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Appeal – Iraq – Winter’s Coming
11 Tuesday Nov 2014
Posted in Iraq
Category Archives: Iraq
ISIS-Held Hostages Return to Turkey – Two Observations
20 Saturday Sep 2014
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Turkish broadcaster NTV said Turkey did not pay a ransom for the hostages who were held for three months by ISIS militants.
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/09/20/Turkish-hostages-seized-in-northern-Iraq-are-free.html – 9/20/2014.
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is struggling to cut off the millions of dollars in oil revenue that has made the Islamic State one of the wealthiest terror groups in history but has been unable to persuade Turkey, the NATO ally where much of the oil is traded on the black market, to crack down on an extensive sales network.
In relation to “hoping the crocodile eats you last”, the definite-maybe “crocodiles” of the Islamic Small Wars may be ambivalent about whether their role is to be crocodile or the prey of one.
We’ll have to imagine the degree of leverage or rollover, either, involved in securing the 49 hostages taken by ISIS in their sweep into Mosul, Iraq.
Davutoglu said their release was the result of the Turkish intelligence agency’s “own methods”, and not a “point operation” involving special forces. He gave no further details.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/20/isis-releases-hostages-turkish-consulate-mosul – 9/20/2014..
Additional Reference
http://www.thetower.org/1057-sale-of-smuggled-oil-to-turkey-boosting-isis-coffers/ – 9/12/2014.
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/tr/business/2014/06/turkey-syria-isis-selling-smuggled-oil.html – 8/13/2014.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/isis-makes-million-day-selling-oil-analysts/story?id=24814359 – 8/2/2014.
Update
While the details of the hostage deal are still unclear, Ankara has had interlocutors with IS — from Arab tribes to former Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, who sought refuge in Turkey — who could have been instrumental in reaching it. Such a deal, however, may include a promise of continued non-involvement in the campaign against the jihadist group, with the soldiers stationed at Suleyman Shah serving as an insurance policy for the jihadists.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/09/21/islamic_state_turkey_hostage – 9/21/2014.
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As Regards ISIS: On Video — TWI’s Michael Knights and Michael Eisenstadt
22 Friday Aug 2014
“In this new video series, Washington Institute experts assess the current state of military operations in Iraq and evaluate Abadi’s ability to extricate his country from deadlock, defeat, and disintegration.”
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/confronting-isis-and-the-future-of-iraq-video-series – 8/21/2014.
From the looks and sound of the productions, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (TWI) has launched a DIY-AH (do-it-yourself-at-home) effort to promote its fellows’ analyses. May the TWI powers that be give them an upgrade in audio-visual recording technology.
What follows is an incomplete relay of the series, but in the way of the web, whether the viewer starts out with e-mail (as I did) or on TWI’s web page or YouTube, all routers lead back to some kind of primary media content.
Of course, if you heard it from me first — after I’ve heard it from them — in the older fashioned way of news, good!
“They are very good at using psychological operations to very quickly establish the sense that they control areas, putting up their flags on all key administrative buildings, cross-roads, wide visibility locations, and they’re very good at pursuing what they want in the mergers and acquisitions model of growth whereby they ruck into an area and immediately try to recruit the most like-minded insurgent group in the area to become part of ISIS.” (1:28 – 1:59).
“First, you can’t address the ISIS threat in Iraq, without addressing the ISIS threat in Syria. Secondly, you can’t address the ISIS threat in Iraq and Syria without addressing the foreign fighter problem. And third, the U.S. really cannot “solve” the region’s problems, because they are rooted in issues of religious and political identity and legitimacy, and this is a problem that can only be worked out among Muslims themselves. ” (2:18 – 2:41)
My “big picture” thought, which might make sense of an $11 billion arms sale): what ISIS scours Qatar will devour.
One day.
However, there are many days between this day and that one, and the Ummah, bloodied from Afghanistan to Yemen, has been pushed by the ambitions and behaviors of its own subscription into a larger global conversation about rightful power, despotism, barbarism, and democracy.
Related on BackChannels
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2014/08/21/qatar-terrorist-refuge-and-financial-platform/ – 8/21/2014.
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Impromptu – “Kurdistan! Israel! USA!”
10 Sunday Aug 2014
Tags
Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Israeli, Kurdish-Israeli relationship, Kurdistan, Kurds, political, politics
(Posted 8/10/2014; Event: 8/9/2014)
Israel-Kurd Magazine, Issue No. 1 – 2009
There is some horrible news out of Kurdistan today. Ekurd.net reports that Mawloud Afand, editor of an Israel-Kurdish magazine called Israel Kurd “disappeared ten days ago in [the] Kurdistan region of Iraq.” Israeli news sources say he was kidnapped by Iranian intelligence in the city of Sulaimaniyah. Ekurd.net claims that Iran had told the Kurdish government to shut Israel Kurd down and it refused.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/06/25/iran-kidnaps-pro-israeli-kurd-iraq-mawloud-afand/ – 6/25/2012
Related: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/topic/israel-kurd-magazine/ – 7/16/2012.
ERBIL-Hewlêr, Kurdistan region ‘Iraq’, — A number of Israeli political experts say Israel will be among the countries that would support Iraqi Kurdistan if it declared independence. They also suggest that Kurdistan not make the decision hastily and ensure the grounds are properly prepared first, Rudaw reported
http://www.ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2012/5/state6172.htm 5/1/2012.
Furthermore, with their initial sale last week of a tanker full of oil, to Israel no less, the Kurds have shown that they are willing not just to cleave themselves from Baghdad but to stand as a magnanimous force for stability in the region.
According to numerous reports by Reuters, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, the tanker SCF Altai transferred a cargo of Kurdish oil from another tanker United Emblem, which had been plying the Mediterranean for two weeks after loading at the Turkish port of Ceyhan. The SCF Altai then docked at the Israeli city of Ashkelon and off-loaded its crude.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2014/06/23/iraqs-kurds-sell-oil-to-israel-move-closer-to-independence/ – 6/23/2014.
In 1966, Iraqi defense minister Abd al-Aziz al-Uqayli blamed the Kurds of Iraq for seeking to establish “a second Israel” in the Middle East. He also claimed that “the West and the East are supporting the rebels to create [khalq] a new Israeli state in the north of the homeland as they had done in 1948 when they created Israel. It is as if history is repeating itself.”
http://www.meforum.org/3838/israel-kurds – Summer 2014.
What attracts me to a story like this one is the possibility of encouraging and securing ethnic self-determination for a true ethnic minority. In that regard, Kurds and Israelis may understand one another. The above scholarly piece by Ofra Bengio goes into detail on the history of the Kurdish-Israeli relationship, and that in turn informs just a little bit how it has turned out that members of the Kurdish community seeing an Israeli group in Lafayette Park (in front of the White House) would (naturally) join them in solidarity.
Update November 12, 2014
http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/11/10/canadian-israeli-woman-fighting-with-kurds-against-isis-audio/ – 11/10/2014
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Lisa Dafteri – “It’s Terrorists Against Humanists”
08 Friday Aug 2014
“We are the generation that stays quiet about political corruption, favoring political correctness instead. We pride ourselves in sticking up for the underdog while throwing our friends and allies to the dogs.”
(8/8/2014)
However you get the news . . . you get it.
Hamas hasn’t a human program or a prayer to offer anyone. Its officers have made themselves millionaires (actually, Khaled Mashaal is a billionaire) on the way to dealing death to their own constituents, including 160 children recruited for the construction of their tunnels.
Of ISIS, one only finds worse things to mention — rape and rapine all the way to attempted genocide, Shiites, Christians, Yazidis, and anyone else just because and as it strikes BadDaddy’s fancy.
Talk about the “Hamaside” and “Muslim Botherhood” . . . .
WASHINGTON — U.S. warplanes made a second wave of airstrikes Friday in northern Iraq against the militants who have besieged a religious group and threatened the city of Irbil, a Pentagon official said.
Rear Adm. John Kirby, spokesman for Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, said the second wave of strikes used a drone to attack a mortar position while four FA-18 fighter-attack planes hit a seven-vehicle convoy outside Irbil.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/08/obama-iraq-airsgtrike/13767377/ – 8/8;/2014.
BBC Live (right now – 8/8/2014/1723 ET):
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28709792
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News Snapshot – Genocide by ISIS
07 Thursday Aug 2014
““We are being slaughtered!” she sobbed, her voice raw and worn out, as seen on this parliamentary video. “We are being exterminated! An entire religion is being exterminated from the face of the Earth. In the name of humanity, save us!””
“Brothers, away from all humanitarian disputes, we want humanitarian solidarity” (1:00)
Kurdish MP Vian Dakhil pleading for life before Parliament, August 5, 2014:
One Yazidis showed al-Jazeera a series of text messages received by Yazidis upon the arrival of ISIS, reading: “Where are you going to go? I swear [to] God I will cut you into pieces… We are coming for you, you pig, you enemy of God.”
The Yazidis took the threat seriously. The Washington Post reports that estimates vary from 10,000 to 40,000 Yazidis currently stranded on a mountain above Sinjar, knowing their immediate death awaits them at the foot of the mountain.
No IPTC data found. Source of download: Breitbart.
Thousands of Yazidis — a Kurdish ethno-religious community — have been trapped on Sinjar Mountain in northern Iraq as they attempt to escape the extremists’ grasp. The sole parliamentary representative of the Yazidis, Vian Dakhil, warned that her small community, which has roots in a 4,000 year-old faith, faces the threat of extermination.
Other religious and ethnic groups, including Christians, Shiite Turkmens and Shabaks, have also recently been displaced since the Islamic State began waging a violent campaign against minorities in the territory it controls.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/07/photos-yazidis-christians-minorities-iraq_n_5658370.html – 8/7/2014.
Yazidis believe in one God and worship seven angels. Melek Taus, known as the Peacock Angel, plays the most important role. Worship of the Peacock Angel is where the label “devil worshipper” stems from. Christianity and Islam view the Peacock Angel as a fallen angel or devil for refusing to bow before Adam. Yazidis interpret this as a test of the Peacock Angel’s commitment to God and see the Peacock Angel as the chief of God’s angels.
David Rubin: Is that then part of it? This is so savage that partly . . . you know, everyone keeps saying the images out of Gaza are horrible, which they are, but there’s this definitive narrative There’s a bomb that drops on something . . .
Nikki DeLoach: It’s a war that we recognize. That’s how we’ve seen war. This is not that. This is savage. It’s like . . . medieval . . . something you would see on Game of Thrones.”
I doubt any will see the mass beheading of children (as has been reported in relation to the slaughter of Chaldean Christians in Iraq) on Game of Thrones.
(CNN) — If you’re following the news about ISIS, which now calls itself the Islamic State, you might think you’ve mistakenly clicked on a historical story about barbarians from millennia ago.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/07/world/meast/stopping-isis/index.html – 8/7/2014.
Additional Reference
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/08/07/isis-seizes-mosul-dam-threatens-genocide-against-the-yazidis/ – 8/7/2014.
“The heinous crime of the Islamic State was carried out not just against Christians, but against humanity,” Sako told a special church service in east Baghdad where around 200 Muslims joined Christians in solidarity.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/21/isis-genghis-khan-iraq-chaldean_n_5603939.html – 7/20/2014.
http://phylliscartersjournal.blogspot.ca/2014/08/the-abuse-of-god-death-and-destruction.html – 8/8/2014 (I continue updating a piece for a little while afterwards as new and telling verbiage appears. As ISIS is basically a raiding party, events move very quickly through its machinations. Where it hustles, Iraq and its allies plod, by comparison, toward getting their act together. At the moment, Aug. 8, 2014, and despite some U.S. activity, ISIS has battlefield resource superiority — arms and ammo, cash, armor and domestic vehicles, a modern enough headquarters, and some techniques in cover and cruelty that have made them especially hard to get at. In their world, the world is running away from them, which for plunder must suit them fine).
http://time.com/3083172/iraq-kurdistan-independence/ – 8/7/2014.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pentagon-considers-air-drops-to-15000-iraq-refugees-fleeing-isis/ – 8/7/2014.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/friend-flees-horror-isis – 8/6/2014.
Finally:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/07/world/iraq-options/index.html “U.S. drops humanitarian aid in Iraq.”
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Iraq – Brief Comment – Three Conflict Themes Distilled
07 Thursday Aug 2014
To suggest that the “field is confused” might understate the reality. However, distilled to structural themes, it might look a little bit like this:
1. Kingdom of God — >Sunni-Shiite rivalry : Saudi-Iranian rivalry
2. Contemporary Governance –> The Despotic vs The Democratic
3. Political and Social Psychology and Topology –> Extremists vs Moderates
Official Iranian hatred of the “Zionist entity” has has maintained a flow of war making machinery and materiel to Hamas from well before present hostilities. IDF interdicted at least one shipment and one may be sure analysts are reverse engineering back to sources the arming of Hamas.
How the above suggested themes are arranged in any given mind and heart seems to me as invisible a matter as it may be personal, and in the field as much account for mistrust and paranoia as related attitudes remain inaccessible to detection except out in battle space where the same becomes quite clear as to who has embraced what cause and with what attitude.
Addendum: As Regards Iran
As appears to happen with “Islamist-style” Islamic overlay, the society that existed prior to onset becomes suffocated and hidden (to greater or lesser extent). Despite the onslaughts of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Iran, so _____ frequently points out, retains many facets of its pre-revolutionary modernity, and what the Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei have done is dealt themselves their own kingdom (see “Reuters, Khamenei, wealth” on that) with themselves at the center of its universe.
As long as the dictator can keep the engines of wealth in his state operating and pursue his dream of himself unmindful of the suffering he causes, that’s all that matters. Iranians may have a problem with this — the modern are the competing interest — but not the Ayatollah, not any more than Baghdaddi or Putin or Assad. They’re very different in their ambitions, but they are of the same personality, and that may be what bonds them albeit along the Shiite axis, loosely speaking.
While oil plays a mighty role in these politics, it may be much less important than the protection of the immense (and fragile) ego of the despot.
The weight of American interest in Israel’s survival probably should not be credited too greatly to the evangelical Christian community: all of the open democracies feature a majority culture, but they are all democracies in function as well as spirit, and Israel stands with them.
Brotherhood-style “democracy” as exhibited in Egypt and perhaps illustrated by Erdogan’s work in Turkey, is inherently anti-democratic and despotic primarily because the intellectual, political, and social machinery exploited is itself kleptocratic or piratical.
Human language programming and scripting get into this right about here: how is one to navigate so confused a world? Adhering to instructions might seem a good idea, but when the same promote such as Baghdaddi the Butcher to star power, one might well question the validity of those charts as well as the functioning of that most perverted “moral compass”.
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Genocide – Chaldean Christians – Iraq
07 Thursday Aug 2014
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“Tal Kayf is now in the hands of the Islamic State. They faced no resistance and rolled in just after midnight,” said Boutros Sargon, a resident who fled the town and was reached by phone in Arbil.
“I heard some gunshots last night and when I looked outside, I saw a military convoy from the Islamic State. They were shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ [God is greatest],” he said.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/07/isis-offensive-iraq-christian-exodus – 8/7/2014.
BackChannels Comment
Unfortunately, when it comes to political absolutism (why I call them the dictator “Putin-Assad-Khamenei”), despotism, and fascism (Hungary’s Jobbik now relates to Iranian heritage), there seems no end to variants.
ISIS has been proving vulnerable to the Kurdish Peshmerga, who know what will happen to them if they lose, and some ad hoc assembly of very small ambush parties that are targeting its leaders. Nonetheless, they’re using Erdogan’s embassy in Mosul as a headquarters (and they have gotten Erdogan to purchase $800 million in oil from them — and Erdogan has blacked out mention of the story in Turkey . . . all of which is bad news for NATO and the Turkish people).
The story with dictators who “take off” always ends in surreal depravity and sadism, and that much BadDaddy Baghdaddi’s lunatics have clearly accomplished.
More From the News
Jihadists who took over large areas of northern Iraq today have forced 100,000 Christians to flee as they occupied churches, removing crosses and destroying manuscripts.
They have fled with nothing but their clothes, some on foot, to reach the Kurdistan region, according to Louis Sako, the leader of Iraq’s largest Christian denomination.
CNN interview with Mark Arabo, Los Angeles –
Related:
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