Category Archives: Iraq

2012 Report – Watching the Horror Born

27 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iraq, Politics, Syria

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From recent correspondence — so recent, it hasn’t even been sent!

You may wish to wonder at the goodness of your country in its domestic ideals. China and Russia work differently, and what they do has probably long “leaked” into our own analyses and options.

With Iran, “War by Proxy” is obvious everywhere the regime sows chaos, death, and sorrow. This week: Yemen.

With Russia, those criminals make war and lie about it. As much has been the story of the invasion of Crimea from the start.

The Chinese: they have built islands on the sly!

Darned Earthworkers!

🙂

This news appeared on Fox nine days ago:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/05/18/military-intel-predicted-rise-isis-in-2012-detailed-arms-shipments/

Who OWNS that monster Out There in Syria-Iraq (“Syriaque”?*).

That it has served Putin-Assad-Khamenei, that person that has managed to pervert a a popular people’s protest into an ineffable tragedy one might title, “Assad vs The Terrorists” (mission accomplished), points to the forbearing of barrel bombing old terrorists positions when the districts of Homs proved so much more convenient and harmless and helpless for doing so.

This month (merry one of May) has brought an example of active observation but passive response to a challenge that has morphed from a negligible horror into a military and political scourge calling to mind the possibly more gentle manners of Attila the Hun.

The story released by Fox has been picked up on the Blogosphere, and the report itself may be located and downloaded as a PDF.

Additional Reference

Always on Watch.  “The DIA: ISIS “A Strategic Asset”?  May 26, 2015.

Hoff, Brad.  “2012 Defense Intelligence Agency document: West will facilitate rise of Islamic State “in order to isolate the Syrian regime”.  Levant Report, May 19, 2015.

Judicial Watch.  “Pgs. 287-293 (291) JW v DOD and State 14-812”.  Download site for the report pdf file (uploaded May 18, 2015).

*“Syriac” is a language and “Syriaque” it’s French spelling.

While on the subject of the dismantling of Syria-Iraq boundary points, BackChannels has taken note of the strength of “nominal affiliation” and “sectarian teleology” in producing and sustaining brutal conflict in the region.  The gamble on the favor of God and related glory appears to overmatch the promise of social cooperation and cohesion across sectarian lines that would produce a more sound freedom, peace, and prosperity while intellectual and social habits related to the experiences of fear and security prevail: Our People vs Those People, Sunni vs Shiite, appears to remain primary across population to some extent.

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Link – Iraqi Theater – Iranian Disinformation

20 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Syndicate Red Brown Green, United States of America

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The idea that the United States is effectively arming the Islamic State is a popular rumor, particularly on Iranian State-run media, but the extent of individuals who believe that mistruth reaches to the highest echelons of Iranian society, according to Crytzer.

“The Iranian Quds Force commander absolutely believes we’re supplying Daesh,” Crytzer told Defense One. “He’s not trying to play on it. He actively believes it.”.

Tucker, Patrick.  “US Helicopter Shot at By Anti-ISIS Forces; Commander Blames Iran.”  Defense One, May 19, 2015.

Disinformation suits the feudal/medieval mode and its concentration of power and wealth in a very few “malignars” (malignant narcissists) devoted primarily to their own absolute power and breathtaking aggrandizement.

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Link – Ramadi – The Way It Looks

19 Tuesday May 2015

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics

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It’s obvious that the US did the bare minimum in the fight for Ramadi. The list of targets destroyed by American air strikes reads like satire or gallows humor.

“Near Ramadi, seven airstrikes struck one large and five small ISIL tactical units and an ISIL IED facility, destroying four ISIL resupply structures, three ISIL fighting positions, two ISIL buildings, two ISIL heavy machine guns, an ISIL VBIED and an ISIL motorcycle.”

No artillery positions were struck, even though they ringed the city. None of the ten trundling Islamic State armored bulldozers were struck. No waves of Islamic State assault infantry were struck. My guess is that President Obama wants to simply run out the clock and leave this mess to his successor. He’s pretending to help, but our contribution is often worthless.

Wictor, Thomas.  “Without Resolve, All is Lost”.  Thomas Wictor, May 18, 2015.

“Anybody who supported the government will probably be executed within the next 24 hours,” said Baer. “Their families will be driven out. It will be a bloodbath over the next couple of days. All the soldiers who were captured will be executed.”

A flood of residents has been pouring out of Ramadi toward safer parts of Anbar and Baghdad in recent days.

“We are witnessing a humanitarian crisis,” said Haimour, estimating that as many as 8,000 people had left the city Sunday.

Mullen, Jethro.  “ISIS seizes key Iraqi city of Ramadi: What happens next?”  CNN, May 18, 2015.

Related, same day: Hoft, Jim.  “ISIS Holds Massive Military Parade in West Anbar Celebrating Victory in Ramadi . . . (Where’s the Coalition?).  Gateway Pundit, May 18, 2015.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday he was “absolutely confident” that the situation could be reversed within days.

Merthi, Karim Abou.  “Iraq forces eye swift Ramadi fightback before IS digs in.”  Yahoo News, May 19, 2015.

The way it looks for Ramadi, Sunnis, and Shiites in Iraq is not good.

The additional forces summoned by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi: Hashed al-Shaabi, Shiite “popular mobilization” units with a reputation for deeply seated Sunni-directed animus.  Merthi’s piece in Yahoo goes on to note, “Abadi and Washington had hoped to rely on regular forces and locally recruited Sunni tribal fighters newly incorporated into the Hashed al-Shaabi to fight IS in Anbar.”

In light of de facto black-and-white divisions in perception — for some (to many) in some spaces, one is either a this or a that, choose a label, and not to be noted for the better qualities of one’s more essential humanity — political habits may pit “all against all” (and some simply spoil for the Great Shiite vs Sunni War) when and where “all for all” is essential to forestall the march of the tyrannical.

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Rare Retraction – Tikrit – At Author’s Request

06 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by in Iraq, Notes On Reading BackChannels

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While Tikrit gets plenty of attention from major media, yesterday’s correspondent, name withheld, has requested retraction.  So done.  My apologies to those arriving here via the search engines.  The piece had provided some detail involving the Iranian side of the battle against ISIS; the cause cited in the writer’s request to quash the piece had to do with the rough English of the writing.

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FTAC – Iraq – Obama – 21st Century Neo-Feudalism

03 Tuesday Mar 2015

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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The coalition may need “buy-in”.

Obama may be misguided or misled or in cahoots with what I guess I’ll call the “Newest Global Nobility” — very wealthy people who cooperate with one another in various ways while maintaining a popular screen of differences in their ideological or political rhetoric.

Khamenei — and his brother — appear themselves to be without boundaries, and perhaps unwittingly, the U.S. / NATO have opened the gates to Iranian power in Iraq — and, bear with the writer, Iran-manipulated ISIS (that’s the story I feel I’ve seen) provides both key and lever for that condition. Khamenei with ISIS has the leverage to convince Iraq’s Shiite community that it needs him in their defense, when, probably, he helped open the way for ISIS into Iraq and influenced the stall of the ISIS summer 2014 campaign north of Baghdad.

Complicated?

Putting on a show in “political theater” has been the Soviet way / post-Soviet neo-feudal KGB / FSB way, and Iran has been part of that all the way. The sanitizing and prettying up of the Camp Liberty crowd may signal Obama’s own complicity in this developing arrangement between emerging 21st Century neo-feudal politicians.

While “Red Brown Green” may be defined by the revanch skeleton of the Soviet Union in the form of a “Newest Nobility” — Putin-Khamenei as anchors, Assad, Orban, and Erdogan as lesser lords — the American and NATO roles in making adjustments on behalf of Really Big Money seems much less visible.

Is The Money Democratic or Republican?

Or is The Money just concerned with itself and include to manipulate whatever suits its accumulation best?

Are we watching the invention of a true-to-life (and politics) Global Monopoly Board?

BackChannels doesn’t know the answer to that question yet, but it’s coming to know how ruthless Soviet / post-Soviet and KGB-derived politics may be, and that to the extent that “false flag operations” and manipulated horrors like ISIL are possible in the cause of the acquisition of human but inhuman and psychologically disturbed (and disturbing) power.

Whether that “Moscow Apartment Bombing” kind of behavior (KGB false flag, according to Karen Dawisha) has found a place in the west remains to be verified (by some preponderance of evidence), but that Obama has been giving Khamenei a hand — Yemen ceded to the Houthis, apparently; the western coalition response to Daesh slowed before being made to response to atrocity (e.g., the enslavement and slaughter of the Yezidis; the intervention on behalf of the Kurdish community in Kobani) with some plans seemingly leaked — seems plain.  In Obama’s world, inaction appears to have become as good as action as regards enabling and encouraging the development of increasingly bad news.

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Syria – False Picture – Irrelevant Praise

19 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Russia, Syria

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UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said on Jan. 15 that the continued violence in Syria is a “disgrace” and that the Syria conflict is “the largest humanitarian crisis since the Second World War.” Syrians have replaced Afghans as the world’s largest refugee population, with 7.6 million displaced and 3.3 million refugees, in addition to a death toll estimated at 200,000, and the return of typhoid, measles and polio to the country.

On Jan. 14, de Mistura got a boost from US Secretary of State John Kerry, who praised UN and Russian efforts to broker a settlement in Syria.

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/01/hezbollah-syria-assad-kerry-russia-israel-turkey-yemen.html – 1/18/2015

This blog has supported the notion that yesterday’s communist elite are today’s state capitalists backed and defended by security fascists motivated by money and a new fascist nationalism.  That’s a complicated way of suggesting that “Old Red has met New Brown” — and the old Soviets are today’s New Nationalists.

Add the Old Red-Green Arrangement.

Along that line, and while scanning, collecting, posting, and commenting on news from journalism’s “second row seat to history”, one cannot help but note that certain relationships seem defined by common interest in “political absolutism”: Putin – Assad – Khamenei | Putin – Orban – Erdogan – (Khamenei).  The dry outer skin of the onion wants another story: secular vs religious power; Sunni vs Shiite teleology; Iran vs Iraq. However, lo and behold, as the Internet helps political wonks tear back the layers of the onion, Iran is in Iraq in a large evident way (and given the malignant psychology involved in men who would be as if gods — or just one — themselves, the Russo-Syrian-Iranian alliance may be what was in back of Daesh, for if one is to be as God, one would naturally manage the entire battle, not just one side of it.

As Putin was in the business of spending about $51 billion on the winter olympics in Sochi (the figure is disputed but still well into the tens of billions), he appears to have been thoroughly out of the business of tempering Assad’s response to a moderate, modern, and democratically updating revolutionary “Arab Spring” challenge or, Mr. Nice Guy, offering Russian aid to ameliorate the damage, displacement, and injury brought to millions of innocents.   After all, it really wasn’t his concern, was it, whatever happened to Syrians.

The suggestion that Assad chose to bomb the daylights out of noncombatant zones while holding off on the al-Qaeda-types who came into theater of war may be borne out in the casualty, IDP, and refugee figures created in the monstrosity that is today the deeply polarized and globally signal “Syrian Civil War”, for while NATO and the western world press for classical liberal values in governance, it appears Putin, Assad, and Khamenei together press for immense systems of abuse, coercion, enslavement, and exploitation on the mighty piers of fear and patronage.

Call Syria an “axle of power” 🙂 — if the three dictators get away with driving over the state’s constituents to an inherently fascist conclusion, they might well drive the same anywhere else — and the end of that kind of power: the power to make others suffer capriciously, with impunity, without heart, without justice, without limits.

Still, Secretary of State John Kerry declared on Wednesday that the United States welcomed both initiatives. He made no call for Mr. Assad’s resignation, a notable omission from Mr. Kerry, who has typically insisted on it in public remarks. Instead, he spoke of Mr. Assad as a leader who needed to change his policies.

“It is time for President Assad, the Assad regime, to put their people first and to think about the consequences of their actions, which are attracting more and more terrorists to Syria, basically because of their efforts to remove Assad,” Mr. Kerry said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/20/world/middleeast/us-support-for-syria-peace-plans-demonstrates-shift-in-priorities.html – 1/19/2015

Name the tyrants — communist, nationalist, Islamist (red-brown-green) — who have with grace backed away from or stepped down from power.

The Kremlin may be the main winner in the Lebanon war. Israel has been attacked with Soviet Kalashnikovs and Katyushas, Russian Fajr-1 and Fajr-3 rockets, Russian AT-5 Spandrel antitank missiles and Kornet antitank rockets. Russia’s outmoded weapons are now all the rage with terrorists everywhere in the world, and the bad guys know exactly where to get them. The weapons cases abandoned by Hezbollah were marked: “Customer: Ministry of Defense of Syria. Supplier: KBP, Tula, Russia.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/218533/russian-footprints/ion-mihai-pacepa – 8/24/2006

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Ali Khamenei and the Letter from Near Mosul – A Speculation

16 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Syria

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LetterFromMosul

Governorate of Ninava
Number of copies 751
Dated June, 06, 2014
To all departments of the governorate
Prevention preparations
Due to critical circumstances in the governorate and since we are convinced that army is not capable to face and confront the mujahideen we order all departments and governmental establishments within the governorate to follow below instructions and advices:
1- destroy all contracts and documents relevant to procurements within your department
2- burn all documents with governor’s name or signature
3- employees must not confront the mujahideen and they have to run away
4- don’t move away or hide vehicles, machineries and heavy equipments
5- in case of facing mujahideen it is prohibited to confront them in order to save lives and properties
6- it’s prohibited to have mobile phone under all circumstances
7- minimize night shift surveillance in order to save lives
Those who will not strictly follow instructions will be severely punished, expelled and followed by security committee of the governorate
For immediate execution
Atheel Abdulaziz Alnujaifi
Governor of Ninava

“Mujahideen” is not a word used to describe an enemy.  It’s rather like “freedom fighter”, a word glorifying men at arms.  In the vicinity of Mosul, which is where the above letter was promulgated by Governor Atheel Abdulazziz Alnujaifi, “enemy” would be referred to, as they are elsewhere, as “terrorists”.

The mid-January attempted assassination of Iranian spy chief General Qassem Soleimani, Commander and Chief of the Al Qods Brigades reported by Debka today may have some relationship to the above “stand-down” letter issued to military personnel by the mayor of Mosul shortly before the Islamic State’s lightning assault on Iraq.

Working on the red-brown-green theme and related political psychology in this blog  has been like watching a sea monster rise from the deep.  At first, the waters are obviously troubled and for apparent reasons — the middle east conflict, anti-Semitism, related Solidarity organizations, the calumny of the UN, and so on — but then the black mass of alliances starts to appear — that International Club of Bad Little Boys: Putin-Assad-Khamenei; Putin-Orban; Putin-Erdogan — and then a little later more data starts pushing up through the roiled surface:

In the eyes of most Iraqis, their country’s best ally in the war against the Islamic State group is not the United States and the coalition air campaign against the militants. It’s Iran, which is credited with stopping the extremists’ march on Baghdad.

http://www.businessinsider.com/iran-has-never-been-more-influential-in-iraq-2015-1#ixzz3Ooudrg10

Of course: Iran’s despot may have been holding the reins not only on Shiite extremist interests, like those of Hezbollah, but Sunni extremist operations as well, like those of Hamas, al-Nusra, and the Islamic State.

It has been a complaint out of the Syrian Revolution (2011) cum Civil War (afterward) that while Assad was barrel bombing the hell out of assorted noncombatants — not to mention sniping babies in the womb — his air force was standing off the positions of the al-Qaeda-type organizations, essentially removing the moderate middle from the field and leaving on the field to fights in its place “the terrorists” — the real ones (reference for that thought: Aboud Dandachi‘s The Doctor, The Eye Doctor, and Me, published early in 2014).

Debka has posted another article already this month combing over the Islamic State’s targeting of Iranian top officers in its area of contest and control:

The Al Qaeda-ISIS force was made up entirely of Saudi jihadis.
When these three episodes are examined in context, the Islamic State’s current modus operandi takes shape, as outlined here by DEBKAfile’s military analysts:

It starts with the detailed tracking of the movements of targeted commanders and staff, followed by the penetration of spies, usually locals converted to the jihadist philosophy, to their staffs. These moles keep their bosses in ISIS abreast of the targeted commanders’ movements, time tables, staff aides and the forces assigned to their security.

“ISIS kills Iranian elite Qods unit commander in Iraq, reports deaths of 555 Iranian officers.”  Debka, January 13, 2015.

If one is a child of the public left scribbling with crayons, “Saudi jihadis” conflates Baghdadi’s operation with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but all who track these wars know that “Saudi jihadis” are as much after the Saudi king as anyone else who gets in their way, and with that in mind, they are leagued naturally with the Ayatollah.  One then might ask, what keeps them, if anything, from taking Ali Khamenei’s money when offered?  And in the medieval mode: they may not know where the influence and money are coming from if the same presenting before them are agents provocateur.

While in a healthy society, the sacrifice of one’s own officers would be anathema — and cause for revolution, bloody housekeeping, or dissolving of an entire army — in a state commanded by a piratical malignant narcissist, such a sacrifice for the greater cause of the leader’s aggrandized image — objective: glorification and immortality — might seem but a small thing, another little bit of political theater and show business.

Over the past year, Iran sold Iraq nearly $10 billion worth of weapons and hardware, mostly weapons for urban warfare like assault rifles, heavy machine-guns and rocket launchers, he said. The daily stream of Iranian cargo planes bringing weapons to Baghdad was confirmed at a news conference by a former Shiite militia leader, Jamal Jaafar. Better known by his alias Abu Mahdi al-Mohandis, Jaafar is second in command of the recently created state agency in charge of volunteer fighters.

Some Sunnis are clearly worried. Sunni lawmaker Mohammed al-Karbuly said the United States must increase its support of Iraq against the extremists in order to reduce Iran’s influence.

“Iran now dominates Iraq,” he said.

http://www.businessinsider.com/iran-has-never-been-more-influential-in-iraq-2015-1#ixzz3Ooudrg10 – 1/12/2015.

Again: I know it sounds absurd: why build or control an enemy?

However, if and as one ventures into the bizarre and perverse aspects of political behavior as tyrants display it — why child soldiers?  Slavery?  Trafficking? — then one may turn on the lights and raise the curtains on the Theater of Realpolitik — and doesn’t this look glorious and good?

Arab commentators believe that recent attacks attributed to Iran against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) positions in Iraq show a significant strengthening of Tehran’s efforts to help its allies in Baghdad and Damascus and maintain its regional influence through the fight against the threat of radical Islamists.

Images of Iranian air strikes in eastern Iraq provided the first concrete evidence of direct involvement by the Iranian air force in the military campaign against ISIS. The US military believes that Iran has conducted air strikes against Isis targets in Diyala province in recent days, although the Defense Department insists that it is not co-ordinating any military action with Tehran.

http://www.thetower.org/1354-iran-attacks-isis-in-iraq-to-protect-its-regional-influence/ – 12/8/2014.

What’s being argued is control — not God, not the fate of humanity, not good deeds: control — and what power greater than that to bring out the chessboard, invite a friend to play — provide him with hospitality and sweets or other reward for the pleasure of doing some combat — and play with and against the same at the same time?

Of course, what’s going on with “Daesh” ain’t chess.

At about this place, the appropriately leisured reader — you’re here — may wish to look up “VEVAK, Iraq, Mumford”.

Worlds may be moved from behind curtains and by staged plays – and what is a leader of a totalitarian mission and system if not a master storyteller and producer?

Along the axis I’ve referred to as “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” bring to this story Karen Dawisha’s analysis of the “Moscow Apartment Bombings” (in Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who owns Russia?): inside job, KGB manipulation of public perception, useful “false flag”.

News outlets report broadly attacks against two Iranian generals: Mehdi Norouzi on January 12, 2015 and Hamid Taghavi around December 28, 2015.

How does that happen — two in a row?

How does Daesh (IS, ISIS, ISIL) know who is going to be where and when?

The Debka article also says, “According to our military and intelligence sources, ISIS forces have been able to wipe out 555 Iranian officers in the four months since last October, most of them by means of jihadist hit squads.”

Holy moley!

The news has been disseminated widely but not recapitulated: would another western intelligence service publication please weigh in?

If the figure is not near to true, one may think that Daesh got lucky twice with perhaps an expected complement of “moles”, those untrustworthy others with access to operational plans.

If it is true and Daesh has made casualties of “555 Iranian officers in the four months since last October”, that sounds to BackChannels like ducks in a shooting gallery: the information on their whereabouts has been loose and broad — has to have been — and the moles could be anywhere, possibly everywhere, even at the top.

Additional Reference

The fall of Mosul, allegedly to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), is not the military victory it has been made out to be. For a start, as the New York Times and Agence France-Presse report, ISIS gunmen (who faced an army outnumbering them fifty-to-one) were able to occupy strategic positions around the city only after Iraqi commanders ordered their troops to stand down and retreat . . . ISIS, it must be understood, is a nebulous entity with three distinct faces. The first face belongs to the ISIS that exists solely in the media, propagated by a scaremongering Iraqi government on the one hand and a grandstanding ISIS on the other. The second is that of ISIS proper, the very real and ultraviolent successor to al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). The third is no face at all, but reportedly a mask worn by the Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

http://clarionproject.org/analysis/three-faces-isis-who-behind-war-iraq – 6/17/2014.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2012/08/inside-chechnya-putins-reign-terror – 8/29/2012.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheel_al-Nujaifi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usama_al-Nujayfi

Daragahi, Borzou.  “Biggest bank robbery that ‘never happened’ – $400M ISIS heist.”  Financial Times, July 17, 2014.

Choose which to trust: the closed information system or the open one:

“Major General Suleimani is in Iran and in good health and the news that he is wounded is false,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian was quoted as saying on Thursday.

The Iranian statement was in response to a report about Suleimani’s injury that first surfaced in the Israeli website DEBKAfile, citing reports from military and intelligence sources in the Gulf. Ya Libnan published a report on the same issue on January 14.

http://yalibnan.com/2015/01/16/iran-denies-that-major-general-suleimani-was-injured-in-iraq-by-isis/ – 1/16/2015.

The Islamic Republic has, for all the blood and treasure shed to date in Iraq and Syria, invested heavily in the managed instability of both countries. Even the meteoric rise of ISIS cannot not significantly alter Tehran’s policy of forging both unity and disunity simultaneously, depending on the local context.

http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2015/01/12/two-brigadier-generals-in-death/ – 1/12/2015.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on Sunday announced the death of Brig. Gen. Hamid Taghavi, who had been training the army and Iraqi volunteers in the city of Samarra, north of Baghdad.

One jihadi forum posted an image of the officer standing next to three others, with a red circle around his head and the caption: “A photo of the miscreant Hamid Taghavi who was killed by the men of IS in the region of Samarra.”

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/12/30/world/islamic-state-claims-killing-of-iranian-military-adviser-in-iraq/#.VLlSGdLF98E – 12/30/2014.

Basiri, Amir.  “When it Comes to ISIS, Iran Isn’t The Solution — It’s Part of the Problem.”  Forbes, October 1, 2014.

Update – February 26, 2015

The more powerful ISIS grows, the more they are useful for the regime

The regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad has long had a pragmatic approach to the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), says a Syrian businessman with close ties to the government. Even from the early days the regime purchased fuel from ISIS-controlled oil facilities, and it has maintained that relationship throughout the conflict. “Honestly speaking, the regime has always had dealings with ISIS, out of necessity.”

Baker, Aryn.  “Why Bashar Assad Won’t Fight ISIS”.  Time.  February 26, 2015.

Update – August 7, 2015

Westcott, Lucy.  “U.S. Accuses Assad of Aiding ISIS Through Airstrikes”.  Newsweek, June 2, 2015.

Update – October 15, 2015

Sumeri, Haider.  “The Speicher Massacre and Its Legacy in Iraq”.  1001 Iraqi Thoughts, June 12, 2015:

Other survivors swear that they were betrayed. Several theories have risen from the ashes of the catastrophic Speicher episode, many of them pointing to collusion between commanders at the base and local Tikriti tribes. Survivors say that officers at Camp Speicher told recruits to leave the base and head back home on a short vacation, reassuring them that the area was safe and dispelling any doubts they had.

Down the road, local Sunni tribesmen and Da’ish militants were waiting.

The “Speicher Massacre” piece was reblogged — WordPress shares a teaser plus a link back to the article cited —  on BackChannels on June 18, 2015.  The citation belongs here as the field reports synch with the “stand-down” letter from near Mosul.

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FTAC – Theater of War – Iran Bombs ISIS

03 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Iran, Iraq, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia, United States of America

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There may be a lot of theater in the theater.

Doha-Washington may be competing with Tehran-Moscow (with Damascus between them), and the point of both would seem to be to have a scourge, accidentally or deliberately, worth elimination and the claim of rescue.

Assad managed to turn an “Arab Spring” revolution toward democracy and modernity into a deeply medieval and polarized civil war pitting his “secular” regime against Islamic extremists. It didn’t start out that way — and missing from the fields of battle: about nine million displaced Syrians.

On the Sunni side of this geopolitical knot (a knot because the Soviet Union was not finished off but merely transferred to the KGB, which has pursued a deeply feudal and equally thieving — internally and externally — course) stands an apparently duplicitous alliance that started out intending to knock Iran out of Syria (taking care of Hezbollah on the way) and produce an updated Islamic.

Things are just not working out the way they seem to have been planned — and much of that planning may have been to promote one appearance or another of a version of political reality. Again: there’s too much of theater in the combat.

The tail isn’t wagging the dog.

The whole dog is wagging the dog, from the tip o’ the nose to the end o’ the tail, U.S.-NATO and perhaps a Sunni-aligned alliance on one side while on the other: Neo-Feudal Russia, today a KGB/FSB Dictatorship, and its familiar “Axis of Evil” partners, Khamenei-Setad, Bashar the Butcher, and assorted anti-American and national socialist whatnot worldwide.

And hanging over every inch of the latest lightning in this storm: the immense and darker cloud of a nuclear umbrella.

Reference

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/03/iran-bombs-isis-in-iraq-says-us – 12/3/2014 (published about an hour ago):

In Tehran, the deputy chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, Brigadier-General Massoud Jazayeri also denied any collaboration. Iran considered the US responsible for Iraq’s “unrest and problems”, he said, adding that the US would “definitely not have a place in the future of that country”.

http://www.businessinsider.com/us-believes-iran-is-carrying-out-airstrikes-against-isis-in-iraq–tehran-denies-2014-12 – 12/3/2014 (earlier today)

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