Tag Archives: Mosul

FTAC – The Decentralizing of ISIS

03 Monday Apr 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, BCND - BackChannels News Day, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East

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Something to know about ISIL: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/09/syria-assad-isil-background/

ISIL — the “Islamists” — have been long “played” by Moscow and Tehran as a goad to the west and a useful foil in their feudal struggle to sustain the medieval political absolutism that in turn supports their respective dictatorships.

President Trump’s bearing down on ISIS threatens to remove that plaything from the Moscow-Tehran (old “Red-Green Alliance”) toy box. Under pressure, and as much may have taken place in St. Petersburg earlier today, ISIS has now to displace and redistribute its criminal program.

The kind of manipulation involved between Moscow and an assortment of terrorist organizations may often be indirect. As the editor of Back-Channels, I believe that the al-Qaeda presence in Syria was “incubated” of de-emphasized in Syria’s combat planning, so as to shape and “frame” the look of the developing civil war. That’s what the piece is about, and there’s more online to support it.

Regarding the St. Petersburg train bombing — today’s event — there are some tweets now crediting ISIS with the attack.

The prompt: the suggestion that ISIS was finished in Iraq.

Jared Kushner’s visiting Iraq may be overshadowing the battlefield story.

There may be more signs likes this one, however — http://www.iraqinews.com/iraq-war/islamic-state-kills-imam-mosque-western-mosul/ — that ISIS, ever murderous and disinterested in the fates of the living, has grown desperate in Iraq and gone in for “motivating” resistance by summarily killing those unwilling to cooperate in their own suicides.

Reliant on the open source, BackChannels has been finding it difficult to obtain data regarding the ISIS presence in Mosul and elsewhere in the combined Syrian-Iraq Theater of War.   This may be the closest one may get with today’s field reporting:

http://www.iraqinews.com/iraq-war/deploys-women-snipers-fights-harder-remaining-western-mosul-districts/

Some posters on Isis forums linked the explosions to Russia’s backing of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, who is fighting Isis as well as other groups in the Syrian civil war.

The group hasn’t yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but often takes as long as a day to do so. If it does claim responsibility for the incident – which it has done with attacks that officials have later said it had no role in – it would be far from the first time it has done so, after it said it had inspired attempted attacks in Chechnya and Russia earlier this year.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/st-petersburg-attacks-isis-russia-bombings-celebrate-islamic-state-response-a7664656.html

“Syria conflict: Raqqa’s civilians foresee last days of Isis: City residents describe a kind of anarchy as jihadis prepare for final battle”: https://www.ft.com/content/db290a58-1847-11e7-a53d-df09f373be87

Note: Undated URL’s were published on the same day as the BackChannels post.

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From Gaza to Mosul With Some Dwelling on Ankara in Relation to the Enabling of Islamic Jihad

23 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Politics, Religion

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The groups that comprise “Islamic Jihad” do worse than push innocents out in front of their violence: they hide in plain sight, infiltrate target communities, and creep forward with programs of intimidation, theft, and murder until they have a developed opportunity to surface in an attack. From Boco Haram to the “islamic State” north of Baghdad, that’s how they work. Moreover, noting Turkey’s apparent cooperation with the Islamic State (underscored by its failure to call the NATO card in on the takeover of its embassy in Mosul), containing this force calls for active blocking and dismantling wherever it is found.

The agony experienced in Gaza may be only prolonged by indecision as regards the “islamist” enterprise and the full spread of its overt objectives, including the genocide of the Jews, and its underlying motivations related to malignant and unbridled narcissism and the criminality it generates.

The note responds to the suggestion that civilians in Gaza be allowed into Egypt to flee the fighting on the strip.  However, as all know, and not least the Egyptian military, “the terrorists” look like anybody when it suits them, and Egypt has appropriately restricted traffic through the Rafah Crossing.

The allusion to Turkish cooperation with the “Islamic Stat” stems from a WordPress article, possibly reposted here, asserting that “ISIS gets men and $800 million from Turkey” (Money Jihad, July 8, 2014).  The body of that piece appears to have been based on a piece in The Algemeiner (June 22) that no longer appears online.

😦

Was the Algemeiner report real?

Has the report allegedly appearing there been suppressed?

Welcome to journalism from the web’s second row seat to history (and see the addendum to this piece).

Be that as it may, I’ve compiled a short list of articles having to do with the character of the Turkish-ISIS relationship.  The salient points that might be best defended via online information sourcing:

  • Whatever the process involved or the stat’s position on it, Turkey has long served as a transfer point for fighters transiting through to Islamic Jihad groups in Syria.  The effect of that lax security makes it as if the state abetted terrorists on their way to battle.
  • The attack by ISIS on Turkey’s embassy in Mosul has been accepted to the extent that the “Islamic State” has been using the facility as its headquarters and without interruption.  The story, which may be slugged “Mosul hostage crisis” has been suppressed within Turkey, and I / we may not know what talk-talk-and-more-talk has been taking place between Prime Minister Erdogan’s government and BadDaddy Baghdaddi’s murderous machinery. In its attempt to manage its blackened eye — the Turks have lost evident sovereignty over both their embassy in Mosul and its personnel — the Turkish state machinery has moved the hostages off the front page and hidden its negotiations and attendant politics from the Turkish constituency at large.
  • Turkey’s issues with the Kurdish community play through in the politics attending its stance toward al-Qaeda / Brotherhood-type organizations on top of its own AKP-driven government.  The longer the secular constituency remains secondary in the power structure of the state, the worse fascist tendencies may be expected to become, and that may include the passive-aggressive response of enabling rogue Islamic Jihad by simply going soft with it.

For about a month now, Erdogan’s government has muzzled the press and the opposition with regard to the Mosul hostage crisis:

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has taken all measures to keep the public in the dark on the issue. The prime minister first warned the media on June 15 not to write or talk about the developments in Mosul. A Turkish court followed up on the warning the next day by imposing a gag order to all print, visual and Internet media. The government is now applying a similar gag order to opposition party members in parliament, denying their requests to be informed about the issue.

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/06/daloglu-mosul-hostage-crisis-erdogan-isis-iraq-turkey.html#ixzz38IWGWWg5 – 6/25/2014.

The situation is so absurd that on look-up, this header appeared just last week: “Iraqi Kurds Offer Turkey Intel on Mosul Hostages” (Hurriyet Daily News, July 16, 2014).

Reference Arranged by Ascending Date of Publication

http://www.todayszaman.com/diplomacy_isil-seizes-turkish-consulate-in-mosul-takes-diplomats-captive_350080.html – 6/11/2014.

http://www.todayszaman.com/diplomacy_isil-seizes-turkish-consulate-in-mosul-takes-diplomats-captive_350080.html – 6/12/2014.

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/06/daloglu-nato-turkey-syria-isis–al-qaeda-mosul-iraq.html – 6/11/2014. “Turkey not asking NATO for help with ISIS.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/14/america-s-allies-are-funding-isis.html – 6/14/2014.

http://english.cntv.cn/2014/06/16/ARTI1402877168646586.shtml – 6/16/2014.  “NATO chief to visit Turkey amid worsening situation in Iraq.”

http://www.danielpipes.org/14486/turkey-isis – 6/18/2014 – “Turkish Support of ISIS.”

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2014/06/turkeys_new_neighbor.php – 6/21/2014.

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/06/zaman-salih-muslim-turkey-blind-eye-isis-mosul-syria-iraq.html – 6/23/2014 – “Syrian Kurdish leader: Turkey turns blind eye to ISIS.”

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/07/zaman-isis-turkeys-mosul-consulate-headquarter-iraq.html – 7/17/2014.

http://www.todayszaman.com/national_hostages-relatives-davutoglu-has-been-testing-our-patience_353461.html – 7/20/2014.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Commentary/2014/Jul-22/264649-turkeys-benign-neglect-helped-spur-the-islamic-states-rise.ashx#axzz38IL0BDe2 – 7/22/2014.

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2014/07/23/turkeys-top-cleric-calls-new-islamic-states-caliphate-illegitimate/ – 7/23/2014.

Addendum

One Turkish opposition politician estimates that Turkey has paid $800 million to ISIS for oil shipments. Another politician released information about active duty Turkish soldiers training ISIS members. Critics note that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has met three times with someone, Yasin al-Qadi, who has close ties to ISIS and has funded it.

Apparently, as comment reflects, The Algemeiner article was that by Daniel Pipes from which the above excerpt was taken.

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Psst — It was a setup – Mosul, behind the scenes

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Psychology

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I know it’s hearsay (from my source in Iraq).

Read it anyway.

Verbatim.

I will tell you that the speaker of the Parliament Usama Al-Nujaifi is also the brother of Atheel Al-Nujaifi the Governor of Mosul who didn’t allow the military to get in a few months ago and kept on fighting them and kicked the Federal police (the Shiites from the city) and said we can protect it ourselves , and many more decisions that lead to this and he was the first to flee to Kurdistan

And Usama backed his brother in all his decisions against the government of Baghdad

Also for you informations Usama went to the States and convinced the Congress in not arming the Iraqi military cause he said that they will use the weapons to kill the Sunnis

I could tell you a few things about “malignant narcissism”, the “psychology of small differences”, the difference between

mafia and system-by-relationship

and

open courts and meritocratic justice and fairness,

but I would have a more difficult time addressing the matter of psychology’s “internal saboteur”.

It appears Atheel Al-Najaifi may have gambled on Sunni-based affinity to maintain Masul and, perhaps by chit-chat, to repulse such as ISIS, but as Mosul melts into ISIS, the same, Sunni or not,  may have lit out for the border.

Where I live, Maryland, USA, Christian Catholic and Protestant colonists had similar decisions to make but may have been more cooperative, eventually, with one another for finding themselves alone on a then European and English frontier with worries about security and markets held in common.  Maryland historian Robert Brugger came to call what the state found within itself a “middle temperament”.

Except in Israel, perhaps Lebanon at the moment, that “middle temperament” seems to be having a hard time surviving n the middle east.

The fascists, secular or religious, dictators or religious warriors, seem to have the more effective armies, and those possessed inherently of a “middle temperament” suffer mightily, endlessly at the onslaughts and impositions of both.

From a location 217 miles north of Baghdad, there’s a fine photograph of Atheel al-Nujafi at this location: http://www.knoxnews.com/photos/2014/jun/11/480986/

One may hope that Iraq will find its “middle temperament” and that Iraqi Sunni and Shiite adherents (for there is no compulsion in religion — or is there?) find the courage to build and cement the army that represents it.

Addendum

Perhaps I have made more of the mechanics than is deserved.  In the west, we would couch the same request — defense by local or regional militia — as associated with “local rule” and reasonable autonomy within a greater federal system.

The one thing known to politicos about the al-Qaeda affiliates: they make themselves the controlling agents of others until stopped cold.  They may or may not believe they are the soldiers of God Almighty himself, but (also given the numbers confused about this), they are really the Soldiers About Themselves Experiencing Power Revolving Around Themselves — pretty much the same as any other ordinary dictator.

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Mosul – A Video from Yesterday’s Fighting

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

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

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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.”

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Mosul – “A Catastrophe By Any Measure”

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

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

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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

 

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