ISIS – IRAQ - KURDISTAN : NEWS THREAD

[Anthea]

Reuters

Rivalries resurface in Iraqi town recaptured from Islamic State
By Isabel Coles

The blood of two militants killed during Islamic State's rout in the Iraqi town of Jalawla has yet to be washed away, but a turf war is already brewing between Kurdish and Shi'ite forces that jointly drove the insurgents out.

The recapture of disputed territory and towns such as Jalawla is reopening rivalries over the boundary between areas of Kurdish control and those administered by the Shi'ite-led Baghdad government.

Local Sunni Arabs displaced in the fighting have little choice but to align themselves with one side or the other.

Not long after Islamic State began its offensive across Iraq this summer, Kurdish commanders in the eastern province of Diyala invited the head of the largest Sunni Arab tribe in Jalawla to discuss jointly resisting the insurgents.

"We sat with them here in this very building," said Brigadier General Barzan Ali Shawas, describing the meeting with Sheikh Faisal al-Karwi in a Kurdish peshmerga barracks on the banks of the Diyala river, lined with date palms.

"We said: What do you want? True, you are Arabs and we are Kurds, but the unity of Iraq is in our interest." The sheikh had replied he would consider the Kurds' offer to set up a unit for local Sunnis under peshmerga command, but he never came back with an answer.

Since that June day, Jalawla changed hands several times, until the peshmerga and Shi'ite militia drove the militants out on Nov. 23. According to Shawas, they agreed before the offensive that the Shi'ite militia would withdraw as soon as it was over and hand full control to the Kurds, but that has yet to happen.

Jalawla, which lies about 150 km (90 miles) northeast of Baghdad, is overwhelmingly Arab and was under the central government's jurisdiction until Islamic State overran it. However, the Kurds say it was theirs until the 1970s, when Saddam Hussein brought in Sheikh Faisal's Karwiya tribe to "Arabise" the area.

Now it is deserted except for stray animals, Shi'ite militiamen and peshmerga, marking their territory with flags and graffiti. The atmosphere is tense.

"Jalawla is Kurdistani," is spray-painted on the front of a bakery. Fridges dragged into the road as barricades are beginning to rust.

Shi'ite fighters drive a pick-up truck with a picture of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the bonnet. One gets out and approaches the Kurds, finger on the trigger of his rifle, to ask if they have permission to be there from the head of the Shi'ite Khorasani Brigades militia.

"If they retain a fanatic stance about the areas they have taken, there's no way we will allow them," said Jawad al-Hosnawi, the Khorasani Brigades' field commander.

Iraqi Kurds have controlled an autonomous region since the early 1990s and their fighters moved into other disputed areas this year to combat Islamic State.

But Hosnawi rejects any further Kurdish ambitions. "Our problem is if they want to separate from Iraq or form an ethnic state - no way," he said.

RESIDENTS FEAR MILITIAS

Cats pick through uncollected rubbish in Jalawla and a cow strolls down the street, oblivious to the danger of thousands of mines planted by the militants. A burst of gunfire and the occasional thud of an explosion can be heard.

Shawas promised civilians would be allowed to return, except those who sided with Islamic State, once a bomb disposal team finishes its work, and water and electricity are restored.

Hosnawi said the Kurds were bulldozing Sunni homes to discourage them from coming back.

Many Jalawla residents are camping a few kilometers away on a football pitch, its perimeter fence draped with laundry. They celebrated the news that Islamic State had been forced from Jalawla and the adjacent town of Saadiya.

Most said they had fled not the militants, but air strikes targeting them. Now they fear the Shi'ite forces, who have killed Sunnis and destroyed their homes in other towns they recaptured from Islamic States.

"We want to go back but the militias will slaughter us," said a 40-year-old farmer from Saadiya who was too afraid to give his name. "We ask the peshmerga to annex Jalawla and Saadiya to the (Kurdistan) region so we can live in peace."

To slow enemy advances, Islamic State blew up bridges across the milky waters of the Diyala river, into which some militants flung themselves to escape when the game was up.

The blood of two insurgents who did not get away stains the entrance to a shop that used to sell roofing. Its shutters are down now and daubed with Shi'ite slogans.

Sheikh Faisal confirmed rejecting the Kurds’ proposal, and says his tribe had fought the peshmerga to prevent them taking over a base abandoned by the Iraqi army.

"They won't let Arabs return, mostly the Karwiya. They want to take Jalawla. It's an Arab area," he said by telephone from the nearby town of Baquba.

He denies collaborating with Islamic State, as the Kurds allege, and says the militants blew up his house in Jalawla because he refused to join them.

Unlike the displaced residents, Sheikh Faisal's nephew Zumhar Jamal al-Karwi said Jalawla should remain under the Baghdad government, not the Kurds.

"We won't accept Jalawla remaining in Kurdish clutches. If they cling to it by force, it will be retaken by force," Zumhar said. "We are prepared to fight against the Kurds alongside the militias unless the peshmerga leave Jalawla."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/ ... 6E20141208

[Anthea]

BBC News Middle East

Islamic State: Coalition 'pledges more troops' for Iraq

The US-led coalition fighting Islamic State (IS) militants has pledged to send an additional 1,500 troops to Iraq, a top US commander has said.

Lt Gen James Terry, who is co-ordinating efforts against IS, said the soldiers would be in addition to 3,100 US soldiers already promised.

He did not say which coalition nations would provide the extra troops or what role they would play.

The US has agreed to send troops to Iraq in an advisory role.

Coalition members discussed the Islamic State issue and made the troop pledge at a security conference in the region last week, Gen Terry said.

Gen Terry also told the conference that air strikes against IS were taking a toll on the militants' campaign in Iraq and Syria.

The US state department says nearly 60 countries belong to the coalition, although most play no direct role in the air strikes.

It is hoped the deployment of additional soldiers will increase the effectiveness of the Iraqi army, much of which proved ineffective under an IS onslaught last summer.

"While [the Iraqi security forces] have a long way to go I think they're becoming more capable every day," Lt Terry said.

"When you start now to balance the different capabilities out across the coalition, I think we're doing pretty well in terms of boots on the ground."

Meanwhile, the Combined Joint Task Force announced that US-led coalition forces carried out 15 air strikes in Syria and 31 in Iraq between 3 and 8 December.

IS controls large areas of Syria and Iraq, imposing a rigid version of Sunni Islam and persecuting or killing non-believers.

The group has also executed several western hostages and has promised to kill more.

Earlier on Monday US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said that the US would not be reviewing its policy of not paying ransoms in hostage situations, in spite of several failed rescue bids in the last few months.

In the latest incident, British-born US journalist Luke Somers and South African teacher Pierre Korkie were both killed by al-Qaeda gunmen in Yemen during an attempted rescue operation on Saturday.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-30388718

[Anthea]

UPI

Islamic State targeted Iraqi military in multi-faceted attack north of Samarra
By JC Finley

Islamic State was suspected in a suicide car bombing attack Wednesday north of Samarra, Iraq, that targeted Iraqi security forces.

Death toll estimates ranged from nine to 27, with an unknown number of civilian and military killed.

"A trapped tanker led by a suicide bomber exploded at noon today, targeting a checkpoint of security forces in Mikeshifa area north of Samarra, (40 km south of Tikrit), resulted in the injury of 7 civilians," a source told Iraqi News.

After detonating the suicide car bomb, IS militants used rockets and heavy weapons against the Iraqi forces.

The attack on Mikeshifa was preceded by mortar attacks on other areas of Samarra, although no casualties were reported in the earlier assaults.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/ ... 418243390/

[Anthea]

Reuters

Islamic State storms town in western Iraq, kills 19 police: officials
Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed, editing by Ned Parker, Larry King

Islamic State fighters stormed a town in Iraq's western Anbar province on Saturday, killing at least 19 policemen and trapping others inside their headquarters, in the latest attack in the desert region where it controls large amounts of territory, officials said.

Islamic State seized the town of al-Wafa, 45 km (27 miles) west of Anbar's capital Ramadi on Saturday after starting its assault early on Friday.

With the capture of al-Wafa, Islamic State now controls three major towns to the west of Ramadi, including Hit and Kubaisa. Islamic State and government forces have been bogged down in a months-long battle for Ramadi.

Al-Wafa fell in a surprise attack that drew fresh attention to the Iraqi government's struggle to arm Sunni tribes in western Iraq who are fighting Islamic State.

"Police forces have been fighting Islamic State fighters since Friday, but lack of ammunition forced it to retreat and losing the town. I'm frustrated because we were left alone without support," said Hussain Kassar, the town's mayor.

Police forces backed by few members of government-paid Sunni tribal fighters tried to prevent the militants from crossing the sand barrier surrounding the town, but were overwhelmed when sleeper cells from inside open fired on them, the mayor and a police officer said.

Police forces and the pro-government Sunni fighters were forced to retreat to a nearby police-brigade headquarters bordering their town.

"We are trapped inside the police 18th brigade. Islamic State managed to surround us today. If no government forces were sent to help us then we will be exterminated," the mayor, who was with the police forces that withdrew from al-Wafa, said by telephone.

Elsewhere in western Anbar, Islamic State militants executed at least 21 Sunni tribal fighters on Friday after capturing them near al-Baghdadi town on Wednesday, local officials and tribesmen said on Saturday. Islamic State has besieged al-Baghdadi, also to the west of Ramadi, since October.

All the bodies had bullet wounds to the head and chest and were dumped inside an orchard near the Islamic-State controlled town of Kubaisa.

The radical Sunni Muslim militants have captured swathes of western and northern Iraq, including the north's biggest city, Mosul, in June. They now hold large territory from western Anbar and Nineveh provinces that extends across the border into Syria.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/ ... F520141213

[Anthea]

GlobalPost

America is building a Sunni army in Iraq to take on the Islamic State
Susannah George

Impatient with the Iraqi government's failure to arm Sunni groups to tackle the Islamic State, the US is taking matters into its own hands.

BASHIQA, Iraq — At a small military base just outside of Mosul, a few hundred Iraqi troops stand at attention in three neat rows.

Within a prefab office nearby, a group of US officials is sitting down with some local commanders. They make introductions and exchange pleasantries, before the Americans ask the question they came all this way to ask: “How can we help?”

When the US announced its intention to support Iraq in its fight against the Islamic State (IS), it did so on the condition that the government undergo serious reforms to reach out to the country’s Sunni population, who were severely marginalized under the sectarian rule of former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

US-backed legislation to create an Iraqi “national guard” — first proposed in September — was aimed at diluting Sunni support for IS by promising Sunni fighters, including tribal forces, weapons and supplies from Iraq’s central government. A former Iraqi National Guard force was absorbed into the army a decade ago.

It was hoped that these groups would recapture the Sunni areas held by IS, also known as ISIS or ISIL, in western Iraq.

But with the Iraqi government failing to make headway in the fight, and the national guard legislation languishing in parliament, the US has begun to work behind the scenes to train and prepare to arm Iraq’s Sunnis on its own.

Enter General Khaled al-Hamdani’s fighters — all of whom are Sunni.

“They asked me ‘what do you want exactly,’” Gen. Hamdani said shortly after his meeting earlier this month with the Americans, one of whom Iraqi officials identified as belonging to the CIA.

When an offensive begins to take back Mosul from IS, says Hamdani — formerly the province’s chief of police — it will be these men who lead the way.

“[The Americans] asked: ‘How can we help you with weapons, with supplies, with life here in this camp?’”

A State Department official described US involvement with groups like Hamdani’s as “encouraging and facilitating the outreach that has been underway by the Iraqi government to Sunni communities across Iraq.”

The official told GlobalPost that the national guard legislation is “a longer-term goal,” but stated that arming other Sunni groups including tribal elements “will be a ‘bridge’ to the [Iraqi] National Guard with these tribal forces eventually subsumed into the national guard once established.”

We’ll take it back in a month’

Dobardan Base, about 10 kilometers from the front lines with IS, houses a division of more than 6,000, mostly former Nineveh province security forces, including a 250-man “SWAT” or special forces unit.

At the compound, the unit jogged in formation from one side of the base to the other while the US officials were taken on a tour of the facilities. The US officials declined to comment, but one confirmed they were there to assess the needs of Hamdani’s men.

“Once we get all the training and the weapons we need,” General Hamdani said flatly, “we’ll take back Mosul in just one month.” The clutch of bodyguards and assistants hovering around the general nodded and murmured in agreement.

But despite Hamdani’s resolve, the means to launch his envisioned counter-attack have not been forthcoming until recently. That has a lot to do with the distrust between Iraq’s different sects — which has deepened since the Islamic State’s rise.

Many of Iraq’s Shia, the sect that dominates the central government and the country’s most effective fighting forces, partially blame Sunnis for the rapid IS sweep across the country’s north and steady progress in Iraq’s western Anbar province.

When IS fighters first advanced on Mosul in June, four entire divisions of the Iraqi army collapsed. Thousands of troops fled, thousands more were killed or captured. Many of the city’s majority Sunni residents, at the time chafing under the brutal rule of then-Prime Minister Maliki’s Shia dominated security forces, welcomed the extremist group.

According to a Reuters special report on the fall of Mosul, top generals in the city, short-staffed and undersupplied to begin with, anticipated the June IS attack and called for reinforcements. Their requests were ultimately denied by the central government.

Since the fall of Iraq’s second largest city in June, Hamdani’s men, looking for a way to join the fight to reclaim it, have been largely ignored. Distrusted by both Iraq’s central government in Baghdad and authorities in the autonomous Kurdish region directly on their border, the men were denied the weapons and training they say they need to fight back against IS.

Things began to change this past week. On Dec. 7, a small shipment of weapons that was being held up at Erbil’s international airport by a tangle of politics and bureaucracy was delivered to the base.

Analysts and Iraqi officials say this follows a weeks-long US campaign to pressure Baghdad to facilitate the arming of the country’s Sunnis as part of an effort to retake territory from IS in the majority Sunni provinces of Anbar and Nineveh.

Outside Mosul, Hamdani's men received 30 heavy machine guns and 2,000 kalashnikov rifles, just a fraction of what Iraqi officials at the base say was promised to them from the Ministry of Interior.

“For six months we had been asking our government [for help],” explains the general, “and they gave us nothing, just tents and beds.” Hamdani says despite the initial shipment from Baghdad, he hopes the US will bypass the central government and arm his men directly.

“I always thought we will get weapons from the Americans before we get anything from [the central government], because the Americans, they are serious.”

Asked if last week’s shipment of arms shows the government in Baghdad is serious, General Hamdani simply replied: “No.”

There are dangers to the strategy being pursued by the US.

Arming Sunni groups without also incorporating them into the country’s armed forces, could, some analysts warn, further fracture the country by militarizing sectarian rifts.

“If there’s going to be a unified Iraq of any kind coming out of this war with Daash [the Arabic acronym for IS], this national guard concept is an absolutely critical element of it,” said Ken Pollack, an Iraq analyst with the Brookings Institution.

“For the Sunni community, this is it … if they are going to move forward and be part of a new Iraq it is going to have to be a highly federalized system, one in which [the Sunnis] have their own security forces.”

Relatively small arms shipments like those made to Hamdani’s men outside of formal legislation appear to just be “paying lip service” to US demands for a more inclusive security force, Pollack said. In order to forge a longer lasting solution, he argues, agreements need to be formalized through law.

“Someone is going to have to help the Iraqis forge a new power sharing arrangement,” he said. “There’s just no evidence to suggest that the Iraqis are going to do it by themselves.”



‘We just talk about guns’

As the visit last week wound down and US officials along with their security detail drove off in a fleet of GMCs, the Iraqi troops stopped jogging. The general’s bodyguards, shadowing him moments before, put down their weapons and lit cigarettes. The rest of the troops dispersed, some to lie down in the sun; others returned to their bunks in the neat rows of tents along the camp’s edge.

“The Americans, yeah they visit, but all they do is talk,” explains Colonel Ibrahim al-Hamdani, another commander at the base, leaning back in a plastic chair. “The US has been very slow,” he adds.

Like many of the men here, Col. Hamdani — no direct relation to the general — wants the US to play a larger role in retaking Mosul, to commit more trainers and directly arm the Sunni fighters.

In the meantime, Hamdani says the men spend most of their day preparing for the eventual Mosul offensive.

“We do physical training every morning,” the Colonel said between drags on a cigarette. “We run for one kilometer, you know, about 30 minutes, then we do stretching for 15 minutes and then we rest.”

When asked what the men do for the remainder of the day, the colonel replied: “Weapons training.” But when asked to elaborate, he reluctantly explained that because until recently the men had no weapons, “for weapons training we just talk about the guns.”

At a peshmerga checkpoint just down the road from the base, Kurdish fighters skeptically eye their Sunni counterparts. While both forces are fighting against IS, there is very little coordination between the two due just as much to decades of animosity as to tensions recently inflamed by IS advances.

“Even I wouldn’t give them weapons,” said one low-ranking peshmerga fighter, of the men from Mosul based just up the road from him. “Half of them, their brothers are still in Mosul and fighting on the side of [IS],” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press. “Giving them weapons is just like arming the enemy.”

Many of Iraq’s Kurdish armed forces share this fighter’s opinion, blaming Iraq’s military and security forces stationed in Mosul not only for facilitating the IS sweep across the country’s north, but also for directly aiding the group by abandoning weapons that IS later pocketed. Many of the men at Dobardan camp openly admit to abandoning their posts in June, leaving behind weapons and supplies.

Camped out in a temporary office above a hair salon in the nearby city of Dohuk, the deputy governor of Mosul becomes visibly frustrated when asked about the lack of weapons for men at bases like Dobardan and slow progress in developing an operation to take back Mosul.

“[The central government] says it’s because they don’t have the capability to send us arms,” Nuraddin Kaplan says from behind a sparse desk. “But I cannot say if that is true or not,” he adds, smiling.

Then he turns serious, and shrugs. “Honestly, it’s because Baghdad doesn’t trust us.”

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news ... the-islami

[Anthea]

In short:

America are arming Sunnis in Iraq

The majority of Sunnis hate the Shia regime in Baghdad

Shia have been suppressing - murdering - torturing Sunnis for years

The newly armed Sunnis will be excluded from being part of the Iraqi army

This idea is as bad as America's idea of arming the Sunni militants (IS) in Syria

[Anthea]

The Fiscal Times

Iraq's 'Bodyguards' Subvert the War Against ISIS
By Riyadh Mohammed

Although the Iraqi government’s 50,000 "ghost soldiers" have been exposed — forcing the government to deal with corruption in the military — Iraq is still playing fast and loose by using soldiers who are on duty for questionable assignments.

Since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, part of the military has been transformed into an ever-growing regiment of bodyguards. The bodyguards protecting government officials are among the most despised among common citizens. Blocking the streets with their long convoys or firing in the air to clear crowds with seemingly no reason is a daily frustration. Few really know how many are assigned to these security roles, and how much money they are costing the Iraqi state.

“Bodyguards reflect the personality of the official they protect. Since we have so many bad officials, their bodyguards are worse,” said Ahmed Hussein, a 35-year old computer technician from Baghdad.

The United States has spent $26 billion over the last decade on arming and training Iraqi security forces, including those now in bodyguard posts. Yet, Iraq’s security forces collapsed and lost one third of Iraq to ISIS in June. Still, the U.S. just approved another $5 billion in training, some of which will inevitably be spent on unnecessary protection for minor bureaucrats at the expense of an army desperately in need of proper training. Once again, corruption, mismanagement and waste has characterized Iraqi security forces.

Bodyguards’ Second Job: Kidnapping

Over the last few weeks, Baghdad was hit by a series of kidnappings, with demands for hefty ransoms. This continues an epidemic that has spread since the 2003 war. But while kidnappings usually takes place for sectarian reasons or in unsafe neighborhoods, it is now happening in some of Baghdad’s most secured areas.

In Northwestern and Northeastern Baghdad, several notable physicians and businessmen were recently kidnapped and released after paying ransom. The Iraqi government, while struggling to cope with the war against ISIS, has been forced to redirect military assets and establish a special unit to arrest members of kidnapping gangs.

After the increase in cases of kidnapping, a cell [unit] was formed…. All the kidnapping gangs will be investigated,” said Lieutenant General Abdul Ameer al-Shamari, the commander of Baghdad operations, in a press conference in Baghdad about two weeks ago.

So far, the anti-kidnapping forces have been successful. Several gangs were dismantled and their members were arrested. To reassure an anxious public, five of the gangs confessed their crimes on camera and the video of their confession was played in a press conference in Baghdad.

One leader testified, “Our first kidnapping operation was in Zyouna. It was a cellophane shop. We took $20,000 and we released the guy. The second kidnapping operation was in the Jamila neighborhood. He was a businessman. We took $40,000 for his release. The third one was in al-Shaab neighborhood where we were arrested….”

While the testimony was meant to reassure citizens, the process gave way when news came suggesting that some of those crimes were by bodyguards of influential government officials.

Personal bodyguards have never had a good record in Iraq. One glaring example is the July 2009 bank robbery in Baghdad that claimed the lives of eight bank guards. Bodyguards of the then Vice President Adil Abdul Mahdi, now Minister of Finance, were involved in the robbery.

In December 2011, former Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi fled Iraq to Turkey to avoid being arrested for murder. Later his bodyguards confessed on TV of their roles in killing judges and planting bombs. In March, an officer working as former Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s bodyguard killed the Baghdad bureau chief of Radio Free Europe.

Battalions of Bodyguards

While these incidents were covered extensively by the media, many don’t know the real size of the veritable army of bodyguards in Iraq. As a former Iraqi government official and a journalist, I have worked with several ranking Iraqi officials. The Iraqi president and his vice presidents are protected by the presidential brigade, which assigns a full army battalion of 1,000 soldiers to each of them. A second brigade was established in the last few years just in case there would be more than two vice presidents at a time, which is the case now. I was embedded several times with former Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi as a journalist, and I counted no less than 60 vehicles accompanying him.

The prime minister is protected by yet another brigade of 3,000 or more soldiers. The Speaker of the Parliament is protected by a battalion. A recent video showed the convoy of the current Iraqi Speaker of Parliament while visiting the city of Najaf. By the time the camera stopped filming, 50 vehicles had passed. More arrived off camera. Some Iraqi NGO activists have demanded that he list his convoy with the Guinness Book of World Records.

The ministers of defense and interior are also each protected by a battalion with no less than 60 vehicles protecting them. Even lower-ranking ministers are protected by about 60 bodyguards, moving with an average of 15 vehicles. Members of Parliament typically have half of this.

Yet because Iraq has 328 members of Parliament, even this group requires the size of an army division, or no less than 10,000 soldiers. Another division is protecting five people: the president and his vice president and the prime minister. Including the governors of Iraqi provinces – who are protected by as many bodyguards as ministers, if not more — and the deputy ministers, and the coddled upper-division staff of the ministries and local offices, the numbers for these protection details are astronomical.

Many bodyguards are hired simply because they are relatives of the official they are protecting. They are all part of the staff of the Defense and Interior Ministries. Most of the government officials also have expensive armored cars as well. The only reasonable estimate for personal protection for Iraqi government officials was last week’s statement by Deputy Prime Minister Bahaa al-Araji that the cost of protecting government officials is $1 billion.

While Iraq is struggling to fund its war with ISIS after a sharp drop in oil prices – Iraq’s main source of income – from $100 per barrel to $60 per barrel, perhaps it is time for professional thugs to go… or at a minimum, turn a better profit.

http://news.yahoo.com/iraqs-bodyguards- ... 00215.html

[Anthea]

...the U.S. just approved another $5 billion in training, some of which will inevitably be spent on unnecessary protection for minor bureaucrats at the expense of an army desperately in need of proper training.

Will America pay $5 billion to rebuild Kobani ?

I think not

America only spends money on making situations worse and destroying people and property

[Anthea]

Mail Online

ISIS using bombs containing live SCORPIONS in effort to spread panic, in tactic used 2,000 years ago against Romans
By Annabel Grossman

Canisters packed with the creatures are being blasted into Iraqi towns
They do not cause mass causalities but have serious psychological impact
The tactic was first used by Iraqis in the desert city of Hatra in 198-199AD
They would pack clay pots full of scorpions and hurl them at Roman armies

Militants fighting for the Islamic State in Iraq have unveiled their latest terror tactic - bombs containing hundreds of live scorpions designed to spread fear among their enemies.

Canisters packed with poisonous varieties of scorpion are being blasted into towns and villages, which explode on impact - scattering the scorpions and causing panic among the innocent local population.

Although scorpion bombs sound like something out of a modern horror movie, the tactic is actually thousands of years old and was first used by Iraqis fighting against the Roman Empire.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, ex-head of chemical and biological weapons for the Army and Nato, told The Mirror that ISIS had improvised devices to launch the poisonous creatures in 2ft bombs.

He said: 'Scorpions are robust – even if they are launched a couple of miles, when the canister breaks thousands are flung out and start crawling all around.

'Some scorpions are very poisonous but the main thing is creating fear.'



Mr de Bretton-Gordon, who returned from Baghdad last week where he was advising security forces, said that the bombs are not causing casualties but had a profound 'psychological impact'.

The bizarre biological weapon was used as far back as 198 AD, when Iraqis stuffed live scorpions into ceramic pots and hurled them at Roman armies marching on the fortress city of Hatra.

The Parthian city was held under siege for 20 days by Emperor Septimius Severus before the Roman military were driven out by the 'live grenades'.

Adrienne Mayor, a historian of ancient science and classical folklorist, researched the weapon in detail for her 2004 book Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World.

She describes how soldiers would spit on the end of the scorpion to calm the creatures before they were packed into pots, which were flung at the besieging Romans.

'It was the brute effectiveness of Hatra's defensive biological and chemical weapons that overcame Roman morale, manpower and siege machines,' she writes. 'The terror effect would be quite impressive.'

Last week, the U.S. confirmed it had launched a further 20 airstrikes against ISIS targets, including raids near Sinjar, Qaim, Ramadi, Mosul and Samarra, as well as inside Kobane.

ISIS militants have been attacking the Iraqi town of Kobane since mid-September, when the terror group assaulted its southern suburbs in an attempt to seize control of the strategic border city.

The terror group quickly encircled the city, raping and murdering its inhabitants, but Kurdish YPG fighters supported by U.S. airstrikes have since pushed ISIS back out of central Kobane.


SCORPION BOMBS - 'THE WORLD'S OLDEST BIOLOGICAL WEAPON'

The live grenades were first used by Iraqis in the besieged city of Hatra in 198-199AD.

Soldiers would pack ceramic pots full of live scorpions which they would then hurl at the Romans led by Emperor Septimius Severus.

It is thought that they would first spit on the scorpions to slow them down so they could be handled - although it was still an incredibly risking tactic.

The biological weapon has been credited with ending the 20 day siege on the desert city.

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

[Anthea]

AFP

Kurds press northern Iraq offensive against jihadists
By Abdelhamid ZEBARI

Nahyat al-Ayadhiya (Iraq) (AFP) - Kurdish forces backed by foreign jets pressed an ambitious operation against the Islamic State group in northern Iraq on Thursday, taking on the jihadists in the heart of their "caliphate".

After mass bombing by aircraft of the US-led coalition paved the way for ground troops Wednesday, Iraq's Kurdish peshmerga retook several villages and closed in on the Sinjar area.

The anti-IS war's top commander, US Lieutenant General James Terry, said Thursday that 50 air strikes had allowed the Kurds to "regain approximately 100 square kilometres of ground".

IS captured Sinjar in early August, and preventing a genocide against its largely Yazidi minority was a reason US President Barack Obama put forward for launching the air war against the jihadists.

Fresh strikes were conducted on Thursday north of Tall Afar, one of the first areas to fall to IS fighters in early June, said Anwar Brahim, a senior officer with the Kurds' intelligence services.

"At around 7:00 am (0400 GMT), there were coalition strikes on Nahyat al-Ayadhiya," Brahim told AFP. "A large deployment of peshmerga is ready to close in on Sinjar."

An AFP reporter saw the mangled bodies of IS fighters killed by the air strikes and which peshmerga fighters covered with sand to reduce the stench.

Kurdish forces used heavy artillery to pound IS positions in the area but officials said the fighting was less intense than on Wednesday.

In Hanakeh, one of the villages the peshmerga took back, one bridge had been blown up and another still had four barrels filled with TNT on it, suggesting the jihadists had to flee before they had time to destroy it.

The US military command supervising the coalition air campaign said Wednesday that 61 air strikes had been carried out in Iraq since Monday.

That was some of the heaviest bombardment since the jihadist onslaught on the Sinjar area and towards Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region prompted the first US air raids four months ago.

- Dozens killed -

The peshmerga said they recaptured eight villages and killed about 80 IS fighters in the initial phase of the offensive launched from Rabia on the Syria border and Zumar on the shores of Mosul dam lake.

The peshmerga lost seven men on Wednesday in Qasreej village when they failed to stop a suicide attacker who rammed an explosives-laden armoured vehicle into their convoy, officers told AFP on the scene.

Sinjar, between the Syria border and Iraq's IS-held second city Mosul, is one of the main goals of the offensive.

The operation aims to disrupt IS supply lines and further isolate Mosul, around which the jihadists have been building berms and trenches in recent weeks.

IS has also cut the mobile phone network in the city and imposed tougher restrictions on the population's movements, sparking accusations they are seeking to use civilians as human shields in the event of an attack.

The jihadists have suffered a string of recent setbacks in Iraq, but the front lines have been more static in Syria.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Wednesday it had learnt that a mass grave was uncovered with the bodies of 230 people from the Shaitat tribe which rose up against IS in the summer in the Deir Ezzor area.

The bodies were discovered by relatives as they returned to their villages from months of displacement after agreeing to respect an IS-imposed curfew.

- Second siege -

The 60-nation US-led coalition against IS, which also carried out five air strikes in Syria this week, is not cooperating with the Syrian regime.

The administrations in Baghdad and in autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, however, have received strong support from Western governments, in the form of weapons, aid and thousands of military advisers.

Kurdish leaders said one of the objectives of Wednesday's offensive was to "break the siege on Mount Sinjar", which was the scene in August of one of the conflict's most dramatic episodes.

IS killed hundreds of residents, abducted and enslaved hundreds of Yazidi women and girls, and forced tens of thousands to seek refuge on Mount Sinjar.

Civilians remained besieged there for days in the searing summer heat with little to eat or drink before a breach in the siege allowed them to flee.

Yazidi fighting units that were formed in the wake of the August attack have struggled to control land in the Sinjar area and retreated to the mountain in September.

A few thousand people are still atop Mount Sinjar in what Yazidi leaders have called a "second siege".

Some are residents of the mountain but most are fighters, from various regional Kurdish groups or recently-formed Yazidi militias.

http://news.yahoo.com/kurds-press-north ... 15219.html

[Anthea]

CNBC

What needs to happen next in Iraq—liberating Mosul
David L. Phillips

Kurdish peshmerga recently opened a corridor to Mt. Sinjar, rescuing 10,000 Yazidis under siege by the Islamic State. Liberating Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, is next. Kurds will be asked to help, but Arab Sunnis and tribes from the Nineveh plains must take the lead.

Atheel al-Nujaifi, Governor of Nineveh Province, was one of the last to leave Mosul after ISIS stormed the city on June 10, 2014. During our recent meeting in Erbil, al-Nujaifi described his strategy for engaging Arab Sunnis and tribal sheikhs to defeat ISIS.

Nujaifi envisions Nineveh's exiled police and security services taking the lead. Tribal sheikhs and Arabs displaced by ISIS would also join the battle. "As soon as we take some villages," maintains Nujaifi, "people inside Mosul will join us." Up to 1 million Arabs displaced by the conflict "have no aim in life but returning to their homes."

Sunni tribal leaders are reluctant to publicly pledge support. They are worried about reprisals against their brethren living under ISIS control. Still, "Most tribes oppose ISIS," insists Nujaifi."They have no loyalty to ISIS." If the Arab tribes are paid, I believe they will fight.

Anthea: I believe that most Sunni tribal leaders support ISIS

Many tribal sheikhs welcomed Islamic State fighters when they first arrived. Iraq's Arab Sunni minority, which enjoyed favor under Saddam Hussein, deeply resented the polarizing politics of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Disenfranchised and marginalized, they saw ISIS as a liberation force.

Today, they chafe under the Islamic State's strict interpretation of Islam. Nujaifi insists they are ready to turn on ISIS.

Establishing a National Guard is the core of Nujaifi's plan. The National Guard would be comprised of Nineveh's security services, who fled ISIS's advance.

While endorsing legislation establishing the National Guard, he wants Shiite militias to be disbanded. All security forces should be established by law.

Shiite militias arose after Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued a religious edict ("fatwa") calling for Shiites to protect Iraq's Shia shrines from the Islamic State. Many appear to have links to Iran's Revolutionary Guard Council. They operate outside Baghdad's control. In the wake of Iraq's sectarian civil war, many have committed crimes and atrocities against Sunnis.

Nujaifi wants help from the United States. "We need weapons, training, and air strikes," says Nujaifi. However, Washington is reluctant. It only offers training and equipment through Iraq's central government.

Fighters must be carefully vetted before weapons are provided. After the Iraqi Army's Mosul garrison collapsed in June, local police fled abandoning weapons to Islamic State forces.

Mosul is a city of more than 1 million people. US air strikes will have limited impact. Expect a bloody battle with fierce street-to-street fighting.

The Iraqi Army seems to lack motivation and capacity. Maliki gutted the army of professional soldiers, replacing them with Shiite cronies. It will take time before the armed forces are ready for combat.

Iraqi Kurds also seem reluctant to join the battle. Mosul is not their fight. Though the Kurds provided sanctuary to Arabs fleeing ISIS, there is a history of animosity between Kurds and Arab Sunnis.

Arab Sunnis and Arab tribes must bear the brunt. Kurds and other Iraqis may participate in a supporting role, but only after Sunnis show unity and resolve.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102285759

[Anthea]

Associated Press

Iraq's Shiite fighters desert over shortages
Nabil al-Jurani

BAGHDAD (AP) — Abu Murtada al-Moussawi answered the call last summer from Iraq's top Shiite cleric to help save the country from the Islamic State group, but after less than three months on the front lines he and several friends returned home because they had run out of food.

"Sometimes, we didn't have enough money to buy mobile scratch cards to call our families," al-Moussawi, a Shiite from the southern city of Basra, said. "Everybody felt like we were being forgotten by the government."

Now Iraq's Shiite religious establishment is urging the faithful to donate food, money and supplies. The clerics hope to prevent a repeat of last summer's collapse of Iraq's demoralized army in the face of the Islamic State group's lightning advance, which saw the extremists capture the country's second largest city Mosul and sweep south toward the capital.

Shortly after the June blitz across northern Iraq, tens of thousands of Shiite men answered a nationwide call-to-arms by the top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Many volunteers came from the country's most impoverished areas and were barely able to make ends meet even before taking up arms.

The Shiite fighters are credited with helping to stall the militants' advance outside Baghdad, breaking the siege of the northern Shiite-majority town of Amirli in August, and later driving the militants out of Jurf al-Sakher south of the capital.

Al-Moussawi was deployed along with fellow militiamen in Latifiyah, a town 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of Baghdad, with orders to keep the Islamic State group out of Sunni areas along the so-called Baghdad Belt. But over the past two months, the number of men in al-Moussawi's unit has dwindled, with as many as 1,000 deserting over economic hardship, he said.

In the upscale Baghdad neighborhood of Harthiya, a representative from al-Sistani's office recently urged his followers to donate food and money to the Shiite militias — warning that many fighters had already deserted.

He said that instead of spending money on cooking the traditional large meals to mark a recent holiday, Shiites should instead donate to front-line militiamen. Since then, donations of money, clothing and food have begun pouring into the local Shiite mosque and charity office.

Issam Abbas said he and other merchants in Basra have begun sending four truckloads of food and water to the front lines each month as their contribution to the war against the Islamic State group.

"I and other traders cannot leave our businesses, so we consider our monthly donations as a jihad against the terrorists," he said.

In the Baghdad Shiite stronghold of Sadr City, desperately-needed ammunition is being purchased through donations by wealthy Shiites. The drive to send weapons to the Shiite fighters has pushed the price of a single bullet from 40 cents to about $2, while an AK-47 is now sold for $800 compared to just $350 a few months ago.

Hassan Saleh, owner of a cafe in Sadr City, took part in battles against the IS group north of Baghdad in September. But he and his fellow militiamen never received any financial support from the government and depended completely on donations and their own money to meet their daily needs, he said. In early October, he returned home to look after his family.

"The government's negligence toward us has created bitterness among the volunteer fighters risking their lives in order to protect the country," he said. "We did not receive any salary, while the government is continuing to pay the salaries of the soldiers and the policemen who abandoned their positions without fighting in June."

http://www.newspressnow.com/news/nation ... eda0e.html

[Anthea]

Associated Press

Iraq TV show makes 'terrorists' confront victims

Iraqi reality TV show brings convicted IS militants face-to-face with victims
By Vivian Salama

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Haider Ali Motar was convicted of terrorism charges about a month ago for helping to carry out a string of Baghdad car bombings on behalf of the Islamic State extremist group. Now, the 21-year old is a reluctant cast member in a popular reality TV show.

"In the Grip of the Law," brings convicted terrorists face-to-face with victims in surreal encounters and celebrates the country's beleaguered security forces. The show, produced by state-run Iraqiyya TV, is among dozens of programs, cartoons and musical public service announcements aimed at shoring up support for the troops after their humiliating defeat last summer at the hands of the Islamic State group, which now controls about a third of the country.

On a chilly, overcast day last week, the crew arrived at the scene of one of the attacks for which Motar was convicted, with a heavily armed escort in eight military pick-up trucks and Humvees. Passing cars clogged the road to watch the drama unfold, but were quickly shooed away by soldiers.

After being pulled from an armored vehicle, a shackled Motar found himself face-to-face with the seething relatives of the victims of the attack. "Give him to me — I'll tear him to pieces," one of the relatives roared from behind a barbed wire barrier.

A cameraman pinned a microphone on Motar's bright yellow prison jumpsuit as he stood alongside a busy Baghdad highway looking bewildered by his surroundings.

"Say something," the cameraman said to him.

"What am I supposed to say?" a visibly panicked Motar asked.

"It's a mic check! Just count: 1,2,3,4..."

Once the cameras were rolling, the show's host Ahmed Hassan quizzed the still-shackled prisoner. When Motar was confronted by one of the victims, a young man in a wheelchair who lost his father in one of the attacks, the convict began weeping, as the cameras rolled.

Iraq has seen near-daily car bombs and other attacks for more than a decade, both before and after the withdrawal of U.S.-led troops at the end of 2011. But the central message of the show, the filming of which began last year, is that the security forces will bring perpetrators to justice.

"We wanted to produce a program that offers clear and conclusive evidence, with the complete story, presented and shown to Iraqi audiences," Hassan told The Associated Press. "Through surveillance videos, we show how the accused parked the car, how he blew it up, how he carries out an assassination."

The episodes often detail the trail of evidence that led security forces to make the arrest. Police allow the camera crew to film the evidence — explosive belts, bomb-making equipment or fingerprints and other DNA samples.

"We show our audiences the pictures, along with hard evidence, to leave no doubts that this person is a criminal and paying for his crimes," Hassan said.

All of the alleged terrorists are shown confessing to their crimes in one-on-one interviews. Hassan said the episodes are only filmed after the men have confessed to a judge, insisting it is "impossible" that any of them are innocent.

"The court first takes a preliminary testimony and then they require a legal confession in front of a judge," Hassan explained. "After obtaining the security and legal permission, we are then allowed to film those terrorists."

Human rights groups have long expressed concern over the airing of confessions by prisoners, many of whom have been held incommunicado in secret facilities.

"The justice system is so flawed and the rights of detainees, especially those accused of terrorism (but not only) are so routinely violated that it is virtually impossible to be confident that they would be able to speak freely," Donatella Rovera, of Amnesty International, said in an email.

"In recent months, which I have spent in Iraq, virtually every family I have met who has a relative detained has complained that they do not have access to them, and the same is true for lawyers."

In a September statement, Amnesty cited longstanding concerns about the Iraqi justice system, "where many accused of terrorism have been convicted and sentenced to long prison terms and even to death on the basis of 'confessions" extracted under torture."

Such concerns are rarely if ever aired on Iraqi TV, where wall-to-wall programming exalts the security forces. Singers embedded with the troops sing nationalist songs during commercial breaks. In another popular program, called "The Quick Response," a traveling correspondent interviews soldiers, aiming to put a human face on the struggle against the extremists.

Iraqi forces backed by Shiite and Kurdish militias, as well as U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, have clawed back some territory following the army's route last summer, when commanders disappeared, calls for reinforcements went unanswered and many soldiers stripped off their uniforms and fled. But around a third of the country — including its second largest city, Mosul — remains under the firm control of militants, and nearly every day brings new bombings in and around the capital.

Back at the makeshift barricade set up for "In the Grip of the Law," security officials insist they are nevertheless sending a message of deterrence.

"Many of these terrorists feel a lot of remorse when they see the victims," said the senior intelligence officer overseeing the shoot, who declined to be named since he often works undercover. "When people see that, it makes them think twice about crossing the law."

http://news.yahoo.com/iraq-tv-show-make ... 01514.html

[Anthea]

Associated Press

Islamic State abusing women, removing them from public life
By Zeina Karam

The gunmen came to the all-girls’ elementary school in the Iraqi city of Fallujah at midday with a special delivery: piles of long black robes with gloves and face veils, now required dress code for females in areas ruled by the Islamic State group.

“These are the winter version. Make sure every student gets one,” one of the men told a supervisor at the school earlier this month.

Extremists are working to excise women from public life across the territory controlled by the Islamic State group, stretching hundreds of kilometers (miles) from the outskirts of the Syrian city of Aleppo in the west to the edges of the Iraqi capital in the east.

The group has been most notorious for its atrocities, including the horrors it inflicted on women and girls from Iraq’s minority Yazidi community when its fighters overran their towns this year. Hundreds of Yazidi women and girls were abducted and given to extremists as slaves. A report by Amnesty International released Tuesday said the captives — including girls as young as 10-12 — endured torture, rape and sexual slavery, and that several abducted girls committed suicide.

In day-to-day life, the group has also dramatically hemmed in women’s lives across the Sunni Muslim heartland that makes up the bulk of Islamic State group territory, activists and residents say. Their movements are restricted and their opportunity for work has shrunk.

In Iraq’s Mosul, the biggest city in the group’s self-declared caliphate, “life for women has taken a 180-degree turn,” said Hanaa Edwer, a prominent Iraqi human rights activist. “They are forbidding them from learning, forbidding them from moving around freely. The appearance of a woman is being forcefully altered.”

At least eight women have been stoned to death for alleged adultery in IS-controlled areas in northern Syria, activists say.

At least 10 women in Mosul have been killed for speaking out against the group, Edwer said. In August, IS detained and beheaded a female dentist in Deir el-Zour who had continued to treat patients of both sexes, the U.N. said.

Relatives of women considered improperly dressed or found in the company of males who are not relatives are lashed or imprisoned. In the IS-controlled town of al-Bab in Syria’s northern Aleppo province, an activist described seeing armed militants walking with a stick in hand, gently whacking or jabbing at women deemed inappropriately dressed.

“Sometimes they follow the woman home and detain her father, or they confiscate her ID and tell her to come back with her father to pick it up,” said Bari Abdelatif, now based in Turkey.

Enforcement varies from one place to the other, much of it depending on the whims of the Hisba, or vice police enforcing those rules. Most of the areas taken over by IS were already deeply conservative places where women had a subordinate role in society, but the extremists have sharply exacerbated the restrictions.

Abdelatif said women in al-Bab are harassed for venturing outside their home without a “mahram,” or male guardian. In the Syrian city of Raqqa, the militants’ de facto capital, activists said women were allowed to leave their homes on their own, but needed a male companion or permission of a male relative to leave the city.

An IS all-female brigade, called al-Khansa, patrols the streets in some areas to enforce clothing restrictions.

Across the territory, women now have to wear the “khimar,” a tent-like robe that covers the head, shoulders and chest. The khimar leaves the face exposed but very often the militants go ahead and force women to put a niqab veil over their faces as well, leaving only the eyes visible.

In the Iraqi city of Fallujah, an elementary school teacher said militants recently dropped by the school to deliver the niqab, robes and gloves for the students to wear.

“I used to wear make-up on occasion, but I don’t anymore,” she said, speaking by phone on strict condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The militants have segregated schools and changed the curriculum. In some cases they shut schools down, summoning teachers to take a course in their hard-line version of Islamic Shariah law before reopening them. In many instances in both Iraq and Syria, parents have opted not to send their children to school to avoid IS brainwashing them.

Hospitals have also been segregated. A woman has to be seen by a female doctor, but there are very few women doctors left.

Early marriage is on the rise because parents want to find husbands for their daughters quickly for fear they will be forced to marry Islamic State fighters, according to the U.N.

“The psychological and physical harm caused by ISIS’s treatment of women, the onerous instructions imposed on their dress code, and restrictions on their freedom of movement demonstrate discriminatory treatment on the basis of gender,” a United Nations panel investigating war crimes in the Syrian conflict said last month.

It said the killings and acts of sexual violence perpetrated by IS constitute crimes against humanity.

While the Islamic State group imposes its extremist vision of Islamic law on Sunni Muslim women under its rule, it went further when it overran the Iraqi villages of the Yazidi minority in early August. The extremists consider followers of the Yazidi faith as infidels — and thus permissible to enslave.

Amnesty International interviewed more than 40 former captives who escaped the militants and described being abducted, raped and being “sold” or given as “gifts” to Islamic State fighters or supporters.

One girl told how a 19-year-old among them named Jilan committed suicide, fearing rape.

In the bathroom, “she cut her wrists and hanged herself. She was very beautiful,” the girl quoted in the report said. “I think she knew she was going to be taken away by a man.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... medium=RSS

[Anthea]

Islamic State counterattacks refinery as fight for Iraq swings back and forth
By Mitch Prothero

Islamic State forces began a powerful counterattack Monday to retake the Iraqi town of Bayji, site of the nation’s largest oil refinery. The militants’ assault came as Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish fighters along with heavy U.S. airstrikes continued to pound the jihadist army in northern Iraq.

If the Islamic State eventually recaptures the refinery, which can produce around 40 percent of Iraq’s refined oil products, it would be a devastating blow both militarily and economically for the cash-strapped central government, which had hoped to begin gasoline production this month. In November, the Iraqi government pushed Islamic forces out of Bayji and the refinery.

In contrast, Kurdish peshmerga fighters took control of much of the town of Sinjar on Monday and continued to encircle Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul, which has been in militant hands since last June. The five-day-long offensive began as an effort to break a partial Islamic State siege of a mountain range north of Sinjar and, Kurdish officials say, it expanded as Islamic State forces withdrew to the cities of Tal Afar and Mosul amid constant air attack.

Both militants and the government Monday claimed to control the refinery complex – and neither claim could be conclusively established as local residents described the area as the scene of heavy fighting before government forces withdrew Monday morning.

“The Iraqi army and Shiite militias abandoned Bayji this morning,” said Abu Ahmed al Tikriti, a local tribal leader reached by telephone. “The Islamic State controls most of the city and the entrance of the refinery but I do not know if they are inside.”

The Iraqi Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment, but Iraq television stations loyal to the government denied the refinery had fallen and said fighting for control of the city was ongoing.

Social media photographs and videos posted Monday morning by the Islamic States press office showed militant fighters taking control of much of the city – including a key central mosque and government buildings in the city center – but did not show any sign of the militants in control of the oil refinery itself. The videos could not be completely confirmed but were posted from accounts that have been reliably linked the Islamic State in the past.

On Monday, an official with the YPG, or People’s Protection Units, a Syrian Kurdish militia with strong links to the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, a group designated in Turkey and the United States as a terrorist organization, confirmed that his group’s fighters had broken through Islamic State lines. The assault opened a corridor from the Syrian border to the town of Sinjar itself, allowing aid to be delivered to refugees on the nearby mountains and closing what had been a key transportation and logistics hub for the Islamic State linking its two largest cities: Raqqa in Syria and nearby Mosul.

Speaking by phone from Syria, Redur Xelil, a YPG spokesman, said that YPG fighters reached Iraqi peshmerga lines late Sunday night, effectively linking the fronts south of the mountain range for the first time since August, when an Islamic State offensive seized control of Sinjar and threw hundreds of thousands of Yezidis, a local sect considered heretics by the Islamic State, out of their homes and into refugee camps on the mountain and along the northern border with Turkey. Militants captured thousands of Yazidi civilians at the time and reports of atrocities and even slavery have persisted in accounts from survivors.

After pushing down from the village of Zummar, outside the strategic Mosul Dam last week, the peshmerga had taken control of much of the city of Sinjar by Monday morning as Islamic State fighters appeared to withdraw in the face of over 60 airstrikes in the area by the U.S.-led coalition. A statement from the National Security Council of the Kurdish Regional Government, as the autonomous Kurdish area of Iraq is known, said that the rapid gains of last week’s offensive, which has retaken more than 500 square miles of mostly desert and highway from the group, led peshmerga military commanders to press their advantage on Tal Afar, a large town east of Sinjar on the approaches to Mosul.

The statement, signed by National Security Adviser Masour Barzani, son of Kurdish President Masoud Barzani, said that at least 8,000 peshmerga fighters had cleared the northern approaches of the mountain range and were pressing to take complete control of Tal Afar and Sinjar in the coming days.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/12/22/2 ... .html?rh=1