ISIS – IRAQ - KURDISTAN : NEWS THREAD

[Anthea]

Anti-Arab protest erupts in Erbil

Anti-Arab sentiment has been generated by fears over the advancement of the Islamic State over Iraq towards Kurdish regions

ERBIL - Tensions came to a peak Saturday afternoon, as hundreds of young Kurds weaved in and out of cars, hunting out Arabs in Iraqi Kurdistan’s capital, Erbil.

The young men, marching in anger at the increasing number of Arabs in Iraqi Kurdistan, began their pursuit in Erbil’s Arab Quarter.

Protestors chanted “Arabs are traitors,” and other anti-Arab slogans while they marched, periodically stopping near a known Arab apartment or business and intensifying their chants, some throwing stones at the buildings and windows, until police dispersed the crowd with tazers and batons.

With Islamic State militants making extensive gains to the west of Erbil after Kurdish Peshmerga forces retreated to official Kurdistan Regional Government borders, the Islamic State now virtually controls all of the Nineveh plains, causing tensions to escalate in Erbil. .

Police are now armed, and there is a constant on-patrol Peshmerga presence in the city center. Residents have expressed fears that even if the Islamic State cannot takeover Erbil—which seems highly unlikely considering recent United States involvement—that the usually safe city will become a target of car bombs, a tactic, the Islamic State has used to deadly effect in the cities of Baghdad and Kirkuk where they have been unable to gain control.

Protestors told Middle East Eye that the demonstration, which had a mob atmosphere, was a reaction to the thousands of Arab refugees who had fled into the Kurdish autonomous region recently seeking safety from the sweeping onslaught of Islamic State militants.

“We don’t want the Arabs here because they are all spies,” one protestor told MEE. “They come here to Kurdistan like they are refugees, but we know most of them are working with the Islamic State. If it was the other way, they wouldn’t help us, in the past they have killed us, we don’t want to help them.”

The belief that Iraqi refugees in Erbil were in the Kurdish region as spies for the Islamic State was widespread, with many protestors holding signs in Arabic and Kurdish that read, “You are spies, we are saving you and you are helping Da’ash [Islamic State].”

After police dispersed the group away from the Arab quarter of the city, protestors set up their own manned checkpoint in the city center beside the historic citadel. Lining up along one of the one-way main roads, Kurdish youth ensured there was no escape for oncoming traffic, with dozens stopping each car by surrounding it as it approached.

The edgy crowd and ready to erupt at any moment. Drivers that were designated as potentially Arab, were screamed at and questioned by angry youth to see if they could communicate in fluent Kurdish. Drivers appeared frightened and desperate to prove they were Kurdish and not Arab, as menacing looks loomed over the car windows.

When an Arab driver, or taxi with Arab customers in it, was caught in the makeshift checkpoint, whistles and shouts were thrown in the air to masses of young Kurds who were milling around ready to answer their peers’ calls for backup. Young men would start running and screaming towards the car, beating on the hood and throwing drinks and lit cigarettes at drivers until the police finally caught up to chase them off and stop a potential hate attack.

One police officer, who spoke under the promise of anonymity, told MEE that he was appalled by the protestor’s actions.

“I think it is disgusting what they are doing here,” he said. “The government is offering help to refugees, these people need our help. We [the police] are here to keep everyone safe, we are more busy now with more patrols and now we have to deal with these kids too.”

Days before the demonstration there were rumours that the police in Erbil would attempt to ban the protest, but it seemed there was little the police force could do once demonstrators took to the streets.
Iraqis subjected to daily discrimination

Hayder Aroomi, a Sunni Arab, has lived in Erbil for two years now. He fled to the Kurdish region when he said Shia Muslims began attacking Sunnis in his hometown near Baghdad. Aroomi said he has always been treated differently in Kurdish Iraq, but he has never felt unsafe like he does now.

“I work for half the minimum wage here, it isn’t enough to rent an apartment so I sleep on the floor at the tobacco pipe café where I work,” Aroomi said. “It is not a good life but at least I am safe.”

Last week, Aroomi was assaulted inside the cafe where he works after a customer realized he was an Arab and couldn’t speak Kurdish. He said the man began to shout and hit him before throwing a glass toward him, which shattered against the wall, slicing his chest and fingers with broken shards.

“The cuts were actually very deep. I couldn’t afford to go to the hospital on my wages, so my friends just bandaged me up, I will be okay,” Aroomi said. “I couldn’t fight back. I didn’t dare. I just tried to protect myself because I am here illegally because my visa has expired, so if I tried to go to the police I would be deported. There was nothing I could do.”

As anti-Arab sentiments have increased with the recent influx of Iraqi refugees in the Kurdish region, Aroomi has changed his regular routine. He is weary of going out alone at night or speaking to people about his nationality and past. Because he speaks no Kurdish, only Arabic, he feels he is an easy target, and could be attacked again at any point, and in a way that could seriously endanger his life.

On the night of the protest, Aroomi didn’t dare leave his cafe.

“I couldn’t leave tonight, I don’t speak Kurdish, if they tried to speak with me they would immediately know I am Arab and then I don’t know what would happen,” Aroomi said.

Aroomi said he and his other Iraqi Arab friends are considering moving back to Baghdad until the conflict and atmosphere in the city settles down. He is caught between two hard decisions: unsure if it is better to risk staying in Erbil illegally where he is now terrified of being violently attacked again, or going back to the town he left, where a threat to his life still exists. It is a decision he never thought he would have to make.

As the Islamic State creates a refugee crisis in the North of Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan, with over one million already having fled the advancing militants, the lives of both new refugees and old are being held in the balance. With the Islamic State reportedly earning 3 million USD a day and holding more advanced weaponry than Kurdish Peshmerga forces, the militants don’t look like they will disappear anytime soon—nor does the anti-Arab mentality beginning to simmer up in the usually quiet city of Erbil.

phpBB [video]

Link to Article & Video:

http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/video ... -397174944

[Anthea]

Reuters

Iraq accuses Islamic State of Yazidi atrocity, U.S. conducts new strikes

Islamic State militants have killed hundreds of Iraq's minority Yazidis, burying some alive and taking women as slaves, an Iraqi government minister said on Sunday, as U.S. warplanes again bombed the insurgents.

Human rights minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani accused the Sunni Muslim insurgents - who have ordered the community they regard as "devil worshippers" to convert to Islam or die - of celebrating what he called a "a vicious atrocity".

No independent confirmation was available of an event that could increase pressure on Western powers to do more to help tens of thousands of people, including many from religious and ethnic minorities, who have fled the Islamic State's offensive.

The U.S. Central Command said drones and jet aircraft had hit Islamic State armed trucks and mortar positions near Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region which had been relatively stable throughout the past decade of turmoil until the insurgents swept across northwestern Iraq this summer.

That marked a third successive day of U.S. air strikes, and Central Command said in its statement that they were aimed at protecting Kurdish peshmerga forces as they face off against the militants near Arbil, the site of a U.S. consulate and a U.S.-Iraqi joint military operations centre.

The U.S. State Department said on Sunday it had pulled some of its staff from the Arbil consulate for their safety.

The Islamists' advance in the past week has forced tens of thousands to flee, threatened Arbil and provoked the first U.S. attacks since Washington withdrew troops from Iraq in late 2011, nearly nine years after invading to oust Saddam Hussein.

Sudani said in a telephone interview that accounts of the killings had come from people who had escaped town of Sinjar, an ancient home of the Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking community whose religion has set them apart from Muslims and other local faiths.

"We have striking evidence obtained from Yazidis fleeing Sinjar and some who escaped death, and also crime scene images that show indisputably that the gangs of the Islamic State have executed at least 500 Yazidis after seizing Sinjar," he said

"Some of the victims, including women and children were buried alive in scattered mass graves in and around Sinjar."

Consolidating a territorial grip that includes tracts of Syrian desert and stretches toward Baghdad, the Islamic State's local and foreign fighters have swept into areas where non-Sunni groups live. While they persecute non-believers in their path, that does not seem to be the main motive for their latest push.

The group wants to establish religious rule in a caliphate straddling Syria and Iraq and has tapped into widespread anger among Iraq's Sunnis at a democratic system dominated by the Shi'ite Muslim majority following the U.S. invasion of 2003.

President Barack Obama warned on Saturday that there was no quick fix for the crisis that threatens to tear Iraq apart.

Kurdish regional president Masoud Barzani urged his allies to send arms to help his forces hold off the militants, who have bases across the Syrian border. During a visit by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, Barzani said: "We are not fighting a terrorist organisation, we are fighting a terrorist state."

Another senior Kurdish official said Kurds retook two towns southwest of Arbil, Guwair and Makhmur, with the help of U.S. strikes. But he did not expect a rapid end to the fighting.

In Jalawla, 115 km (70 miles) northeast of Baghdad, a suicide bomber killed 10 Kurdish forces and wounded 80 people on Sunday. Kurdish fighters and Islamic militants are locked in fierce clashes in the town.

Fabius, noting how Islamic State fighters had taken the upper hand after seizing heavy weaponry from Iraqi troops who fled in June, said the European Union would look into bolstering the Kurds' arsenal to help them hold out and hit back.

TAKEN AS "SLAVES"

Iraqi rights minister Sudani said: "The terrorist Islamic State has also taken at least 300 Yazidi women as slaves and locked some of them inside a police station in Sinjar and transferred others to the town of Tal Afar. We are afraid they will take them outside the country.

"In some of the images we have obtained there are lines of dead Yazidis who have been shot in the head while the Islamic State fighters cheer and wave their weapons over the corpses," he added. "This is a vicious atrocity."

A deadline passed at midday on Sunday for 300 families from the Yazidi community - followers of a religion influenced by the Zoroastrianism of ancient Persia - to convert to Islam or die. It was not immediately clear if the victims to whom the minister referred were from that group of families.

U.S. military aircraft have dropped relief supplies to tens of thousands of Yazidis who have collected on the desert top of nearby Mount Sinjar, seeking shelter from the insurgents.

A spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency in Iraq said some 30,000 Iraqis had since Friday reached safety in Kurdistan after travelling on the Syrian side of the border from Sinjar.

At the Vatican, Pope Francis held a silent prayer for victims of the Iraq conflict: "Thousands of people, among them many Christians, banished brutally from their houses, children dying of hunger and thirst as they flee, women kidnapped, people massacred, violence of all kinds," he said in a Sunday address.

"All of this deeply offends God and deeply offends humanity."

MALIKI CRITICISM

Obama said it would take more than bombs to restore stability, and criticised Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite-led government for failing to share power with Iraq's Sunni minority, which was dominant under Saddam.

France joined the calls for Iraq's feuding leaders to form an inclusive government capable of countering the militants.

"Iraq is in need of a broad unity government," Foreign Minister Fabius said in Baghdad. "All Iraqis should feel they are represented to take part in this battle against terrorism."

Maliki's critics say his sectarian agenda has prompted heavily armed Sunni tribes to join the insurgency. But Maliki, serving in a caretaker capacity since an inconclusive election in April, has defied calls by Sunni, Kurds, fellow Shi'ites including regional power broker Iran and Iraq's top cleric to step aside for a less divisive leader.

The pressure from France came a day after Obama described the upheaval in the north as a "wake-up call" to Iraqis who have slipped back into sectarian bloodshed not seen since 2006-2007.

Nearly every day police report kidnappings, bombings and execution-style killings in many cities, towns and villages. In Baghdad, police were on Sunday manning some squares in armoured personnel carriers, an unusual sight.

The Islamic State, which sees Shi'ites as infidels who deserve to be killed, has met little resistance. Thousands of U.S.-trained Iraqi soldiers fled when its Arab and foreign fighters swept through northern Iraq from eastern Syria in June.

The collapse of the Iraqi army prompted Kurds and Shi'ite militias to step in, with limited success.

The Sunni militants routed Kurds in their latest advance with tanks, artillery, mortars and vehicles seized from fleeing Iraqi troops, calling into question the Kurds' reputation as fearsome warriors.

Iranian-trained Shi'ite militias may stand a better chance than the Kurds but they are accused of kidnapping and killing Sunnis, playing into the hands of the Islamic State, which also controls a large chunk of western Iraq.

After hammering Kurdish forces last week, the militants are just 30 minutes' drive from Arbil, the Iraqi Kurdish capital, which until now has been spared the sectarian bloodshed that has scarred other parts of Iraq for a decade.

The possibility of an attack on Arbil has prompted foreigners working for oil companies to leave the city and Kurds to stock up on AK-47 assault rifles at the arms bazaar.

In their latest sweep through the north, the Sunni insurgents routed Kurdish forces and seized a fifth oil field, several more villages and the biggest dam in Iraq - which could give them the ability to flood cities or cut off water and power supplies - hoisting their black flags up along the way.

After spending more than $2 trillion on its war in Iraq and losing thousands of soldiers, the United States must now find ways to tackle a group that is even more hardline than al-Qaeda and has threatened to march on Baghdad.

(Addiornal reporting by Isla Binnie in Rome and Missy Ryan in Washington; Writing by Michael Georgy and David Stamp; Editing by Alastair Macdonald and Sonya Hepinstall)

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/08/1 ... L620140810

[Anthea]

BBC News Middle East

Iraqi Kurdish leader Barzani seeks weapons to fight IS
The BBC's Caroline Wyatt has travelled west of Irbil to meet Kurdish forces battling the Islamic State

The political leader of Iraq's Kurds, Massoud Barzani, has appealed for international military aid to help defeat Islamist militants.

The plea came as the US launched a fourth round of air strikes targeting Islamic State (IS) fighters near Irbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.

IS, formerly known as Isis, has seized swathes of territory in northern Iraq.

Kurdish forces said they had regained control of two towns in Nineveh province after heavy fighting.

A Kurdish official said US air strikes on IS militants near the towns, Gwer and Makhmur, had helped.

It is the first time Kurdish forces, known as Peshmerga, have regained ground from IS since US military action was authorised on Thursday.

"A humanitarian disaster of amazing proportions", says Telegraph journalist Jonathan Krohn on Mount Sinjar

In western Iraq, minority groups, such as the Yazidis, have been forced from their home, prompting international aid drops.

Eyewitnesses told the BBC that thousands of refugees near Sinjar had escaped to safer areas.

Advanced weapons

Mr Barzani was speaking alongside French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who was in Iraq for crisis talks with Iraqi and Kurdish officials.

"We are not fighting a terrorist organisation, we are fighting a terrorist state," said Mr Barzani, the president of the Kurdish regional government.

"The weapons they possess are more advanced than what the Peshmerga have," he added.

"What we are asking our friends to do is to provide support and to co-operate with us in providing the necessary weapons that would enable us to defeat these terrorist groups," he said.

Mr Fabius later said that France would look into the possibility of supplying equipment to the Kurds.

"One way or another, they must receive equipment that will allow them to defend themselves and to counterattack" Mr Fabius told France 2 television.

Full Article and Pic:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28730618

[Anthea]

Reuters

Maliki defiant as his special forces deploy in Baghdad
(that man just cannot take a hint)

Special forces loyal to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki were deployed in strategic areas of Baghdad on Sunday night after he delivered a tough speech indicating he would not cave in to pressure to drop a bid for a third term, police sources said.

Pro-Maliki Shi'ite militias stepped up patrols in the capital, police said. An eyewitness said a tank was stationed at the entrance to Baghdad's Green Zone, which houses government buildings.

In a speech on state television, Maliki accused Iraq's Kurdish President Fouad Masoum of violating the constitution by missing a deadline for him to ask the biggest political bloc to nominate a prime minister and form a government.

"I will submit today an official complaint to the federal court against the president of the Republic for committing a clear constitutional violation for the sake of political calculations," said Maliki.

Serving in a caretaker capacity since an inconclusive election in April, Maliki has defied calls by Sunnis, Kurds, some fellow Shi'ites, regional power broker Iran and Iraq's top cleric for him to step aside for a less polarising figure.

Critics accuse Maliki of pursuing a sectarian agenda which has sidelined Sunnis and prompted some of them to support Islamic State militants, whose latest sweep through northern Iraq has alarmed the Baghdad government and its Western allies.

Washington seems to be losing patience with Maliki, who has placed Shi'ite political loyalists in key positions in the army and military and drawn comparisons with executed former dictator Saddam Hussein, the man he plotted against from exile for years.

A senior U.S. official said on Sunday he fully supported Masoum after Maliki, who the United States has blamed for stoking Iraq's security crisis, criticised him.

"Fully support President of Iraq Fouad Masoum as guarantor of the Constitution and a (prime minister) nominee who can build a national consensus," Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Brett McGurk, the State Department point man for Iraq, said on his Twitter feed.

U.S. President Barack Obama urged Iraqi politicians on Saturday to form a more inclusive government that can counter the growing threat from the Islamic State. But Maliki keeps digging in.

"Now we can see unprecedented deployment of army commandos and special elite forces deployed in Baghdad, especially sensitive areas close to the green zone and the entrances of the capital," one of the police sources said.

"These forces are now taking full responsibility of securing these areas of the capital."

Iraq's Interior Ministry has told police to be on high alert in connection with Maliki's speech, a police official told Reuters.

The Islamic State has capitalised on political deadlock and sectarian tensions that have made it easier for the group to make fresh gains after arriving in the north in June from Syria.

The group, which sees Shi'ites as infidels who deserve to be killed, has ruthlessly moved through one town after another, using tanks and heavy weapons it seized from soldiers who fled in the thousands.

Islamic State militants have killed hundreds of Iraq's minority Yazidis, burying some alive and taking women as slaves, an Iraqi government minister said on Sunday, as U.S. warplanes again bombed the insurgents.

Human rights minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani accused the Sunni Muslim insurgents - who have ordered the community they regard as "devil worshippers" to convert to Islam or die - of celebrating what he called a "a vicious atrocity".

No independent confirmation was available of the killings of hundreds of Yazidis, bloodshed that could increase pressure on Western powers to do more to help tens of thousands of people, including many from religious and ethnic minorities, who have fled the Islamic State's offensive.

The U.S. Central Command said drones and jet aircraft had hit Islamic State armed trucks and mortar positions near Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region which had been relatively stable throughout the past decade of turmoil until the insurgents swept across northwestern Iraq this summer.

That marked a third successive day of U.S. air strikes, and Central Command said in its statement that they were aimed at protecting Kurdish peshmerga forces as they face off against the militants near Arbil, the site of a U.S. consulate and a U.S.-Iraqi joint military operations centre.

The U.S. State Department said on Sunday it had pulled some of its staff from the Arbil consulate for their safety.

The Islamists' advance in the past week has forced tens of thousands to flee, threatened Arbil and provoked the first U.S. attacks since Washington withdrew troops from Iraq in late 2011, nearly nine years after invading to oust Saddam Hussein.

Iraqi rights minister Sudani told Reuters in a telephone interview that accounts of the killings had come from people who had escaped the town of Sinjar, an ancient home of the Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking community whose religion has set them apart from Muslims and other local faiths.

"We have striking evidence obtained from Yazidis fleeing Sinjar and some who escaped death, and also crime scene images that show indisputably that the gangs of the Islamic State have executed at least 500 Yazidis after seizing Sinjar," he said.

"Some of the victims, including women and children were buried alive in scattered mass graves in and around Sinjar."

Consolidating a territorial grip that includes tracts of Syrian desert and stretches toward Baghdad, the Islamic State's local and foreign fighters have swept into areas where non-Sunni groups live. While they persecute non-believers in their path, that does not seem to be the main motive for their latest push.

The group wants to establish religious rule in a caliphate straddling Syria and Iraq and has tapped into widespread anger among Iraq's Sunnis at a democratic system dominated by the Shi'ite Muslim majority following the U.S. invasion of 2003.

Obama warned on Saturday that there was no quick fix for the crisis that threatens to tear Iraq apart.

Kurdish regional president Masoud Barzani urged his allies to send arms to help his forces hold off the militants, who have bases across the Syrian border. During a visit by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, Barzani said: "We are not fighting a terrorist organisation, we are fighting a terrorist state."

Another senior Kurdish official said Kurds retook two towns southwest of Arbil, Guwair and Makhmur, with the help of U.S. strikes. But he did not expect a rapid end to the fighting.

In Jalawla, 115 km (70 miles) northeast of Baghdad, a suicide bomber killed 10 Kurdish forces and wounded 80 people on Sunday. Kurdish fighters and Islamic militants are locked in fierce clashes in the town.

Fabius, noting how Islamic State fighters had taken the upper hand after seizing heavy weaponry from Iraqi troops who fled in June, said the European Union would look into bolstering the Kurds' arsenal to help them hold out and hit back.

TAKEN AS "SLAVES"

Sudani said: "The terrorist Islamic State has also taken at least 300 Yazidi women as slaves and locked some of them inside a police station in Sinjar and transferred others to the town of Tal Afar. We are afraid they will take them outside the country.

"In some of the images we have obtained there are lines of dead Yazidis who have been shot in the head while the Islamic State fighters cheer and wave their weapons over the corpses," he added. "This is a vicious atrocity."

U.S. military aircraft have dropped relief supplies to tens of thousands of Yazidis who are trapped on the desert top of nearby Mount Sinjar, seeking shelter from the insurgents.

A spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency in Iraq said some 30,000 Iraqis had since Friday reached safety in Kurdistan after travelling on the Syrian side of the border from Sinjar.

At the Vatican, Pope Francis held a silent prayer for victims of the Iraq conflict: "Thousands of people, among them many Christians, banished brutally from their houses, children dying of hunger and thirst as they flee, women kidnapped, people massacred, violence of all kinds," he said in a Sunday address.

"All of this deeply offends God and deeply offends humanity."

MALIKI CRITICISM

France joined the calls for Iraq's feuding leaders to form an inclusive government capable of countering the militants.

"Iraq is in need of a broad unity government," Foreign Minister Fabius said in Baghdad. "All Iraqis should feel they are represented to take part in this battle against terrorism."

The pressure from France came a day after Obama described the upheaval in the north as a "wake-up call" to Iraqis who have slipped back into sectarian bloodshed not seen since 2006-2007.

Nearly every day police report kidnappings, bombings and execution-style killings in many cities, towns and villages. In Baghdad, police were on Sunday manning some squares in armoured personnel carriers, an unusual sight.

The Islamic State has met little resistance. Thousands of U.S.-trained Iraqi soldiers fled when its Arab and foreign fighters swept through northern Iraq from eastern Syria in June.

The collapse of the Iraqi army prompted Kurds and Shi'ite militias to step in, with limited success.

The Sunni militants routed Kurds in their latest advance with tanks, artillery, mortars and vehicles seized from fleeing Iraqi troops, calling into question the Kurds' reputation as fearsome warriors.

Iranian-trained Shi'ite militias may stand a better chance than the Kurds but they are accused of kidnapping and killing Sunnis, playing into the hands of the Islamic State, which also controls a large chunk of western Iraq.

After hammering Kurdish forces last week, the militants are just 30 minutes' drive from Arbil, the Iraqi Kurdish capital, which until now has been spared the sectarian bloodshed that has scarred other parts of Iraq for a decade.

The possibility of an attack on Arbil has prompted foreigners working for oil companies to leave the city and Kurds to stock up on AK-47 assault rifles at the arms bazaar.

In their latest sweep through the north, the Sunni insurgents seized a fifth oil field, several more villages and the biggest dam in Iraq - which could give them the ability to flood cities or cut off water and power supplies - hoisting their black flags up along the way.

After spending more than $2 trillion on its war in Iraq and losing thousands of soldiers, the United States must now find ways to tackle a group that is even more hardline than al-Qaeda and has threatened to march on Baghdad.

(Additional reporting by Missy Ryan in Washington; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Sandra Maler)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/ ... 8J20140810

[Anthea]

Press TV

ISIL is coming to US: Sen. Graham

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has told “Fox News Sunday” that the extremist Takfiri group ISIL - which also goes by the name of ISIS and IS - poses a real threat to the US.

He has urged President Barack Obama to expand limited airstrikes on the militants that began last week in Iraq.

“I think of an American city in flames because of the terrorist ability to operate in Syria and Iraq … to change that threat, we have to have a sustained air campaign in Syria and Iraq. We need to go on offense,” Graham, who is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said.

“They're coming here … This is not just about Baghdad, not just about Syria. It's about our homeland,” Graham added.

A leading Republican senator has said that he worries an American city could soon be a terrorist target if the US military fails to turn back the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants in Iraq and Syria.

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee told “Fox News Sunday” that the extremist group - which also goes by the name of ISIS and IS - poses a real threat to the US. He has urged President Barack Obama to expand limited airstrikes on the militants that began last week in Iraq.

“I think of an American city in flames because of the terrorist ability to operate in Syria and Iraq … to change that threat, we have to have a sustained air campaign in Syria and Iraq. We need to go on offense,” Graham said.

“They're coming here … This is not just about Baghdad, not just about Syria. It's about our homeland,” Graham added.

Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona has also warned that the militant group is “metastasizing as we speak.”

Meanwhile, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, who is a close Obama ally, has echoed a similar warning saying that ISIL Takfiri militants are a growing threat to the US.

Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, who is the Senate Intelligence Chairwoman, warned on Friday of the risk that ISIL could be preparing fighters to attack American and European targets.

“It has become clear that ISIL is recruiting fighters in Western countries, training them to fight its battles in the Middle East and possibly returning them to European and American cities to attack us in our backyard.”

The United States last week launched airstrikes against the militants who have overran parts of western and northern Iraq. They seeking create a “caliphate” to combine with areas they control in neighboring Syria.

The strikes came several months after the group began its attacks in Iraq.

The UN said in June that the militant group committed war crimes in Iraq by carrying out “systematic series of cold-blooded executions”.

Earlier this week, the UN Security Council warned that ISIS posed a threat not only to Iraq and Syria but to “regional peace, security and stability”.

In June 2014, US Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky said the US government is arming the ISIL group. He told CNN that "they (ISIL) would not be in power in Iraq, if we were not providing safe haven in Syria by arming their allies."

“I think one of the reasons why ISIS has been emboldened is because we have been arming their allies. We have been allied with ISIS in Syria. They have had a safe haven because we have been arming the rebels to keep Assad away from them … We have been fighting alongside al Qaeda, fighting alongside ISIS. ISIS is now emboldened and in two countries. But here's the anomaly. We're with ISIS in Syria. We're on the same side of the war.”

Senator Paul added that the US helped the ISIL militants to be empowered.

“They (ISIL) would not be empowered and in Iraq if we were not providing safe haven in Syria by arming their allies.”

A recent report by an independent news website, WND, said that ISIL members were trained in 2012 by US instructors working at a secret base in Jordan.

Jordanian officials - who wanted to remain anonymous - told WND said dozens of ISIL members were trained at the time as part of covert aid to the insurgents targeting the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

The officials said all ISIL members who received US training to fight in Syria were first vetted for any links to extremist groups like al-Qaeda.

WND reported that Saudi Arabia, a staunch US ally in the region, has been arming the ISIL.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/374810.html

[Piling]

OK, last night, Maliki stated that Fuad Massum violates the Iraqi Constitution and complained to the court against him. Will it be a Coup and arrested the Iraqi president ? This guy is mad…

[Anthea]

Washington Post

Iraq’s president named prominent Shiite politician Haider al-Abadi as the country’s new prime minister Monday, dislodging incumbent Nouri al-Maliki after eight years in office despite a show of force as he clung to power.

President Fouad Massoum called on Abadi, a member of Maliki’s ruling party and currently the deputy speaker of parliament, to form a new government.

Maliki has been standing his ground despite mounting pressure from domestic opponents and the Obama administration for him to step aside. He has been widely blamed for the growth of an insurgency by Sunni Muslim extremists that has ravaged the country.

“Now the Iraqi people are in your hands,” Massoum said as he shook hands with Abadi in a ceremony in Baghdad after Shiite politicians named him as their candidate. Massoum took office last month.

Earlier Monday, the United States warned Maliki that he risked further destabilizing Iraq and jeopardizing international support by clinging to power.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry made it clear that Maliki, who became prime minister in 2006 with U.S. backing, had lost Washington’s support.

“We believe that the vast majority of Iraqis are united in an effort to be able to have this peaceful transition” to a new government, Kerry said shortly after arriving in Australia for annual security and diplomatic talks. “We believe that the government formation process is critical in terms of sustaining stability and calm in Iraq, and our hope is Mr. Maliki will not stir those waters.”

Kerry spoke a day after Iraqi special forces teams and army tanks surrounded the Green Zone housing the country’s government as Maliki resisted giving up power, escalating a political crisis at a time when Iraq is already facing a lethal challenge from radical Islamist fighters.

In actions that had all the markings of a political coup, Maliki gave a defiant speech in Baghdad late Sunday saying he would lodge a legal case against the country’s president, who had resisted naming him as a candidate for another term as prime minister.

Tanks rumbled onto major bridges and roads in the capital as security forces were put on high alert, with militiamen also patrolling Shiite neighborhoods. The special forces teams surrounding the Green Zone were taking orders directly from the prime minister, security officials said.

But there were indications Monday that Maliki’s actions had turned the tide further against him.

“It has backfired and was unwise,” said Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd who served as foreign minister in the Maliki government. “We have passed the stage of military coups and taking power by force.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/ira ... story.html

[Anthea]

Reuters

Iraq president names new PM but Maliki hangs tough

Iraq's president named a new prime minister to replace Nuri al-Maliki on Monday, urging him to form a broad government that can stem communal bloodshed, but it was unclear whether Maliki would bow to U.S. and Iranian pressure to step aside.

A Shi'ite Muslim blamed by erstwhile allies in Washington and Tehran as well as Baghdad for driving the alienated Sunni minority into revolt, Maliki deployed loyal militias and special forces in the capital on Monday after making a defiant speech accusing the head of state of abusing the constitution.

Militants from the Islamic State, who routed Maliki's army in the north in June, made new gains over Kurdish forces despite three days of U.S. air strikes and Baghdad, long braced for the Sunni fighters to attack the city, was now tensing for possible clashes between Maliki and rivals within the Shi'ite majority.

There was no immediate reaction from Maliki to the naming of Haider al-Abadi as prime minister. However, Maliki's son-in-law, a close political ally, told Reuters that he would seek to overturn the nomination in the courts.

President Fouad Masoum asked Abadi, a leader of Maliki's Islamic Dawa Party, to lead an administration that can win the support of a parliament elected in April. In remarks broadcast on television, Masoum, an ethnic Kurd, urged him to "form a broader-based government" over the next month.

Abadi himself, who spent decades in exile in Britain during the rule of Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein, urged national unity against the "barbaric" Islamic State, which has driven tens of thousands from their homes as it swept Baghdad's troops from the north and west to consolidate a "caliphate" in Iraq and Syria.

"We all have to cooperate to stand against this terrorist campaign launched on Iraq and to stop all terrorist groups," he said in broadcast remarks after meeting Masoum.

Maliki, 60, who emerged from obscurity to become prime minister in 2006 under U.S. occupation, may not go quietly.

"We will not stay silent," his son-in-law Hussein al-Maliki said. "The nomination is illegal and a breach of the constitution. We will go to the federal court to object."

U.S. WARNING

After Washington endorsed Masoum's attempts to break three months of post-election political deadlock that have hamstrung Baghdad's response to the Islamic State, Secretary of State John Kerry called on Maliki not to resort to force or "stir the waters" when Iraqis were seeking a change of leader.

In pointed remarks, he said: "The government formation process is critical in terms of sustaining stability and calm in Iraq and our hope is that Mr. Maliki will not stir those waters.

"There will be little international support of any kind whatsoever for anything that deviates from the legitimate constitution process that is in place and being worked on now."

As police and elite armed units, many equipped and trained by the United States, locked down the capital's streets, Kerry added: "There should be no use of force, no introduction of troops or militias in this moment of democracy for Iraq."

Serving in a caretaker capacity since the inconclusive election on April 30, Maliki has defied calls by Sunnis, Kurds, fellow Shi'ites, regional power broker Iran and Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric to step aside for a less polarizing figure.

"Maliki knows it is very difficult to gain a third term and is playing a high-stakes game to try and ensure his authority and influence continue into the new government, despite who may officially become prime minister," said Kamran Bokhari, a Middle East specialist at analysis firm Stratfor.

Washington is losing patience with Maliki, who has placed Shi'ite political loyalists in key positions in the army and military and drawn comparisons with Saddam, the man he plotted against from Iranian exile for decades.

Before Abadi's nomination, a U.S. State Department spokeswoman reaffirmed support for a "a prime minister who can represent the aspirations of the Iraqi people by building a national consensus and governing in an inclusive manner".

"We reject any effort to achieve outcomes through coercion or manipulation of the constitutional or judicial process," she said in a statement, adding that the United States "fully supports" Masoum as guarantor of Iraq's constitution.

MILITARY AID

U.S. President Barack Obama has urged Iraqi politicians to form a more inclusive government that can counter the growing threat from the Islamic State, though he has rejected calls in some quarters for a return of U.S. troops other than in the form of several hundred military advisers sent in June.

The group, which sees Iraq's majority Shi'ites as infidels who deserve to be killed, has ruthlessly moved through one town after another, using tanks and heavy weapons it seized from soldiers who have fled in their thousands.

On Monday, police said the fighters had seized the town of Jalawla, 115 km (70 miles) northeast of Baghdad, after driving out the forces of the autonomous Kurdish regional government.

Washington and its European allies are considering requests for more direct military aid from the Kurds, who have themselves differed with Maliki over the division of oil resources and took advantage of the Islamists' advance to expand their territory.

On Sunday, a government minister said Islamic State militants had killed hundreds of people from the small, Kurdish-speaking Yazidi religious sect, burying some alive and taking women as slaves. No confirmation was available of the killings.

Thousands of Yazidis have taken refuge in the past week on the arid heights of Mount Sinjar, close to the Syrian border.

The bloodshed could increase pressure on Western powers to do more to help those who have fled the Islamic State's offensive. They have already dropped supplies and U.S. aircraft have been bombing the militants since Friday.

(Writing by Alastair Macdonald; editing by David Stamp)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/ ... 8J20140811

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(Reuters) - New prime minister Haider al-Abadi called on Iraqis to unite against the "barbaric" campaign waged by Islamic State militants whose latest sweep through the north has caused alarm at home and abroad.

“We all have to cooperate to stand against this terrorist campaign launched on Iraq and to stop all terrorist groups," he said in remarks broadcast on state television just after the president asked him to form a government.

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ITV

Ally of Iraq's Al-Maliki says they will 'not stay silent'

A member of two time Iraqi prime minister Nouri Al-Maliki's political bloc has said they "will not stay silent" over President Fouad Massoum's decision to replace him.

Hussein al-Maliki, Maliki's son-in-law said: "The nomination is illegal and a breach of the constitution. We will go to the federal court to object to the nomination."

Maliki has indicated rejecting calls by Sunnis, Kurds, fellow Shi'ites to stand down and President Fouad Massoum has nominated Haider Al-Abadi to form a new government.

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BBC News Middle East

Iraq president asks Abadi to succeed PM Nouri Maliki

Iraq's president has asked the deputy speaker of parliament, Haider al-Abadi, to form a new government.

Mr Abadi has been nominated prime minister by Shia parties, instead of the incumbent Nouri Maliki.

But Mr Maliki has made it clear he wants to stand for a third term, and pro-Maliki security forces took key sites in Baghdad overnight.

Meanwhile the jihadist insurgency in the north of Iraq continues to cause international concern.

Fighters from the Islamic State (IS) group have made substantial gains in northern Iraq in recent months, forcing tens of thousands of people from religious minorities to flee their homes.

The US has begun supplying weapons to the Kurdish Peshmergas who are fighting the militants, senior US officials have told the Associated Press.
Maliki snubbed

In Baghdad, Iraqi President Fuad Masum said in a TV address that he hoped Mr Abadi would succeed in forming a government that would "protect the Iraqi people".

Analysts say the announcement is a public snub for Mr Maliki, whose State of Law coalition won the most seats in April's elections.

Nouri Maliki made a defiant speech on Sunday, resisting calls to stand down

He has been in power as prime minister since 2006, but parliament has never agreed to give him a third term. He has also lost the backing of the US.

Mr Maliki's popularity has suffered from the growing Islamist insurgency in the north - and even before that his support from Sunnis and Kurds was dwindling.

Now he has lost support from his own Shias - with the Shia National Alliance reported to have supported Mr Abadi with 130 votes, compared to just 40 votes for Mr Maliki.

Earlier on Monday, US Secretary of State John Kerry called on Mr Maliki not to increase tensions, and warned against the use of force by political factions.

Full Article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28739975

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New York Times

Iraq Nominates New Leader as Defiant Maliki Musters Troops

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s president on Monday formally nominated a candidate to replace Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a political breakthrough that also seemed to take Iraq into uncharted territory, as Mr. Maliki gave no signal that he was willing to relinquish power.

The nomination of Haider al-Abadi, who is a member of Mr. Maliki’s Shiite Islamist Dawa Party, came hours after a dramatic late-night television appearance in which a defiant Mr. Maliki challenged the Iraqi president, Fuad Masum, and threatened legal action for not choosing him as the nominee. As he spoke in the middle of the night, extra security forces, including special forces units loyal to Mr. Maliki, as well as tanks, locked down the fortified Green Zone and took up positions around the city, heightening the sense of drama.

There were no immediate signs on Monday afternoon that Mr. Maliki had taken further steps to use military force to guarantee his survival. And Mr. Maliki was scheduled to make a public statement on television, along with other members of his Dawa Party who remain loyal to him.

Mr. Maliki’s late-night television appearance, in which he appeared to be trying to intimidate Mr. Masum by mentioning the army in the context of protecting the Constitution, alarmed American officials and left Baghdad wondering if a coup was underway.

Under Iraq’s Constitution, Mr. Abadi now has 30 days in which to form a government that offers meaningful positions to Iraq’s main minority factions, Sunnis and Kurds. During that time, Mr. Maliki will remain as a caretaker leader, and as commander in chief of Iraq’s security forces.

Mr. Maliki’s and Mr. Abadi’s Dawa Party has its roots in the clandestine political opposition to Saddam Hussein’s regime, and Mr. Abadi, like many of Iraq’s current leaders, lived in exile during part of the Hussein regime. He has recently been first deputy speaker of Iraq’s Parliament.

The United States has been reluctant to help the Iraqi government as long as it is led by Mr. Maliki, a Shiite Islamist seen by many as exacerbating sectarian and ethnic tensions, alienating some Sunnis and driving them to join the militants.

Even many who are opposed to Mr. Maliki’s coalition appeared ready to accept someone else from inside it. “Really at this point, I think it’s anybody but Maliki,” said a Kurdish politician who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation.

Whether Mr. Maliki will accept someone else from his bloc in the top spot remains unclear.

“The risk is, if he clings to power, he will control the country by force,” said another senior Iraqi politician. “This would be a military coup.”

Secretary of State John Kerry, in Australia, warned that Mr. Maliki must back the constitutional process and not attempt to circumvent it by using his powers as commander in chief to stay in office. He said that any extralegal effort to cling to power would bring a cutoff of international aid.

“There should be no use of force,” Mr. Kerry said in remarks to reporters in Sydney, where he was meeting with government leaders, “no introduction of troops or militias into this moment of democracy for Iraq.”

“Iraq needs to finish its government formation process,” Mr. Kerry added. “And our hope is that Mr. Maliki will not stir those waters.”

Mr. Kerry asserted that the Iraqi people supported a peaceful transition of power and added that there were “three or so” Shiite candidates for prime minister, “none of whom are Mr. Maliki.”

If Mr. Maliki were to call on the Iraqi Army to back his effort to stay in power, he could face resistance from one or several of the many militia groups that have close ties to political parties.

“We’re all worried about a coup d'état,” said Gen. Halgurd Hikmet, the chief spokesman for the Kurdish pesh merga. “Maliki has to know that we have two major units of our troops guarding the Parliament and the Defense Ministry,” he said referring to the Kurdish division of the Iraqi Army.

There are also the forces loyal to the influential Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who oppose Mr. Maliki and are numerous in Baghdad. And there are the fighters of the Badr Corps, who are technically part of the Iraqi Army but remain closely tied to Hadi al-Ameri, a powerful Shiite member of the Iraqi Parliament with links to Iran. Whether Badr fighters will back Mr. Maliki or will move against him could help determine whether he survives.

Whether any of these militias would be deployed is not clear, but the potential for fighting among different factions is real, several people said.

A person close to Mr. Masum said the president had “taken his briefcase and gone to his office as usual” on Monday morning and that he was calling the leadership of each of the blocs in Parliament so that they can try to meet the 3 p.m. deadline to name a prime minister. His presidential guard is on high alert, said a Kurdish leader who was in touch with the guard team, made up of Kurdish pesh merga.

“What Fuad Masum is doing is trying to make things clear,” said Aram al-Sheikh Mohammed, a leader in Goran, one of the Kurdish parties in the Iraqi Parliament. Although the army was “there in the Green Zone Sunday night, Fuad Masum’s house was not surrounded” as some media outlets reported, he said.

“One thing all Iraqis need to know,” Mr. Kerry said Monday, “there will be little international support of any kind” if a decision on Iraq’s leadership “deviates from the legitimate Constitution” and interrupts the government formation process.

Without military aid, the Iraqi government would be unable to win back terrain from Sunni militants and are at risk of losing considerably more ground. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria took the town and villages surrounding Jalawla in northern Diyala Province near the Kurdistan border late Sunday and were pushing east.

The winning back of two towns in eastern Kurdistan on Sunday, by Kurdish pesh merga forces in the wake of American airstrikes, were described as only putting a small dent in the advances of the Islamic State, said General Hikmet of the pesh merga. However the events heartened Kurdish fighters and the public and has changed the sense of their ability to take on ISIS fighters.

The situation in Baghdad on Monday morning was tense, with army troops on high alert. Soldiers manned numerous checkpoints and filled the Green Zone where the prime minister’s offices are situated, as well as the offices of Parliament and of other government figures.

The Kurds have begun receiving weapons from outside sources, American officials said on Monday. Although the United States was aware of the weapons deliveries, officials would not comment on the types of arms or on who was providing them.

Tim Arango reported from Baghdad, Alissa R. Rubin from Dohuk, Iraq, and Michael R. Gordon from Sydney, Australia. Rod Nordland contributed reporting from Erbil, Iraq.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/12/world ... .html?_r=0

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BBC News Middle East

Profile: Haider al-Abadi, Iraqi PM in waiting
By Mohamed Madi BBC News


Haider al-Abadi faces a stiff challenge, even from within the State of Law coalition he is part of

Iraq's deputy speaker Haider al-Abadi has been nominated as the new prime minister by President Fuad Masum.

One of Iraq's most senior politicians, he has held several high-profile posts since returning to Iraq from exile in 2003.

He appears to have succeeded in usurping Nouri al-Maliki as the preferred candidate of the Shia State of Law parliamentary coalition, although Mr Maliki bitterly disputes his appointment.

He has been charged with forming a new government within 30 days, and faces the task of rebuilding trust between the Iraqi government and the country's Kurds and Sunnis, who felt increasingly alienated under Mr Maliki.

If successful, Mr Abadi will take over at a time of deep national crisis, as Islamic State militants have taken over large swathes of northern Iraq.

Suffered under Saddam

Born in 1952 in Baghdad, Mr Abadi studied electrical engineering at the University of Baghdad in 1975. In 1981, he completed a PhD at the University of Manchester in the UK. He worked as an industry adviser and consultant in the UK during this time.

Mr Abadi says two of his brothers were killed and another imprisoned for 10 years during Saddam Hussein's rule. They were all Islamic Dawa members.

After returning to Iraq in 2003, he became minister of communications in the Iraqi governing council, and has served as an MP since 2006. He has headed several Iraqi parliamentary committees, including those for finance and economics.

Moderate but firm

Mr Abadi has long been tipped as a potential prime-ministerial candidate, having been in contention for the top job in both 2006 and 2010.

Analysts are generally agreed that Mr Abadi is a less divisive figure than Nouri Maliki. However, this tells us little as the bar for that comparison is so low.

The political background of both is rooted in the Islamic Dawa party, which in the 1970s waged an armed insurgency against the Baath regime.

Former foreign office diplomat Gerard Russell says that because of this, Mr Abadi is not too distant politically from his rival.
For much of the 80s and 90s, he was exiled from Iraq because he was a member of the Islamic Dawa party, an Iraqi Shia opposition organisation.

"He comes from a very similar background" he says. But he adds that, within the Dawa party, both men have taken differing approaches.

"Al-Abadi is a very clever man, and is a politician by background. Maliki had something more of an underground background" he says.

He will also be more attractive abroad, Mr Russell says.

"His name would probably not have been put forward without the approval of the Americans and the Iranians" he says.

"Of the three elected post-war prime ministers, he's certainly the most fluent in English and understands the West better" he adds.

Ranj Alaaldin, an Iraq specialist and visiting scholar at Columbia University, met Mr Abadi in April, during the Iraqi parliamentary elections.

He says Mr Abadi is seen as a moderate within the Dawa party, and has shown more of a willingness to compromise than his predecessor.

"He is very engaging, articulate and direct" he says.

He warns however though that we shouldn't expect radical changes from Mr Abadi, who still largely represents a specific subset of Iraqi society.

"He is still a politician with constituencies mainly in the south of Iraq among the Shias, and so his policies will reflect that" Mr Alaaldin says.

IS threat

When it comes to halting the advance of the self-declared "caliphate" of the Islamic State, Mr Abadi is unlikely to give an inch.

He told the Huffington Post in June that he would be prepared to "take any assistance, even from Iran" in the fight against IS militants.

"If US air strikes [happen], we don't need Iranian air strikes. If they don't, then we may need Iranian strikes" he said in the interview.

But he also admitted that there had been "excesses" by Iraqi security forces.

"We have to listen to the grievances, some of which are right and some of which are false".

Ranj Alaaldin says that during the militant insurgency in Anbar province, Mr Abadi believed that a strong military response was required in the short term but "stressed the importance of national dialogue and reconciliation in the longer term".

Mr Abadi's confirmation as prime minister is still not a foregone conclusion, as Mr Maliki and his remaining allies are mounting a fierce last stand.

If confirmed however, Mr Abadi's troubles will have only just begun. He faces the unenviable task of defeating a fearsome militant foe with a rattled army and vast areas of the country outside his control. He will need to bring to bear all his powers of persuasion and influence to stand a chance.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28748366

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Reuters

Power struggle on Baghdad streets as Maliki replaced but refuses to go
By Michael Georgy and Ahmed Rasheed


Fouad Masoum, Iraq's newly elected president, speaks during a news conference in Baghdad, July 24, 2014.

Iraq's president named a new prime minister to end Nuri al-Maliki's eight year rule on Monday, but the veteran leader refused to go after deploying militias and special forces on the streets, creating a dangerous political showdown in Baghdad.

Washington, which helped install Maliki following its 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, congratulated Haidar al-Abadi, a former Maliki lieutenant who was named by President Fouad Masoum to replace him.

But Maliki's Dawa Party declared his replacement illegal, and Maliki's son-in-law said he would overturn it in court. Washington delivered a stern warning to Maliki not to "stir the waters" by using force to cling to power.

A Shi'ite Muslim Islamist, Maliki is blamed by his erstwhile allies in Washington and Tehran for driving the alienated Sunni minority into a revolt that threatens to destroy the country. Leaders of Iraq's Sunni and Kurdish communities have demanded he go, and many fellow Shi'ites have turned against him.

Maliki himself said nothing about the decision to replace him, standing in grim-faced silence on Monday next to a member of his Dawa Party, who read out a statement on national television declaring Abadi's nomination illegal.

Abadi "represents only himself", the Dawa member, Khalaf Abdul-Samad said.

Maliki's son-in-law Hussein al-Maliki told Reuters his camp would fight the "illegal" decision: "We will not stay silent."

"The nomination is illegal and a breach of the constitution. We will go to the federal court to object."

Washington made its support for the new leader clear. The White House said Vice President Joe Biden relayed President Barack Obama's congratulations to Abadi in a phone call.

"The prime minister-designate expressed his intent to form a broad-based, inclusive government capable of countering the threat of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant," the White House said in a statement, using a previous name for the Sunni militant group that now calls itself the Islamic State.

The new political crisis comes just days after Washington launched its first military action in Iraq since pulling its troops out in 2011. U.S. warplanes have bombed Sunni insurgents from the Islamic State, who have marched through northern and western Iraq since June.

Washington says it is taking limited action to protect a Kurdish autonomous region and prevent what Obama called a potential "genocide" of religious minorities targeted by the militants.

The fighters made new gains against Kurdish forces despite three days of U.S. air strikes, while Baghdad, long braced for the Sunni fighters to attack, was now tensing for possible clashes between Maliki and rivals within the Shi'ite majority.

President Masoum asked Abadi to form a government that could win the support of all groups in a parliament elected in April. In remarks broadcast on television, Masoum, a Kurd, urged Abadi to "form a broader-based government" over the next month.

Abadi urged national unity against the "barbaric" Islamic State, which has driven tens of thousands from their homes as it swept aside Baghdad's troops to consolidate a "caliphate" in Iraq and Syria.

"We all have to cooperate to stand against this terrorist campaign launched on Iraq and to stop all terrorist groups," he said in broadcast remarks after meeting Masoum.

As police and elite armed units, many equipped and trained by the United States, locked down the capital's streets, Secretary of State John Kerry aimed a stark warning at Maliki against fighting to hold on to power.

"There should be no use of force, no introduction of troops or militias in this moment of democracy for Iraq," Kerry said. "The government formation process is critical in terms of sustaining stability and calm in Iraq and our hope is that Mr. Maliki will not stir those waters.

"There will be little international support of any kind whatsoever for anything that deviates from the legitimate constitution process that is in place and being worked on now."

POWER SHARING

Under Iraq's post-Saddam governing system, designed to avert conflict by giving all groups a stake, the speaker of parliament is a Sunni and the largely ceremonial president a Kurd. Most authority is wielded by the prime minister, a Shi'ite.

Maliki's opponents accuse him of abusing the system by keeping key security posts in his own hands instead of sharing them with other groups, alienating Sunnis in particular by ordering the arrest of their political leaders. Islamic State fighters were able to exploit that resentment to win support from other Sunni armed groups.

Maliki's Shi'ite State of Law bloc emerged as the biggest group in parliament in the April election, but does not have enough seats to rule without support from Sunnis, Kurds and other Shi'ite blocs, nearly all of which demand he go.

He has nevertheless stayed on in a caretaker capacity while arguing that the constitution requires his bloc to be given the first opportunity to form a government. He has used courts before to keep power: in the previous election in 2010, when State of Law was second, a court let him form a cabinet.

A U.S. official insisted Washington had not been involved in the selection of Abadi, but said "everybody is pretty relieved that they have chosen somebody and that it was not Maliki".

Maliki also appears to have alienated his supporters in Iran, the regional Shi'ite power, which has sent military advisers to help organise the battle against the Islamic State. Iraq's most influential Shi'ite cleric, Ali Sistani, all but ordered Maliki to leave power on Friday, declaring that politicians who cling to power were making a "grave mistake".

Obama says a more inclusive government in Baghdad is a pre-condition for more aggressive U.S. military support against the Islamic State. He has rejected calls in some quarters for a return of U.S. ground troops, apart from several hundred military advisers sent in June.

The Islamic State which sees Shi'ites as heretics who deserve to be killed, has ruthlessly moved through one town after another, using tanks and heavy weapons it seized from soldiers who have fled in their thousands.

On Monday, police said the fighters had seized the town of Jalawla, 115 km (70 miles) northeast of Baghdad, after driving out the forces of the autonomous Kurdish regional government.

Washington and its European allies are considering requests for more direct military aid from the Kurds, who have themselves differed with Maliki over the division of oil resources and took advantage of the Islamists' advance to expand their territory.

On Sunday, a government minister said Islamic State militants had killed hundreds of people from the small, Kurdish-speaking Yazidi religious sect, burying some alive and taking women as slaves. No confirmation was available of the killings.

Thousands of Yazidis have taken refuge in the past week on the arid heights of Mount Sinjar, close to the Syrian border. The Islamic State considers the Yazidis, who follow an ancient faith derived from Zoroastrianism, to be "devil worshippers".

The bloodshed could increase pressure on Western powers to do more to help those who have fled the Islamic State's offensive. They have already dropped supplies and U.S. aircraft have been bombing the militants since Friday.

(Writing by Alastair Macdonald and Peter Graff; editing by David Stamp)

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/08/1 ... L620140811

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Reuters

Islamic State defeats Kurds in town of Jalawla northeast of Baghdad

Islamic State militants captured the town of Jalawla northeast of Baghdad at dawn on Monday after weeks of clashes with Kurdish fighters, police said, extending dramatic gains that have alarmed Iraq's Western allies.

The seizure of Jalawla, 115 km (70 miles) from the Iraqi capital, came a day after a suicide bomber killed 10 Kurdish fighters there. The militants also took control of two nearby villages. (Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Louise Ireland)

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/08/1 ... I920140811