ISIS – IRAQ - KURDISTAN : NEWS THREAD

[Anthea]

Now ISIS wants to introduce its own currency: Plans to bring back solid gold and silver dinar coins announced in Iraqi mosques

ISIS said to be planning to introduce its own currency to areas it controls
Militants allegedly want to bring back the dinar - an ancient Islamic currency
The original dinar currency consisted of purely gold and silver round coins

By Emma Glanfield

ISIS wants to introduce its own currency and plans to bring back solid gold and silver dinar coins, it has emerged.

The Middle East terror group apparently wants to introduce its own Islamic currency as part of its attempts to solidify its makeshift caliphate.

Militants are said to want to bring back the original dinar, which is an ancient currency from early Islam, and religious figures in Mosul and Iraq’s Nineveh province have apparently announced its return in mosques.



The currency known as the dinar, which once consisted purely of gold and silver coins, is today used by a variety of countries, but the coins are created from different materials to the originals.

However, the jihadi group is understood to be planning to return to the original gold and silver coins, which were first introduced during the Caliphate of Uthman in 634 CE.

The original Islamic dinar was a gold coin which was the weight of gold equivalent to 4.3 grams. Its silver counterpart, known as the Islamic dirham, was a silver coin equal in weight to 3 grams of silver.

Both were round in shape and one side of the coin was typically stamped with an Islamic message, while the other side featured the date of minting and the country’s ruler.

While ISIS has yet to confirm the introduction of its currency, social media is awash with claims that leading religious figures announced the plans during recent prayers in Mosul and Nineveh province.

It is believed the terror outfit wants to use the independent currency in areas it controls as part of its war on the West.

The currency, which could be introduced within the next few weeks, will involve changing from regular dinars and Lira to golden dinars and silver dirhams.

Last month, it emerged that ISIS, which also goes by the name Islamic State, is raking in money at a remarkable rate - earning about $1million a day from black market oil sales alone.

The group extracts oil from territory captured across Syria and Iraq, and sells it to smugglers.

David Cohen, who leads the Treasury Department's effort to undermine the Islamic State's finances, said the extremists also get several million dollars a month from wealthy donors, extortion rackets and other criminal activities, such as robbing banks.

In addition, he said the group has taken in at least $20million in ransom payments this year from kidnappings.

Mr Cohen said ISIS, which is led by Iraqi Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,obtains the vast majority of its revenues through local criminal and terrorist activities.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... sques.html

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Reuters

Special Report: The fighters of Iraq who answer to Iran
By Babak Dehghanpisheh

Among the thousands of militia fighters who flocked to northern Iraq to battle militant group Islamic State over the summer was Qais al-Khazali.

Like the fighters, Khazali wore green camouflage. But he also sported a shoulder-strapped pistol and sunglasses and was flanked by armed bodyguards. When he was not on the battlefield, the 40-year-old Iraqi donned the robes and white turban of a cleric.

Khazali is the head of a militia called Asaib Ahl al-Haq that is backed by Iran. Thanks to his position he is one of the most feared and respected militia leaders in Iraq, and one of Iran's most important representatives in the country.

His militia is one of three small Iraqi Shi'ite armies, all backed by Iran, which together have become the most powerful military force in Iraq since the collapse of the national army in June.

Alongside Asaib Ahl al-Haq, there are the Badr Brigades, formed in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War, and the younger and more secretive Kataib Hezbollah. The three militias have been instrumental in battling Islamic State (IS), the extremist movement from Islam's rival Sunni sect.

The militias, and the men who run them, are key to Iran's power and influence inside neighboring Iraq.

That influence is rooted in the two countries' shared religious beliefs. Iran's population is overwhelmingly Shi'ite, as are the majority of Iraqis. Tehran has built up its influence in the past decade by giving political backing to the Iraqi government, and weapons and advisers to the militias and the remnants of the Iraqi military, say current and former Iraqi officials.

That was clear this summer, when fighters from all three militias took on IS. During IS's siege of one town, Amerli, Kataib Hezbollah helicoptered in 50 of its best fighters, according to Abu Abdullah, a local Kataib Hezbollah commander. The fighters set up an operations room to coordinate with the Iraqi army, the other militia groups, and advisers from the Quds Force, the branch of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that handles operations outside Iran and oversees Tehran's Iraqi militias. Over days of fierce fighting in August, and with the help of U.S. bombing raids – a rare example of Iran and the United States fighting a common enemy – those forces successfully expelled IS.

Tehran's high profile contrasts sharply with Washington's. Both Iran and the United States are preparing for a long battle against IS. But Iraqi officials say the two take very different views of Iraq.

"The American approach is to leave Iraq to the Iraqis," said Sami al-Askari, a former member of Iraq's parliament and one-time senior adviser to former prime minister Nuri al-Maliki. "The Iranians don't say leave Iraq to the Iraqis. They say leave Iraq to us."

The danger, Iraqi officials say, is that Iran's deep influence will perpetuate sectarian conflict in Iraq. Many Iraqi Sunnis complain that Maliki, who was Iraq's leader until he was forced out in August, was beholden to Tehran and prevented Sunnis from getting greater political power. Maliki has denied sidelining Sunnis.

Former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shi'ite who left office in 2005, told Reuters that "Iran is interfering in Iraq. Foreign forces are not welcome here. And militias controlled by foreign powers are not welcome also."

Iraq's Shi'ite militias have certainly fueled sectarian violence. In the past few months they have taken revenge on Sunnis thought to be sympathetic to IS, burned homes and threatened to stop Sunnis returning to their towns. Shi'ite fighters have kidnapped or killed civilians, say Sunni family members.

"The militias are a problem," said Askari, the former Maliki adviser. "What do you say after Islamic State ends? Thank you very much and go home?"

ECHOES OF LEBANON

The main body funding, arming, and training the Shi'ite militias is Iran's Quds Force. The model it uses is Hezbollah in Lebanon. Created by Tehran in the early 1980s, and operating as both a military outfit and political party, Hezbollah has grown to become the most powerful force in Lebanon.

Like Hezbollah, Iran's three big Iraqi militias have political wings and charismatic leaders.

Coordinating the three is Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, who, at least until the IS victories in Iraq this summer, had gained a reputation as one of the region's most effective military leaders.

After the collapse of the Iraqi military in June, Soleimani visited Iraq several times to help organize a counter-offensive. He brought weapons, electronic interception devices and drones, according to a senior Iraqi politician.

"Soleimani is an operational leader. He's not a man working in an office. He goes to the front to inspect the troops and see the fighting," said one current senior Iraqi official. "His chain of command is only the Supreme Leader. He needs money, gets money. Needs munitions, gets munitions. Needs materiel, gets materiel."

The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is the most senior religious authority in Iran and wields huge constitutional power.

Soleimani, who Reuters was unable to reach, knows the heads of the three big Iraqi militias personally, Iraqi officials say. A picture posted on a Facebook page in August shows him in an olive shirt and khaki pants next to Khazali, who is in clerical robes. A picture on Facebook and Twitter late last month showed Soleimani and the leader of the Badr Brigades grinning and wrapped in a tight hug after what was reportedly a victory against IS.

In an interview with Iranian state television in September, a senior Revolutionary Guard commander, General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, said that Soleimani, with a force of only 70 men, had prevented IS from overrunning Arbil. "If Iran hadn't helped, Daesh would have taken over Kurdistan," he said, using a common Arabic name for IS.

The way Iran and Soleimani work is "completely the opposite of Saudi intelligence that just gives money but are not on the ground," said the current senior Iraqi official. "Soleimani sees a target and he has the powers to go after it."

THE BADR BRIGADES

Iran's oldest proxy in Iraq is the Badr Brigades, which is headed by Hadi al-Amri, a veteran of both combat and politics. The group renamed itself the Badr Organisation once it entered politics.

Amri fought alongside Iran's Revolutionary Guard against Saddam's army during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, he won a seat in parliament and served as Minister of Transportation during Maliki's second term.

Amri, who could not be reached for comment, is feared and loathed by many Sunnis for his alleged role in running death squads in recent years. In July, Human Rights Watch accused Badr forces of killing Sunni prisoners.

In recent battles with IS, Amri replaced his suit with a military uniform and transformed into a battlefield commander overnight, giving television interviews from the frontlines.

"Look at Amri's uniform and then compare it to any Iraqi uniform ... It's completely different," said a senior former security official. "Look for the uniform of the IRGC" – Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - "it's exactly one of them."

KATAIB HEZBOLLAH

The head of Iran's second proxy, Kataib Hezbollah, goes by the nom de guerre Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes. Many Iraqi officials simply call him al-Mohandes, or "the Engineer."

Mohandes, who could not be reached for comment for this story, is Iran's most powerful military representative in Iraq, according to senior Iraqi officials. At 60, he has distinctive white hair and a white beard. He studied engineering in Basra and joined Dawa, a political party banned by Saddam, according to a Facebook page set up in his name.

He began working with Iran's Revolutionary Guard in Kuwait in 1983, organizing attacks against embassies of countries that supported Saddam in the war against Iran. He has repeatedly denied involvement in such attacks.

Following the first Gulf War, Mohandes lived in exile in Iran. After the United States invaded Iraq, he returned home and was elected to parliament. Even then, it was clear where his allegiances lay. On a 2006 trip to Tehran, when protocol dictated that the Iranian and Iraqi delegations sit apart, "he sat with the Iranians," said Askari, the former Maliki adviser. "This was not normal."

Kataib Hezbollah is the most secretive of Iraq's militias, and the only one the U.S. Treasury labels a terrorist organization. In 2009 the Treasury sanctioned Mohandes for his alleged role in committing and facilitating attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces. Mohandes has denied those charges, though his group's website features several video clips showing improvised explosive devices blowing up American Humvees.

He has a house in Baghdad's Green Zone close to Maliki, Iraqi officials say. In recent years, he occasionally delivered messages between Maliki and Iranian officials. He frequently visits Iran, where his family lives, according to a former senior Iraqi official.

When Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's most powerful cleric, called on Shi'ites to rise up and fight IS earlier this year, Mohandes took charge of the tens of thousands of new volunteers. "He's involved in everything: administration, funding, logistics and planning," said a senior Iraqi security official.

ASAIB AHL AL-HAQ

The third big Iraqi militia, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, started as a splinter group of the Mahdi Army, a paramilitary force formed by anti-American Shi'ite leader Moqtada al-Sadr during the U.S. occupation.

Under leader Khazali, Asaib gained notoriety for kidnapping and killing Sunni civilians and carrying out attacks against U.S. forces.

In 2007 he was arrested by U.S. military forces for his alleged role in an attack on an Iraqi government compound in Karbala, which left five American soldiers dead. Khazali managed to use a kidnapped British consultant as a bargaining chip to win his own release. (British and U.S. military denied striking such a deal.)

Askari, the former Maliki adviser, played a key role in negotiations. When a senior British commander was skeptical that Khazali could wield power from Camp Cropper, the high security facility where he was imprisoned, Khazali asked for a phone. "They brought him a phone and he made a call," said Askari. "Within two weeks the attacks stopped."

Asaib has grown stronger in recent years. Sunnis say Maliki allowed Shi'ite militias, particularly Asaib, to kidnap and kill ordinary Sunnis to solidify his grip on power. Some Sunnis began to see Asaib as Maliki's personal militia.

Khazali was not available to be interviewed. At Asaib's offices in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood, the group's spokesman, Naim al Aboudi, denied that Asaib is closely linked with Maliki or that the group targeted Sunni civilians. "We are ... working toward building a more stable country," he said.

THE SYRIA CONNECTION

Fighters from all three militias have sharpened their combat skills in Syria in recent years. In late 2011, as the Syrian conflict grew, Iran stepped in to defend Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Assad is a follower of the Alawite faith, an offshoot of Shi'ism.

Iraqi Shi'ite fighters also flocked to Syria. Billboards and posters in Baghdad praise Iraqi "martyrs" in the conflict.

Syria has also helped militia fighters hone their media skills. Internet videos set to a booming soundtrack of Shi'ite militant religious songs show fighters shooting rocket-propelled grenades, sniping from rooftops and firing heavy machine guns from pickup trucks.

Some Iraqi Shi'ite militia commanders concede that defending Assad has been unsavory. But they argue that fighting in Syria was necessary for broader regional reasons, namely the struggle that Iran and its allies are waging against Israel.

"Bashar is a dictator," said Abu Hamza, a burly commander from Kataib Hezbollah who has fought in Syria. "But his presence there preserves the line of resistance."

BREAKING THE SIEGE

One of the biggest rallying points in recent months was Amerli, an Iraqi town of some 15,000 Shi'ites, which was besieged by IS for two months. Most residents there are Turkmen, not Arabs, but that did not change the symbolism of the conflict for Shi'ites. Graffiti sprayed outside the town in August read "Amerli is the Karbala of the age" – a reference to a seventh century battle that is a defining moment for Shi'ites.

Iran helped train Kataib fighters in the use of AK-47 assault rifles, heavy machine guns, mortars, rockets and IEDs, according to Abu Abdullah, the Kataib commander. Kataib fighters also used a camera-equipped drone to gather information on IS positions. A Reuters reporter met two men who spoke Farsi, the language of Iran, accompanying Asaib fighters during the battle. A third man said he had come from Iran to train police.

When the battle began in late August, Shi'ite militias teamed up with Kurdish fighters to attack IS positions, as American aircraft bombed around the town.

The importance of the battle for Iran was underscored when photographs and videos surfaced on the Internet that allegedly showed Revolutionary Guard commander Soleimani in the town.

In early September, a group of Shi'ite fighters and Kurdish peshmerga fought to protect a small village near Amerli called Yangije. Some 50 IS fighters had attacked the village in the early morning. After nearly eight hours of fighting, the Shi'ites and Kurds pushed the fighters out.

The next morning, Shi'ite and peshmerga fighters went house-to-house to check IS had cleared out. They came across an IS fighter hiding beneath a blanket. The man shot and killed one peshmerga and detonated a suicide belt, injuring several others.

Around midday, the burned and mangled body of the IS fighter was lying in the sun when a group of Shi'ite fighters approached. A Reuters team saw one Shi'ite fighter behead the corpse with a large knife while a handful of fighters filmed with their phones. The dead fighter's head was mounted on a knife, and one Shi'ite fighter shouted, "This is revenge for our martyrs!"

The Shi'ite fighters put the head in a sack and took it away with them.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/ ... ZA20141112

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BBC News Middle East

Islamic State: 'Baghdadi message' issued by jihadists



Islamic State has released an audiotape it says was recorded by its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, days after reports that he had been killed or injured.

In the recording, released via social media, the speaker says IS fighters will never stop fighting "even if only one soldier remains".

Correspondents say the recording appears authentic and recent.

BBC analysts say the message is probably also intended to counter the claim that Baghdadi has been killed.

The IS leader was said to have been caught in a US-led air strike near the Iraqi city of Mosul last week.

Thursday's 17-minute recording makes no direct reference to that air strike, but does mention some developments that have occurred since then.

An English transcript of the recording was also released:

https://ia601509.us.archive.org/6/items ... nglish.pdf

Meanwhile, US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said the US-led coalition fighting IS was making progress, but must "prepare for a long and difficult struggle".

The IS audiotape mentions US President Barack's Obama decision to deploy an extra 1,500 troops to Iraq - a move announced shortly after the air strike on Mosul.

BBC Arab affairs editor Sebastian Usher says the tone of the recording is characteristically defiant and incendiary, and the cadences and language do sound like those of the Islamic State leader.

The recording calls on IS supporters to "erupt volcanoes of jihad" across the world.

He disparages opponents of IS as "Jews, Crusaders, apostates... [and] devils", and says the US and its allies "are terrified, weak and powerless".

The recording also calls for attacks in Saudi Arabia - describing Saudi leaders as "the head of the snake" - and says that the US-led military campaign in Syria and Iraq is failing.

Gulf state rulers, who have joined the US-led coalition against IS, are described as "treacherous".

The recording also refers to new pledges of allegiance from jihadist groups in Libya, Egypt and Yemen that occurred in recent days.

"O soldiers of the Islamic State... erupt volcanoes of jihad everywhere. Light the earth with fire against all dictators," the voice on the recording says.

In Washington on Thursday, US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel told Congress that there had been "steady and sustainable progress" against IS.

In contrast to the audio messaging disparaging the coalition efforts, Mr Hagel said US-led air strikes had helped in "degrading and destroying Isil's [IS] war fighting capacity and in denying safe haven to its fighters".

"Directly and through support of Iraqi forces, coalition air strikes have hit Isil's command and control, its leadership, its revenue sources... and impaired its ability to amass forces," he added.

'IS coins'

The self-styled Islamic State - a jihadist group also known as Isis, or Isil - has seized swathes of Syria and Iraq since June, declaring a caliphate over territory it controls.

It emerged on Thursday that the group has reportedly announced plans to mint its own gold, silver and copper coins.

A statement posted on jihadist sites, which could not be independently verified, said the coins were to be used in IS-controlled areas.

The statement said this would counter "the tyrannical currency system that was imposed on the Muslims" - thought to be a reference to the US dollar.

Mass killings

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi himself is a shadowy figure who only showed himself publicly for the first time in a video released in July, when he delivered a sermon in Mosul, Iraq.

He claims lineage from the family and tribe of the Prophet Muhammad.

Although currently limited to Iraq and Syria, IS has promised to "break the borders" of Jordan and Lebanon and to "free Palestine".

The group has attracted support from extremists around the world and demands that all swear allegiance to its leader.

Its brutal tactics - including mass killings and the beheadings of soldiers and journalists - have sparked fear and outrage across the world, including from Muslim groups.

In February, al-Qaeda disavowed IS for its actions in Syria.



Analysis: BBC Security Correspondent Frank Gardner

All week rumours have swirled around the status of Islamic State's elusive leader. Within hours of new, unsubstantiated claims on Thursday that he had died, an audio message emerged purporting to be from him, promising an expansion of IS's campaign into new countries. It calls for attacks on the "'Land of the Two Holy Mosques", meaning Saudi Arabia, listing Shia Muslims as the top target.

It mentions new oaths of allegiance from jihadists in Egypt, Algeria and Libya and mocks the announcement of 1,500 additional US military advisers in Iraq, saying US-led air strikes had failed to stop the advance of Islamic State.

In fact the airstrikes have done exactly that in military terms, driving IS fighters off key dams, but there is no denying the spread of IS's popularity among violent extremists across the Middle East and even in Europe.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-30041257

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(Anthea: interesting and informative site)

Iraq forces retake strategic town of Baiji

Iraqi forces retook the strategic northern town of Baiji, near the country's largest oil refinery, on Friday after more than two weeks of fighting with the Islamic State group, officials said.

Baiji, which had been out of government control for months, lies on the main highway to Iraq's IS-controlled second city Mosul, and its recapture further isolates militants in the city of Tikrit, to the south.

It is the largest town to be recaptured by government forces since IS-led militants overran much of the country's Sunni Arab heartland in June, and the victory is one of the most significant in the conflict so far.

"Iraqi forces were able to regain complete control of the town of Baiji," Ahmed al-Krayim, the head of the Salaheddin provincial council, told AFP.

An army major general, a police colonel and an army major all confirmed to AFP that Baiji was retaken.

State television also reported that the town was back in government hands.

Soldiers, police, Shiite militiamen and tribesmen were all involved in the operation to retake Baiji, and are now pushing farther north, Krayim said.

"Iraqi forces are on their way to the Baiji refinery," north of the town, where security forces have held out against repeated jihadist attacks, he said.

Breaking through to the massive refinery would be another significant win for the government in Baghdad.

The Baiji refinery once produced some 300,000 barrels of refined petroleum products per day, meeting 50 percent of the country's needs, but it would take time before it could be brought back online.

The operation to retake Baiji began more than four weeks ago when security forces and pro-government fighters began advancing towards the town from the south, slowed by bombs militants had planted on the way, and finally entered the town on October 31.

But the victory was marred by a suicide bombing Friday that targeted a military command headquarters set up at Tikrit University, south of Baiji, killing at least four people, army officers said.

Three suicide bombers and other militants had attacked the same headquarters in late October, disrupting the initial push into Baiji.

IS also claimed a truck bombing in Baiji that killed a senior police officer last week.

Iraqi troops initially struggled to regain ground from IS after the start of the jihadist offensive.

But helped by US-led air strikes, support from Shiite militias and Sunni tribesmen, assistance from international advisers, and a signficant reshuffling of top officers, Baghdad's forces have begun to make progress.

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Iraq_fo ... i_999.html

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CNN

U.S. Joint Chiefs chairman goes to Iraq to discuss ISIS fight

Days after refusing to rule out recommending U.S. combat troops in Iraq, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff made an unexpected trip Saturday to the turbulent Middle Eastern nation to talk with officials there about combating ISIS, an official said.

Gen. Martin Dempsey traveled to Iraq "to confer (with) Iraqi political and security officials on next phase of the campaign to defeat (ISIS)," according to a tweet from Brett McGurk, a U.S. diplomat focused on ISIS as well as Iran and Iraq.

Pentagon spokesman Jim Gregory added that Dempsey met with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, as well as U.S. Ambassador Stuart Jones and U.S. troops and commanders in the country.

Iraqi PM: U.S.-led campaign welcome if 'they do it right'

"The primary purpose of his visit is to get a firsthand look at the situation in Iraq, receive briefings, and get better sense of how the campaign is progressing," said Gregory.

During the meeting between Dempsey and al-Abadi, the two discussed the fight against ISIS, including new developments and progress made by Iraqi forces, according to a statement from the Prime Minister's office.

The troops' victories are part of a strategic plan for liberating all Iraqi territory, and it will be achieved, al-Abadi said.

Dempsey stressed U.S. commitment to to support Iraq in its fight against ISIS and pledged continued support of Iraq's armed forces through the ongoing air campaign, and by arming and training Iraqi troops, according to the Prime Minister's statement.

Dempsey's trip, which wasn't announced beforehand, is the first since the U.S. military earlier this year launched Operation Inherent Resolve. That's what Washington is calling its military campaign against ISIS, which consists largely of U.S.-led airstrikes against the terrorist group as well as support for the Iraqi military.

Christopher Harmer, an analyst with the Institute for the Study of War, said Saturday that it's very important for U.S. military leaders like Dempsey to get away from Washington and see for themselves how this fight is going.

"I think what General Dempsey is doing here is sending a message both to the U.S. troops that he understands what's happening, that he wants to get firsthand knowledge of what's happening," Harmer said. "And (he is) also sending a message to our allies, the Iraqi government, that he's taking this seriously and that we're committed to an ultimate victory on their behalf."

Dempsey has been one of President Barack Obama administration's leading voices on the situation in Iraq, where ISIS -- which calls itself the Islamic State -- has taken over wide swaths of territory, reportedly terrorizing citizens in the process.

Obama has made going after ISIS a top priority in recent months, including expanding coalition airstrikes against the Islamist extremist group into neighboring Syria. Yet he has insisted that American combat troops won't play a role in Syria or in Iraq, though military advisers have recently been sent to Iraq.

Yet in testimony Thursday to the House Armed Services Committee, Dempsey said he would not rule out asking the President to send U.S. ground troops into Iraq. He told the committee that he could envision scenarios in which a U.S. ground contingent would be necessary there, particularly if the coalition moves to retake Mosul or the western border with Syria.

"I'm not predicting at this point that I would recommend that those forces in Mosul and along the border would need to be accompanied by U.S. forces," cautioned Dempsey, "but we're certainly considering it."

By Greg Botelho, Laura Koran and Salma Abdelaziz contributed to this report.

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/11/15/world ... index.html

[Anthea]

Reuters

UK looking into reports IS beheading suspect wounded

Britain said on Saturday it was investigating reports that a man believed to be a British national suspected of carrying out beheadings in videos released by Islamic State (IS) had been wounded in a U.S.-led air strike last week.

The man, dubbed "Jihadi John" by the British media, was believed to have been injured in an air attack on a summit of IS leaders in an Iraqi town close to the Syrian border last Saturday, Britain's Mail on Sunday newspaper reported.

The group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was also said to have been wounded in the attack, the paper added.

"We are aware of reports," a British Foreign Office spokeswoman said. "We cannot confirm these reports."

A speech purporting to be by Baghdadi was released on Thursday following contradictory accounts out of Iraq that he had been wounded last Friday in U.S. air strikes.

U.S. officials said on Tuesday they could not confirm whether Baghdadi was hit in a strike near Falluja in Iraq.

According to the Mail on Sunday, which said its source was an unnamed nurse, "Jihadi John", Baghdadi and other wounded IS figures were taken to hospital and then driven to the Syrian city of Raqqa.

The paper said it was not clear how serious their injuries were.

In videos released by Islamic State, the masked, black-clad militant brandishing a knife and speaking with an English accent appears to have carried out the beheadings of two Americans and two Britons.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/ ... W420141115

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Mail Online

EXCLUSIVE: Got him! Jihadi John is 'wounded in US airstrike on secret bunker meeting of ISIS high command that killed 10'



Jihadi John was in a bunker in northern Iraq with the leader of ISIS
A US airstrike destroyed the bunker, killing an estimated 10 ISIS leaders
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was believed to have been injured in the airstrike
The Foreign Office confirmed they are investigating reports the injuries
A nurse claimed one of the men was the man who 'slaughtered journalists'

By Abul Taher for The Mail on Sunday

Jihadi John, the Briton who beheaded two British and two American hostages held by Islamic State terrorists, has been injured in a US-led air strike, according to reports received by the Foreign Office.

The masked ‘executioner’ with a London accent is believed to have narrowly escaped death when he attended a summit of the group’s leaders in an Iraqi town close to the Syrian border last Saturday.

The meeting was targeted by American and Iraqi jets.

The US Air Force attacked a bunker where Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi and Jihadi John were meeting in Iraq

‘We are aware of reports that this individual [Jihadi John] has been injured, and we are looking into them,’ a Foreign Office spokesman told The Mail on Sunday.

This newspaper has received an independent account of how Jihadi John was injured and rushed to hospital after a devastating air strike in Al Qaim, in Anbar Province, Western Iraq.

The Foreign Office spokesman added: ‘We have a number of sources of information coming in.

‘The incident occurred last weekend, and so we have received the reports in the last few days. We don’t have any representation inside Syria, and so it is difficult to confirm these reports.’

The Foreign Office also issued an official statement saying: ‘We are aware of reports. We cannot confirm these reports.’ A spokesman for US Central Command said they were unable to confirm the details for security reasons.

The joint US-Iraqi mission left at least ten IS commanders dead, and around 40 injured.

Those reportedly hurt included IS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.

But until now, Jihadi John’s presence at the meeting has not emerged.

It is also not known whether Jihadi John was intentionally targeted or merely happened to be present.

The secret, heavily guarded meeting took place last Saturday in a makeshift underground bunker beneath a house in Al Qaim. At least 30 tribal elders from various parts of Syria and Iraq gathered to pledge allegiance to Al-Baghdadi, according to our well-placed Syrian source. He said Jihadi John, as a senior IS figure in his own right, who goes by the nomme de guerre Jalman Al-Britani, was also present.

Sources claim that Jihadi John was injured and rushed to hospital following the surgical airstrike in Iraq which killed ten ISIS commanders, the killer, who has a London accent, murdered Steven Sotloff

According to our source, a nurse who treated the wounded in a hospital in Deir-ez-Zour, confirmed that one of the names on the injured list was Jalman, saying it was ‘the one who slaughtered the journalists’.

It is not clear how seriously the British fanatic was hurt, but the source said that both he and Al-Baghdadi were rushed to the Al Qaim General Hospital for treatment.

IS members issued urgent calls through the local mosque’s loudspeakers, appealing for the town’s residents to donate blood at the hospital.

Our source, who does not want to be identified for his own safety, added that Jihadi John, Al-Baghdadi and the other wounded IS personnel were then driven to Syria, and travelling 200 miles north along the Euphrates valley to the IS stronghold of Raqqa.

The injured were taken to two captured Syrian army barracks near the city in the hope that underground medical facilities there would provide protection against further air strikes.

The source said that hospitals in Raqqa and nearby Deir-ez-Zour were ordered to take their medical supplies and staff to the secure bases, once the HQs of the Assad regime’s 17th Division and 93rd Brigade.

Jihadi John has become one of the world’s most hunted terrorists after beheading British aid workers David Haines, 44, from Perth, and Alan Henning, 47, from Manchester; and American journalists James Foley, 40, and Steven Sotloff, 31. Footage of the atrocities has been released online, and in the most recent gruesome execution video of Mr Henning, put out last month, the murderer threatened to behead another US hostage, Peter Kassig, 26, an aid worker.

British journalist John Cantlie, also held hostage, has been forced to appear in a series of internet propaganda videos for IS.

Our source, who has contacts with the IS leadership in Syria, also throws fresh light on the role played by Jihadi John within the terrorist group.

Unlike most other western Muslim recruits, he has risen to a position of some seniority. Normally, Western fighters occupy lowly positions, mainly being used as foot soldiers or performing guard duty. Although believed to formerly have been a prison guard for IS, Jihadi John was made a member of a shura council, or governing body, of an IS ‘wilayat’, or province.

IS is now controlling large areas of Syria and Iraq, which it has declared an Islamic caliphate. Jihadi John is understood to be in the shura council for the wilayat of Al Furat, an area that straddles the Syria-Iraq border and includes Al Qaim, the scene of the air strike.

Our source added that Jihadi John does not live in Raqqa, but in Al Bukamal, a small desert town which borders Iraq.

He is aged between 28 and 31, and is fluent in English, Arabic and classical Arabic, the language of the Koran, according to our source. He first joined IS in Iraq when he left the UK, but then moved to Syria.

The source said that Jihadi John usually travels in a black Audi jeep, and he has six other British terrorists with him who act as his bodyguards.

In the confusion following the bombing last weekend, rumours swiftly spread that IS leader Al-Baghdadi had been killed.

Last week, in order to scotch those rumours, he issued a 17-minute audio recording, exhorting extremists to ‘erupt volcanoes of jihad everywhere’.

The Mail on Sunday has obtained an Iraqi intelligence document from the Federal Intelligence and Investigation unit of the Ministry of Interior, which outlines last Saturday’s attack.

The document said that Al-Baghdadi was wearing black and first went to a kindergarten building before going to have lunch at an IS leader’s house. It is believed that the air strikes took place when he was meeting the other leaders in a bunker beneath that property.

Muhammad Nasser Delli, an MP for Anbar province, told The Mail on Sunday that local residents confirmed to him that they saw Al-Baghdadi being treated at Al Qaim.

He said: ‘A number of people saw him there, but he did not stay at the hospital long. There were lots of women and children that were killed on Saturday during the air strikes.’

The Iraqi intelligence paper also states that Al-Baghdadi was taken to Al Qaim hospital, before being driven to Syria.

It lists 16 IS leaders as having been killed in the attack, and nine injured.

Among the dead are Abu Huzaifa Al-Adnany, a security guard to Al-Baghdadi, and Abu Quatayba, the cleric of Al Furat wilaya, who would sit in the same shura council as Jihadi John.

Also dead is a prominent IS fighter from Chechnya called Abu Abdul Rahman Al-Shishani, says the document.

Link to Article - Photos - Video:

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/news/arti ... njury.html

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UN News Centre

Iraq: UN convoy hit by explosion in Baghdad, mission reports

17 November 2014 – A United Nations convoy of three vehicles proceeding from the Baghdad International Airport to the International Zone was hit with at least one explosion this morning, the Organization’s assistance mission in the country reported today.

According to astatement from the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), no UN personnel were killed or injured in the incident and all proceeded safely back to the UN Compound. One of the vehicles sustained serious damage.

“The unfortunate incident this morning will not deter the UN from continuing its work in support of Iraq and its people, who have lived with violence for too long,” UNAMI chief Nickolay Mladenov said.

He commended the UN security teams whose “professionalism has ensured that no staff member was injured or killed today” and said that he looked forward to working together with the Government of Iraq in ensuring that the perpetrators of this attack are brought to justice.

Mr. Mladenov is expected in New York tomorrow to brief the UN Security Council on the latest developments in Iraq.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=49358

[Anthea]

Consortium News

Neocons’ Fateful Iraq ‘Surge’ Myth

After provoking the Iraq War debacle, America’s neocons found themselves on the defensive but soon came up with a “theme” to salvage their reputations – the myth of the “successful surge” – what might be called the last lie of Iraq War I or the first lie of Iraq War II, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains.
By Paul R. Pillar

One of the most persistently voiced myths about U.S. foreign policy of the past several years — and because of that persistent voicing, one apparently already entrenched in the minds of many Americans — concerns the status as of about five years ago of the big experiment in regime change and nation-building known as the Iraq War.

According to the myth, the war was all but won by then, with just a few more touches yet to be added to complete the forging of a stable Iraqi democracy, before the Obama administration snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by prematurely withdrawing the remaining U.S. troops that were needed to finish the job. No matter how often the myth gets repeated, it is just as false now as the first part of the myth was five years ago.

It is easy to see the motivations for promoting the myth. Probably the leading motivation is to relieve the cognitive dissonance and the blow to personal reputations of those who promoted or strongly supported the war itself — the grandest neoconservative project ever and the biggest foreign policy endeavor of the George W. Bush administration — only to see it materialize as one of the biggest and costliest blunders in the history of U.S. foreign policy.

Also rough on amour-propre, and in a way more worthy of understanding and even respect from the rest of us than is the case with the war-promoters, is how those in uniform who were given the task of carrying out the project have not been able to claim honestly that their efforts and sacrifices resulted in a victory. Yet another obvious motivation, which arises whenever Barack Obama’s political opponents find a stick they can employ to beat him, is to use the troubles of Iraq today as one more such stick.

With regard particularly to that last motivation, it always has been puzzling how the part of the myth relating to Obama’s policies gets propagated even though it was the Bush administration that established the schedule for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq by 2011. The Obama administration merely carried out the terms of the agreement that the Bush administration had negotiated with the Iraq government.

In response to assertions that Mr. Obama “didn’t try hard enough” to negotiate a new agreement with different terms, which implication are we supposed to draw: that Mr. Bush did not try hard enough in the first place, or that when Bush people and Obama people each try to do the same thing we should expect the Obama people to be better at it? But the myth has more significant consequences than its effect on the partisan scorecard.

A reflection of the discrepancy between the myth and Iraqi reality arose in a public debate in which I participated a couple of months ago, the topic of which concerned the efficacy, or lack thereof, of additional applications of U.S. military force in the Middle East. One of my opponents on the pro-efficacy side (a prominent neocon pundit) asserted that Iraq was “at peace” in 2009.

As one measure of what this supposedly peaceful state looked like, consider the statistics compiled by the Iraq Body Count project, which show 5,309 civilian deaths from the continued violence in Iraq in 2009. For comparison, that is more than total U.S. combat deaths for the entire war. It also includes only documented civilian deaths, which are basically collateral damage, and does not reflect either undocumented casualties or the full toll among government forces and militias who were the principal combatants.

The civil war unleashed by the U.S. invasion and ouster of the Iraqi regime has had an unbroken history, from then through today. Like most wars, its intensity has ebbed and flowed. The surge of U.S. troops in 2007 and 2008 was one factor, but only one, involved in one of the ebbs. And if there are more than 160,000 U.S. troops in a country, as there were in Iraq at the peak of the U.S. occupation, we certainly should expect some effect on the ebb and flow.

Even with the temporary ebbing of the violence, the issues driving the civil war remained unsettled — fundamental issues involving distribution of political power in Iraq. The surge was intended to make it possible for Iraqis to resolve those issues, and in that respect the surge failed.

There is an unbroken history from the conflict of interests that caused the civil war and its associated mélange of insurgencies to break out a decade ago, to the conflict of interests — which is mostly the same unresolved conflict of interests among sectarian and ethnic communities — that underlies the violence in Iraq today.

There also is an unbroken history from the most violent and extreme of the groups in Iraq as of several years ago and the feared group ISIS — which is the same group with a new name and a new leader — that is such a preoccupation today.

There never has been a logic accompanying the myth. If eight-and-a-half years of U.S troops in Iraq were not enough, then why should we expect a few more years (or would it turn out to be only a few?) of a troop presence to be sufficient? And if 160,000 troops were not enough, then why should we expect a smaller number (or would it re-escalate to a large number?) to be sufficient?

The myth seems to be predicated on some strange process of telepathic osmosis by which democratic thoughts in the minds of American troops in Iraq would somehow have gotten former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to have turned away from his sectarian and authoritarian habits and nourished an inclusive, tolerant, multi-confessional democracy.

What else exactly could U.S. troops in Iraq have done if they had lingered longer in Iraq to have made such a political difference? Threaten to overthrow Maliki, through a kind of U.S.-led military coup, if he didn’t get with the program? If U.S. forces instead would have been helping to provide security against the extremist groups and Sunni insurgents whose support has been rooted all along in opposition to the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad, that would only have reduced rather than increased Maliki’s incentive to reform and to be more inclusive.

If telepathic osmosis was not expected to work and whatever good U.S. troops would have done would be in spite of the unhelpful ways of Iraqi politicians such as Maliki, then the job would never be done, if the job is defined as making way for a stable Iraqi democracy standing on its own.

Or at least it would not be done on any time scale less than generational — a time scale, measured in decades, long enough for a new political culture to evolve. Until then, U.S. troops would have been sitting forcefully and indefinitely on the ingredients of a volatile stew — a little like how Saddam Hussein sat on top of it in a much more brutal way, before the U.S. removed him and the stew boiled over.

No, we never won, or almost won, the Iraq War. One of the uniformed leaders who was given the task to try to do that, now retired three-star general Daniel Bolger, has painfully — but honestly, and not buying into myths that would be soothing for him and his colleagues — acknowledged this by writing:

“The surge in Iraq did not ‘win’ anything. It bought time. It allowed us to kill some more bad guys and feel better about ourselves. But in the end, shackled to a corrupt, sectarian government in Baghdad and hobbled by our fellow Americans’ unwillingness to commit to a fight lasting decades, the surge just forestalled today’s stalemate. Like a handful of aspirin gobbled by a fever patient, the surge cooled the symptoms. But the underlying disease didn’t go away.”

The damage that the myth about Iraq inflicts is not limited to fostering public misunderstanding about an important episode in modern American history, although that is indeed harmful. It is not limited to fostering misunderstanding about who was right and who was wrong about that episode and thus who should and should not be listened to on similar matters, a misunderstanding that also is harmful.

The damage extends to the encouragement of more general misconceptions about efficacy of the exertion of U.S. power overseas.

George Kennan made a somewhat similar observation about an earlier set of myths and recriminations concerning developments in another faraway country that has been a preoccupation of Americans. The belief that we “lost China,” wrote Kennan, “seriously distorted the understanding of a great many Americans about foreign policy, implying that our policy was always the decisive mover of events everywhere in the world; that in any country of the world, including China, we had it in our power to prevent the rise to positions of authority of people professing Marxist sympathies…”

The ideologies that Americans fear the most now are ones other than Marxism. And the myth involving Iraq is a more extensive one than the one involving China in that it posits the United States having “won” Iraq before “losing” it. But the damage Kennan identifies — the mistaken belief that if U.S. power and especially military power is applied with sufficient determination and persistence, the governments of other countries will be composed of people who are to our liking or at least act in accordance with our liking — is the same.

Paul R. Pillar, in his 28 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to be one of the agency’s top analysts. He is now a visiting professor at Georgetown University for security studies. (This article first appeared as a blog post at The National Interest’s Web site. Reprinted with author’s permission.)

Really interesting Comments suggest you follow link to read them

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/11/17/ne ... urge-myth/

[Anthea]

Most of the violence in Iraq goes unnoticed by the world at large

Let us remember exactly what is happening in Iraq

Sunday 16 November: 12 killed
Baghdad: 5 by car bomb, IED.
Hit: 5 executed.
Haditha-Baiji: 2 more lorry drivers executed.

Saturday 15 November: 24 killed
Baghdad: 10 killed by IEDs.
Taji: 6 by suicide car bomber.
Jalawla: 2 executed.
Muqdadiya: 1 by gunfire.
Falluja: 1 by shelling.
Haditha-Beiji: 2 lorry drivers executed.
Baquba: 2 by shelling.

Friday 14 November: 30 killed
Baghdad: 27 killed by car bombs, IED.
Amara: 1 body.
Falluja: 2 by shelling.

Thursday 13 November: 54 killed
Baghdad: 12 by gunfire, IEDs, car bombs; 17 bodies.
Thar Thar: 16 executed.
Baquba: 2 by gunfire.
Falluja: 2 elders, 1 policeman executed.
Bani Saad: 1 by car bomb.
Latifiya: 2 by IED.
Madaen: 1 policeman by gunfire.

Wednesday 12 November: 31 killed
Mosul: 15 killed in air strikes.
Baghdad: 8 by car bomb, IEDs; 2 bodies.
Al-Garagoul, Hatimiya: 4 Sahwa members by IED.
Shirqat: 2 former army members buried alive.

Tuesday 11 November: 24 killed
Baghdad: 9 killed by IEDs, suicide bomber, gunfire; 3 bodies.
Baiji: 7 by suicide bomber.
Falluja: 3 family members by shelling.
Tuz: 1 by IED.
Hajaj: 1 by suicide bomber.

Monday 10 November: 26 killed
Makhoul: 11 by shelling.
Baghdad: 5 by IEDs.
Mosul: 5 executed.
Basra: 1 by gunfire.
Zubair: 1 body.
Muqdadiya: 2 by gunfire.
Abu Ghraib: 1 by gunfire.

1-10 November 720 innocent civilians killed

[Anthea]

A Kurd Builds His Own 'White House'

Near The Front Lines In Iraq, A Homage To The White House



There are a lot of American knockoffs in the Kurdish parts of northern Iraq: Burger Queen is Burger King's twin, and instead of Papa John's, people get their pizza at PJ's.

The latest knockoff comes courtesy of Kurdish businessman Shihab Shihab after he decided he'd like to live in the White House. So he's building one for himself, his wife and his child — a mere 50 miles or so from a raging war against the Sunni extremist group that calls itself the Islamic State, or ISIS.

The sound of drills, shovels and hammers fill the air in Erbil's Dream City, a district filled with ostentatious villas for the rich.

Construction workers are toiling away on the replica of the U.S. president's home in Washington.



But this one is a bit more new money, with Greek marble instead of sandstone making up the façade, complete with marble columns and the signature white portico of the White House facing Pennsylvania Avenue.

"I wanted a house people would talk about," Shihab says. "I wanted to create a new landmark that rivals the citadel. And I think if you have money you should live in luxury."

And Shihab has money: He built the first shopping mall in the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan.

But the similarities to the White House stop as soon as you walk inside. The bathrooms are finished with Italian tiles; 21-karat gold leaf is being applied to the ceiling and columns in the two huge dens as well as the banisters on the grand staircase.

Shihab plans to put a nine-foot crystal chandelier in the foyer. And one master suite isn't enough for Shihab, he's building two.

When asked how many bedrooms the house has, he laughs and replies that he doesn't know, the place is too big for him to remember.

We walk downstairs to the Turkish bath, indoor swimming pool surrounded by intricately designed Turkish tiles, and a multi-colored room that will be the gym. All improvements, he says, on the original White House.

Shihab's White House is more than 32,300 square feet (compared to 55,000 square feet in the real White House). And when it's done he hopes people talk about it as much as they talk about the White House in times of crisis.

He has a dream for President Obama to come to Kurdistan.

"If Obama comes, I will invite him to come here," Shihab says. "We will invite him to have Erbil kebab and fish."

And maybe the president will leave with some decorating ideas.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014 ... paign=news

[Anthea]

BBC News

Car bomb blast in Iraqi Kurdish city

Car bomb targets government building in Iraqi Kurdish capital, Irbil, local media say

A suicide car bomber has killed at least four people in the Iraqi Kurdish capital, Irbil, local media say.

The blast, accompanied by gunfire, was reported outside the governor's office, close to the historic citadel in the city centre.

Iraqi Kurds and Iraqi government forces have been battling an advance by Islamic State (IS) militants, but Irbil has largely avoided major attacks.

The oil city has a reputation as a safe base for foreigners.

The bomb exploded just before midday on Wednesday at the main checkpoint outside the governor's building, an official told AFP news agency.

Images from the scene showed burnt vehicles and a bloodstain on the pavement.

More news later

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BAGHDAD (AP)

Kurdish forces launched a new offensive Wednesday targeting Islamic State group extremists as a suicide bomber killed at least five people in the Kurds' regional capital.

The operation came as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said details haven't been finalized for a deal that would have his country train rebels to battle IS in Syria, where the militants also hold territory

A U.S.-led coalition is targeting IS with airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, supporting Western-backed Syrian rebels, Kurdish fighters and the Iraqi military on the ground. The strikes have helped halt the extremists' move to take the Syrian city of Kobani near the Turkish border, and enabled Iraqi forces to make key advances. On Tuesday, the Kurds captured six IS-controlled buildings in Kobani and confiscated a large amount of weapons and ammunition, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

In Iraq, the new offensive by Kurdish forces, known as the peshmerga, targeted areas in Diyala and Kirkuk provinces, said Jaber Yawer, a peshmerga spokesman. The IS extremists had seized the territory in their August offensive that saw them capture a third of Iraq.

In Diyala, the peshmerga worked with Iraqi security forces to retake the towns of Saadiya and Jalula, Yawer said. In Kirkuk, Kurdish forces backed by coalition airstrikes launched attacks to retake territory near the town of Kharbaroot, located 35 kilometers (22 miles) west of the city of Kirkuk.

The offensive began as a suicide car bomber struck in the heart of Irbil, killing at least five people, officials said. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the midday attack in the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, though authorities suspected the Islamic State group. Authorities also suspected IS in three Baghdad bombings that killed at least 10 people and wounded almost 30.

Turkey, while previously backing Syrian rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad, has been hesitant to aid the Kobani fight over its own fears about stoking Kurdish ambitions for an independent state. On Wednesday, Erdogan said no deal had been finalized for Turkey to train rebels under the auspices of the U.S.-led operation against IS.

"If we only talk about train and equip, we would be lying to ourselves," Erdogan said, reiterating that overthrowing Assad must be a priority as well.

Retired Marine Gen. John Allen, the U.S. envoy for the international coalition, held talks with Turkish officials in Ankara on Wednesday but few details were released.

The IS group has declared a self-styled Islamic caliphate in areas under its control in Iraq and Syria, governing it according to its violent interpretation of Shariah law. The group has carried out mass killings targeting government security forces, ethnic minorities and others against it, including a video released Sunday with militants showing they beheaded American aid worker Peter Kassig.

Among the militants in that video were two French citizens, identified by the government in Paris as Maxime Hauchard, 22, and Mickael Dos Santos, 22. Both men were said to have left for Syria in August 2013.

France also said Wednesday it would send an additional six fighter jets to back the U.S.-led coalition. The jets will be deployed next month to Jordan, reducing the flying time to Iraq, said Col. Gilles Jaron, a French military spokesman. France already has 12 aircraft taking part in strikes in Iraq.

Riechmann contributed from Istanbul. Associated Press writers Bram Janssen in Irbil, Iraq, Hamza Hendawi in Baghdad, Lori Hinnant and Jamey Keaten in Paris, Ryan Lucas in Beirut and Jon Gambrell in Cairo contributed to this report.

[Anthea]

Fox News - AP Exclusive:

Jailed Iraqi militant helps government in its fight against Islamic State group

The former Islamic State group commander walked into the visitors' room of his Baghdad prison, without the usual yellow jumpsuit and shackles his fellow inmates wear. In slippers and a track suit, he greeted guards with a big smile, kissing them on the cheeks.

The scene testifies to the strange path of Abu Shakr, a 36-year-old who joined al-Qaida out of anger over treatment of Iraq's Sunnis and rose in the group as it transformed into the extremist juggernaut now called the Islamic State. Finally, he became an informant against the group after his capture.

Arrested in late 2013, he was presented a choice by Iraqi security officials: Help them against the extremists and in return he would get jailhouse perks. Now with relatively free rein inside the confines of a maximum security prison complex, Abu Shakr can play with his five children, enjoy supervised visits and buddy up with the guards.

Security officials say he has given them guidance on the extremists' tactics and helped them find, capture and interrogate suspected militants. In Salahuddin province, a key front line north of Baghdad, he helped the military win back key areas this week, including the town of Beiji, where troops secured Iraq's largest oil refinery.

He clearly has been willing to act against his former group in return for access to his family — and perhaps, implicitly, to prevent any government action against them. But his personal sentiment toward the militants is hard to gauge. Speaking to The Associated Press, he didn't express any remorse for his involvement in the group or directly denounce its actions or talk of any ideological conversion. He only said he never liked the group's ferocious targeting of Shiites and Christians. "It was not supposed to be this way," he said.

"We can't stop this thing, but we can limit it," he said of the Sunni militant group. "Daesh has nothing to lose," he added, using its Arabic acronym.

He spoke to the AP with various prison guards coming in and out of the room and with an intelligence official — with whom he works closely — present for part of the time. He spoke on condition he be identified only by his nom de guerre to protect his family. IS militants have issued numerous death threats against him.

Abu Shakr's drive to wage jihad was twofold: He said he was enraged by the U.S.-led occupation in Iraq that overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003 and bitter toward the new Shiite-led government that Sunnis feel discriminates against them.

A graduate of Baghdad University, he joined al-Qaida's branch in Iraq in 2007. His reasoning, he said: "If we invaded America, what would be the reaction? The American people ... would resist, of course."

He said he climbed al-Qaida's ranks, starting as a foot soldier, moving from his native Diyala province to Baghdad, then to Salahuddin and finally stationed in the western city of Fallujah.

"When you get a new assignment with your company, sometimes you have to move," he said. "This was no different."

During that time, al-Qaida in Iraq's leaders — Abu Ayyub al-Masri and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi — were killed by a 2010 U.S. airstrike. They were replaced by the ambitious Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who would transform the group. In 2012, he began sending fighters into Syria, barging into that country's civil war. There, the group garnered battlefield prowess, resources and more fighters.

Abu Shakr was assigned to Fallujah in 2012. His task was to oversee security for al-Qaida's operations there. That meant in part organizing safehouses and movement between Iraq and Syria, but security officials said he was also responsible for Iraqi deaths from ordering militants in fighting with troops.

Fallujah fell completely to the militants in January this year, two months after Abu Shakr's arrest. But even at the time he deployed there, he said, much of the city was under the group's sway.

Their weapons were primitive at that time, he said. They could easily build explosives, he said, "but we had very few weapons. We had to rely on primitive car bombs, IEDs, as well as street fights with the army."

But they gradually drew support from Sunni tribes across Anbar province, resentful of the government. "The tribes feel the issue of oppression. For example, they didn't get a percentage of contracts ... or someone to represent them in the government," he said.

With resources from Syria, the group could provide fighters with a comfortable salary. Abu Shakr said he was getting the equivalent of $65 a month, plus an extra $45 for his wife and $20 per child.

Al-Baghdadi accelerated the group's transformation. In early 2013, the group renamed itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. It began seizing territory in Syria, leading to bloody frictions with Syrian rebels. Al-Qaida's central leader Ayman al-Zawahri began to criticize the network's Iraqi branch.

Under al-Baghdadi, "the operation changed," Abu Shakr said. Policies became "random," he said. Frictions with al-Qaida Central deepened. For example, "al-Zawahri objected to the policy of beheading. He told them, 'Don't get carried away with this publicity, it is not acceptable'," Abu Shakr said.

By the end of 2013, al-Qaida formally ejected al-Baghdadi's group. Al-Baghdadi burst forth only more powerful, first overrunning Fallujah and parts of Anbar. Then his fighters captured Iraq's second-largest city Mosul in the north in June. The group now controls around a third of Iraq and Syria.

By that point, however, Abu Shakr had been caught.

Iraqi intelligence forces had learned of his high-level role and began inquiring about him through informants around town. Haitham, an intelligence officer, said an intelligence team staked out his Fallujah home for 11 days, watching him and his family come and go. Haitham said he would even sneak into the house to listen to Abu Shakr's conversations. He spoke on condition he be identified only by his first name because he still works undercover.

Finally in late 2013, they arrested Abu Shakr. Intelligence officials worked to flip him. "Everyone has a weakness," Haitham said. "His biggest weakness is his family. ... We knew that if we were going to get him to cooperate with us, we needed to get his family too."

An Interior Ministry spokesman said Abu Shakr has not yet been sentenced for his collaboration with the radical group and the case is ongoing.

During the interview, Abu Shakr's 2-year-old daughter entered the visitor's room, her hair styled in a short bob. She greeted the guards with a bashful kiss on the cheek.

Abu Shakr says he considers the government his family's protector now. "I may be in prison for the rest of my life, and I'm sorry for that," he continued. "But I see now that it was my arrest that saved my family."

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/11/19 ... t-against/

[Anthea]

Reuters

Senior Islamic State figure killed in Mosul: sources
(Reporting by Saif Hamid and Raheem Salman in Baghdad, Mark Hosenball in Washington; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Michael Georgy and Giles Elgood)

An Islamic State leader has been killed in an air strike in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, residents and a local medical source said on Thursday.

Radwan Taleb al-Hamdouni, whom the sources described as the radical militant group's leader in Mosul, was killed with his driver when their car was hit in a western district of the city on Wednesday afternoon.

The ultra-hardline Islamic State swept through northern Iraq in June almost unopposed by the Iraqi army, consolidating gains made in the country's Sunni heartland region of Anbar.

Hamdouni was buried later on Wednesday. Large numbers of supporters, some carrying black Islamic State flags, attended the funeral, one source said.

Two U.S. officials said they were unable to confirm whether Hamdouni had been killed.

Hamdouni had been the Islamic State 'wali', or governor, of Mosul, which was captured by the group in June and is the largest city in a self-declared Islamic State caliphate straddling the border between northern Iraq and eastern Syria.

Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi chose a mosque in Mosul to deliver a sermon in July, his only appearance since he assumed the title of caliph, or Muslim leader.

Sources in Iraq said two weeks ago that he had been wounded in an air strike. The movement later released a defiant audio statement by Baghdadi.

A senior Iraqi official told Reuters earlier this month that Mosul was the focus of government efforts to defeat Islamic State, because of the city's size and symbolic status after Baghdadi's speech there.

The United States launched air strikes against the group in Iraq in August, later expanding operations to targets in Syria.

The air campaign helped Kurdish forces retake territory from the group in Iraq and defend the Syrian border town of Kobani from an ongoing IS offensive.

Islamic State fighters faced another setback this week when Iraqi officials said they had broken a five-month siege of the Baiji oil refinery, Iraq's largest, on Tuesday.

But militants continue to strike across the country.

A suicide bomber blew up a lorry on a bridge near the western city of Ramadi on Thursday, killing at least five people, a local official said.

Countries in the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State will meet in Brussels in early December, a NATO official said.

While some of NATO's 28 members are taking part in air strikes, the alliance has limited its role to coordinating assistance for Iraq.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/ ... FC20141120