ISIS – IRAQ - KURDISTAN : NEWS THREAD

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According to CNNI, ISIS began to attack Peshmergas in Sinjar with heavy weapons.

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BBC News Middle East

Islamic State crisis: Iraq air strikes 'halt IS advance'

Iraqi ground forces, backed by air strikes, appear to have halted advancing Islamic State (IS) militants in a town west of Baghdad.

The BBC's Lyse Doucet in the Iraqi capital says the air strikes followed clashes with IS militants, who have been making gains towards the capital.

Amariya al-Falluja, 40km (25 miles) from Baghdad, is a key strategic town.

It comes as a US-led coalition continues to carry out air strikes on IS targets in Syria and Iraq.

The area around Amariya al-Falluja is now said to be calm, but there is a standoff along the main road to Falluja to the north, which is controlled by IS, our correspondent says.

US aircraft also attacked other IS positions in Anbar province overnight, the Pentagon said.

Ful Article and Video:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-29408101

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The Independent

Isis 'just one mile from Baghdad' as al-Qaeda fighters join forces against Syria air strikes
Lizzie Dearden

Isis fighters are reportedly just one mile away from Baghdad as reports emerge of al-Qaeda militants bolstering their ranks in Syria.

According to the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East, Isis was approaching the Iraqi capital on Monday morning.

"The Islamic State are now less than 2km away from entering Baghdad," a spokesperson said.

"They said it could never happen and now it almost has. Obama says he overestimated what the Iraqi Army could do. Well you only need to be here a very short while to know they can do very very little."

Isis fighters were also battling Government forces in a key town 25 miles west of Baghdad - Amiriyat al-Fallujah.

According to a BBC correspondent, fighting had calmed by Monday afternoon but a standoff continued along the main road to nearby Fallujah, which is under Isis control.

The extremists had been advancing towards the capital but were held off by bombing and Iraqi ground forces.

US air strikes overnight targeted other Isis positions in Anbar province, the Pentagon said, and in Syria four more oil fields controlled by militants near Raqqa were hit on Sunday.

American officials called the attacks “successful” but the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed mostly civilians were hit and a grain silo was destroyed.

The news comes amid reports of an emerging alliance between Isis forces in Syria and Jabhat al-Nusra, also known as the Nusra Front.

The group is the Syrian offshoot of al-Qaeda and has been fighting against the Assad regime in the civil war.

Despite months of clashes between its forces and Isis (also known as Islamic State) militants, the two groups appear to be forming a loose coalition in parts of the country to fight increasing attacks by the US and its allies.

Al-Nusra’s official spokesperson, Abu Firas al-Suri, threatened the coalition nations with retaliation on Saturday.

“These states have committed a horrible act that is going to put them on the list of jihadist targets throughout the world,” he said.

“This is not a war against al-Nusra, but a war against Islam.”

Al-Nusra and Isis leaders are now holding war planning meetings together, a source told the Guardian, although no formal alliance has been confirmed.

The reports follow growing defections from other Islamist groups to Isis, which is seen as better organised and equipped to create an “Islamic State” straddling Iraq and Syria.

A loyalty pledge was reportedly made by al-Nusra in June in the town of Al-Bukamal near the Iraqi border, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, and the two groups have fought together against Government forces.

The report appeared to be confirmed on Twitter by a photograph showing an Egyptian al-Nusra Front commander shaking hands with an Isis leader of Chechen origin.

Although both Isis and al-Nusra are rooted in al-Qaeda, the two have been rivals since Isis started its involvement in Syria’s civil war in spring last year and have engaged in bloody battles killing more than 3,000 militants from both sides.

Full Article:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 61392.html

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Exclusive: Islamic State Member Warns of NYC Attack In VICE News Interview

phpBB [video]

I am still trying to think of a name for these nut-cases

All suggestions welcome

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Iraq: Islamic State's advance on Baghdad halted - BBC News

phpBB [video]

We - the general public - were lead to believe that the UnIslamic Murderers had more or less been driven back into Syria - yet here they are knocking on the door of Baghdad

We - the general public - have been misinformed and lied to

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The Telegraph

Isil releases new video of British hostage John Cantlie

Photojournalist delivers forced propaganda message criticising Barack Obama's strategy of air strikes and proxy armies against Islamist extremists



Islamist terrorists have released a third video of John Cantlie, a British journalist held prisoner for two years, in which he delivers a scripted propaganda attack against Barack Obama's strategy in Iraq and Syria.

Mr Cantlie, wearing an orange Guantanamo-style jumpsuit, delivers the words directly to the camera using a sing-song tone as if to undermine the message.

In it he criticises Barack Obama's tactics of using air strikes and proxy Kurdish and Iraqi ground forces against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

"Air power is good at taking out specific targets but it is not good at taking and holding ground," he said, sitting behind the same desk as before. "For that you need effective and disciplined troops and it's hard to see how this hotch potch army with a long history of underperforming is going to be any form of credible infantry."

He added that organising the Iraqi army into a proper fighting force would take months and dismissed the Free Syrian Army as "undisciplined, corrupt and largely ineffective".

Mr Cantlie was first paraded in front of the cameras two weeks ago, promising a series of videos giving the real story of Isil.

It was the first that had been heard from him since he was captured inside Syria close to the border with Turkey towards the end of 2012.

Analysts said it may suggest a change in tactics by Isil, which had previously released videos of the murder of other Western hostages, including two American journalists and a British aid worker.

A second video was released last week in which Mr Cantlie, 43, from West Sussex, said the American president was being sucked into Gulf War III, another unwinnable conflict.

This time he sits in front of the same black backdrop to disguise his location. His appearance is similar, with the same length of beard, suggesting the videos were filmed at about the same time.

His main target is Mr Obama's speech delivered on the 13th anniversary of 9/11.

He quotes approvingly from a New York Times article critical of Mr Obama's strategy, and accuses the American president of using predictable and simplistic language.

The words attempt to rebut accusations that Isil lacks a vision and is interested only in murder

"Islamic State does have a vision: they have created an autonomous and functioning caliphate," he said, before promising future videos.

"Join me again for the next programme."

A British taxi driver, Alan Henning, who was kidnapped while delivering aid to Syria, is also still being held by Isil.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... ntlie.html

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The Independent

Isis an hour away from Baghdad - with no sign of Iraq army being able to make a successful counter-attack

The Iraqi army, plagued by corruption, absenteeism and supply failures, has little chance against Islamist fanatics using suicide bombings and fluid tactics. And US air strikes are making little difference

US air strikes are failing to drive back Isis in Iraq where its forces are still within an hour’s drive of Baghdad.

Three and a half months since the Iraqi army was spectacularly routed in northern Iraq by a far inferior force of Isis fighters, it is still seeing bases overrun because it fails to supply them with ammunition, food and water. The selection of a new Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, to replace Nouri al-Maliki last month was supposed to introduce a more conciliatory government that would appeal to Iraq’s Sunni minority from which Isis draws its support.

Mr Abadi promised to end the random bombardment of Sunni civilians, but Fallujah has been shelled for six out of seven days, with 28 killed and 117 injured. Despite the military crisis, the government has still not been able to gets its choice for the two top security jobs, theDefence Minister and Interior Minister, through parliament.

The fighting around Baghdad is particularly bitter because it is often in mixed Sunni-Shia areas where both sides fear massacre. Isis has been making inroads in the Sunni villages and towns such as in north Hilla province where repeated government sweeps have failed to re-establish its authority.

Full Article:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 63658.html

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Reuters

Special Report: Islamic State uses grain to tighten grip in Iraq
By Maggie Fick

For Salah Paulis, it came down to a choice between his faith and his crop.

A wheat farmer from outside Mosul, Paulis and his family fled the militant group Islamic State early last month. The group overran the family farm as part of its offensive that captured vast swathes of territory in northern Iraq. Two weeks later, Paulis, who is a Christian, received a phone call from a man who said he was an Islamic State fighter.

“We are in your warehouse. Why are you not here working and taking care of your business?” the man asked in formal Arabic. “Come back and we will guarantee your safety. But you must convert and pay $500.”

When Paulis refused, the man spelled out the penalty. “We are taking your wheat,” he said. “Just to let you know we are not stealing it because we gave you a choice.”

Other fleeing farmers recount similar stories, and point to a little-discussed element of the threat Islamic State poses to Iraq and the region.

The group now controls a large chunk of Iraq’s wheat supplies. The United Nations estimates land under IS control accounts for as much as 40 percent of Iraq’s annual production of wheat, one of the country’s most important food staples alongside barley and rice. The militants seem intent not just on grabbing more land but also on managing resources and governing in their self-proclaimed caliphate.

Wheat is one tool at their disposal. The group has begun using the grain to fill its pockets, to deprive opponents – especially members of the Christian and Yazidi minorities – of vital food supplies, and to win over fellow Sunni Muslims as it tightens its grip on captured territory. In Iraq’s northern breadbasket, much as it did in neighboring Syria, IS has kept state employees and wheat silo operators in place to help run its empire.

Such tactics are one reason IS poses a more complex threat than al Qaeda, the Islamist group from which it grew. For most of its existence, al Qaeda has focused on hit-and-run attacks and suicide bombings. But Islamic State sees itself as both army and government.

“Wheat is a strategic good. They are doing as much as they can with it,” said Ali Bind Dian, head of a farmers’ union in Makhmur, a town near IS-held territory between Arbil and Mosul.

“Definitely they want to show off and pretend they are a government.”

The Sunni militants and their allies now occupy more than a third of Iraq and a similar chunk of neighboring Syria. The group generates income not just from wheat but also from “taxes” on business owners, looting, ransoming kidnapped Westerners and, most especially, the sale of oil to local traders. Oil brings in millions of dollars every month, according to estimates by Luay Al-Khatteeb, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. That helps finance IS military operations – and is why IS-held oilfields in Syria are targets in U.S.-led airstrikes.

“Islamic State presents itself as exactly that, a state, and in order to be able to sustain that image and that presentation, which is critical for continued recruitment and legitimacy, it depends on a sustainable source of income," said Charles Lister, another visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center.

SEIZING CROPS AND LIVESTOCK

In early August, Kurdish farmer Saeed Mustafa Hussein watched through binoculars as armed IS militants shovelled wheat onto four trucks, then drove off in the direction of Arab villages. Hussein said he does not know what became of his wheat. But he knows that IS runs flour mills in areas it controls and he believes that his wheat was likely milled and sold.

He had 54 tonnes of wheat on his farm in the village of Pungina, northeast of Arbil, wheat he had been unable to sell to a government silo or private traders because of fighting in the area.

The militants also took 200 chickens and 36 prized pigeons.

"What made it worse was that I was helpless to prevent this, I couldn’t do anything. They took two generators from the village that we had recently received from the Kurdish government after a very long process," said Hussein.

Residents are too scared to return even though Kurdish fighters are now in control. "We think the Islamic State laid mines to keep us from going back," said neighbor Abdullah Namiq Mahmoud.

There are scores of similar stories at displacement camps across Kurdistan.

"We escaped with our money and gold but left our wheat and furniture and everything else," said farmer and primary school teacher Younis Saidullah, 62, a member of the tiny Kakaiya minority.

"Everything we built for 20 years using my salary and our farming: It's all gone. We are back to zero," he said, sitting on the floor of a tent at a United Nations-run camp on the outskirts of Arbil.

MILITARY AND ECONOMIC POWER

After Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait triggered Western sanctions, the then-Iraqi dictator built a comprehensive subsidised food distribution system in Iraq. That was expanded under the United Nations’ Oil-for-Food program. Joy Gordon, a political philosophy professor at Fairfield University in Connecticut and author of the 2010 book “Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions,” estimates that two-thirds of Iraqis “were dependent primarily or entirely” on food subsidies between 1990 and 2003.

The system survived the U.S. invasion and years of violence. Now fully run by the Iraqi government, it has been plagued in recent years by “irregular (food) distributions” that have cut dependency, according to a June report by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization. A former U.S. Department of Agriculture economist estimates that about quarter of Iraqis living in rural areas were dependent on subsidised food before the latest violence, while another quarter used it to top up food they bought.

IS is demonstrating that controlling wheat brings power. As its fighters swept through Iraq’s north in June, they seized control of silos and grain stockpiles. The offensive coincided with the wheat and barley harvests and, crucially, the delivery of crops to government silos and private traders.

IS now controls all nine silos in Nineveh Province, which spans the Tigris river, along with seven other silos in other provinces. In the three months since overrunning Nineveh’s provincial capital Mosul, IS fighters have forced out hundreds of thousands of ethnic and religious minorities and seized hundreds of thousands of tonnes of wheat from abandoned fields.

A SILO UNDER ATTACK

One target was the wheat silo in Makhmur, a town between the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk. The silo has a capacity of 250,000 tonnes, or approximately 8 percent of Iraq’s domestic annual production in 2013.

IS attacked Makhmur on August 7. But even in the weeks before that, the group had found a way into the silo and the Iraqi state procurement system.

Abdel Rizza Qadr Ahmed, head of the silo, believes that IS forced local farmers to mix wheat produced in other, IS-controlled areas into their own harvest. The farmers then sold it to Makhmur as if it all had been grown locally. In the weeks before the attack, the silo purchased almost 14,000 more tonnes than it had in 2013. That extra wheat is worth approximately $9.5 million at the artificially high price Baghdad pays farmers.

Ahmed believes IS was looking to make money from the wheat and ensure there was bread available for Sunnis in the areas it controlled.

Ahmed said it was not his job to investigate the source of the grain, just to buy it. “We just take the wheat from the farmers and we don't ask 'Where did you get this from?'" he said.

Huner Baba, local director general of agriculture, said he too believed that traders and farmers had sold wheat from outside the region.

But Baghdad usually pays its wheat farmers around two months after they deposit their produce and so wheat farmers around Makhmur – and therefore IS – had not yet been paid by the time IS militants entered the town on June 7 and, according to Baba, headed for the silo.

The militants were met by Iraqi Kurdish fighters, known as Peshmerga, and fighters from the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). After IS took the silo, Baba said, they installed snipers there. He speculates that the militants believed U.S. warplanes would not strike the facility, which is in the center of town.

“They want to get people on their side especially the Arabs. Maybe that’s why they didn’t do anything to the wheat, not to anger people,” he said.

IS held Makhmur for three days before the Kurdish fighters and U.S. air strikes on IS positions – though not on the silo – drove them out. U.S.-led air strikes did hit grain silos in the northern Syrian town of Manbij on Sept 28. A group monitoring the war said the aircraft may have mistaken the mills and grain silos for an Islamic State base. There was no immediate comment from Washington.

SMOOTH TRANSITION

In many ways, IS is replicating in Iraq strategies it developed in Syria. In the year it has controlled the town of Raqqa in northeastern Syria, for instance, IS militants say they have allowed former employees from Assad’s regime to continue to run its mills. The group has set up a wheat "diwan," or bureau, in charge of the supply chain, from harvesting the crop to distributing flour.

The same push to keep things running smoothly can be seen in Iraq. IS fighters have regularly avoided destroying government installations they have captured. When IS took over Iraq's largest dam it kept employees in place and even brought in engineers from Mosul to make repairs.

Baghdad, too, has tried to minimise upheaval.

Hassan Ibrahim, head of Iraq's Grain Board, the Trade Ministry body responsible for procuring Iraq’s wheat internationally and from local farmers, said that government employees in IS-held areas keep in regular touch with head office. Some staff in IS areas even come to Baghdad every couple of weeks, he said.

In the past few weeks, he said, IS fighters had disappeared from some areas in Mosul and Kirkuk because of the U.S.-led air strikes. “The situation is stable,” he said, with IS fighters mostly happy to allow state employees to continue to run the silos.

“I give instructions to my people to try to be quiet and smooth with those people because they are very violent people. It is not good to be violent with violent people because they will come to kill you. Our aim is to keep the wheat.”

After IS’s June offensive, Ibrahim was ordered to suspend salaries for workers in IS areas. “But this troubled me," he said. "I cannot have the mills stopping. I need people to stay there like guards to convince the Islamic State that wheat is important for everybody.”

Ibrahim says he convinced his bosses to keep paying salaries. A Trade Ministry spokesman confirmed that all government employees in Mosul had been paid their salaries “through state banks in Kirkuk, as it’s safer and under government control.”

Ibrahim is now worried about farmers who have not been paid for the wheat they delivered in the weeks before the grain was seized by IS.

He said the Grain Board and the Trade Ministry were trying to pay farmers either living in IS-held areas or recently displaced from them. "We would like to help the farmers, but not IS," he said.

WINNING HEARTS AND STOMACHS

In some places, the IS stranglehold on wheat appears to be winning support among Sunnis.

Ahsan Moheree, chairman of the government-affiliated Arab Farmers Union in Hawija, says IS has gained in popularity since its fighters took over. Baghdad’s dismissive attitude towards the country’s Sunni Arabs had forced people towards IS, he said. But IS’s ability to provide food had also helped.

“They distribute flour to the Arabs in the area. They get the wheat from the Hawija silo ... And they run the mill and they distribute to people in a very organised way,” he said.

Even those who have fled IS see wheat as one reason for the group’s strength.

“Nowadays a kilo of wheat is 4,000 or 5,000 dinars ($3.45 - $4.30). It used to be 10,000 to 11,000 dinars,” said Joumana Zewar, 54, a farmer who now lives in Baharka camp outside Arbil. IS and Sunni Arabs are selling the wheat they stole “for very cheap. It’s cheap because they stole it.”

Zewar called a friend in Mosul to check on the latest prices.

“The price of foods and bread is very cheap,” the friend said. Islamic State had taken control, and as in Syria, was dictating prices. “They are the government here now. They are going to the bakeries and saying, ‘Sell at this price.’”

THE YEAR AHEAD

The big worry now is next season’s crop. In Nineveh province, home to the capital of the group’s self-declared caliphate, 750,000 hectares (1.8 million acres) should soon be sown with wheat and 835,000 hectares with barley, an Iraqi agriculture ministry official said.

The official said that the province normally has 100,000 farmers. But thousands have fled.

Iraqi farmers normally get next season’s seeds from their current harvest, keeping back some of the wheat for that purpose. IS controls enough wheat so finding seeds should not be a problem. It also controls Ministry of Agriculture offices in Mosul and Tikrit which should have fertilizer supplies.

But getting the seeds and fertilizer into the right hands will be a problem. Mohamed Diab, director of the World Food Program's Regional Bureau for the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and Eastern Europe, said that it is "highly unlikely" that displaced farmers would return.

"The picture is bleak regarding agriculture production next year," he said. "The place where displacement has happened is the main granary of the country."

That’s especially true for non-Sunni Arab farmers. Those who have remained on their land just outside IS-held territory fear the militants will soon take their villages, and their harvested but unsold crops.

Even if that does not happen, they say, they will not plant after the first rain, which typically comes at the end of September or in early October.

Farmers in the town of Shekhan, nestled among sun-bleached wheat fields, say they have no hope of getting the seeds, fertilizer and fuel needed to plant because the provincial government in Mosul is under IS control.

"The real problem is how to get seeds to those inside Mosul and surrounding areas,” said Nineveh Governor Atheel Nujaifi, who believes production will drop next season.

Bashar Jamo, head of a local farmers' cooperative, is also worried. “The most important thing to us is agriculture, not security. Maybe (IS) will have a state, maybe an army, but all we need is to be able to farm.”

(Additional reporting by Ned Parker and Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad, Maha El Dahan in Abu Dhabi and Mariam Karouny in Beirut; Editing by Michael Georgy and Simon Robinson)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/ ... 2J20140930

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Voice of America

Kurdish Forces in Iraq Advance Against IS Fighters

Kurdish fighters launched a series of attacks against the Islamic State group's positions Tuesday in Iraq, supported by the Iraqi military and the U.S.-led coalition.

U.S. Central Command said 11 aistrikes Monday and Tuesday were focused largely on the Islamic State group's stronghold in northwest Iraq.

The U.S.-led air campaign also included 11 strikes in Syria, destroying militant artillery and rocket launchers on the outskirts of Kobani, also known by its Arabic name of Ain al-Arab.

The two-week offensive by Islamic State militants has sent more than 160,000 refugees across the border into Turkey, which reinforced its side of the frontier Monday near Kobani.

Border crossing

An Iraqi Kurdish political source told Reuters that Kurdish peshmerga fighters took control of the Rabia border crossing with Syria in a battle that began before dawn.

The ability to cross the frontier freely has been a major tactical advantage for Islamic State fighters on both sides.

Fighters swept from Syria into northern Iraq in June and returned with heavy weapons seized from fleeing Iraqi government troops, which they have used to expand their territory in Syria.

U.S.-led forces have been bombing Islamic State targets in Iraq since August and expanded the campaign to Syria last week in an effort to defeat the fighters who have swept through Sunni areas of both countries, killing prisoners, chasing out Kurds and ordering Shi'ites and non-Muslims to convert or die.

In Iraq, a coalition of Iraqi army, Shi'ite militia fighters and Kurdish troops have been slowly recapturing Sunni villages that had been under the Islamic State group's control south of the Kurdish-held oil city of Kirkuk.

"At dawn today, two villages near Daquq, 40 kilometers south of Kirkuk, Peshmerga forces liberated them from Islamic State [militants]," an Iraqi security official told Reuters.

Islamic State fighters had used positions in the villages to fire mortars at neighboring Daquq, a town populated mainly by ethnic Turkmen Shi'ite Muslims.

When Kurdish fighters entered the villages, they were empty, the security official told Reuters.

Maneuvers near Kirkuk

Forces were also pushing north from the city of Tuz Khurmatu to drive Islamic State fighters out of the countryside that surrounds Kirkuk, the official said. He credited U.S.-led airstrikes with helping the peshmerga clear the two villages.

"This area witnessed intense airstrikes from U.S.-led strikes and Iraqi air strikes overnight and at dawn," the official told Reuters.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said coalition airstrikes also hit Islamic State fighters east and west of Kobani, the newest flashpoint in the battle to push back the extremist group, on Tuesday. The Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, also confirmed the airstrikes on the town's outskirts, according to The Associated Press.

The offensive follows a successful campaign a day earlier to recapture towns in Diyala province from the militants.

Fight for Kobani continues

In Syria, Kurdish militiamen continue to defend the border town of Kobani, on the Turkish border.

It was not immediately clear how effective Tuesday's airstrikes were in slowing the Islamic militants' advance. Over the past few days, the extremists have pushed to within five kilometers (three miles) of Kobani and have begun hitting it with mortars and artillery shells.

Just outside Kobani, Islamic State militants captured the deserted Kurdish village of Siftek on Tuesday and appeared to be using it as a headquarters from which to launch attacks on Kobani itself, according to AP.

But Ocalan Iso, deputy commander of the Kurdish forces defending the town, told Reuters that Kurdish troops had battled Islamic State fighters armed with tanks through the night and into Tuesday.

On the ground, fighting Tuesday focused around Kobani's eastern edge, said Ahmad Sheikho, an activist operating along the Syria-Turkey border. He said that members of the local Kurdish militia destroyed two tanks belonging to the Islamic State group.

The frontier town of Kobani and surrounding villages have been under attack by the Islamic State group since mid-September.

The two-week offensive near the town has led to one of the largest single exoduses in Syria's civil war, now in its fourth year.

Turkey mulls action

Meanwhile, the Turkish parliament is considering legislation that would authorize military action against the Islamic State group, and a vote is expected Thursday.

The opposition does not support such action, and it is not clear what form any Turkish military intervention would take.

Turkey, a NATO member with a long border with Syria, has so far declined to take a frontline role, fearful partly that the military action will strengthen President Bashar al-Assad and bolster the Syrian Kurdish militants allied to the outlawed PKK in Turkey who have fought for three decades for more autonomy.

US costs

With the United States now conducting what it says are "near continuous" strikes in both Iraq and Syria, a Washington-based think-tank, speaking with the French news agency AFP, warned that the costs of the campaign to the U.S. taxpayer could swiftly escalate.

U.S. aircraft have flown roughly 4,100 sorties in the air war against the jihadists in Iraq and Syria since August, including surveillance flights, refuelling runs and bombing raids, a military officer said Monday.

The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments estimated that when U.S. airstrikes against the Islamic State group in Syria got under way last week, Washington had already spent as much as $930 million (735 million euros) on the campaign against Islamic State fighters.

If airstrikes continue at a moderate level, the cost will run at between $200 million and $320 million a month, but if they are conducted at a higher pace, the monthly cost could rise to as much as $570 million, the think tank projected.

http://www.voanews.com/content/kurds-ir ... 67463.html

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BBC News Middle East

Islamic State crisis: Heavy fighting on Iraq-Syria border

Heavy fighting is reported on both sides of a key border crossing between Iraq and Syria where Kurdish forces are battling Islamic State militants.

Iraqi Kurdish troops are said to have recaptured the town of Rabia, but suffered heavy casualties.

Meanwhile, IS fighters have been trying to dislodge Syrian Kurdish forces on the other side of the border.

It comes amid continuing air strikes by a US-led coalition on IS targets both in Syria and Iraq.

On Tuesday, British warplanes bombed an armed position and a vehicle in Iraq - the first IS targets struck by UK forces.

Britain said two Tornados were on an "armed reconnaissance mission" when they were asked to help Kurdish troops in north-west Iraq who were under attack.

In a separate development, Turkish tanks have taken up positions along the border near the Syrian town of Kobane after several shells hit Turkish territory during clashes between IS and Kurdish fighters.

The Turkish government is expected to send a motion to parliament, authorising military action against IS in Iraq and Syria. A parliamentary mandate would cover "all possible threats and risks", Deputy PM Bulent Arinc was quoted as saying by Reuters.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that US-led air strikes targeted IS militants on the outskirts of Kobane on Tuesday.

The BBC's Paul Adams in the area tweeted that there were "occasional plumes of smoke west of Kobane and... an apparent air strike".

The US has not confirmed such reports.

Also on Tuesday, a series of deadly bomb attacks were reported in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, and the holy Shia city of Karbala.
Suicide bombers

Senior Iraqi Kurdish officials said their peshmerga special forces had made good initial progress during their dawn offensive in Rabia.

The officials said that by nightfall, Rabia was firmly in Kurdish hands, although IS militants continued to hold out in just one building.

Rabia lies about 100km (60 miles) north-west of Mosul - the city controlled by IS.

But the Iraqi Kurdish forces also took heavy casualties - including the loss of a senior commander - when three suicide car bombers blew themselves up among the Kurdish troops.

The bombers are believed to have travelled from IS-controlled areas further east.



The Kurds believed they had air cover from US jets that would prevent any IS reinforcements from being brought up, and there is considerable bitterness that the attackers managed to get through, the BBC's Jim Muir in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil reports.

Our correspondent says control of the Rabia crossing and cutting IS supply lines are seen as important steps towards an eventual move to regain another important area that the militants overran in August: the town of Sinjar and its nearby mountain, from where tens of thousands of civilians from the minority Yazidi community fled for their lives.

The other side of the border is controlled by Syrian Kurdish fighters, who themselves have been coming under attacks from IS.

More than 30 Syrian Kurdish fighters are reported to have been killed as the jihadists took over several villages south of the border crossing.

However, the crossing itself is said to be still under Kurdish control.

IS militants have seized large swathes of Iraq and Syria, proclaiming a caliphate (Islamic state) there.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-29429971

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Al Jazeera

IS/ISIL under heavy assault by Kurds in Iraq

Peshmerga forces backed by US and UK air power launch attacks on three fronts against ISIL.

Kurdish peshmerga forces backed by US and British air attacks have pushed into territory held by ISIL in Iraq, recapturing several towns and villages that had recently fallen to the group.

The peshmerga began their assault early on Tuesday in the village of Basheer, which ISIL captured in June and has used as a base for operations against Kirkuk, a key oil town 15km to the north.

A senior peshmerga source told the AFP news agency that his forces, backed by US-led coalition jets, also attacked the town of Zumar, near the reservoir Mosul dam, Iraq's largest.

They also went on the offensive north of the ISIL-controlled city Mosul, Iraq's second largest.

Al Jazeera's Monica Villamizar, reporting from Erbil in northern Iraq, said the Kurds had been boosted by air attacks on ISIL by the US-led coalition.

"Peshmerga fighters have been in stalemate with the ISIL in the past, but now this is changing. At least in two of these attacks, air strikes were also involved," our correspondent said.

She said the strikes had emboldened peshmerga, who could previously not match the firepower of ISIL.

Halgord Hekmat, of the peshmerga, told AFP: "We have pushed ISIL from 30 positions, including in the Zumar and Rabia areas."

He said the advances would aid efforts to retake Sinjar, a town further southwest which ISIL captured in early August, prompting tens of thousands of civilians, mostly from the Yazidi minority, to flee.

The US central command said on Tuesday that seven air attacks had destroyed a number of ISIL fighting positions and vehicles in northwest Iraq. The UK said its air force had attacked two ISIL positions to aid the Kurd fighters - the first such attacks in Iraq by the RAF.

Baghdad bombs

In Syria, an ISIL offensive pushed to within kilometres of Kobane, a Kurdish town on the border with Turkey, as Turkish leaders prepared to discuss its role in the US-led coalition against the group.

The ISIL advance there has forced tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds to flee across the border, and prompted Turkey to station a company of tanks nearby after shells landed in its territory.

The Turkish government previously said it would submit motions to parliament authorising armed forces to take action in Iraq and Syria, so Ankara could join the US-led coalition against the ISIL fighters.

In a separate development, a wave of car bombings and other attacks mainly targeting Shia areas of Iraq killed at least 47 people on Tuesday, including more than 20 in the capital Baghdad, officials said.

No one claimed responsibility for the blasts. ISIL has claimed responsibility for similar previous attacks.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeas ... 02745.html

[Anthea]

Reuters

Islamic State committing 'staggering' crimes in Iraq: U.N. report
By Stephanie Nebehay (additional reporting by Ned Parker in Baghdad; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Islamic State insurgents in Iraq have carried out mass executions, abducted women and girls as sex slaves, and used child soldiers in what may amount to systematic war crimes that demand prosecution, the United Nations said on Thursday.

In a report based on 500 interviews with witnesses, also said Iraqi government air strikes on the Sunni Muslim militants had caused "significant civilian deaths" by hitting villages, a school and hospitals in violation of international law.

At least 9,347 civilians had been killed and 17,386 wounded so far this year through September, well over half of them since the Islamist insurgents also known as ISIL and ISIS began seizing large parts of northern Iraq in early June, the report said.

"The array of violations and abuses perpetrated by ISIL and associated armed groups is staggering, and many of their acts may amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity," said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein.

In a statement, he called again for the Baghdad government to join the International Criminal Court, saying the Hague court was set up to prosecute such massive abuses and direct targeting of civilians on the basis of their religious or ethnic group.

Islamist forces have committed gross human rights violations and violence of an "increasing sectarian nature" against groups including Christians, Yazidis and Shi'ite Muslims in a widening conflict that has forced 1.8 million Iraqis to flee their homes, according to the 29-page report by the U.N. Human Rights Office and the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI).

"These include attacks directly targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure, executions and other targeted killings of civilians, abductions, rape and other forms of sexual and physical violence perpetrated against women and children, forced recruitment of children, destruction or desecration of places of religious or cultural significance, wanton destruction and looting of property, and denial of fundamental freedoms."

FEMALE "SEX SLAVES"

In a single massacre on June 12, the report said, about 1,500 Iraqi soldiers and security officers from the former U.S. Camp Speicher military base in Salahuddin province were captured and killed by Islamic State fighters.

However, the bodies have not been exhumed and the precise toll is not known. No one disputes that Iraqi military recruits were led off the base near Tikrit unarmed and then machinegunned in their hundreds into mass graves by Islamic State, whose fighters boasted of the killings on the Internet.

Women have been treated particularly harshly, the report said: "ISIL (has) attacked and killed female doctors, lawyers, among other professionals."

In August, it said, ISIL took 450-500 women and girls to the Tal Afar citadel in Iraq's Nineveh region where "150 unmarried girls and women, predominantly from the Yazidi and Christian communities, were reportedly transported to Syria, either to be given to ISIL fighters as a reward or to be sold as sex slaves".

Islamic State pushed on with its assault on a Syrian border town on Thursday despite coalition air strikes meant to weaken them, sending thousands more Kurdish refugees into Turkey and dragging Ankara deeper into the conflict.

Islamic State and allied groups have attacked and destroyed places of religious and cultural significance in Iraq that do not conform to its "takfiri" doctrine, the U.N. report said, referring to the beliefs of Sunni militants who justify their violence by branding others as apostates.

But the report also voiced deep concern at violations committed by the Baghdad government and allied fighters, including air strikes and shelling that may not have distinguished between military targets and civilian areas.

(additional reporting by Ned Parker in Baghdad; Editing by Louise Ireland)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/ ... R120141002

[Anthea]

Reuters

As Kurds regain ground in Iraq, new challenges emerge
By Isabel Coles

The changing fortunes of war in northern Iraq are recorded in layers of graffiti daubed on the walls of villages overrun by Islamic State militants this summer, but since re-appropriated by Kurdish peshmerga forces.

"Bravo peshmerga," read the freshest markings, painted over older inscriptions - some of them already scribbled out - that proclaim "property of the Islamic State".

Village by village, Kurdish forces have regained around half the territory they gave up in August when IS militants tore through their defenses in the northwest, prompting September's airstrikes by the United States - their first since 2011.

The Kurds scored a particularly important victory recently, driving Islamic State fighters from the strategic Rabia border crossing and severing their main artery from Mosul to Syria, which had been used to re-supply fighters on both sides.

Though their brethren in Syria have lost control of hundreds of villages to IS fighters, prompting thousands of refugees to flee to Turkey, the Kurds in Iraq now feel as though the tide has turned in their favour.

But to secure the rest of what they have lost they will now have to overcome numerous challenges ranging from a lack of heavy weaponry and U.S. air support in eastern areas close to Iran's border, to hostile residents rejecting their claim in other areas.

MINES AND TANKS

Peshmerga secretary-general Jabbar Yawar illustrates the problems along the front line by tracing it across a map with his laser pen: from Rabia on the Syrian border in the northwest to Khanaqin near the Iranian frontier.

"Our plan is to liberate the areas we lost," he says, and explains how next his men will wait for Iraqi forces to liberate the northern province of Salahuddin and western Anbar governorate before the next push after that.

"We can't advance on Mosul on our own. If they (Iraqi forces) get close to Nineveh, we can carry out joint operations."

Northeast of Mosul, IS militants are still in control of the Nineveh plains, home to religious and ethnic minorities that fled en masse when the peshmerga pulled out in August.

The Kurds have since re-captured all the high ground surrounding the plains, giving them a strategic advantage.

But they say the flat terrain below would be tough to defend without tanks and armoured vehicles - though Western allies sent arms, the Kurds report that what they received is no match for Islamic State's arsenal, which includes U.S.-made Hummers plundered from the Iraqi army.

Further progress has also been complicated by improvised explosive devices planted by IS as it retreated - the peshmerga have taken control in more than one town only to relinquish it again because of mines and counter-attacks by suicide bombers.

Yawar said a decision had been made several weeks ago to halt advances on some fronts in order to limit casualties until the peshmerga received bomb detectors and robots from Western countries, as well as instruction in how to use them.

Britain has sent some and is training peshmerga at a base in the Kurdish city of Suleimaniyah.

A PATCHWORK OF ALLIES

When the Iraqi army abandoned its bases in the north, the Kurds moved forward to realise long-held ambitions in the disputed territories - then found them less easy to retain.

Wary of overextending themselves again, they now show little interest in venturing into areas where they are likely to encounter resistance from the local population: In the Makhmour area south of Arbil, for example, fighting has lulled for several weeks, but the peshmerga are in no hurry to risk a backlash from Arab residents that resent their takeover.

"You need an Arab force there because of the ethnic sensitivity,"said Kurdish official Nejat Ali Saleh in Makhmour.

It is not clear what Arab force could be enlisted to help, but U.S. and Iraqi officials plan to incorporate Sunnis into a "National Guard" force to decentralise power from Baghdad and turn them against Islamic State.

South of Kirkuk, Kurdish forces have found an unlikely Arab ally in Shi'ite militia which have rallied to fight IS in the absence of an army. Together the forces have driven militants back from the town of Tuz Khurmato and last month broke a long siege of Amerli nearby.

Elsewhere the Kurds are working closely with the Iraqi army, particularly on the eastern part of the frontline.

Forces belonging to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan's party are the main presence between Kirkuk and the eastern city of Jalawla, not far from the Iranian frontier. But the United States and their allies have bombed no further east than Amerli - because, say some Kurdish officials, that would bring their planes uncomfortably close to Iranian airspace.

However the Iraqi army still has a presence in the eastern Diyala province that also homes Jalawla, and its planes are conducting strikes in the area.

Yawar said Jalawla - which has changed hands several times since the IS militants initially surged through Iraq - was almost entirely encircled by peshmerga, which are now waiting for Iraqi forces to take the city of Tikrit in the neighbouring province of Salahuddin.

"We expect that if this area is liberated by the Iraqi army the supply route will be cut...and...they will leave the area."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/ ... HV20141002

[Anthea]

Ghost villages of northern Iraq ripped apart by Isil jihadists

Region not so much ethnically cleansed as cleansed of people entirely after sects and races split over battle between Isil jihadists and Kurdish Peshmerga


The village of Barzanke in Iraq was destroyed in the battle against Isil

Of the two Sunni Arab villages on the Kurdish front lines, one has children playing in the street and families inviting passers-by in for tea. The other lies in ruins, crushed and blackened houses, row after row razed to rubble.

This is the present of northern Iraq, and seemingly its future. The war has divided the country not only between sects and races but also among them. A fragile jigsaw of communities has been torn apart and seems unlikely ever to be rebuilt.

Both villages were seized in August by the jeep-led armies of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), but only in the now-devastated village of Barzanke were the Sunni jihadists welcomed. The number of black flags that sprouted immediately, according to Kurdish troops, suggested most of the inhabitants were already supporters.

In the assault by the Kurdish Peshmerga to reclaim it locals joined the jihadists, who were pummelled from the air and by tanks until they fled. They booby-trapped the buildings as they left, leading to even greater destruction, the Kurds said.

"Seventy-five per cent of the village was Isil," said Sgt Major Hazem Zedu, a Kurdish soldier. "They stabbed us in the back."

Not a house remains standing. It looks more like archaeology than settlement, the outlines of a previous existence marked in stones, rather than living rooms and kitchens.

The streets are too dangerous to enter. They are still mined.

In Syria, foreign fighters have been at the forefront of Isil battles, gaining notoriety as suicide bombers and, of course, beheaders. In Iraq, it is different. Isil here grew from a nucleus of jihadists and former soldiers of Saddam Hussein after his overthrow by western troops in 2003, outraged at the loss of the Sunni dominance of Iraq that he represented.

As the years went by, villages and communities, many already scarred by the traumas of the Saddam years, fragmented along sectarian and tribal lines. Many local people still support the jihadists, preferring a harsh rule by their own to one by Iraq's majority Shia who, they say, discriminate against them.

In Barzanke, the dominant Arabs, most from a small local tribe, fought with the minority Kurds more and more, according to residents of the next-door village, Sumud.

"From 2003, in Barzanke some always supported al-Qaeda, some supported the Kurds," said Eissa al-Jabouri.

"It was, 'I blow up your house, you blow up my house'."

By contrast, the al-Jabouri tribe, one of the most celebrated anti-jihadist Arab tribes in the country, dominates Sumud.

When the jihadists arrived in their pickup trucks at the beginning of August, many of the residents were terrified. Quite a number had served in the police or other armed forces.

"We were called to attend a mosque, and I was so scared I could hardly walk," said Abu Sahr, a policeman. "One of the Isil people told us he was going to kill all of us.

"At every checkpoint I was thinking, OK, I am on my way to my death."

In the end, there was a reprieve. Isil took every single weapon in the village, and made the police swear Tawba – a formal oath of allegiance in the mosque. Many of the residents were so scared, they did so even though they weren't required to.

In a twist, Abu Sahr and his friends said the men who ran the village in the month it was under Isil control were not, in fact, Arab at all.

They were Turkmen from the town of Tal Afar, taken by Isil in June.

The Turkmen are a minority in Iraq, the third largest ethnic group behind Arabs and Kurds, and they are divided along religious lines evenly between Sunni and Shia. Religious identity comes first: Turkmen Shia have been targeted for massacres and bombings by Isil across northern Iraq, but Turkmen Sunni have joined up with Isil in numbers.

One local Arab man who was with Isil when they arrived in Sumud was reassigned, the villagers said, in case he met people he knew and showed sympathy.

Across the north of Iraq swathes of countryside now lie bare of people, ghost villages lining the roads. These are areas outside the Kurdish autonomous region, but being defended by its troops.

The residents of Sumud are stuck, and running out of food. They fear retribution if they go south to Isil-controlled territory, but because of the overwhelming fear of Sunni Arabs in Kurdistan now are not allowed to enter its towns and cities, checkpoints turning them back.

Nearly all the area's Christians – Assyrians and Chaldeans, some of the oldest Christian communities in the world – have fled, to Erbil, or to Europe and America. To the west, the Yazidis are imprisoned or in refugee camps further north. When Isil arrived, the Kurds fled too, and most have yet to return from the Kurdish autonomous region while the front lines are unstable.

This area has not so much been ethnically cleansed, as cleansed of people altogether. Victory against Isil is not imminent, and even so, it is hard to see how much it would help these communities to live alongside each other.

From a windy bluff above Sumud, the Ninevah plain comes into view. The nearest black Isil flag, at the foot of the hill, is less than a mile away. Behind lie the towns of Domees and Zummar, whose police chief was beheaded by Isil when the jihadists arrived.

Major Muslim Karim Salim said the Kurdish attack on Zumar would come soon. He said that one day, Iraq would be united again, and all its people would live together, like the Kurds and the "good people" of Sumud.

But he also explained how they would know if Zummar's Arabs were "good people", when they retook the town.

"If they are good people, they won't have stayed there under Isil rule," he said. The "bad people", of course, are likely to flee with Isil.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... dists.html

[Anthea]

130 Iraqi officers under investigation or forced retirement for surrendering Mosul to ISIS

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi submitted the names of 130 Iraqi military officers for investigation in connection with the surrender of the city of Mosul to the so called organization of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria without a fight last June.

On Monday a source close to al-Abadi said “The decisions will be issued after the Eid al-Adha. Three senior officers of the ranks of generals will be forwarded to retirement on the background of the military events that accompanied the seizure of the cities of Mosul, Tikrit, and parts of the western regions by the organization ISIS.”

The source added that “among the decisions to be taken by Abadi is the referral of 130 officers to retirement and investigation.”

http://www.iraqinews.com/features/urgen ... osul-isis/