Social media accounts associated with the Islamic State also triumphantly announced the end of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the demarcation of modern Middle East borders by France and Great Britain after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. The group released credible but unconfirmed footage of heavy equipment adorned with the black flag of the Islamic State destroying fences and earthen berms along the Syrian border.
From the Vietnam Era’s evening newscasts from the killing fields of that war to this: having enough of a social network to be directed to a URL, one, however, that may raise more questions than can or will be answered: where was the above clip made? What happened to the children the soldier was carrying? What happened to military personnel assembled at that location? How many were killed in that battle? How many are missing in action today? What was gained? What was kept? What was lost?
This blog has a correspondent in Iraq, and with a little bit of difficulty in the language, this, nonetheless, is what he has had to say about Mosul recently:
. . . unfortunately I’m not sure about what happened to those kids but many of those who ran away got killed by those terrorists, but mainly the people of Mosul are happy and they are celebrating in the entry of ISIS and consider it a liberation, and the ISIS are really good with them now and I guess it will last untill the Iraqi and Kurdish armies try to enter the city and go deep , then they will kill many of those who welcomed them and film them to say that the Iraqis and Kurds killed them
It appears that the Sunni-Shiite division that runs through Iraqi society plus the exigencies of war half a million of Mosul’s residents to flee and left the remainder in place to be pleasant, genuinely so or not.
The paragraph’s a little garbled at the end but I’m not going to mess with it.
. . . . cause they are against them and most of them are Sunnis along to Christians and other minorities (since it’s a Sunni province) , and they hate them but Mosul is known in Iraq as a real hater for the Shiites (my mother studied at the University of Mosul and she saw that even though it was over 25 years ago and now they hate the Shiites more than ever… and let’s say that 1 million are just staying cause they are scares of running and think they are safe cause they are sunnis then that leaves us more half million aiding and supporting them and the Iraqi army had to keep its presence as minimum due to the hate of Mosul’s people against them, and the continues attacks by the people of Mosul more like the attacks that the IDF often have in the West Bank..
My distillation: Mosul is predominantly Sunni and by that along partially aligned against Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s perceived Shiite-friendlier government. As happens often in politics, it may not be true, but if it’s believed, it’s treated as true. Those politics play in the field to leave state forces exposed to Sunni extremists, i.e., not engaged positively with state forces.
The soldiers who ditched their uniforms are mostly cops from the city (sunnis) and they are 52,000 And the army had to ran away cause their leaders (the Sunnis that were put cause the Governor of Mosul asked to since he didn’t want a Shiite or Kurdish general in the city) Then the soldiers had to leave their spots and far more they didn’t even have ammunition and they fought in the road to secure the people of Mosul who ran away
If for western readers the image of the state’s resistance in flight has made out Iraqi military and paramilitary forces a paper tiger, the reality relayed to me would seem to describe a very practical decision process predicated on 1) Sunni identification with Sunni force come to town 2) an ambivalent military not completely welcomed in Mosul and running low on ammo.
Time to skedaddle.
Recorded today, June 11, 2014, probably by Sunni bystander today: Round Street, Tikrit, Iraq. About that provenance, my correspondent says, ” . . . and at the end he said “exclusively for the Iraqi great revolution” which is a Sunni Iraqi term not ISIS way.”
We’re going to see a lot of this.
This one: yesterday, driving around:
My source: “They meant liberated by the ISIS and the police vehicles moving in the streets are in the hands of ISIS.”
Unfortunately, that kind of killing has to be stopped by killing.
There are no pacifist or passive options that are not ultimately self-destructive.
“These guys” — I think I can say that about both religious and secular fascists — simply do not have an “off button” — no containment, no self-restraint.
In their heads, they are the favored of God and can do no wrong.
At the moment, in fact, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has confined and laid siege to the lives of four daughters, and he is killing and will kill them in this manner (Twitter hash #FreeThe4) and there seems no power on earth interested in or willing to stop him, and verbal persuasion may have no effect at all.
Humanity at large is on a collision course with this aspect of its own errant psychology. It is complex if interpreted as “secular vs religious” adherence, but that’s not what the fighting is about: it is about The Despotic (mafia and fascist) vs. The Democratic (justice and inclusion).
While the New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left continues to decry the Bush Era invasion of Iraq (and many Muslims continue to blame America for the widespread death and displacement brought about through sectarian warfare and vendetta), the most brutal and horrifying of al-Qaeda affiliates — actually, these so exceed limits that al-Qaeda has officially distanced itself from them — the ISIS has stormed through Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city.
From a CNN video clip: “Planes and command positions, all of them have fallen in addition to weapons caches. In addition, prisons were stormed and criminals have been set free. What happened is a catastrophe by any measure.”
I have for some years now been sitting on journalism’s “second row seat to history”, specifically, in front of a computer monitor attached to a computer with a broadband connection to the Internet. It has been and remains a global virtual trip.
I’ve made some friends.
My weirdest introduction to what this baby (of a setup) can do: watching television with a family in Madrid via Skype with their laptop turned to their screen. It was like sitting on their sofa with them.
Later: one of the Anonymous clique got a live camera on to the streets of Egypt’s counterrevolution. It was like being taken on a walk, but the communication was one way — remote camera to my eyes.
Oh what we can now see on the World Wide Web!
What we’re seeing in Mosul is a disaster.
The worst of the worst, so lacking in their own containment and so cruel that even the fascists of al-Qaeda want nothing to do with them, have gained martial control of a major oil producing state, a state so riven with internal divisions and cowed by decades if not centuries — or centuries and decades — of authoritarian brutality that even while outnumbering ISIS invaders 15:1 its defenders chose to dematerialize by shedding their uniforms in their flight.
Chair Ibn Warraq called for “an age of Enlightenment. Without critical examination of Islam, it will remain dogmatic, fanatical, and intolerant, and will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality, originality, and truth.”
“Who is a Jew?” is a terrible question as it is answered so often by anti-Semites with a program for plunder (or conversion and taxation).
Apart from that, I’ve started my definition (so it’s not the pervasive definition, whatever that may be) with ” . . . a global ethnic commune . . . .” and at stake in determination is that linkage x language (!) x belief x calendar x customs x identity in self-concept. Jews could, I suppose, measure by Likert scale their own performance in each dimension (e.g., Hebrew 0=None, 5=Fluent) and that might tell something . . . but ask a Jew to embrace another faith and one is more likely to get Muhammad’s 1/0, black-and-white, you-in-you-out perspective on the matter.
The rest is a) demographics and b) invention sidelining the ethnic tie while endorsing and embracing, buying into, the dual Judaic concepts of the God of the universe and justice predicated on the gifts that are human awareness, self-awareness, and conscience predicated on awareness and good regard for the other, as Eve and Adam are to one another when they “cover” (leaving God, sigh, God) to sew the first real clothes.
I should like to have been around to see the first time a primate (or any other form) ever adorned, covered, or made a habit of wearing a loin cloth or anything remotely like it.
FTAC — There’s a threaded conversation around the above blip, if that, on the theological radars scanning for possibility.
🙂
The thread starter: Jonathan Tobin’s recent piece in Commentary, “The Problem with American Jewry” (the system’s fast enough to block-and-search a string while I hold on to my next seven free views of the publication, as funding subscriptions to key online publications becomes an issue here).
I might amend that to “fortunately by religion”, for there are more of us than there are of them, and we’re likely to find or highlight in our respective religions greater cause for defending one another as believers and, perhaps, exemplars of the next platform (which related to “coming forward of our respective positions) and thereby promoting in common values good in the sight of God, within the better graces of nature, and beneficial to mankind.
The above comes from another portion of the awesome conversation but with the same person on the same day.
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