made three arguments against American intervention on their behalf, arguments still commonly heard today: (1) independence for Iraq’s Kurds would spell the end of Iraq as a state, (2) it would embolden Kurds to agitate for independence in Syria, Turkey, and Iran, leading to destabilization and border conflicts, and (3) it would invite the persecution of non-Kurds, causing “large and bloody exchanges of population.”

All three expectations proved flat-out wrong. Given Iraq’s wretched domestic and foreign track record, the end of a unified Iraq promises relief, as do Kurdish stirrings in the neighboring countries. Syria is already fracturing into its three ethnic and sectarian components — Kurdish, Sunni Arab, and Shi’i Arab — which promises benefits in the long term. Kurds’ departing from Turkey would usefully impede the reckless ambitions of now-president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Similarly, Kurds’ decamping from Iran would helpfully diminish that arch-aggressive mini-empire. Far from non-Kurds fleeing Iraqi Kurdistan, as I feared, the opposite has occurred: Hundreds of thousands of refugees are pouring in from the rest of Iraq to benefit from Kurdistan’s security, tolerance, and opportunities.

I can account for these errors: In 1991, no one knew that autonomous Kurdish rule in Iraq would flourish as it has. The KRG, which came into existence the following year, can be called (with only some exaggeration) the Switzerland of the Muslim Middle East. Its armed, commercially minded mountain people seek to be left alone to prosper.

One could also not have known in 1991 that the Kurdish army, the peshmerga, would establish itself as a competent and disciplined force; that the KRG would reject the terrorist methods then notoriously in use by Kurds in Turkey; that the economy would boom; that the Kurds’ two leading political families, the Talabanis and the Barzanis, would learn to coexist; that the KRG would engage in responsible diplomacy; that its leadership would sign international trade accords; that ten institutions of higher learning would come into existence; and that Kurdish culture would blossom.

But all this did happen. As Israeli scholar Ofra Bengio describes it, “autonomous Kurdistan has proved to be the most stable, prosperous, peaceful, and democratic part of Iraq.”

What’s next on the KRG agenda?

The first item, after severe losses to the Islamic State, is for the peshmerga to retrain, re-arm, and form tactical alliances with such former adversaries as the Iraqi central government and the Turkish Kurds, steps which have positive implications for Kurdistan’s future.

Second, the KRG leadership has signaled its intention to hold a referendum on independence, which it rightly presumes will generate a ringing popular endorsement. Diplomacy, however, lags behind. The Iraqi central government, of course, opposes this goal, as do the great powers, reflecting their usual caution and concern for stability. (Recall George H. W. Bush’s 1991 “Chicken Kiev speech.”)

However, given the KRG’s superior record, outside powers should encourage its independence. Pro-government media in Turkey already do. Vice President Joe Biden might build on his 2006 suggestion of “giving each ethno-religious group — Kurd, Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab — room to run its own affairs, while leaving the central government in charge of common interests.”

Third: What if Iraqi Kurds joined forces across three borders — as they have done on occasion — and formed a single Kurdistan with a population of about 30 million and possibly a corridor to the Mediterranean Sea? One of the largest ethnic groups in the world without a state (a debatable claim: e.g., the Kannadiga of India), the Kurds missed their chance in the post–World War I settlement because they lacked the requisite intellectuals and politicians.

Every map of the Kurdish peoples differs from the others, but this one offers an estimate of their geographic extent, including a corridor to the Mediterranean Sea:



The emergence now of a Kurdish state would profoundly alter the region by simultaneously adding a sizable new country and partially dismembering its four neighbors. Such a prospect would be dismaying in most of the world. But the Middle East — still in the grip of the wretched Sykes-Picot deal secretly negotiated by European powers in 1916 — needs a salutary shake-up.

From this perspective, the emergence of a Kurdish state is part of the region-wide destabilization, dangerous but necessary, that began in Tunisia in December 2010. Accordingly,

I offer a hearty welcome to its four potential parts soon joining together to form a single united Kurdistan.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/3 ... niel-pipes

[Anthea]

Slightly different take on previous post

National Post

The world should welcome an independent Kurdistan
Daniel Pipes

In 1991, after the Kuwait War had ended, and as Saddam Hussein attacked Iraq’s 6-million Kurds, three arguments were made against American intervention on the Kurds’ behalf, arguments still commonly heard today: (1) Kurdish independence would spell the end of Iraq as a state, (2) it would embolden Kurdish agitation for independence in Syria, Turkey and Iran, leading to destabilization and border conflicts, and (3) it would invite the persecution of non-Kurds, causing “large and bloody exchanges of population.”

All three arguments no longer are persuasive. Given Iraq’s wretched domestic and foreign track record, the end of a unified Iraq actually promises relief, as do Kurdish stirrings in neighbouring countries. Syria already has fracturing into its three ethnic and sectarian components: Kurdish, Sunni Arab, and Shiite Arab, which promises benefits in the long term. Kurdish areas departing Turkey usefully impede the reckless ambitions of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Similarly, Kurds decamping Iran helpfully diminish that arch-aggressive mini-empire.

Moreover, far from non-Kurds fleeing Iraqi Kurdistan, as I once feared in the 1990s, the opposite has occurred: Hundreds of thousands of refugees are pouring in from the rest of Iraq to benefit from Kurdistan’s security, tolerance and opportunities.

Why did we get this wrong 23 years ago? In 1991, no one knew that autonomous Kurdish rule in Iraq would flourish as it has. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which came into existence the following year, can be called (with only some exaggeration) the Switzerland of the Muslim Middle East. Its armed, commercially-minded mountain people seek to be left alone to prosper.

One also could not have known in 1991 that the Kurdish army, the peshmerga, would establish itself as a competent and disciplined force; that the KRG would reject the terrorist methods then notoriously in use by Kurds in Turkey; that the economy would boom; that the Kurds’ two leading political families, the Talabanis and Barzanis, would learn to co-exist; that the KRG would engage in responsible diplomacy; that its leadership would sign international trade accords; that 10 institutions of higher learning would come into existence; and that Kurdish culture would blossom.

But all of this did happen. As Israeli scholar Ofra Bengio describes it, “autonomous Kurdistan has proved to be the most stable, prosperous, peaceful, and democratic part of Iraq.”

What’s next on the KRG agenda?

The first item, after severe losses to the Islamic State, is for the peshmerga to retrain, re-arm, and tactically ally with such former adversaries as the Iraqi central government and the Turkish Kurds, steps which have positive implications for Kurdistan’s future.

Second, the KRG leadership has signalled its intention to hold a referendum on independence, which it rightly presumes will generate a ringing popular endorsement. Diplomacy, however, lags behind. The Iraqi central government, of course, opposes this goal, as do the great powers, reflecting their usual caution and concern for stability. (Recall George H.W. Bush’s 1991 “Chicken Kiev” speech.)

However, given the KRG’s superior record, outside powers should encourage its independence. Pro-government media in Turkey already do. U.S. vice president Joe Biden might build on his 2006 suggestion of “giving each ethno-religious group — Kurd, Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab — room to run its own affairs, while leaving the central government in charge of common interests.”

The emergence now of a Kurdish state would profoundly alter the region by simultaneously adding a sizable new country and partially dismembering its four neighbours

Third: What if Iraqi Kurds joined forces across three borders, as they have done on occasion, and form a single Kurdistan with a population of about 30-million and possibly a corridor to the Mediterranean Sea? One of the largest ethnic groups in the world without a state, the Kurds missed their chance in the post-World War I settlement because they lacked the requisite intellectuals and politicians.

The emergence now of a Kurdish state would profoundly alter the region by simultaneously adding a sizable new country and partially dismembering its four neighbours. This prospect would be dismaying in most of the world. But the Middle East — still in the grip of the wretched Sykes-Picot deal secretly negotiated by European powers in 1916 — needs a salutary shake-up.

From this perspective, the emergence of a Kurdish state is part of the region-wide destabilization, dangerous but necessary, that began in Tunisia with the Arab Spring in December, 2010. Accordingly, I offer a hearty welcome to its four potential parts joining soon together to form a single united Kurdistan.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/201 ... kurdistan/

[Anthea]

The Independent

The impossible war: Isis 'cannot be beaten' as long as there is civil war in Syria

US air strikes against Isis are unlikely to be as effective as Obama hopes. Sunni communities in Iraq and Syria may prefer the militants as a lesser evil compared to the return of vengeful government troops

A letter printed at the bottom of this article was emailed by a friend soon after her neighbourhood in Mosul was hit by Iraqi airforce bombers. This was some hours before President Barack Obama explained his plan to weaken and ultimately destroy Isis, which calls itself Islamic State, by a series of measures including air attacks. The letter illustrates graphically one of the most important reasons why American air power may be less effective than many imagine.

The reasons for this are political as well as military. The five or six million Sunni Arabs who live in areas controlled by Isis in Iraq and Syria may not be happy with the brutality, bigotry and violence of their new rulers. But they are even more frightened of the prospect of the soldiers and militiamen of the Baghdad or Damascus governments recapturing and wreaking vengeance in Sunni cities, town and villages. The Sunni communities in both countries have little choice but to stick with Isis as their defenders.

For all its bellicose rhetoric, Mr Obama’s plan is more of a strategy to contain Isis rather than eradicate it – and he may find that even this is difficult to do. His problem is that the US does not have reliable local partners in either Iraq or Syria.

The new Iraqi government under Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi remains sectarian, with even more members of the ruling Shia Dawa party than before. The Kurds were press-ganged by the US into joining it though none of their outstanding demands has been satisfied.

In Syria, the US is to bolster the “moderate” Syrian rebels who are to be trained in Saudi Arabia. The Syrian military opposition on the ground is dominated by jihadis, of which Isis, with control of 35 per cent of the country, is the most powerful.

The US air power should be enough to prevent Isis capturing the Kurdish capital Irbil or launching a successful assault on Baghdad. It might also be employed to save Aleppo or Hama from Isis. But without American forward air observers embedded in Iraqi units, as happened in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraqi Kurdistan in 2003, the Iraqi army is unlikely to make real progress on the ground. Given that the Sunni community is likely to fight the Shia-dominated army to the last man or flee in front of it, this may be no bad thing.

For all Mr Obama’s caution, the US is being dragged into new conflicts in Iraq and Syria. By beheading two American journalists in retaliation for US air strikes Isis has shown that it will retaliate against any US or British attack. Concern is expressed about the possibility of Isis bombers blowing themselves up “in the streets of London” but they could more easily target the 2.5 million British tourists who visit Turkey every year.

There is a bizarre section in Mr Obama’s speech in which he says “we must strengthen the [Syrian] opposition as the best counterweight to extremists like Isil [Isis]”. The only way that this could be done would be to raise a mercenary army and pretend it is the Free Syrian Army reborn or, something that Saudi Arabia and Qatar have done in the past, pretend that jihadi groups whose ideology is the same as that of Isis nevertheless belong to the moderate camp.

The missing element in the Obama plan is the creation of the framework for new peace negotiations between Mr Assad’s government and the moderate opposition such as it is. The Geneva 11 talks got nowhere because Washington insisted that the only topic of negotiations should be the departure of Mr Assad. Since he controlled most of Syria this was not going to happen, so in practice US and British policy was a recipe for an endless war.

So long as the civil war in Syria goes on Isis cannot be beaten: Syrian Sunni in areas under its rule will prefer it to the alternative which is the return of a vengeful government. In Iraq the political and military reach of Isis is limited by the fact that the Sunni Arabs are only a fifth of the population, but in Syria they are three-fifths. Their natural constituency is much greater than in Iraq.

It is likely that in Syria the US will covertly collaborate with the Assad government using intelligence services and third parties. Likewise in Iraq, the US and Iran are evidently pursuing common aims in propping up the Baghdad government. As the letter writer from Mosul points out the Shia militiamen who broke the siege of the Shia Turkoman town Amerli (and ransacked Sunni villages nearby) were aided in their advance by US air strikes. For all his caution, Mr Obama is being sucked into a sectarian civil war of terrible savagery.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 27847.html

[Anthea]

BBC News Middle East

US opposes Iran role in coalition against Islamic State

US Secretary of State John Kerry has said it would be inappropriate for Iran to join a coalition that is seeking to fight Islamic State (IS) militants.

Speaking on a visit to Turkey, Mr Kerry said he was confident the US could build a broad international coalition, of European and Arab countries.

Both Iran and the US have offered military aid to hold back an IS advance across northern and western Iraq.

But the US has clashed with Iran on its nuclear programme and policy in Syria.

Earlier this week, US President Barack Obama unveiled plans for an expansion of the campaign against IS in the region.

Ten Arab nations have agreed to help the US in its fight against the group, which the CIA says may have up to 31,000 fighters on the ground.

France has also offered its support for military action against IS, as part of a coalition being formed by Washington.

At a press conference in Ankara on Friday, Mr Kerry said he had not formally been asked to discuss "the presence of Iran" at the Paris conference.

"But I think under the circumstances at this moment in time... it would not be appropriate given the many other issues... with respect to their engagement in Syria and elsewhere," he said.

Iran has backed the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, while the US and several European and Gulf countries have supported the rebel factions fighting to overthrow him.

The US and Western countries are also in talks with Iran over its nuclear programme, which they fear could be used to develop a bomb, allegations Iran has strenuously denied.

Turkey fears

On Friday, Mr Kerry held talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in an effort to secure more co-operation from the Turkish government in the fight against IS.

Turkey has refused to allow the use of its air bases to launch attacks on the jihadist group.

The BBC's Jim Muir in Irbil says one reason is that Turkey fears for the lives of nearly 50 Turkish hostages held by the militants, including staff from the consulate in Mosul.

After the meeting, Mr Erdogan's office said in a statement quoted by AFP news agency: "The two countries will continue to fight against the terrorist organisations in the regions as in the past."

It added that Turkey would continue to share intelligence with the US and provide logistical support to the Syrian opposition, as well as humanitarian aid to Syrians affected by the conflict.

On Thursday Mr Kerry met representatives from 10 Arab nations in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, who said in a communique that they "agreed to do their share in the comprehensive fight" against IS.

A Pentagon spokesman said Washington was preparing a more "aggressive" air campaign, with some of the aircraft taking off from the air base at Irbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan.

President Obama on Wednesday said for the first time that he had also authorised air strikes against IS in Syria.

In recent months IS has expanded from its stronghold in eastern Syria and seized control of more towns, cities, army bases and weaponry in Iraq.

The US has already carried out more than 150 air strikes in northern Iraq. It has also sent hundreds of military advisers to assist Iraqi government and Kurdish forces, but has ruled out sending ground troops.

Article and Videos:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-29172524

[Anthea]

Politico

To Defeat the Islamic State - Follow the Money
By HOWARD J. SHATZ

President Obama is laying out his strategy to counter the Islamic State, whose rampages across Iraq and Syria have riveted Americans’ attention on a zone of conflict that many had hoped to forget. Many are urging him to step up military action. But if Obama wants to defeat the jihadis, he will need more than airstrikes—he should follow the money.

For all that ideology, religious belief and perhaps a lust for violence and power might motivate those who fight for the Islamic State (known variously by the acronyms ISIS and ISIL), money is what keeps the group going. As with any state, ISIL has bills to pay and mouths to feed. Even for the world’s richest terrorist organization—which, by all available accounts, ISIL is—money doesn’t grow on trees, and nothing in the world comes for free.

So where does ISIL’s money come from? As part of my research at the RAND Corporation, since late 2006 I have been studying the finances, management and organization of the precursors to the Islamic State—Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Islamic State of Iraq—using their own documents, manuals and ledgers. More recently, Rand has teamed up with scholars from Princeton and Emory universities, as well as analysts from other organizations, to study more than 150 documents produced between 2005 and 2010. Although our work is still not yet done, we can draw a number of conclusions.

The most important thing for U.S. policymakers to remember is that ISIL now possesses the financial means to support a long-term fight—some $2 billion, according to a recent report in the Guardian, citing a British intelligence official. At the same time, ISIL’s preferred fundraising methods and many financial commitments create vulnerabilities. The organization was badly damaged by late 2009, thanks to a combination of coalition and Iraqi forces, as well as intervention by the Iraqi government, and it can be badly damaged again. But without the establishment of a widely accepted, legitimate political order in Iraq, ISIL cannot be eradicated—and will continue to seek out and mete out cash.

ISIL raises most of its money domestically in Iraq and Syria. Its income streams include oil smuggled to other countries in the region, extortion, taxes—especially on non-Muslim minorities—and other essentially criminal activities.

Oil is ISIL’s biggest source of revenue but also presents the biggest problem. ISIL controls about a dozen fields in Syria and Iraq, in addition to a number of refineries, including mobile refineries. Based on media accounts, RAND has estimated the total production capacity of these fields to be more than 150,000 barrels per day, although actual production is estimated to be much lower. As a comparison, the website Iraq Oil Report has reported that exports from Iraq for the month of August were about 2.4 million barrels per day.

ISIL smuggles this oil out in tanker trucks—clearly visible from the sky should any drone pass overhead, so the smuggling is not particularly furtive. The group then sells the oil to whoever will buy it—reported in the media to be buyers in Syria, Turkey, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and possibly in Iran and even Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria, among other countries. Sales take place at rates deeply discounted from world prices. But even so, revenues have been estimated in the media at $1 million, $2 million or even $3 million per day.

We have seen this before. From 2006 to 2009, ISIL’s predecessor, the Islamic State of Iraq, raised perhaps $2 billion through smuggled oil originating in the Baiji refinery in northern Iraq. This ended as a result of a concerted effort by U.S. and Iraqi forces to destroy the group and create the conditions in which the Iraqi government could exercise its law-and-order responsibilities, as well as vastly improved management at Baiji, owned by the Iraqi government.

So where does all of ISIL’s money go?

ISIL historically has paid its members (yes, it maintains payroll sheets) based on a flat monthly rate per person and then additional fixed amounts for each wife, child and dependent unmarried adult woman in the household. In Anbar, Iraq, the rate was $491 per year in 2005 and 2006, and then about $245 per year per dependent; the rate was similar in Mosul in 2007 and 2008. These payments to family are meant to continue if the ISIL member is captured or killed—a primitive form of life insurance. If enough members are captured and killed, however, these costs start to mount.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/ ... 10825.html

[Anthea]

Confronting the Islamic State
Hassan Hassan

The Syrian opposition is in a rare position of power, at least internationally. In his September 10 address, President Barack Obama extended the war against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, into Syria. He said that the United States will lead a coalition to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS. There is a wide recognition that the opposition will be key in the fight against the radical group. But the opposition does not have a strategy to seize this opportunity. And at this critical juncture Syrian rebels have even alienated some of their allies.

Until Obama’s speech, the opposition was suspicious that U.S. strikes in Syria would be carried out in collaboration with the Assad regime, despite repeated statements from Western capitals to the contrary. On Wednesday, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood rejected the international coalition against ISIS “unless the first bullet is directed at [Bashar] al-Assad’s head.” Even though the opposition’s National Coalition welcomed the American move against ISIS, the political opposition is still waiting for an invitation to play a role, rather than proactively presenting a vision for a way out for the Syrian crisis.

Away from politics, however, a fairly different situation exists among opposition fighters. Significant rebel coalitions have already been formed to help in the fight against ISIS, and preparations for the zero hour seem to be in full swing. On September 10, seven groups affiliated with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), Free Syrian Army, and the Islamic Front, among them Kurdish and Arab fighters, announced a small yet symbolically significant coalition to fight ISIS in eastern Syria. On Monday, five sizable fighting groups in Idlib announced a merger, named al-Faylaq al-Khamis (The Fifth Legion), saying they would adhere to strict military discipline and use the Syrian revolutionary flag, which indicates a rejection of Islamist ideology. The Syrian Revolutionary Front, which was key to the expulsion of ISIS from much of the north earlier this year, also announced that it would send “convoys after convoys” to areas under ISIS control to defeat the jihadi group.

But even though rebels on the ground are willing and prepared to fight ISIS, the political opposition has a critical role to play. The areas tightly controlled by ISIS will require an assiduous effort to organize groups that could fill any vacuum left by ISIS as a result of the potential airstrikes. ISIS has made it much harder for armed groups from these areas, particularly Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa, to regroup and make a comeback or for local forces to stage an insurrection against the jihadi group. Rebel groups from outside these areas will also find it quite difficult to navigate, much less be welcomed in, these territories.

Rebel forces from the north can help fight ISIS from the ground, under air cover and intelligence and with logistical assistance, but local forces will be vital in retaking areas currently under ISIS control. Many of the fighters from Deir ez-Zor, for example, left the province to fight near Damascus after ISIS entered their areas in June. Local forces who have surrendered to ISIS have little appetite to rise up against the group unless they know that it will be too weakened to return to their areas and retaliate against them, as it did to several villages and towns in recent weeks.

These complexities will make the fight against ISIS that much more difficult. The dilemma is obvious: in areas currently ruled by ISIS, local forces are unwilling to initiate a ground-up uprising against ISIS unless the group is weakened, and it cannot be seriously weakened without help from local forces. The U.S.-led coalition will have to consider aligning with rebel groups from adjacent areas outside ISIS control, combined with effective air operations, before expecting a popular impetus against the group. A leadership role for the political opposition will be needed to make that happen.

A main setback for the political opposition is that its relationship with even its most committed backers has turned sour, mostly because of crippling infighting. Saudi Arabia, for example, has not held any official bilateral meetings with the National Coalition since the new leadership was formed in June, and did not invite it to recent meetings, which countries like Jordan and Egypt attended, even though the discussions were about Syria and the U.S. strikes.

The worsening relationship has led to two developments that might prove to be a turning point for the opposition. The first one is that the opposition’s sponsors now focus on working with individual, reliable figures, rather than the National Coalition or even the military councils. These individuals are currently taking a leading role in the effort against ISIS. This might signal a tendency to overlook the structures that have been resistant to inclusivity and change. In addition, the sponsors’ effort to provide funding only to loyal groups has already produced remarkable results, primarily the weakening of the Islamic Front, which turned to little more than a brand that has no operational reality. Ahrar al-Sham, for example, had been steadily weakening even before nearly all its top leaders were killed on September 9 in an attack at one of the group’s bases in Idlib’s countryside.

Such efforts to tighten the noose around extremist groups—at least for countries like Saudi Arabia—will be part of a long-term effort to build an organic army that would be part of a future Syria. According to sources1 in the Gulf region, the need for establishing a “Sunni peshmerga” is key to the regional countries’ current strategy. There are already reports that thousands of rebel fighters will be trained in Jordan and the Gulf; Saudi Arabia has reportedly agreed to host training for the rebels inside the kingdom. This force, despite its name, is not meant to have a sectarian agenda, but it would be designed as an army that can police and protect Sunni-dominated territories in Syria and Iraq. The plan to establish “Sunni peshmerga” will exclude Islamist groups, even if they project a moderate tone.

Such efforts have already led some of the Islamist factions in Syria to significantly moderate their ideological and political stances in recent months, primarily the Islamic Front, and individual groups such as Ahrar al-Sham. It has also led others, such as Harakat Noureddin al-Zinki, to either join more moderate forces or form new ones. An indication that Islamists are concerned about this approach is that the Syrian Islamic Council, along with the Muslim Brotherhood, have so far opposed the anti-ISIS coalition because it might potentially bypass the existing Islamist-dominated structures of the opposition.

The dwindling trust in the opposition, even from its most committed allies, drives them to do more to win back that trust. Airstrikes against ISIS will provide the opposition with an opportunity to work alongside countries that long doubted its ability to rule a post-Assad Syria. It is an opportunity that should not be missed.

Hassan Hassan is an analyst with the Delma Institute, a research house based in Abu Dhabi, and a columnist for The National newspaper. Follow him on Twitter @hxhassan

http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/2014/ ... state/hoiq

[Anthea]

PUK Media

Peshmerga Forces liberate 8 villages in Makhmor

Kurdistan Peshmerga forces cleared Friday, September 12th, a number of villages related to Makhmor district.

Head of PUK organizations committee in Makhmor Rashad Galali said in a statement to PUKmedia that Peshmerga forces advanced towards libration of Makhmor's related villages of: (khirbani, Mahmudia, Durinkeyo, Rashdia, Kerdhara, Lakcha, Lilzga and kerdklikha).

Galali stressed that the operation led to the killing of many of ISIL terrorists. Galali pointed out that ISIL groups fled the strikes of Peshmerga leaving seven terrorist bodies in Khirbani.

http://www.pukmedia.com/EN/EN_Direje.aspx?Jimare=21605

[Anthea]

PUK Media

Inside Mosul: Thousands Of Students, Teachers Trapped Between Extremists And Education Ministry

Inside the extremist-occupied city of Mosul, teachers have been told to report to work and teach an extremist-formulated curriculum - or face the consequences.

Meanwhile the Ministry of Education in Baghdad, which still pays their salaries, says if they show up to work, they may be fired.

Usually at this time of year, Mosul girl Athara Hussein, would be attending a school near her home. Today, she’s not there. But from her bedroom window she can see who is: Families are living in her school, using it as a home and their children are playing in classrooms she once sat in.

Hussein still hopes to finish her exams and go to university. “I dream of going back to school,” she wrote in a letter to a friend. “I don’t just want to watch it from the window of my house. It would be wonderful if this city was liberated from ignorance,” she concluded, referring to the fact that Mosul is currently under the control of the Sunni Muslim extremist group known as the Islamic State, or IS.

Many local schools are currently occupied by internally displaced Iraqi families who have fled nearby fighting between the IS group and other forces, like the Iraqi Kurdish military.

And Hussein is one of thousands of students in the northern Iraqi province of Ninawa who face an uncertain future, in terms of their education. And it is not just about classroom space. In the areas controlled by the IS group there is a struggle for control of the education system going on, between the extremists themselves and the central government in Baghdad.

The government in Baghdad has said it will not endorse any exam results gained in schools in areas under IS control. It won’t open the schools and universities there either. The Ministry of Education has continued to pay the salaries of around 53,000 employees in the area but all of them are also on compulsory leave until the end of the current year. The ministry has also threatened to fire anyone who goes back to their jobs or who doesn’t abide by its decisions.

Meanwhile the IS group is also trying to gain control of local education systems, as part of its activities to act like a real state within its self-declared Caliphate.

To end what they describe as “ignorance in the city” a statement recently issued by the extremists said that all students studying during the scholastic year between 2013 and 2014 can be considered as having passed their exams. The statement also said that all schools under the IS group’s control will open their doors on Sept. 9.

An IS educational department had been created and this would be responsible for getting the educational curriculum in IS-controlled areas in line with the group’s version of their religion. An employee of the Ministry of Education, who could not be named for security reasons, told NIQASH that the head of the IS’ department of education is a man called Khaled al-Afari, a 30-year-old Turkmen from the town of Tal Afar, who has a degree in Islamic science.

“The biggest danger lies in this new curriculum, if the IS group manages to teach it beyond primary school level,” the employee explained. “Al-Afari is known as a radical Islamist and parents should not send their children to him for education – they won’t turn out to be doctors or engineers or lawyers. They will grow up to be members of the IS group.”

Additionally there have been extremists pulling strings at local tertiary institutes too. University buildings have been used for various purposes by fighters from the IS group and they’ve started to interfere in university affairs.

At Mosul University, the fine arts institute was closed and the law school’s curriculum was altered. “It is a crime against the arts and sciences and we shouldn’t tolerate it,” one university professor, who decided to stay on at the institute, told NIQASH; most others have left.

However, he says, his colleagues advised him not to protest lest he be killed. The professor now says that if he is going to be forced to teach subjects as formulated by the extremists, then he too will leave Mosul.

Two days after the IS group published their statement on education in Mosul, the new department head summoned all of the employees of the Ministry of Education and demanded they resume work this week, on Sept. 9.

Local teachers and other staff are well aware that they are trapped between the IS group’s hammer and an anvil made of Baghdad’s decisions. They are now working under two bosses – one is al-Afari and the other is Mohammed Iqbal, who was appointed Minister of Education by the Iraqi Parliament earlier this week. Coincidentally Iqbal is also from Mosul. But right now, the teachers and school staff know they have no choice but to obey the IS group’s orders, especially as punishments like executions are rising in the city.

As a result, on Sept. 9, some of the teachers and other staff went to work. However, as they say, they didn’t really do anything there. One of the teachers told another that, “we just said hello, then left after half an hour. We just went because we had to obey the order”.

It’s not only students and teachers who have been affected by the IS group’s decisions. Those working in the main market for educational supplies and stationery on Najafi street in Mosul are also feeling the impact.

Every year the store owners here wait for September and the school term to begin to do their best business. However this year that doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen. And quite possibly by next year some of these stationery stores will be restaurants –most likely staffed by students who had to forgo their education.

http://www.niqash.org

http://www.pukmedia.com/EN/EN_Direje.aspx?Jimare=21606

[Anthea]

Reuters

Islamic State's financial independence poses quandary for its foes
By Raheem Salman and Yara Bayoumy

Sometimes they came pretending to buy things. Sometimes they texted, sometimes they called, but the message was always the same: "Give us money."

Months before they took control of the Iraqi city of Mosul in June, Islamic State militants were already busy collecting money to finance their campaign of setting up a 7th century-style caliphate.

The owner of a Mosul grocery store recounted how, when he hesitated to pay, militants exploded a bomb outside his shop as a warning. "If a person still refused, they kidnapped him and asked his family to pay ransom," he said.

The shopkeeper, who declined to be identified out of concern for his safety, said he had paid the militants $100 a month six or seven times this year.

In return, he was given a receipt that says: "Received from Mr. ...., the amount of ...., as support to the Mujahideen."

The shop keeper's tale illustrates how Islamic State has long been systematically collecting funds for a land grab that already includes a stretch of northern Iraq and Syria. Another Mosul worker corroborated the account of IS tactics.

"The tax system was well-organized. They took money from small merchants, petrol station owners, generator owners, small factories, big companies, even pharmacists and doctors," said the shop owner who, out of frustration and fear, closed his store and is now trying to make a living as a taxi driver.

Learning from their previous incarnation as the Islamic State of Iraq, when they received money from foreign fighters, Islamic State has almost weaned itself off private funds from sympathetic individual donors in the Gulf. Such money flows have come under increased scrutiny from the U.S. Treasury.

Instead the group has formalized a system of internal financing that includes an Islamic form of taxation, looting and most significantly, oil sales, to run their 'state' effectively.

This suggests it will be harder to cut the group's access to the local funding that is fuelling its control of territory and strengthening its threat to the Middle East and the West.

Nevertheless, financing from Gulf donors may prove more critical in months to come, if U.S. President Barack Obama's mission to "degrade and destroy" the group succeeds and the group loses territory and finds itself looking abroad for funds.

CONTROLLING COMMERCIAL CENTERS

In the eastern Syrian city of Mayadin, an Islamic State supporter who goes by the name of Abu Hamza al-Masri, said the militants had set up checkpoints in the last few months demanding money from passing cars and trucks. The money purportedly goes into a 'zakat' or 'alms' fund, but Abu Hamza admitted some sums go to pay bonuses or salaries of fighters.

"Passengers are asked to open their wallets ... in some instances they are threatened at gunpoint if they resist," said another Syrian secular activist in Deir ez-Zor contacted by Reuters via Whatsapp.

But extortion is not Islamic State's top money-spinner.

Analysts and activists say the majority of the group's money comes from oil sales to local traders from wells under Islamic State control.

Luay Al-Khatteeb, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center who has done extensive research into Islamic State's oil smuggling, says the group now has access to five oilfields in Iraq, each of which have between 40 to 70 oil wells.

"They deal with a sophisticated network of middle men, some of whom are affiliated with the (Iraqi) oil companies. They have to pay various checkpoints to move around all these oil convoys and specifically to export the oil to Turkey," Khatteeb said.

"It is estimated that now, after recent territory losses, they can produce give or take 25,000 bpd, easily getting them about $1.2 million a day, on and off, even if they sell at a discount price of $25-$60 a barrel," Khatteeb said.

This volume of oil production would be on par with a small offshore field on the north slope of Alaska.

A high-level Iraqi security official put the number of oilfields under the group's control at four, with a fifth in contest between them and Kurdish peshmerga forces.

The group appears to have chosen areas of conquest carefully, with an eye to funding.

In the Syrian province of Raqqa, a stronghold of the group, the militants made sure they could effectively manage the area before moving on to conquer territory across the border in Iraq. They moved into Fallujah in Iraq's Anbar province in early 2014, before reaching Mosul in June, a major urban center.

"It's about controlling financial nodes. It's controlling commercial centres, it's controlling roads for checkpoints and there's no surprise in that, because there's significant value in that control. And the more finance you earn, the more you can develop. It's a reinforcing circuit," said Tom Keatinge, a finance and security analyst at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

"There's no point in controlling acres of desert. You want to control the financial nodes so that you can continue to expand. You don't want to spread yourself too thin financially before you can operate effectively in an expanded area."

LESS RELIANCE ON PRIVATE FUNDS

Documents from al Qaeda in Iraq captured by U.S. forces near Iraq's Sinjar town in 2007 included reams of finance and expense reports, showing the group, a predecessor of Islamic State, "relied heavily on voluntary donations", says a 2008 report by West Point's Combating Terrorism Center.

The report, "Bombers, Bank Accounts and Bleedout", said the "financial reports and receipts in the Sinjar documents show that the Islamic State of Iraq relied on three sources of funding: transfers from other leaders in al Qaeda in Iraq, money foreign suicide bombers brought with them and fundraising from local Iraqis." The study said it was unclear from the documents whether the funds from locals were given voluntarily.

The bureaucratic obsession with accounting proved ironic - while it helped the group track funds, the documents, once in the hands of the U.S. military, helped Washington understand how the financing worked - from the operatives who moved money, to the ones who donated money, to how the money was spent.

One lesson learned, the Sinjar documents show, was the need for more reliable financing, especially with countries trying harder to disrupt the flow of funds, Keatinge said.

"If you have a sophisticated understanding of financial management like Islamic State or al Shabaab in Somalia, you know very well that relying on diaspora or private donations or funds that can be disrupted by the international community is a risky way to go," said Keatinge.

By its own admission, Washington realises funds from outside donors are not as significant a threat as their self-financing methods, but the United States and its allies have been slow to move to cut those sources off.

"(IS) receives some money from outside donors, but that pales in comparison to their self funding through criminal and terrorist activities," a senior State Department official said.

Ransoms from kidnappings do not seem to compete with oil sales, and not much is reliably known about the amounts they have received. ABC News reported that one U.S. hostage held by Islamic State is a 26-year-old female aid worker, for whom the group has demanded $6.6 million in ransom.

British Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament he had no doubt that tens of millions of pounds of ransom payments were going to Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq.

Focus, a German magazine said in April that France paid $18 million for the release of four French hostages who had been held by Islamic State, citing NATO sources in Brussels.

French officials say the French state does not pay ransoms.

Then there is crime. IS raided the central bank in Mosul and reportedly seized substantial sums of money, though the figures are disputed. The group apparently allows Iraqis in Mosul to withdraw 10 percent of their bank deposits and give 5 percent of the withdrawn amount, as zakat, or Islamic alms.

WHAT CAN BE DONE

Kuwait has been one of the biggest humanitarian donors to Syrian refugees through the United Nations. It has also struggled to control unofficial fund-raising for opposition groups in Syria by private individuals.

Ahmed al-Sanee, head of charities in Kuwait's Social Affairs ministry, said recently there was "strict monitoring" of unlicensed donation collecting. Finance minister Anas al-Saleh said on Tuesday Kuwait was "committed to international efforts in fighting this terror".

"Whomever has been identified by the United Nations as a terrorist, we will be implementing our law on them," he said.

Washington has moved to cut off sources of private donations. Last month it imposed sanctions on three men it said funnelled money from Kuwait to Islamic militant groups in Iraq and Syria. Kuwait briefly detained two of the men, both of whom are prominent clerics.

"If I were the Chief Financial Officer of IS or ISIS as it was then, I would be watching that development very closely. Because if I were receiving money from the Gulf states, at that point I for sure knew that it would get harder," said Keatinge.

NO SIMPLE SOLUTION

In the end, squeezing the group's finances will involve a mixture of intelligence and force. Ending the group's control of a given area using military might would remove its ability to raise local taxes, for example. Tracking smuggling routes or Gulf donors, in contrast, would involve local informants.

Khatteeb, who is also the director of the Iraq Energy Institute, says Turkey must clamp down on oil smuggling routes through southern Turkey. This would dent a revenue stream Islamic State has used to fund a significant recruitment drive.

"Turkish authorities (need) to really pay attention in closing down these markets, put more work in intelligence and enforce the rule of law."

In an op-ed last month published in the New York Times Patrick Johnston and Benjamin Bahney of the RAND Corporation argued that strategies that focused on sanctioning international financial activities were unlikely to be effective.

The authors say that "the terrorist group's bookkeepers, its oil business and cash holdings" should be the targets of greater intelligence and scrutiny to help "disrupt ISIS's financing and provide additional intelligence on its inner workings."

Johnston told Reuters that even with the rapid expansion of Islamic State and its need to pay a larger number of recruits, the group could still make an estimated $100-$200 million surplus this year, given the amount of money it is making.

"They're making more money, they have less opposition militarily ... the question is what are they going to do with it?"

(Additional reporting by Ned Parker in Baghdad, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman, John Irish in Paris, Mahmoud Harby, David French and Ahmed Hagagy in Kuwait; Writing by Yara Bayoumy, Editing by William Maclean and Janet McBride)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/ ... BC20140911

[Anthea]

VOX

3 numbers that explain why ISIS will be so hard to destroy
By Zack Beauchamp

After President Obama announced his plan to destroy the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), one general involved in war planning called the mission "harder than anything we've tried to do thus far in Iraq or Afghanistan," according the Washington Post. Given how tough those wars have been for the United States, that's an incredibly high bar. So what is it about the ISIS situation that makes it so very hard for the United States to solve?

Obviously, there are quite a few things that make the crisis in Iraq and Syria complicated. But there are three really important features of the ISIS crisis that make it especially complicated. Each can be represented, simply, in one number. So here are three numbers that explain the ISIS crisis — and why it's so, so difficult to resolve.

1) 20,000

According to the Washington Post, the US has failed to destroy a single major Islamist terrorist organization since 9/11. That's right: after the so-called War on Terror began, the United States hasn't managed to annihilate a single significant militant group. And Obama wants to make ISIS, one of the strongest such groups we've ever seen, the very first.

Obviously, America's failure isn't for lack of trying. It's because destroying terrorist organizations is quite difficult. These organizations, ISIS included, often have some level of support from the local population, which makes it easy for them to hide among civilians and recruit new fighters. They frequently have bureaucratic, decentralized leadership structures that make the loss of even high-level leaders insignificant. ISIS may be an exception here, as self-proclaimed Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is quite important to the group, but it's tricky to make the case that ISIS will fall apart without Baghdadi so long as he's still alive.

Moreover, ISIS has a history of resiliency. During the later stages of the Iraq war, a Sunni uprising (called the Awakening) and an improved US offensive demolished what was then al-Qaeda in Iraq, reducing its membership by about 95 percent. Yet despite these losses, AQI rebuilt itself, and eventually morphed into ISIS.

The CIA estimates that ISIS has a fighting strength of 20,000 — at minimum. The high-end estimate is 31,500.

Back in June, the Agency estimated that ISIS topped out at about 10,000 soldiers. But after its June 10 offensive that swept northern Iraq (explained in the above video), ISIS' recruiting surged. Moreover, the group captured advanced American equipment during the offensive, which has given it an edge even against the well-trained Kurdish peshmerga.

These ISIS fighters are extremely effective in tactical terms. The veterans are battle-tested from years of fighting in Syria and Iraq, and ISIS has skilled ex-Saddam commanders in its officer corps. In June, 800 ISIS fighters sent 30,000 Iraqi army troops packing from Mosul, Iraq's second largest city.

Contrast this with the Syrian rebels the US is trying to arm and train. The BBC reported in December 2013 that there are about 1,000 rebel groups in Syria, totaling about 100,000 soldiers. However, that count included not just the rebels that Obama wants to arm and train to fight ISIS, but also ISIS itself, al-Qaeda in Syria, and other jihadi groups.

As the Times explains, the prospects for marshaling a unified rebel front against ISIS are dismal at best. "Analysts who track the rebel movement say that the concept of the Free Syrian Army as a unified force with an effective command structure is a myth," the New York Times' Ben Hubbard, Eric Schmitt, and Mark Mazzetti wrote. "Since pushing ISIS from parts of northern Syria early this year, Syria's rebels have few military advances to point to and in many areas have lost ground, to [Syrian dictator Bashar al-]Assad's forces and to ISIS."

"In many places they remain busy fighting Mr. Assad and are not eager to redirect their energies to ISIS," they dourly conclude.

2) 56

New Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's cabinet is 56 percent Shia, according to a count by indispensable Iraq blogger Joel Wing. That makes his cabinet even more Shia heavy than either of his disgraced predecessor Nuri al-Maliki's last two administrations, which were (respectively) 52 and 46 percent Shia.

Why does this matter? Well, Sunni discontent with Iraq's largely Shia government is the core driver of ISIS' strength in heavily Sunni northwest Iraq. The Obama administration's Iraq strategy is premised on the idea that the current government will govern in a far less sectarian manner than Maliki, who was quite cruel to Sunnis, did.

"I've insisted that additional US action depended upon Iraqis forming an inclusive government, which they have now done in recent days," Obama said in his September 10 address announcing the new counter-ISIS campaign.

But the reality of the Iraqi government, thus far, suggests the opposite. "The government is composed mostly of Shia Islamists who may not differ from Maliki on many key issues," Fanar Haddad, an expert on Iraq's Sunni-Shia divide at the National University of Singapore, told me in an email. "In fact, the track record shows that the new government is likely to be more hardline than Maliki on contentious issues."

Haddad points to the new coalition's "voting patterns and positions" on two core Sunni-Shia issues as proof. First, they've been skeptical of decentralization, which means granting more autonomy to Sunni and Kurdish regions. Second, they've held up efforts to rewrite Iraq's de-Baathification law, which excludes former members of Saddam's government from holding positions in government. In practice, de-Baathification has been used to exclude Sunnis from important positions in the army and other major Iraqi institutions.

Indeed, some of the hardline Shia parties in Abadi's coalition helped scuttle an early 2013 proposal from Maliki and Sunni lawmaker Saleh al-Mutlaq to reform de-Baathification laws. Many of these guys, in other words, are significantly more hardline than Maliki.

So while Abadi himself has promised to govern more inclusively, his coalition may make that extremely hard to do. And until that changes, Sunnis will continue to feel alienated — and will turn to ISIS.

3) 0

According to the Washington Post, the US has failed to destroy a single major Islamist terrorist organization since 9/11. That's right: after the so-called War on Terror began, the United States hasn't managed to annihilate a single significant militant group. And Obama wants to make ISIS, one of the strongest such groups we've ever seen, the very first.

Obviously, America's failure isn't for lack of trying. It's because destroying terrorist organizations is quite difficult. These organizations, ISIS included, often have some level of support from the local population, which makes it easy for them to hide among civilians and recruit new fighters. They frequently have bureaucratic, decentralized leadership structures that make the loss of even high-level leaders insignificant. ISIS may be an exception here, as self-proclaimed Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is quite important to the group, but it's tricky to make the case that ISIS will fall apart without Baghdadi so long as he's still alive.

Moreover, ISIS has a history of resiliency. During the later stages of the Iraq war, a Sunni uprising (called the Awakening) and an improved US offensive demolished what was then al-Qaeda in Iraq, reducing its membership by about 95 percent. Yet despite these losses, AQI rebuilt itself, and eventually morphed into ISIS.

Obama cited US campaigns against Islamist militants in Yemen and Somalia as success cases. But, as ThinkProgress' Hayes Brown pointed out, al-Qaeda in Yemen, called al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has weathered the US bombing campaign. The National Counterterrorism Center believes that AQAP is the terrorist group "most likely to attempt transnational attacks against the United States." And al-Shabaab, the Somali militant group, is alive and kicking, though the US and local allies have killed some of its leaders and pushed it back from its territorial high-water mark.

The point, then, is that everything we know about similar organizations suggests that the campaign against ISIS will take a long time, if it ever succeeds. ISIS can be weakened and pushed back, but destroying it outright is next-to-impossible.

"We're not going to see an end to this in our lifetime," Charles F. Wald, a retired Air Force general who oversaw the start of the air war in Afghanistan in 2001, told the Post.

It's not exactly a heartening thought.

http://www.vox.com/2014/9/12/6138977/isis-iraq-numbers

[Anthea]

The Independent

The impossible war: Isis 'cannot be beaten' as long as there is civil war in Syria

US air strikes against Isis are unlikely to be as effective as Obama hopes. Sunni communities in Iraq and Syria may prefer the ISIS militants as a lesser evil compared to the return of vengeful government troops

A letter printed at the bottom of this article was emailed by a friend soon after her neighbourhood in Mosul was hit by Iraqi airforce bombers. This was some hours before President Barack Obama explained his plan to weaken and ultimately destroy Isis, which calls itself Islamic State, by a series of measures including air attacks. The letter illustrates graphically one of the most important reasons why American air power may be less effective than many imagine.

The reasons for this are political as well as military. The five or six million Sunni Arabs who live in areas controlled by Isis in Iraq and Syria may not be happy with the brutality, bigotry and violence of their new rulers. But they are even more frightened of the prospect of the soldiers and militiamen of the Baghdad or Damascus governments recapturing and wreaking vengeance in Sunni cities, town and villages. The Sunni communities in both countries have little choice but to stick with Isis as their defenders.

For all its bellicose rhetoric, Mr Obama’s plan is more of a strategy to contain Isis rather than eradicate it – and he may find that even this is difficult to do. His problem is that the US does not have reliable local partners in either Iraq or Syria.

The new Iraqi government under Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi remains sectarian, with even more members of the ruling Shia Dawa party than before. The Kurds were press-ganged by the US into joining it though none of their outstanding demands has been satisfied.

In Syria, the US is to bolster the “moderate” Syrian rebels who are to be trained in Saudi Arabia. The Syrian military opposition on the ground is dominated by jihadis, of which Isis, with control of 35 per cent of the country, is the most powerful.

The US air power should be enough to prevent Isis capturing the Kurdish capital Irbil or launching a successful assault on Baghdad. It might also be employed to save Aleppo or Hama from Isis. But without American forward air observers embedded in Iraqi units, as happened in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraqi Kurdistan in 2003, the Iraqi army is unlikely to make real progress on the ground. Given that the Sunni community is likely to fight the Shia-dominated army to the last man or flee in front of it, this may be no bad thing.

For all Mr Obama’s caution, the US is being dragged into new conflicts in Iraq and Syria. By beheading two American journalists in retaliation for US air strikes Isis has shown that it will retaliate against any US or British attack. Concern is expressed about the possibility of Isis bombers blowing themselves up “in the streets of London” but they could more easily target the 2.5 million British tourists who visit Turkey every year.

There is a bizarre section in Mr Obama’s speech in which he says “we must strengthen the [Syrian] opposition as the best counterweight to extremists like Isil [Isis]”. The only way that this could be done would be to raise a mercenary army and pretend it is the Free Syrian Army reborn or, something that Saudi Arabia and Qatar have done in the past, pretend that jihadi groups whose ideology is the same as that of Isis nevertheless belong to the moderate camp.

The missing element in the Obama plan is the creation of the framework for new peace negotiations between Mr Assad’s government and the moderate opposition such as it is. The Geneva 11 talks got nowhere because Washington insisted that the only topic of negotiations should be the departure of Mr Assad. Since he controlled most of Syria this was not going to happen, so in practice US and British policy was a recipe for an endless war.

So long as the civil war in Syria goes on Isis cannot be beaten: Syrian Sunni in areas under its rule will prefer it to the alternative which is the return of a vengeful government. In Iraq the political and military reach of Isis is limited by the fact that the Sunni Arabs are only a fifth of the population, but in Syria they are three-fifths. Their natural constituency is much greater than in Iraq.

It is likely that in Syria the US will covertly collaborate with the Assad government using intelligence services and third parties. Likewise in Iraq, the US and Iran are evidently pursuing common aims in propping up the Baghdad government. As the letter writer from Mosul points out the Shia militiamen who broke the siege of the Shia Turkoman town Amerli (and ransacked Sunni villages nearby) were aided in their advance by US air strikes. For all his caution, Mr Obama is being sucked into a sectarian civil war of terrible savagery.

‘The Jihadis Return: Isis and the New Sunni Uprising’ by Patrick Cockburn, published by OR Books, is available at orbooks.com

Letter from Mosul: Why Isis is seen as the lsser of two evils

The bombardment was carried out by the government. The air strikes focused on wholly civilian neighbourhoods. Maybe they wanted to target two Isis bases. But neither round of bombardment found its target. One target is a house connected to a church where Isis men live. It is next to the neighbourhood generator and about 200-300 metres from our home.

The bombing hurt civilians only and demolished the generator. Now we don’t have any electricity since yesterday night. Now I am writing from a device in my sister’s house, which is empty.

The government bombardment did not hit any of the Isis men. Now I have just heard from a relative who visited us to check on us after that terrible night. He says that because of this bombardment, youngsters are joining Isis in tens if not in hundreds because this increases hatred towards the government, which doesn’t care about us as Sunnis being killed and targeted.

Government forces went to Amerli, a Shia village surrounded by tens of Sunni villages, though Amerli was never taken by Isis. The government militias attacked the surrounding Sunni villages, killing hundreds, with help from the American air strikes.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 27847.html

[Anthea]

I do NOT agree with the American policy which appears to be:

Bomb everyone and let God sort them out

Nor do I think that having a government that is 56% Shiite is going to help improve the conflict

America pushing (rightly so) for an Iraqi government that had a much wider representation of the Sunni population - is crazy to support the new Shiite-lead government

What was all the fuse about pushing Maliki out - the new government has a slightly higher percentage of Shiite

I do not have the exact number of the Iraqi population to hand but there are 2 ways in which I would form a government:

If the government consists of 3 different sections such as Kurds - Sunni - Shiite then surely each section should have a THIRD of the seats

OR

If the government is based on size of population perhaps

20% Kurds

40% Sunni

40% Shiite

This is just a rough idea - if it was my job I would number crunch to make certain I had my percentages correct

One thing is certain the Shiite would most definitely NOT control 56% of the government

If I were a Sunni I would be ABSOLUTELY FURIOUS

It was the Shiite ill-treatment of the Sunni and the Sunni mistrust and hatred of the Shiite government that made Sunnis more supportive of the Islamic State

To my mind this new government has shown once again that the Sunnis are still being treated with contempt by the Iraqi government

The only way to rid Iraq of the Islamic State is for the Iraqi government to offer Sunni a far greater part in the government so that they (the Sunni) have more control and support than the IS are giving them

I had thought that the new government was supposed to be improving the tensions between the Shiite and Sunni - this will only make matters much worse

[Anthea]

The Guardian

Isis offensive: Obama puts faith in allies with little proof of their worth

US president's partners in battle against militants in Iraq and Syria have previously failed to stand up when tested

After securing broad regional support for his coalition against Islamic State (Isis) Barack Obama is now turning to the second part of his strategy: empowering proxies on the ground who – in theory – will finish what air strikes started.

The US president's plan, though, invests immense faith in partners and would-be allies that have done little to display their worth in alliances that are, in many cases, at least a decade old. Of all the US-backed armies or rebel groups in the region, only a few have stood up when tested – and none of them recently.

The best armed and trained of them all, the Iraqi military, surrendered northern Iraq – and all of its arsenals – in less than 48 hours in mid-June, which is the main reason Obama is scrambling to take on a battle-ready Isis now.

The rout of the Iraqi army was one of the most extraordinary in modern military history. Five divisions numbering roughly 120,000 soldiers and officers fled as the jihadis advanced towards Mosul, Tikrit and Kirkuk, changing the face of the modern Middle East and posing a serious threat to states from the Levant to the Gulf and well beyond.

In August, the Isis rampage turned north towards the notional Kurdish capital of Irbil, where another US-trained ally – the Kurdish peshmerga forces – also rapidly retreated, leaving half a million Yazidis and Christians to fend for themselves.

Across the now redundant border with Syria, the Syrian army – though not a US partner – had been struggling to contain an insurrection against the country's leadership until it was reinforced by Iran and its proxies, especially Hezbollah, in December 2012.

Now, from Damascus to Baghdad, non-state actors are leading the fighting, with what remains of the Syrian and Iraqi armies subservient to them.

Iranian-backed Shia militias are directing key battles, including the fight earlier this month to regain the Turkoman town of Amerli, which had been surrounded by Isis since late June.

The campaign saw an extraordinary convergence of interests, with the US air force providing game-changing air cover to its arch-foe, the Iranian Major General Qassem Suleimani, who was on the ground as militias he directed rescued the Turkomans.

The Iraqi army played a support role, just as it has elsewhere in Iraq in every attempt to claw back its losses. Ever since, it has not been deployed anywhere in the country without large numbers of militias.

In Syria, where the US air campaign is now turning, militias are also dominant. The Syrian opposition is split into two main groupings. The Syrian revolutionary council – which is backed by Saudia Arabia – will be expected to lead the counterattack against Isis. But its influence is limited by the terrain it controls, roughly a wedge of land from northern Idlib province to the edge of Aleppo.

Beyond that the Islamic Front – backed by Qatar and Turkey but viewed warily by the US – holds sway and has been the main bulwark against Isis. Neither group gets on, and while heavy weapons and training could buy influence with either, there is little to show from their track record against Assad that they could defeat an even more formidable foe.

There is, however, one precedent for success – the partnership between the US military and the Sunni tribes of Anbar province, who revolted against al-Qaida in Iraq in early 2007. The then occupying US army threw its full weight behind the initiative, and the jihadis were ousted after around nine bloody months. Several years of relative quiet followed, but now they are back, stronger than ever, and with the world's most powerful army not on the ground to take them on.

"This is a big, big stretch," said a senior US official who was in Iraq at the time of the awakening. "Nothing I have seen inspires confidence that our new friends can get things done, especially when the old (friends) failed so miserably."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/s ... ven-allies

[Piling]

ISIS announces the execution of British captive David Haines.