Iraq civil war update - 08/16/2014

August 15th Iraq SITREP: The king is dead, long live the king

http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.co.nz/2014/08/august-15th-iraq-sitrep-king-is-dead.html

12th Aug: The United States sends another 130 "Advisors" to Iraqi Kurdistan

13th Aug: The US is reporting that its reconnaissance missions are confirming that the plight of the Yazidis is not as severe as was expected

14th Aug: The US Secretary of Defence clarifies that US troops will not take part in military operations in Iraq

14th Aug: The Iraqi Airforce bombs a Daash position in Al Atheem and kills a large number of Daash fighters. Five vehicles are also reportedly destroyed in the raid.

14th Aug: The Iraqi a Security Forces suffer 10 casualties when a road side bomb planted by Daash explodes in Al Atheem district, north east of Baqouba. 
The Iraqi forces have arrested a Saudi member of Daash in Al Atheem and have taken him for "questioning"

14th Aug: Daash has executed 4 Ethnic Kurds in Jalawla for providing intelligence to Peshmerga forces. 

Daash has also marked fifty houses belonging to Officials and is expected to confiscate them

14th Aug: The a Gathering/Group of Scholars in Iraq, a Sunni Muslim organisation, has requested that a new Iraqi government be formed quickly and that it's leaders should learn from the sectarian mistakes of the previous regime. It should look at laws that were "controversial" and "sectarian," should be fair and unpartisan, should curb religious extremism, fight Daash, and move towards an equitable society.

14th Aug: eighteen Peshmerga fighters are killed in two separate instances of bombings in Diyala. IEDs and car bombs were used.

14th Aug: Masoud Barzani talks to Haider Al Abadi over the telephone and offers his full support in forming the new government

14th Aug: The Iraqi Airforce bombs 7 trucks belonging to Daash carrying weapons in Anbar. The trucks were travelling north of Hadetha.

14th Aug: Johnson Siawesh, a Christian and the Minister of Transport in Iraqi Kurdistan, resigns at the state of affairs of Christians in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan.

14th Aug: The Iraqi Airforce is reporting killing 28 fighters of Daash in airstrikes in the provinces of Salah Al Din, Nineveh, and Anbar.

14th Aug: Fighting breaks out between Daash fighters and the Iraqi Army on the outskirts of Fallujah. Fifteen people are reported dead.

14th Aug: The Iraqi army claims to have taken control of four cities: Al-Dhuluiya, Al-Ishaqi, Al-Mutassim and Balad in Salah Al Din province in the last two weeks after forcing out Daash.

The Iraqi army has killed 70 Daash fighters when it retook Haditha Dam in Anbar that it briefly lost to Daash

14th Aug: The US reports having delivered 15 million rounds of different types of ammunition and 10000 artillery rounds to the Iraqi government. Hellfire missiles were also delivered.

14th Aug: The US kills two Daash fighters in airstrikes in Sinjar

14th Aug: The Iraqi Army claims to be in complete control of Al Atheem sub district

15th Aug: Nouri Al Maliki appears on Iraqi television and endorses Haider Al Abadi in the "higher interest of Iraq"

     
15th Aug: The National Alliance has stated that the appointment of ministers in the new Haider Al Abadi cabinet will be based on meritocracy and not on political affiliation     

15th Aug: The progress of the Iraqi army has more or less come to a stand still with no major offensives being carried out. There appears to be a lack of leadership and managerial experience in the army's leadership.

15th Aug: The National a Alliance is deciding between Hussein al-Shahristani and Shaikh Humam Hamoudi for the post of First Deputy Speaker that Haider Al Abadi has now vacated

15th Aug: the UK carries out an "aid air drop" over Mount Sinjar. The airdrop consists of 13200 litres of drinking water and 480 tents. Strangely solar batteries and lamps that can also be used to charge mobile phones were also dropped. 

15th Aug: The Iraqi airforce has reportedly bombed Ghazlani camp in Nineveh That resulted in killing Abu Azzam al-Kandahari, a Daash terrorist, and Mohammed Ali al-Obeidi, in charge of military engineering for Daash.

Another airstrikes in Tal Afar district killed Haqi Farhat (in charge of Daash checkpoints) and 15 Daash fighters

15th Aug: The US and UK stop airlifting aid to Sinjar after claiming that the refugees are better off now. The number of refugees is now being reported as being less than 4000. 

Obama says that US airstrikes will continue in Iraq with the aim of protecting US personnel and interests and that US airstrikes broke the siege of Mount Sinjar
15th Aug: Six Peshmerga fighters are killed and three injured in fighting in central Jalawla

15th Aug: Daash terrorists attack and kill 100s of Yazidis in the village of Kojo in Sinjar and take women and girls prisoner after they repurposed to convert to "Islam"

15th Aug: The US is planning to build an airbase in Iraqi Kurdistan

15th Aug: His Eminence Grand Ayatullah al-Sayyid Ali al-Hussani al-Sistani backs the new Prime Minister of Iraq, urges an end to corruption and instructs the Iraqi Army to hoist only the Iraqi flag and avoid factionalism 

Further reading:

Special forces of the US and UK have been operating in Iraq for weeks:www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/11032684/SAS-sent-in-to-Iraq-as-US-troops-land-on-Mount-Sinjar.html 

Insightful interview by Nasrallah:http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/hezbollah-leader-reveals-secrets-july-2006-war

Mission Creep: From Rescuing Iraq Refuges, The US Is Now Assisting Kurds In Fighting ISIS With Drones, F-18s

Zero Hedge,

16 August, 2014

Just over a week ago, Obama announced that the US military intervention in Iraq would be solely under the pretext of "humanitarian intervention" while US troops would be deployed exclusively as "advisers", and nothing else. 7 days later, the siege on Mount Sinjar is virtually over with the US announcing that "far fewer Iraqi refugees were found on mount Sinjar", and yet the US finds it difficult to leave: something which the current president crusaded against his predecessor over. 

And today it was finally confirmed that the latest US airborne assault of Iraq (so far without a land invasion force) has just suffered terminal mission creep, when US airstrikes, by both F-18s and drones, were used not to protect and safeguard the besieged refuges but to aid Kuridsh forces in retaking the critical Mosul dam from ISIS militants who took control of the critical piece of infrastructure in early August.

BBC reports that the operation to recapture the country's largest dam began early on Saturday with raids by F-18 fighters and drones, US officials said.

Kurdish Peshmerga fighters have shelled militants' positions, and there is an unconfirmed report of a ground attack. Supposedly no US troops are involved in the ground attack, although with the level of lies lobbed around by everyone, it is almost assured that US marined are currently engaged in combat with ISIS

US military officials told NBC News the decision to try to retake the dam came after intelligence showed IS militants "were not yet at a point where they could blow up the installation".

A Kurdish commander, Major General Abdelrahman Korini, told AFP that the Peshmerga had captured the eastern side of the dam and were "still advancing".

Rudaw, a Kurdish news website, said the air strikes appeared to be the "heaviest US bombing of militant positions since the start of air strikes" against IS last week. At least 11 IS fighters were killed by the air strikes, sources in Mosul told BBC News.

The dam, captured by IS on 7 August, is of huge strategic significance in terms of water and power resources. Located on the River Tigris about 50km (30 miles) upstream from the city of Mosul, it controls the water and power supply to a large surrounding area in northern Iraq.

The BBC's Jim Muir in Irbil says there are fears the dam is structurally dubious and many have warned that it could unleash a catastrophic flood if it was breached.

One wonders if it is extensive military planning that has green-lighted an operation as having "no risk" of dam breach as F-18s are launching missiles at militants located at or near the dam wall.

An image said to show Islamic State gunmen on the Mosul dam on 9 August

An FA-18 takes off from the US Navy aircraft carrier USS George HW Bush in the Gulf on Friday

For the latest update on the combat theater we go to the usual source: the Institute for the Study of War with its most updated Iraq situation plan:

So now that Obama is the latest president to suddenly find it next to impossible to extricate himself from a "land war in Asia" and mission creep for the indefinite future virtually assured, one wonders just what humanitarian excuses will be used when the first US pilot (let alone marine) is brought back home in a bodybag, and less relevantly, if the Nobel peace prize-awarding committee will suddenly have an epiphany and finally demand its trophy back.