Understanding Iraq

June 18th IRAQ SITREP by Mindfriedo

Vineyard of the Saker,

18 June, 2014

I would like to thank the Saker for permitting me to post these updates. They are mostly open source. I just compile them. There were a few commentators (appreciate all your support) who had asked about Daash and the future of Iraq. I am no expert here. However, please refer to this link:

http://m.policymic.com/articles/91127/to-understand-the-crisis-in-Iraq-follow-the-pipelines

It shows how Daash is establishing control and earning revenue through oil. This oil and Kurdish oil is flowing through Turkey. The militants are attacking through Turkey; the injured are leaving through Turkey. Turkey is playing both sides. Turkey, unlike Saudi Arabia, is in it for the money. Turkey is the new Pakistan of the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. Whoring itself unscrupulously. Turkey should look at Pakistan now and shudder. For once the militants loose, and they will lose, they will turn in frustration on their masters. Blowback/karma is a bitch.

17th June: The US embassy has been supplemented with 275 marines. An additional force is being kept in reserve with Osprey V-22 aircraft on stand by.

17th June: Lakhtar Brahimi has very politely called Tony Blair a spent force. One that nobody is interested to listen to anymore.

17th June: America confirms that discussions were held with Iran regarding Iraq on the sidelines of the Vienna summit. Iran at first denies any talks concerning Iraq. They are then confirmed by Iran's foreign minister Javed Zarif.

17th June: Six terrorist bombings in Baghdad have left 17 dead and 34 injured.

17th June: Police personnel have discovered the bodies of 18 men in the west of Samarra. They were members of the security forces and were shot through the head and chest.

17th: Maliki sacks four senior military commanders. He recommends the court martial of one of the four.

17th June: The brother of the slain Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi in Sallahuddin province along with 10 other Daash militants has been arrested by Security Forces.

17th June: Reuters reports that Yuval Steinitz, the Israeli minister of Strategic Affairs, has cautioned the US against working with Iran stating "Iran should not be helped to expand its influence in Iraq."

18th June: Baiji refinery is now under heavy attack with militants using mortar and machine gun fire and attacking from two sides. It is not expected to hold on for long. The attack started at 4 am.

18th June: Maliki appears on Iraqi television along with Kurdish and Sunni leaders appealing to militants to lay down their arms.

18th June: Rouhani says that Iran will do whatever it takes to protect Shia shrines in Iraq.

18th June: Nasrallah speech made on Tuesday the 17th of June: "We are ready to sacrifice martyrs in Iraq five times more than what we sacrificed in Syria, in order to protect shrines, because they are much more important than [the holy sites in Syria],”

18th June: The Shia militias are holding back the rebels in Baqouba.

18th June: Baiji refinery is now mostly in rebel hands.

18th June: Dr. John Andrew Morrow, an Islamic scholar terms Daash as not belonging to the Sunni faith; Zaid Hamid a Sunni Pakistani defence analyst has gone further and called them Kharajis, an anarchist, heretic early Islamic sect.

18th June: Heavy fighting has resumed in Tal Afar. The army has airlifted troops and is attempting to wrest control of the city from Daash

18th June: Shia militias have started returning from Syria. Their aim is to join the fight in Iraq against Daash. This is expected to affect the balance of power in Iraq and in Syria.

18th June: German police have arrested an injured French national on his return from Syria. The man was fighting against the Assad are gone and was returning via, very interesting, Turkey. The man was arrested on Sunday. French authorities deported a Tunisian who was recruiting French nationals to fight for Daash. French authorities estimate that 800 of its nationals are currently in Syria.

18th June: Daash has reportedly asked all other groups in Mosul to refrain from claiming parts of Mosul in any other name. Daash has also confiscated weapons from fighters in Hawija and forced them to swear allegiance before being allowed to be armed.

18th June: The town of Qaratapa in Diyala province, 110 km north of Baquba is now completely under Peshmerga control

18th June: Clashes between Peshmergas and Daash in Jalawla, a town 70 km north of Baquba, has displaced 150 families from the outskirts of the town.

18th June: Saqlawiyah, a town north of Fallujah is in government hands. Security forces claim to have killed 250 "terrorists." The town was earlier under opposition control.

18th June: The Iraqi airforce attacked a Daash military parade in Fallujah. An estimated 400 militants tried to hide on seeing the aircraft and hid an apartment building. The building was subsequently bombed. The air strike has reportedly killed 270 militants and destroyed seven vehicles.

18th June: the Iraqi armed forces are claiming to have killed 56 terrorists in the past 24 hours in and around Baghdad.

18th June: Maj Gen Qassim Atta, the spokesperson of the Iraqi Armed forces, claims that the army has killed 279 militants in Salahuddin, Diyala, and Nineveh. This claim was made on Sunday.

18th June: Iraqi state television is reporting the deaths of 70 militants in government airstrikes in Samarra and another 17 in Baqouba.

18th June: The Iraqi national news agecncy is claiming the success of the armed forces in Tal Afar. It has also claimed that the attack on Baiji refinery has been repelled. Forty militants are reported killed and vehicles destroyed.

18th June: Al Manar is reporting the deaths of 21 Daash militants by the army in Anbar.

18th June: al Manar is also reporting the deaths of 19 Daash militants in Edhaym. And government gains in Bala, Dhuluiya and Ishaqi.

18th June: Atta's press conference, points put forward:

Rumours of the fall of the Iraqi government, pro Daash tweet, are untrue

The government is not running out of food; the BBC was reporting yesterday of food shortages and hoarding

Confirms that Attack on Baiji refinery was repulsed and resulted in 40 terrorists being killed

Most of Tal Afar in government hands

Twenty terrorist killed in Tikrit and vehicles destroyed

Twenty one terrorist killed in Anbar province

Fifteen terrorist killed in Baqouba

Most of his assertions confirm earlier reported figures and are not in addition.

18th June: Sixty foreign workers have been kidnapped by Daash from Kirkuk. They were from Pakistan, Turkey, Bangladesh, Turkmenistan, and Nepal. The Turkish nationals were working on a hospital in the town of Dor. It is situated between Kirkuk and Sallahuddin. A worker who managed to evade capture has informed authorities of the abduction.

Forty Indian workers have been kidnapped by Daash in Mosul on Tuesday.

Eighty Turkish nationals were abducted by Daash when Mosul was captured. 

Thirty one of these were truck drivers.

Abductions, kidnappings and ransom are a lucrative means for Daash to fund its activities.

18th June: the United States has defended it's ally Saudi Arabia and termed Maliki's comments as "inaccurate and unprofessional."

18th June: the BBC is carrying a story on Gassem Soleimani and the power he wields. It talks about how the US needed his help in the past and how it might have to work with him again, of his helping Assad survive, and his organising the fight against Daash.

18th June: The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has warned in parliament that Daash plans attacks on the UK next.

18th June: Sir Peter Tapsell, referred to as the father of the house in the UK, has suggested that Tony Blair be impeached for misleading the world prior to Iraq's invasion.

18th June: the telegraph reports that Major General Mohammed Koraishi, allegedly captured and to be executed by Daash, is alive and well and is leading the assault against the militants in Tal Afar.

18th June: Rouhani's advisor has stated that Iran would be willing to work with America once the nuclear talks are successful

There is a touchy subject that I would like to mention. This is because everywhere I read in the western press it's always referred to as sectarian violence and sectarian killings. I would request readers to always read the detail in every report and not the headlines; the devil is in the detail.

Nine times out of ten in Iraq it's the Sunni takfiris that are targeting Shias. Their modus operandi is suicide bombings, market bombings, mosque and shrine bombings, hospital bombings and targeted killings; mostly it is indiscriminate terror. This is true from Beirut to Karachi and in the case of other communities being targeted, all the way till Bali. The Shia response is ALWAYS a retaliation, and it has always occurred after a tipping point has been reached. Killings by Shias are equally bad (during the height of tit for tat killings, some Shia militias used ambulances to drive to Sunni areas in Baghdad, asked for blood for the resistance fighting against the Americans in Fallujah, kidnapped Sunni young men volunteering to donate blood, executed them, and dumped their bodies outside Sadr City-No good deed goes unpunished), no doubt, but the targets are never women, children, and civilians. Most targets were initially ex-Baathist. Then it was almost always young men. The Shia clergy, be they apolitical Sistani or the political mullahs of Iran, have always condemned them and called for restraint.

This article by Patrick Cockburn is a case in point (the New York Times has printed a similar misleading story "As Sunnis Die in Iraq, a Cycle is Restarting")

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/iraq-crisis-fears-grow-that-baghdad-could-be-engulfed-in-sectarian-violence-9544442.html

He compares two events in Iraq. One the killing by Daash of 1700 Shia airforce recruits and the killing of 44 or 63 Sunni prisoners in Baquba. The Shias were recruits looking for a job, the prisoners were almost all arrested under Iraq's anti terrorism laws, possibly arbitrarily, but militants none the less. The Shias were killed in cold blood, the Sunnis, most probably, either in panic or fear of having to face them in the future. People can draw their own conclusions. But if Shias were to come down to sectarian killings, I doubt many Sunnis would remain in Iraq.

I received a forwarded message today that was informing Shias that the fight in Iraq is not a Shia Sunni one, that Shias should reach out to Sunnis in their local communities, and that Daash are not Muslim. It was from a Shia.

To Understand the Crisis in Iraq, Follow the Pipelines

Mic.com,

14 June, 2014

The news: Terrorist group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the world's richest terrorist group, now controls large portions of both Iraq and Syria. Even though al-Qaida ended formal association with the Islamic extremists in February, they've grown large enough to seize areas with particularly lucrative oil resources.

By transporting and selling oil to and throughout their regime, ISIS is becoming even wealthier and expanding their power. 

The faction's agenda includes money, armed forces, religion and, now increasingly, oil. And it's that last one that poses the largest threat in taking down the Syrian government and creating the proto state they want. 

Aaron Zelin, an analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, recently discovered a 2006 map where ISIS projected their potential control. 

Image Credit: Aaron Y. Zelin 

To get a clearer understanding of the region, this current map illustrates where attacks have occurred and shows the controlled provinces in detail.

Image Credit: The Economist 

By comparing the two, ISIS starts to look like a fine-tuned group with the ability to achieve their ambitious goals. They plotted out regions to control in Syria and northern Iraq with oil in mind. 

The New York Times reported that so far ISIS has taken over oilfields in Syria and resumed pumping. On Wednesday, forces gained control of Iraq's largest oil refinery and power plant, Baiji. Even worse, the insurgents have "secured revenue by selling electricity to the government from captured power plants."

In January the Telegraph reported that ISIS was being financed "by selling oil and gas from wells under their control to and through the regime," proving that they've taken very deliberate steps in securing power. 

What will the money be used for? 

Essentially, power. But after robbing Mosul's central bank on Wednesday and walking away with $425 million, you have to wonder why ISIS needs more money. 

The insurgents want the money to pay their members. And the group is attracting more members by paying higher salaries. This is in addition to the group's already luring qualities such as extremist ideology, highly skilled armed forces and an ability to consolidate power. So they are bringing in more man-power and paying them much better than the Iraq and Syrian armies, who have seen high a number of deserters recently. 

What does this all mean? 

ISIS has been carving out stringent parameters since the beginning of the year. Their first set of new rules impose strict standards on the occupied territory: No guns, alcohol or cigarettes will be allowed, women must dress modestly and all Muslims are to pray on time. 

In a rough count, ISIS only has 7,000 troops, far smaller than the Iraq army's 250,000 troops, not including armed police forces. While the Islamic group does have U.S.-supplied humvees and weaponry, despite many commentators' fears, they don't have the manpower likely needed to seize Baghdad. But even without Baghdad, the group's premeditated tactics have already given them the huge advantage of being able to maintain enough capital to sustain its growing members.

It is still unclear if ISIS will be able to operate and run all of the Syrian and Iraqi oilfields down the line. Though their strategic vision is telling enough about how they operate — enough to worry the rest of the world anyway.