Tag Archives: ISIS

Kurdish Fighter Comments on the Arabization of Northern Iraq

26 Thursday Jun 2014

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

(8:21): “Terrorists and ISIS want to make this place just like all the others by killing and committing crimes here.”

VICE interviewer Danny Gold tweets as @DGisSERIOUS.

The web would seem to be coming along for near real time experience of the world’s war zones.  This environment from field signal to page makeup to Twitter publicity to blog to reader is not another generation’s evening network news: I’m not holding my breath but am waiting for the waves of live remote feeds to come marching over the virtual berms at any time.

Par for the middle east course and evident in the above clip: deeply shared Kurdish and Arab tribal animus, and that with each attempting to align the other with ISIS (of the two, I would suggest the Kurds have the more coherent view of the fighting and how it will play both to their autonomy, defense, and expansion).

The “love of the land” also plays in the Kurdish script as regards how things should be and, therefore, how events should unfold for the Kurds as a people free — self-determining — in their own lands.

We shall see how that motivation plays in the coming days.

ISIS appears to be its own wild and piratical machine.

In fact, ISIS reminds me of the al-Shabaab saga in Somalia in which Islamic anarchists, essentially, have long terrorized the state, at times controlling the bulk of it, at others finding their footprint reduced to their southern reaches.  To this day, they’re still part of the Somali landscape and proven capable of instigating or conducting attacks on targets in their vicinity.  One expects that even a smashed ISIS will continue spinning around Iraq’s landscape as a human version of the chemist’s “free radical”.

While ISIS makes progress in Iraq it has also gotten itself surrounded by either natural enemies or enemies it has been making on its beyond-all-limits killing spree in Iraq.  It’s presence has urged a nation to its feet, but the same today has many different kinds of feet, and they seem not to want to advance in the same direction.

Externals: the dictator Putin-Assad-Khamenei becomes now the dictator Khamenei-Assad-Putin driving a Russia-aligned Shiite bloc against the Saudi sphere’s NATO-aligned Sunni bloc, the same that was to have produced a modern people’s revolution in Syria.  Probably, that alignment has run its course, worn itself out, and pushed the White House into deep reconsideration of how to sort out the middle east for its own sake, for oil, and for NATO’s existence and the values it promotes.

Aside: America’s chief oil suppliers have been Canada and Mexico, and as American energy policy produces greater flexibility in access to crude, one may expect related politics to follow.

Back to Iraq: It turns out deposing Saddam the Tyrannical was the easy part.  Then too, perhaps the way in always is, for everything else having to do with the middle east has been twisted up, torn apart, patched back together, and totally fucked up beyond all repair (FUBAR).

Oh Bummer!

What next?

We shall see.

Soon.

Just about as fast as it happens.

# # #

Link

http://thediplomat.com/2014/06/in-iraq-isis-channels-mao/

25 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , ,

http://thediplomat.com/2014/06/in-iraq-isis-channels-mao/

It’s more like a Hezbollah or Viet Cong, which tries to win legitimacy, than an al-Qaeda, which is mostly interested in showy attacks and ideological purity. Few revolutionaries govern well, but ISIS may be an exception. Its ability to consolidate its territorial gains and make the transition to stable peacetime rule, whether over part or all of Iraq, is a revealing indicator to watch.

Aside

19 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iraq, Middle East, Regions

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

Compiled Fast Reference: ISIS: 6/19/2014

______

ISIS, wild and cruel, has proven through its criminality and inhumanity incapable of governance except through continued sadism.  Call it deeply intoxicated by brute power, it is as it displays itself.

______

Although the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) — a marauding army of Sunni Muslim jihadists — has turned south toward Baghdad, Kurds in the semi-autonomous oil-rich northeast expect that they may have to face their fellow Sunnis, who left a trail of death and destruction in overrunning the Iraqi army in taking the cities of Tikrit and Mosul.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/06/19/kurds-outgunned-by-fanatical-isis-hope-looming-baghdad-battle-buys-time-for/ 6/6/2014.

The crisis caused by the sudden advance of the Isis insurgents has driven world crude prices past $114 a barrel in recent days and led to warnings of shortages from industry experts.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/18/dwindling-iraq-oil-reserves-cause-price-spike 6/18/2014.

. . .  nearly 100 militants had been killed as his forces repelled wave after wave of attacks since Tuesday.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/06/19/witness-claims-isis-flag-flies-over-key-iraq-refinery-baghdad-says-soldiers/ 6/19/2014.

 . . . a stark illustration of one of the most alarming aspects of ISIS’s rise: the group’s growing ability to fund its own operations through bank heists, extortion, kidnappings, and other tactics more commonly associated with the mob than with violent Islamist extremists.

http://complex.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/06/16/isis_uses_mafia_tactics_to_fund_its_own_operations_without_help_from_persian_gulf_d 6/16/2014.

ISIS appears to be as well-endowed economically as any such group can be endowed by conquest, by plunder and by voluntary contributions. How do they make their money?

http://wlrn.org/post/how-isis-endowed-conquest-stocks-its-war-chest 6/18/2014.

# # #

Proposed: A Great Conversation About Power

18 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Regions

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Pharaoh to Hitler to Assad to ISIS: let’s have our talk about power, personality, and politics.

Now.

I don’t know what metaphor suits that concept that is time when it is time for one to seal off a section of history, to have arrived at the end of a chapter of one’s own story, and to have to look across a river (in time) or desert (in time — add the biblical term of forty years for wandering lost in the foyer to the future) — and to leave one bank (in time) to wade, swim, or bridge and walk to that other shoreline.

Is there parochial time?

Is there universal time that contains parochial time?

I feel that with the destruction of Syria, which carnage has exceeded that involved in the Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus (70 CE) and the challenge posed today by ISIS in Iraq, some Islamic introspection and review of Sunni-Shiite rivalry (throw in Arab anti-Semitism while at it) might be helpful.

Iraq is a test: will parochialism seek through blood letting a nation divided by sectarian identification that guarantees perpetual war — or will the middle, mild, and moderate of Sunni and Shiite humanity recognize ISIS as an alien force inimical to the survival of either and therefore band together to eject and destroy it?

What is the timeline for the development of either path?

The world would seem to have all of the time in the world for this conflict between (BackChannel’s trope coming right here) “two mad wasps in a bell jar”.

There’s a terrific political cartoon by artist Talal Nayer at this location: http://tnayer.blogspot.com/2014/01/sunni-vs-shiite.html.

Irshad Manji has featured the same on her Facebook fan page, and it has been shared about 500 times, a good indicator that others are seeing the same thing.

Power.

I think the Jews — because our stories compel us to argue about these things and one may have opinions — took the monotheist power represented by Pharaoh and threw it out into the universe — and beyond the universe — to an abstract conception of God (“King of the Universe”) — and that was that for the people who walked away from what Pharaoh represented as a power unto himself.

# # #

Iraq Go No Go

17 Tuesday Jun 2014

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

It took Paul Bremer less than ten minutes to dissolve the Coalition Provisional Authority but it will take years, if not decades, for the Iraqi government to restore the messy legacy the Americans leave behind.  The success of this new government hinges on its ability to convince skeptical Iraqis that they are nationalist caretakers of Iraq and not merely puppets controlled by Washington.

Fassihi, Farnaz.  Waiting for an Ordinary Day.  New York: Public Affairs, 2008.

Farnaz Fassihi’s book, which I am still reading, in part recounts the American abuse of Iraqi civilians in the wake of Operation Iraqi Freedom and well describes the consequences of that abuse.

While one may note also the ensuing chaos in the Iraqi-generated vendetta, sectarian assaults, and insurgent terror that provoked enormous IDP and refugee numbers while pumping casualty rates through the roof, the shadow looms large as regards American military incompetence related to “managing the peace” or the post-war transition overall.

When all goes well, people don’t give that normalcy a second thought.

Detain and torture the innocent (at any rate per capita): those stories mix with the war stories of a generation to become part of the national lore.

Having finally been extricated after nine years of trying to fix Iraq’s dysfunctional political culture, re-engaging in response to recent advances by Sunni extremists would be a mistake.

Thompson, Loren.  “Iraq Crisis: Six Reasons Why America’s Military Should Not Re-Engage.”  Forbes, June 16, 2016.

In a section titled, “We shouldn’t be taking sides in a religious war,” Loren Thompson notes, “The fundamental divide in Iraq that makes it ungovernable by anybody other than dictators is the split between the Sunnis and the Shiites, the two major sects within Islam.”

While I find much else in Loren’s article appeasing, disagreeable, and patronizing (on the political left), the hint that involvement in Iraq’s issues would engage in a deeply anachronistic and unreasoning cultural animosity tells a hard truth: The two deeply aggrieved camps have not been made to discover their common humanity.

The dreaded phantoms of the west, including Israel, made fearful by the propaganda of malignantly narcissistic leaders and spoilers all over the middle east cannot help them.

ISIS, as an infection pushing before it all potential victims of its ravenous appetites while subduing with fear all left to deal with it, may work that magic on the body politic, Sunni as well as Shiite.

We shall see.

And soon.

Related Reference

Kagel, Jenna.  “Could the Terrorist Group That Executed 1,700 People Force the U.S. Back Into Iraq?”  PolicyMic, June 17, 2014.

CBS News.  “Will ISIS plan a 9/11-style terror plot against the U.S.”  June 16, 2014.

Rothman, Noah.  “Obama’s former acting CIA director warns ISIS in Iraq is a threat to U.S.”  Hot Air, June 16, 2014:

After taking the weekend to ruminate on the suboptimal options available to him for dealing with the rapidly escalating crisis in Iraq and acting on none of them, the president awoke on Monday to his former acting CIA Director Mike Morell telling CBS’s This Morning hosts that the ISIS insurgency in Iraq poses an immediate threat to American national security.

This Day in History.  “Mar 19, 2003: Bush announces the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

Addendum

FTAC – from correspondence immediately after posting this blog: “https://conflict-backchannels.com/2014/06/17/iraq-go-no-go/  Perhaps people have to sort themselves out, do they not?  Resentment of the foreigner plus the foreigner’s inept qualities may have isolated Iraq.  If anything like a national government wants its uniforms back, it’s going to have to get them itself.”

# # #

Mosul – A Video from Yesterday’s Fighting

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by in Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Regions

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , ,

Recorded: Ninawa Province, east of Mosul,

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.”

# # #

 

Mosul – “A Catastrophe By Any Measure”

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, ,

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.”

Reference

Free Republic.  “ISIL fighters seize Turkish consulate in Iraq’s Mosul.”  June 11, 2014: “The seizure of the consulate comes a day after 28 Turkish truck drivers were abducted by ISIL militants while delivering diesel to a power plant in Mosul.”

BBC.  “Iraq crisis: Islamists force 500,000 to flee Mosul.”  June 11, 2014.

Robertson, Nic and Laura Smith-Spark.  “500,000 Iraqi civilians flee Mosul fighting, migration group says.” CNN, June 11, 2014.

Knights, Michael.  “Battle for Mosul: Critical test ahead for Iraq.  BBC, June 10, 2014.

Sly, Liz and Ahmed Ramadan.  “Mosul as security forces flee.”  The Washington Post, June 10, 2014.

Abbas, Mushreq.  “ISIS ‘hit and run’ tactics reveal Iraqi security weaknesses.”  Al-Monitor, June 9, 2014.

Damon, Arwa and Raja Razek.  “CNN Exclusive: Syrian town left scarred by opposition group ISIS’ brutal rule.”  CNN.  February 17, 2014.

Afterthought

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.

After kidnapping 28 Turkish truck drivers, ISIL/S has occupied the Turkish consulate as well, as clear a provocation and invitation to war as any ever made.

Where is America now?

Where is NATO?

Related: https://twitter.com/INTLSpectator/status/476753992655978496/photo/1

 

# # #