ISIS – IRAQ - KURDISTAN : NEWS THREAD

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BBC News Middle East

Amerli: Iraqi town besieged by IS starving to death
By Lydia Green

With each new dawn, the people of Amerli wake up to the same nightmare.

Surrounded by towns and villages taken by the Sunni jihadist militants of Islamic State (IS), the residents of this small Shia Turkmen community about 180km (110 miles) north of Baghdad have been living under siege for two months.

There is no electricity, little medicine and food supplies are dwindling. Unlike recent US intervention to help save members of the Yazidi religious minority trapped on Mount Sinjar in north-western Iraq, there is no dramatic plan to rescue people here.

In the eyes of those in Amerli, the world has turned its back on them.

"After the attack of Mosul, all the Shia Turkmen villages around Amerli were captured by Islamic State," explains Dr Ali Albayati, a local resident. "They killed the people and displayed their bodies outside the village."

The majority of the residents of Amerli are part of the Turkmen ethnic group, who make up roughly 4% of Iraq's population. As Shia, they are directly targeted by Islamic State, who consider them apostates.

"We have been trying to fight them off for 70 days," says Dr Albayati. "We have no electricity, no drinking water."

"We are depending on salty water, which gives people diarrhoea and other diseases. Since the siege started, more than 50 sick or elderly people have died."

"Children have also died," he says, "because of dehydration and disease."

'Fighting off death'

Although most of the town's residents are farmers, fighting has dragged the men from their fields and the crops have had to be neglected.

As a result, the only food supplies that arrive into the town come by means of Iraqi army helicopters. They come once a day at most, and the provisions they bring are not enough to serve the whole community.

"It is a humanitarian disaster," says Dr Albayati. "Twenty-thousand people in Amerli are fighting off death. There are children who are only eating once every three days. I can't describe the situation. I just don't know what to say."

Dr Albayati works with the Turkmen Saving Foundation, an NGO seeking to improve conditions for members of the Turkmen community across Iraq. He travels in and out of the town in the army's helicopters, trying to ensure that the most essential provisions get delivered.

For many however, these supplies are too little or come too late.

"Women have died in childbirth because there aren't doctors here. People are dying from simple wounds because we don't have the means to care for them," says Nihad Albayati, who lives in the town with his wife and seven children.

The Iraqi army helicopters are able to evacuate about 30 people per visit, and some of the wounded have been taken to hospitals in government-controlled areas, but the army is stretched and the route is dangerous. The helicopters cannot always make the journey.

'Godless and merciless'

When it comes to defending the town, it is the residents themselves who must step up to the plate.

"There are no soldiers," explains Nihad. "The families are working together to fight Islamic State - fighting to defend ourselves and our land."

Among those fighters is Nihad's own son. He is just 13 years old.

"Am I scared for him? No, I am proud," he says. "We parents are proud that our children are helping. This is our jihad. Islamic State are godless and merciless people."

In reality, the residents see little alternative.

"You know what happens when Islamic State captures a village?" Dr Albayati asks. "They capture all the men, women and children and they kill them all, believe me. They keep just a few girls, you know, for other things..."

The town is no stranger to the brutality of extremist Sunni militants. In one of the bloodiest attacks in Iraq after the US invasion, 159 residents were killed and a further 350 wounded in an al-Qaeda truck bombing in 2007. Amerli knows all too well what it feels like to lose loved ones to acts of violence.

'Completely forgotten'

Sundus Abbas is the UK representative of the Iraqi Turkmen Front, a political party which represents the community.

She is campaigning desperately to get the West's forces to intervene in Amerli as they did in Mount Sinjar.

"Amerli has been under siege for two months now," she says. "How long do we have to wait? How much suffering must we see and how many children have to die before the international community realises that the people of this town need help urgently and they have to help them? We have been completely forgotten."

This week the UN launched a major new push to provide assistance for over half a million people displaced by the fighting in northern Iraq.

The aid will offer some welcome relief to the Yazidis, Christians, Sunnis and Shia displaced by the fighting. But since Amerli is now inaccessible by land, its residents have little possibility of making it to refugee camps, let alone receiving this much-needed support.

For now, men like Nihad and his son must continue to defend their town with what few weapons they have and hope that help, in whatever form, reaches them soon.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28881417

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YES I have posted the same information about Amerli TWICE

Because it is extremely important - people are dying - many lives are at risk

HOW MANY OTHER TOWNS

Are in the same situation

? ? ?

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Reuters

Suicide bomber attacks Baghdad intelligence headquarters, eight dead

A suicide bomber rammed a vehicle into an intelligence headquarters in Baghdad on Saturday, killing at least eight people, police and medical sources said.

The attack came a day after Shi'ite militiamen machinegunned 68 Sunni worshipers at a village mosque in Diyala Province, raising the prospect of revenge attacks as politicians try to form a government capable of countering Islamic State militants.

An advance by Islamic State through northern Iraq has alarmed the Baghdad government and its Western allies and drawn airstrikes in Iraq for the first time since the withdrawal of American troops in 2011.

Although the air campaign has caused a few setbacks for Islamic State, they do not address the wider problem of sectarian warfare which the group has fueled with attacks on Shi'ites.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/ ... L620140823
Bombings, kidnappings and execution-style shootings occur almost daily, echoing the dark days of 2006-2007, the peak of a sectarian civil war.

(Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Toby Chopra)

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Blasts In Iraq As UN Warns Of Town 'Massacre'

Bomb attacks in cities including Baghdad leave dozens dead as concerns grow for 17,000 residents cut off from aid by militants.

Iraq has been hit by a wave of deadly explosions on the day the UN warned of a "possible massacre" in one town besieged by militants.

At least 30 people were killed in explosions in Baghdad and the northern city of Kirkuk, where three blasts went off in a crowded commercial area.

In the capital, a suicide bomber drove a car full of explosives into the gate of the intelligence headquarters in the Karrada district - killing civilians and security personnel.

Meanwhile, the UN's Special Envoy to the country said immediate action was needed to protect 17,000 people in the town of Amerli, which has been overwhelmed by Islamic State (IS) fighters.

Nickolay Mladenov said reports "confirm that people are surviving in desperate conditions" and there is "unspeakable suffering".

Shia Turkmen residents of the town, in the Salaheddin province north of Baghdad, have been cut off from food and water supplies by IS for months.

Iraq's prime minister designate Haidar al Abadi has promised aid for them.

nd in northeastern Iraq, Kurdish forces have been struggling to defend themselves against IS fighters.

There has been fighting around towns including Jalula and Sa'dya, which have been controlled by the well-armed Sunni extremists for several weeks.

In Irbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region, local media said a car bomb had exploded.

IS insurgents have seized large swathes of the country since a June offensive but have been hit by US airstrikes in some areas including around Mosul Dam.

However, Sky's Chief Correspondent Stuart Ramsay, reporting from outside Jalula, north of Baghdad, said the Kurdish peshmerga fighters want more weaponry from the outside world and are "getting little or no air support".

Thousands of peshmerga and counter-terrorism soldiers have been deployed, including many around the town.

Ramsay said: "Peshmerga front-line positions are regularly hit from far away."

The latest bombings came amid an investigation into a sectarian attack at a mosque in which 68 Sunni Muslims died, plunging efforts to form a united front against the jihadists into crisis.

Officials say a suicide bomber blew himself up on Friday in the Imam Wais mosque north of Baghdad, with Shia militiamen picking off fleeing worshippers with machine guns.

The attack, in Diyala province, is seen as a blow to government efforts to secure backing from Sunni groups in its battle against IS extremists.

Having poured in from Syria across a desert border that it does not recognise, the Islamist movement has declared its own caliphate.

Mr al Abadi, a moderate Shia, is attempting to form a more inclusive government following the resignation of outgoing PM Nouri al Maliki.

But two influential Sunni politicians - Parliamentary Speaker Salim al Jabouri and Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al Mutlak - have now pulled out of talks with the main Shia political alliance after the mosque attack.

Earlier, the US ramped up its rhetoric over the beheading of journalist James Foley by IS.

In Washington, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said the murder "represents a terrorist attack against our country".

Link to Article and Photos:

http://news.sky.com/story/1323435/blast ... n-massacre

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New York Times

Response to Attack Reflects Iraq’s Sectarian Divide

Iraq’s politicians were struggling to meet the constitutional deadline to form a new government when, in an isolated village, two masked men stepped into a Sunni mosque and opened fire on Friday, killing dozens of worshipers.

Within hours, Sunni leaders said they were pulling out of the negotiations, and the political process was suddenly jammed again by the same sectarian rifts that have long bedeviled this country.

The formation of a new, inclusive government that could command some support from both Sunnis and Shiites is widely seen as a vital first step in confronting jihadists from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, who have stormed into Iraq, seizing territory and taking control of major cities in the north and west. President Obama has hailed the appointment of a new prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, and many observers hope that Mr. Abadi will undo the policies of his predecessor, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who has been accused of marginalizing Iraq’s Sunni minority and, in effect, opening the way for the advance of the Sunni militant group.

But only a new government can undo those policies, which included the revitalization of Shiite militias, the arrests of many Sunni men (and innocent women), and military strikes on Sunni areas in which civilians were killed.

The problem here now, highlighted by the swift fallout from the mosque attack, is that sectarian polarization has grown so deep that it could prevent such a government from being formed.

Sunnis and Shiites tend to view many of the country’s most pressing issues through profoundly different lenses, making compromise difficult. Shiite leaders speak of ISIS as a terrorist threat that must be battled with all available means. Some have even accused Sunni leaders of providing political cover for the extremists.

“Politicians are responsible for the security collapse in some provinces,” Qais al-Khazali, the head of Asaib Ahl al-Haq, the Shiite militia that may be the most feared by Sunnis, said in a statement. “They are still in the stage of being loyal to their parties, not to Iraq,” he said.

Sunni leaders also condemn ISIS, but they say that the group exploited a vacuum that the government created by marginalizing their regions and abusing their people.

“The only way to fight ISIS is to support the citizens who lost their dignity and their rights under the old government,” said Ahmed al-Dulaimi, the governor of Anbar Province, which is now largely held by ISIS.

Similar rifts were clear on Saturday as political leaders responded to the attack that killed dozens of Sunni worshipers in a mosque in Diyala Province.

Salim al-Jibouri, the Sunni speaker of Parliament, called for political unity and said the attack sought to “foil all the efforts that have been made to form a government.”

The two gunmen who carried out the attack melted into the countryside afterward, and their identities were not clear. But Mr. Jibouri and others appeared to assume that they were Shiite militiamen. Mr. Jibouri said a committee had been sent to investigate the attack and would report within two days. “As we condemn what ISIS does, we also have to denounce what the militias are doing,” Mr. Jibouri said.

By contrast, Shiite leaders blamed ISIS for the mosque attack. The radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr called it “a clear sectarian escalation” and said it had the “explicit touch of ISIS.”

The negotiations to form a new government were already fraught before the attack, as Sunni politicians pushed demands that they considered necessary but had little chance of being accepted. They included a halt to government shelling and airstrikes on Sunni areas where ISIS is present; the withdrawal of Shiite militias from predominantly Sunni cities; the release of Sunni detainees who have not been convicted of crimes; the dismissal of criminal charges against a number of Sunni politicians, which they call politically motivated; and the cancellation of the law banning former members of Saddam Hussein’s regime from holding government posts.

Foreign diplomats in Baghdad were concerned that those demands would prevent a deal, and urged Sunni leaders to be more flexible.

Zaid al-Ali, a former legal adviser to the United Nations in Iraq and the author of a book on Iraq’s future, said the American insistence on inclusive politics was misguided. Iraq’s recent governments have included representatives from all the major sects, he noted, “But this is not a solution — it has never translated into the trickle-down politics that everyone assumed it would.”

Western officials in Baghdad acknowledge that a new government would be only a first, modest step in a long process of necessary reform.

Highlighting the amount of distrust, many Sunnis immediately blamed the mosque attack on Shiite militias.

“What happened was a mass execution in cold blood,” said a Sunni resident who lives near the attacked mosque, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retribution. “That was a message to tell us that our time on this land has finished.”

Abdul-Salam Hashim, a 55-year-old Sunni shopkeeper in Baghdad, said, “I’m with any kind of revenge against this cowardly crime.” He added, “This is what Maliki has left to Iraq, and it will not end easily.”

The Shiite militias, many of them originally formed to fight American forces, were supported by Mr. Maliki and called back into service to fight ISIS. But Sunnis consider them little more than gangs operating outside the law, and human rights groups have accused them of killing and detaining Sunni civilians.

Even so, in many areas they have been the factor that halted ISIS’ advance, and they are so embedded in the current political reality that even the transportation minister, Hadi al-Amari, heads a powerful militia.

The leader of a local Shiite militia in the area near the mosque, Sheikh Abdel-Samad al-Zarkoushi, struck out at those who want to disband his group, saying it is necessary to fight ISIS.

“How can the politicians tell us what to do, when they don’t know what is happening in our region?” said Sheikh Zarkoushi. “If I withdrew from the area, that would be goodbye for everyone. ISIS would take it over in a few hours.”

The violence in Iraq continued on Saturday, with three car bombs exploding in the northern city of Kirkuk, killing 21 people and wounding 100, security officials said. Several more attacks were reported in other areas.

The American air campaign against ISIS targets in the north continued as well. A vehicle operated by militants was destroyed near the Mosul Dam, according to the American military’s Central Command. The newest attack brings to 94 the number of American airstrikes since President Obama approved the mission; 61 have been aimed at pushing back ISIS fighters near the dam.

While many Iraqis now expect little from the political process, they nonetheless see it as the only avenue to fix the country.

Hamid al-Mutlaq, a Sunni member of Parliament from Anbar Province, compared politicians like himself to a man drowning in the ocean who spots a piece of wood.

“It might not save him, but he still tries to save himself,” Mr. Mutlaq said. “That is what we are doing.”

Link to Article Pics and Video:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/24/world ... ivide.html

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BBC News Middle East

Iraq forces defeat militant push to take oil refinery

Iraqi government forces say they have defeated a militant attack on the country's largest oil refinery, killing several insurgents.

The Baiji refinery in northern Iraq has been the site of several battles between government forces and militants over the past few months.

The Islamic State (IS) militant group is suspected of carrying out the attack.

Meanwhile, a car bomb killed at least seven people in the capital Baghdad.

The bombing targeted the mostly Shia district of Shula.

IS has seized large swathes of Iraq and Syria in recent months.

Since 8 August, the US has carried out more than 90 air strikes to support Iraqi and Kurdish troops tackling the insurgents.

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is currently in Baghdad to talk about the growing threat posed by IS.

Attractive target

The militants launched their push on the Baiji refinery on Saturday and the fighting continued into Sunday, police sources and witnesses told the AFP news agency.

But the insurgents were eventually pushed back by security forces.

The refinery is an attractive target for IS militants, as it produces about a third of Iraq's oil output.

There are fears that if the militants were able to take the refinery, they might also want to seize the Kurdish-controlled oilfields in Kirkuk to provide fuel.

IS has already taken over large parts of northern Iraq and Syria - including oil-producing areas,

Their campaign has also displaced an estimated 1.2 million people in Iraq, many of them minority Christians and Yazidis who feared they would be killed by the hardline Islamist group.

On Saturday the UN called for action to prevent what it says may be a possible massacre in the northern Iraqi town of Amerli.

Amerli, under siege by IS for two months, has no electricity or drinking water, and is running out of food and medical supplies.

Crisis talks

As the violence continues, the rise of IS is an urgent point of discussion for Iraq's neighbours and the wider region.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is currently in Baghdad for talks.

He has met outgoing Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and is expected to meet his Iraqi counterpart, Hoshyar Zebari, and Prime Minister-designate Haider al-Abadi during the visit. IS will be one of the main topics on the agenda.

According to an official statement seen by Reuters, the two men discussed the need for an international effort to eliminate the militant group.

Meanwhile Saudi Arabia is hosting a meeting of foreign ministers from Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to discuss their response.

The ministers are from the Friends of Syria group, which opposes the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28917609

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Female Kurdish fighters take arms against Islamic State extremists
BY Anya van Wagtendonk

After Kurdish and Iraqi forces recaptured a critical Iraqi dam from Islamic State militants Monday, much attention turned to the role U.S. airstrikes may have played in securing a victory.

Less attention has been given to an increasingly fierce segment of the Kurdish security forces, known as the Peshmerga: female soldiers.

These fighters follow a tradition of Kurdish women warriors. One all-female unit of the Peshmerga has operated since 1996, when women began combat training in opposition to Saddam Hussein’s regime.

That unit’s commander, Col. Nahida Ahmed Rashid, says more women are enlisting today to defend Iraq’s Kurdish region from Islamic State extremists.

“They’ve taken up arms and gone to battle to protect Kurdistan, but also to say that there’s no difference between men and women,” Col. Rashid said, adding that her troops have trained alongside special forces and SWAT teams.

And these soldiers don’t only swell the fighting ranks; they’ve recently become a part of front-line strategy.

“The jihadists don’t like fighting women, because if they’re killed by a female, they think they won’t go to heaven,” one female soldier said.

Women are also involved in Kurdish resistance to the Islamic State’s advances in Syria. Some 30 percent of the armed wing of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) there, which also fights against Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch, are female.

Such soldiers join up not simply to defend their cities from invading armies, said the commander of the first all-woman PYD brigade, but from the extremist ideas they would carry with them.

“I believe in a greater cause, which is protecting our families and our cities from the extremists’ brutality and dark ideas,” she said. “They don’t accept having women in leadership positions. They want us to cover ourselves and become housewives to attend to their needs only. They think we have no right to talk and control our lives.”

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/fem ... xtremists/

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Women fighters in kurdistan 2013

phpBB [video]

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Reuters

Iraq's Abadi optimistic on formation of new government

Aug 25 (Reuters) - Iraq's Prime Minister-designate Haider al-Abadi said on Monday that talks on forming a new government were constructive and predicted a "clear vision" on a unified administration would emerge within the next two days, state television reported.

Abadi is tasked with forming a power-sharing government that can ease sectarian tensions and counter Islamic State militants who pose the biggest security threat to Iraq since a U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003. (Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; Writing by Michael Georgy, editing by John Stonestreet)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/ ... 2Q20140825

(Let us hope he can)

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Rudaw

Mosul Residents Fed Up With IS
By Judit Neurink

The killings and kidnappings of Yezidis by the Islamic State (IS/ISIS) are affecting the situation in Mosul, where the militants have become far less visible and where villagers have stepped in to terrorise the towns folk.

There are less IS fighters in the streets, at the markets and the checkpoints, sources in Mosul report. The militants in their black outfits are hardly seen anymore.

Meanwhile, looting has increased dramatically. IS supporters are mainly looting the homes of policemen and officers who left for fear of revenge by the radicals, and are taking the goods out of the city. Even herds of sheep are taken from the Kurdish left side of Mosul over the Tigris bridges towards Syria.

“Most supporters are from the villages,” said a journalist still living in Mosul, speaking by phone. “They treat the city folk badly. They are lowly educated and badly behaved. They are gangs. We suffer badly.”

He recounted how women, and even the men accompanying them, are beaten with sticks if the woman is wearing only a hijab (head scarf) instead of the now obligatory niqab which covers most of the face.

“A Mosul man would never do that, but it is common in the villages,” the journalist said. He added that the looting is also mainly done by the villagers who came with to the town with the IS, or daash as it known locally.

“Some of the Mosul people joined daash because they had no income, no money. But after they saw their mistake, they ran away.”

Mosul residents are fed up with IS, the journalist said. “We Muslims are in a critical situation, and we cannot speak out now. Islam is the big loser of this bloody game. It is too terrible what they did to the Christians and the Yezidis. We have always been a mixed town.”

“They are criminals,” said spokesman Ghanem al-Abed of the Sunni Resistance against former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, that started working with IS when it took over Mosul on June 10.

“What they are doing to Christians and Yezidis is not human. After they killed the Sunni leaders in prison, they became criminals.”

IS has in the past weeks picked up former Baath officials that had joined the group, as well as policemen and military men who had openly repented to IS to be able to stay in the city.

At the same time, IS fighters have been killed, said a policeman who fled the city. He knew about 20 of them being shot, possibly in connection to a ban on cigarettes imposed by the IS, which has had a major effect on the income of tradesmen.

IS has made itself unpopular not only with that ban, but also the prohibition for girls over 12 to go to schools and changing school curriculums to Arabic, maths and Islam. Many people have no income. Many hate the way their Christian neighbors have had to leave, the policeman said.

“There is the fear and the killings. Most daash in Mosul are villagers, and they operate in gangs. I just heard they killed a female doctor at home; probably because she was alone.”

He said he had been told of minor acts of resistance by the people of Mosul, of elderly people swearing at them openly, women refusing to wear the niqab or people asking IS fighters when they would leave.

“Now very few people are still cooperating with daash,” he said. “All former Baathists now are against them. Other groups stopped coordinating with them. Most of those people left.”

According to Abed, the spokesman of the Sunni resistance, the time has come “to liberate Mosul.” Former governor Atheel Nujaifi has formed a force of 10,000 men to do so, he said. “We will start the fight to chase daash out of Mosul.”

When told, the policemen openly wondered where the governor would have found such a number of able fighters, as none of the old colleagues he is in contact with seemed to be involved.

But in Mosul the story is spread by people eager to be rid of IS. The journalist said he had heard rumors about a force of 15,000 men that would be led by the former police chief of Mosul.

When asked if there will be cooperation with the Iraqi army, as is happening in Ramadi where Sunni fighters are confronting IS in the city, Abed is very clear that Mosul needs a completely Sunni force.

“We will not work with the militia of Iran,” he said, referring to the Iraqi army, which mainly consists of Iraqi Shiites and is being assisted by the Shiite militias both from Iraq and neighbouring Iran. “Only Sunnis from Mosul will fight IS and then reinstall the security in the city.”

http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/25082014

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Guardian

On the frontline with the Shia fighters taking the war to Isis

Special report In the first of a two-part series on the forces ranged against Isis in Iraq, meet the controversial Shia militia keeping the Islamists from moving on Baghdad
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in Diyala province, Iraq

The new Iraqi "border" is marked by a two-metre-high wall of earth. The berm, as it is known, cuts through farmland and orchards, separating the shrinking lands of the Iraqi state as it has existed for 95 years from the expanding territory of the new Islamic caliphate.

On the northern side, the black flags of Islamic State (Isis) shimmer in the afternoon haze. But on the Iraqi side it is not a national flag that flutters but a black Shia banner.

"This land is what separates good from evil," says a Shia fighter, pointing at the no man's land between the two forces. "Here you see the flag of Imam Hussein and there you see the black flags of Isis. This is the same history repeating itself," he says, referring to ancient Sunni-Shia enmities that played out on these plains centuries ago.

When the Iraqi army capitulated in the face of the Isis onslaught earlier this summer, it was left to Shia militias to fill the void and check the Islamist progress towards Baghdad. Like the Kurds in the north, the Shias are emerging as a far more effective fighting unit to confront the Islamists, whose murderous recent activities have elevated them to global public enemy number one.

But relying on the Shias brings problems of its own. On Friday, Shia militiamen were blamed for killing 70 people at a Sunni mosque in Diyala. It is attacks like these that have persuaded large numbers of ordinary Sunnis who live in the vast spaces between Baghdad and Damascus to side with Isis. In the Middle East, as the British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, said last week, my enemy's enemy is not always my friend.

On the ground, Shia militiamen are eager to stress their passionate dedication to the fight, but deny that they are just as bad as Isis.

"Our name brings terror and they fear us. They think we are like Isis but we are not like them," the militiaman adds. "We don't kill families and we don't attack women or children or elderly people."

The route to the frontline leaves the visitor in no doubt: this is a war. Military debris lies scattered along the two sides of the highway. An occasional military truck or a Humvee speeds in the opposite direction, ferrying the injured and dead, passing the wreckage of an artillery piece, a blown-up turret from a Humvee and a great multitude of mangled metal objects.

Fertile fields famed for their melons, wheat and barley are now parched wastelands after irrigation canals were destroyed by shelling. Hamlets lie deserted or destroyed and the remaining mud houses have been taken over by military and militia units after their Sunni inhabitants fled further north.

In these almost medieval settings, modern intrusions can seem absurd. A road sign on the nearby highway, the main artery connecting Baghdad to Kirkuk in the north, declares, with misplaced confidence, distances that cannot be measured in kilometres any more, but instead by how many men will die trying to traverse them.

"See the electricity towers in front of us? That's the town of Udhaim. It's under Isis control," said Mujtaba, another young Shia militiaman, as he sped towards the frontline. He nodded with his floppy hat to the left and added: "They are also parallel to us now – only the Tigris river separates us."

Mujtaba is a good example of the new breed of Shia fighter, hellbent on confronting what they see as an existential threat against them, battle-hardened by more than a decade of conflict in Iraq and Syria and, in some cases, trained in Iran and Lebanon under the unrelenting attention of Hezbollah.

Mujtaba is in his mid-20s, has fought in Syria, and has little faith in the Iraqi army's capability to fight this war. "You can't depend on the army – even if they put 2,000 soldiers in this village I won't take them seriously or count on them," he said. "We are a resistance faction that have been fighting for 11 years. Each one of us has been sent to at least three outside training camps in Iran and Lebanon under supervision of Hezbollah. Each lasted for two months. Do you know what it means to go for 60 days under constant gruelling by Hezbollah? You come back as a new person. You can't compare us with those soldiers who joined the army for money."

He was so impressed by his experiences that he named his first son after Imad Mughniya, the legendary Hezbollah military commander.

At the frontline, it is clear who the poor relations are. At one corner of the berm, a group of Iraqi army soldiers in boxer shorts and T-shirts caked with dust and sweat stood dazed under a scorching sun. Instead of foxholes or shelters, they had spread coloured mattresses and blankets on the berm, giving it the look of a giant laundry line.

The soldiers are dependent on the militias to hold the line and on civilian volunteers and villagers to feed and water them. The government has given up trying to supply them.

"They say the Iraqi soldier is a coward but where is the government?" said one middle-aged soldier. The troops had only a few hours' worth of ammunition and of the two ancient Russian armoured vehicles positioned nearby, only one could fire. The other had broken down and was there for decoration only.

"Where are the parliamentarians who are bickering back in Baghdad? Why don't they visit the front, give us a box of machine gun ammunition?" the disgruntled soldier asked.

Further along, in a small concrete room, a group of middle-aged militiamen with salt and pepper beards were huddled half-naked in the sweltering heat trying to get some sleep. Brand new machine guns, rocket launchers and Kalashnikovs were lined neatly against the wall on one side.

The men had just returned from fighting in Syria to take charge of a sector of the front in their home province of Diyala. There were no complaints about weaponry. Instead, there was just impatience for the battle. "Why are we not attacking them?" asked a one-eyed policeman who doubled as a militia fighter. "Our enemy in Syria was much stronger and there we were foreigners fighting in a strange land. Now we are home, I know every village and pathway."

In front of him sat the commander of the unit, a quiet former school clerk who said the berms were bad for advancing the cause.

"Before, targeting them was easier. Now we have walls between the two communities and they have settled behind them."

For these men, the Sunnis as a whole are the enemy, regardless of whether they are Isis supporters or not. For them, western strategies of trying to defeat Isis by depriving it of mass Sunni support are nonsense.

"When I withdraw my forces now the Sunnis will come back and they will become an incubator for Isis again," said one fighter. "When I liberate an area from Isis why do I have to give it back to them? Either I erase it or settle Shia in it."

"If it's for me I will start cleansing Baghdad from today," added another fighter. "We have not started sectarian war, we are just trying to secure our areas, but if the sectarian days come back then I am sure it will be won by us."

The war resumes every night. Soldiers and militiamen open fire at will, shooting into the darkness until the early hours.

"If they don't see us firing they will presume we have abandoned the positions and they start moving against us," said a young soldier. "We fire at everything, anything beyond the ridge, even if it's a dog."

There are signs that the Shia-inspired fightback is having results. Here in Diyala they have managed to push 50 kilometres into Sunni territory, taking over a series of villages and solidifying their lines. Corpses of dead Isis fighters have been taken back by the commanders and displayed like trophies in the provincial capital.

A Sunni village near the frontline was deserted, doors and windows smashed and many houses burned, the walls scribbled with pro-army slogans. A lone mortar shell fell in a small garden and started a fire. Palm trees burned slowly, their fronds crackling and moaning while a heavy stench of dead bodies wrapped the village.

"This is a village of rich farmers," said Mujtaba. "They brought destruction on themselves just because they hated the Shia and supported Isis."

He looked at the small mosque, which stood intact. "Its a shame the mosque is still standing – we should have burned it."

In the provincial capital, Baquba, two corpses have been hung from a lamppost, one upside-down. The Shia militiaman said they were Isis fighters brought from the front. But for the Sunnis of Diyala, the corpses were locals kidnapped by the militias and killed in retaliation for militiamen killed at the front.

"If they lose men at the front, they come raiding our villages and snatching men in retaliation," said a terrified Sunni farmer who lived nearby. "Nine men have been kidnapped in the last month. We found the bodies of three. The rest are still missing."

Across the street from the corpses, men and women waited silently for a bus with their plastic shopping bags and children in hand, keeping their gaze away from the dead bodies.

By noon another group of militiamen arrived at the frontline. They wore identical black T-shirts and brand new combat trousers. They posed with the soldiers, filming themselves as they fired a volley of precious bullets.

Mujtaba walked away in disgust and said it was time to leave. "We have a tense relationship with them."

Back in his pick-up truck, he said the young men belonged to one of the new battalions formed recently which were competing with his militia over funding and ammunition. "We suffer from the problem of the new factions that are appearing now every week," he said. "They are disastrous. Every 20 guys are forming a battalion or a brigade. They receive support from the mobilisation office and from the state and they haven't delivered anything in return.

"We used to get a lot of Iranian support but now Diyala is under the control of Hadi al-Amiri [commander of the Badr brigade and a longterm ally of Iran]. All the support of the Iraqi state and the [Iranian] republic is channelled through him. Iran says you get your share from Hadi al-Amiri."

In Baghdad a senior Shia politician, whose own party has started arming and equipping a militia force of its own, said that he feared the Shia were becoming as radical as the enemy they were fighting. "We are in the process of creating Shia al-Qaida radical groups equal in their radicalisation to the Sunni Qaida."

"By arming the community and creating all these regiments of militias, I am scared that my sect and community will burn. Our Shia project was building a modern, just state but now it's all been taken by the radicals. Think of 20 years ahead – these are all schools graduating militias, creating a mutant that is killing people, that is amassing weapons. Where will they go when the fight is over here? They will take their wars and go to Saudi and Yemen. Just like the Sunni jihadis migrated, so will the Shia militias."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/a ... s-war-isis

[Anthea]

Reuters

Bombings shut down telecoms operator Zain Iraq's network in Kirkuk

A spate of deadly bombings that struck Kirkuk in northern Iraq at the weekend has damaged and temporarily shut down telecoms operator Zain Iraq's network in the province, a company source told Reuters on Monday.

Three bombings that appeared to target Kurdish forces killed 18 people in the city of Kirkuk, 250km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, on Saturday.

These attacks also damaged part of Zain Iraq's network, the source said.

"There is a currently a network outage in the province of Kirkuk," a company source said. "Work is under way to restore services in that area."

Zain Iraq's network in Kurdistan also went down briefly due to the Kirkuk bombings, the source added, but services in the autonomous region have now been restored.

Zain Iraq is Iraq's No.1 mobile operator with a 49 percent share of subscribers, according to Kuwaiti parent Zain's most recent earnings release.

Rival Asiacell, a subsidiary of Qatar's Ooredoo , said its networks in Kirkuk province and Kurdistan had suffered a "minor impact - nothing of significance" in an emailed response to questions from Reuters.

Asiacell said it was unable to access some of its sites in those areas for maintenance and faced similar problems in Tikrit, Mosul and Anbar, with 25-30 percent of its 11.6 million subscribers "affected by the overall security situation".

The impact of this "will be seen in Q3 results", Asiacell added, but did not provide further details.

Orange affiliate Korek, Iraq's third mobile operator, did not respond to requests for comment. (Reporting by Matt Smith; Editing by Michael Urquhart)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/ ... IK20140825

[Anthea]

Mail Online

Car bombing kills at least 11 people in Baghdad

A car bomb exploded on Tuesday in a busy Shiite area in eastern Baghdad, killing at least 11 people, officials said, the latest in a series of attacks to shake the Iraqi capital as the Shiite-led government struggles to dislodge Sunni militants from areas in the country's west and north.

The bombing came a day after a wave of attacks targeted Shiite areas in several cities, including Baghdad, killing at least 58 people. Among them were 15 worshippers who died in a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in the same New Baghdad neighborhood where Tuesday's car bomb struck.

In online statements, the Islamic State extremist group claimed responsibility for Monday's mosque attack and another in the Shiite-majority district of Utaifiya in Baghdad, where two car bombs tore through a busy commercial area near a crowded restaurant and killed at least 15 people.

And in two separate tweets, it took credit for car bombings in the revered Shiite city of Karbala and the nearby Hillah city south of Baghdad that together killed at least 23 people on the same day.

The authenticity of the statements and tweets could not be independently verified, but they were posted on a militant website and Twitter accounts frequently used by the group.

No one has claimed responsibility for Tuesday's attacks, which bore the hallmarks of al-Qaida-inspired militants.

Iraq has faced a growing Sunni insurgency since early this year as the Islamic State, an al-Qaida-breakaway group, and allied militants have taken over areas in the country's west and north. The crisis is Iraq's worst crisis since the 2011 withdrawal of U.S. troops.

The Islamic State has captured large swaths of territory in western and northern Iraq in a lightning offensive earlier this year.

The blitz stunned Iraqi security forces and the military, which melted away and withdrew as the Islamic State in June overran the northern cities of Mosul and Tikrit, as well as small towns and villages on their path.

Since then, tens of thousands of Iraqis, including members of Christian and other minorities, have been forced from their homes and displaced, while the Islamic State has carved out a self-styled caliphate in the large area straddling the Iraqi-Syrian border that it now controls.

The explosives-laden car went off during the morning rush hour in the main commercial area of the New Baghdad district. It was parked close to outdoor pet and vegetable markets and a traffic police office, a police officer said.

The attack also wounded 31, he added. A medical official confirmed the casualty figures. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Link to Article and Pics:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/art ... ghdad.html

[Anthea]

Washington Post

Here’s everything the U.S. military has hit with airstrikes in Iraq

The United States is closing in on its 100th airstrike in Iraq since Aug. 8, when President Obama authorized military action against a variety of militant targets affiliated with the Islamic State. The details have come in news releases issued nearly every day since, incremental reminders that the U.S. military is waging a new war with no end in sight.

What has been hit, though? As the strikes continue, grasping the totality has become increasingly difficult. To get a better handle on it, Checkpoint compiled a spreadsheet — available in Google Docs here — breaking down all of the targets as U.S. Central Command has described them. Among the patterns to emerge:

Vehicles have been targeted in the majority of the strikes

The very first airstrike took out a convoy of seven vehicles, and the military hasn’t let up on similar targets since. Airstrikes have destroyed or damaged more than 85 vehicles, including 43 described either as “armed trucks” or “armed vehicles” and 19 more identified as Humvees. Those numbers could be even higher, however: At other points, CENTCOM has characterized vehicles as “armored vehicles” or simply as vehicles. Those are counted in the total of 85, but it wasn’t possible to break down which type of military vehicles they were.

A variety of stationary targets have been hit

The military said it destroyed nine enemy fighting positions on Aug. 18, but it hasn’t reported doing so since. Other stationary targets have been hit, however. CENTCOM has reported striking a machine-gun emplacement, four militant checkpoints and numerous improvised explosive device emplacements.

Weapons under fire

The Islamic State has seized a variety of weapons from Iraqi forces during their assault across the northern and western regions of the country this year. Among the targets the U.S. military has hit: Mobile artillery (once), mortar systems (three times) and anti-aircraft artillery guns (once).

Most are near Mosul Dam

Two-thirds of all airstrikes conducted by the U.S. in Iraq have occurred near the Mosul Dam, a strategic asset that the Iraqi military took back from the militants earlier this month. The military has carried out 96 airstrikes as of Aug. 24, when the last news release was published. Sixty-two of them have occurred around the dam.

Article and Videos:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/chec ... s-in-iraq/

[Anthea]

Reuters

Iran supplied weapons to Iraqi Kurds; Baghdad bomb kills 12
By Isabel Coles

Iran has supplied weapons and ammunition to Iraqi Kurdish forces, Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani said Tuesday at a joint press conference with Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Arbil, capital of Iraq's Kurdish region.

The direct arming of Kurdish forces is a contentious issue, because some Iraqi politicians suspect Kurdish leaders have aspirations to break away from the central government completely. The move could also be seen by some as a prelude to Iran's taking a more direct role in broader Iraqi conflict.

"We asked for weapons and Iran was the first country to provide us with weapons and ammunition," Barzani said.

Militants from the Islamic State have clashed with Kurdish peshmerga fighters in recent weeks and taken control of some areas on the periphery of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Earlier in the day, a car bomb was detonated in a mainly Shi'ite district of eastern Baghdad, killing 12 people and wounding 28, police and medical sources said. The bombing in the New Baghdad neighborhood followed a series of blasts in the Iraqi capital on Monday which killed more than 20 people.

The Islamic State, which controls large swathes of northern and western Iraq, claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in the New Baghdad neighborhood on Monday. It said in a statement the attack was carried out as revenge for an attack against a Sunni mosque in Diyala on Friday which killed 68 and wounded dozens.

The U.N. Human Rights Council will hold an emergency session in Geneva on Monday concerning abuses being committed by Islamic State and other militant groups in Iraq, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

The 47 member states of the forum have moral authority to condemn abuses or set up international investigations into war crimes or crimes against humanity, but they cannot impose binding resolutions

The Iranian foreign minister held talks with Barzani on Tuesday, one day after visiting senior Shi’ite clerics in southern Iraq. Zarif acknowledged giving military assistance to Iraqi security forces but said the cooperation did not include deploying ground troops in the country.

"We have no military presence in Iraq," Zarif said. "We do have military cooperation with both the central government and the Kurds in different arenas.”

Neither Zarif nor Barzani gave any details on whether weapons supplied to Kurdish peshmerga forces had been routed through the central government or given directly to Kurdish forces. Prime Minister-designate Haider al-Abadi said Monday that arms given to the peshmerga had been routed through the central government.

Britain, France, Germany and Italy have also promised to send military assistance to Kurdish security forces to fight the Islamic State.

The United States has carried out a series of air strikes against the Islamic State fighters in northern Iraq in the past two weeks, partly to protect the Kurdish region from being overrun.

Zarif denied that Iran and the United States were discussing Iraq as part of talks between Iran and Western powers about Iran’s nuclear program.

(Additional reporting by Kareem Raheem in Baghdad; Writing by Babak Dehghanpisheh; editing by Ralph Boulton, Larry King)

Article and Video:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/ ... 1P20140826