July 19th Iraq SITREP by Mindfriedo: Daashing Christians in Iraq
Quote
of the Day (Courtesy of Robert Fisk),
Jonathan Whittall of the
Médecins Sans Frontières referring to his job of providing medical
aid to Palestinians in Gaza being akin: “to patch(ing) up prisoners
in between their torture sessions “
Vineyard of the Saker,
Vineyard of the Saker,
19
July, 2014
18th
July: The Iraqi Government is coordinating with French authorities is
trying to reclaim Iraqi assets of the previous regime in
France.
19th July: The representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations, Nikolai Meladanov, visits Najaf and meets with Ali al-Sistani. He later tells reporters that Sistani stressed on the formation of a government that was acceptable to all Iraqis. Meladanov also visited three other Shia Marjas in Najaf: Mohammed Said al-Hakim, Bashir al-Najafi, and Muhammad Isehaq al-Fayyad.
19th July: Baha al-Araji, an MP with the Sadr al-Ahrar political bloc has asked the Kurdish authorities to expedite their nomination for the post of President.
19th July: The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of President Jalal Talibani has selected Fuad Massoum as its Presidential candidate. Massoum is believed to be close to Jalal Talibani.
19th July: Amnesty International is reporting of gross Human Right violations by Daash. Daash militants have been cited as carrying out sectarian kidnappings and murders of Shia civilians in areas that it captured.
Amnesty also singled out the Iraqi government for indiscriminate air strikes and shelling of Daash held areas and of the death of 100 detainees.
Amnesty has asked the region of Iraqi Kurdistan to open up its border crossings. The Kurdish autonomy government placed restrictions on non Kurdish Iraqis along its border.
19th July: Human Rights Watch has released a statement highlighting the kidnappings and murder of Daash rebels. The victims have been primarily Turkoman Shias, Yazidis, Christians, and Shabak Ethnic groups.
19th July: In response to Jordan hosting the yet to be named group of opposition parties to the Iraqi Government, the Iraqi government is considering the cessation of oil shipments to Jordan. Iraq has been supplying oil to Jordan at US$10/barrel. The opposition group called for the overthrow of Iraq’s government and consisted of former Ba’athist, current Islamists, former army men and Iraqi Sunni politicians.
19th July: Amer al- Kenani, an MP of the Ahrar block (Sadr’s party) has told Kurdish press that the State of the Law Coalition of Maliki may be contemplating some other candidate for Prime Minister. State of the Law Coalition is Prime Minister Maliki’s party and holds the largest number of seats in the house. Maliki won the election with 700,000 votes.
19th July: Daash has released guidelines for the type of “Abaya” or cloak that can be sold by shopkeepers and worn by women. Manufacturers have been asked to approach the “Centre of Calculations” to determine these specifications. All non Daash specified apparels will be confiscated in 5 days time.
19th July: The DI of Daash had issued a decree asking Christians in Mosul to either:
- Become Muslims
- Pay Religious Tax
- Die
Daash had earlier removed all Christian Doctors and Nurses from their jobs and prevented them from working.
19th July: Iraqi armed forces have taken back control of Nofal and al-Sodor villages in Diyala. Ten Dassh/rebel fighters were killed in the assault on these villages. Some of the rebel dead are non Iraqi Arabs.
19th July: A Suicide bombing at a police checkpoint in the south of Baghdad has left 7 dead and wounded 19. Baghdad was hit by five car bombs in mostly Shia neigbourhoods killing 26.
19th July: A mortar attack on a security post of the Peshmergas in Jalawlaa, Diyala leaves 5 Peshmergas injured/dead
19th July: Daash terrorists are preventing Christians leaving Nineveh from carrying their possessions and money. Their properties are being looted by Daash.
19th July: Atta’s/Government claims for the day:
Government air strikes have destroyed 3 vehicles and 7 Daash/rebel fighters near Baiji refinery
Related:
19th July: More “proof” that Daash is American: Daash is suing Al Qaida. Five Islamists in Jordan have taken Abu Mohammed Al Maqdissi (cleric sympathetic to Al Qaida) to Sharia court for claiming that the DI of Daash (Daulat Islamia) was un-Islamic.
19th July: Iran has said that it is willing to allow commercial/passenger flights over its airspace after the shooting down of the Malaysian Airliner in a possible false flag operation carried out by the pro US Ukrainian government.
19th July: Samir Zaitoun of the Tawheed Brigade (an anti regime militia) in Syria claims that half of the foreign fighters in Aleppo have got disillusioned and left in the last year. He states that most of them expected a “whirlwind” Jihad over the summer.
19th July: Iran has edited parts of the Oscar winning film “The Message” that it felt distorted historic facts. The edited version is more in keeping with the Shia Hadees narrative.
19th July: The Iranian nuclear negotiations have been extended till the 24th of November 2014. Meanwhile, the centrifuges keep spinning.
Further Reading:
Understanding Kurdistan: When the Kurds win, everybody else looses, except Israel:
An analysis of the current situation in Iraq
Islamic
State overwhelms Iraqi forces at Tikrit in major defeat
18
July, 2014
IRBIL,
Iraq -- Islamic State gunmen overran a former U.S. military base
early Friday and killed or captured hundreds of Iraqi government
troops who’d been trying to retake Saddam Hussein’s hometown of
Tikrit, the worst military reversal Iraqi troops have suffered since
the Islamist forces captured nearly half the country last month.
The
defeat brought to an end a three-week campaign by the government in
Baghdad to recapture Tikrit, which fell to the Islamic State on June
11. Military spokesmen earlier this week had confidently announced a
final push to recapture the city.
Instead,
Islamic State forces turned back the army’s thrust up the main
highway Wednesday. Beginning late Thursday, the Islamist forces
stormed Camp Speicher, a former U.S. military base named for a pilot
who disappeared during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and overwhelmed the
troops there.
Witnesses
reached by phone, who asked not be identified for security reasons,
said that by Friday morning the final pocket of government troops had
collapsed, an ignominious end for a counteroffensive that had begun
with a helicopter assault into Tikrit University but ended with
troops trapped at Camp Speicher.
There
was no comment from the Iraqi government. On Wednesday, the military
had acknowledged that its forces had made what it called a “tactical
retreat” to Ajwa, a town about 10 miles south of Tikrit, after the
push into the city failed.
Interviews
with Tikrit residents and statements on Twitter accounts associated
with the Islamic State described massive government losses. One
Twitter post said Islamic State militants had shot down or destroyed
on the ground as many as eight helicopters, a number that if
confirmed would be a catastrophic loss for the government. Another
Twitter posting said Islamic State militants had set the base’s
fuel storage tanks on fire and that a suicide bomber had attacked a
“gathering” of government soldiers.
One
resident said that as many as 700 government soldiers and 150
fighters he described as Iranians, but who may have been Shiite
Muslim militiamen, had participated in the final battle. Sunni
Muslims in central Iraq often inaccurately describe Iraqi Shiites as
Iranians.
“They
were being bombarded and mortared all night, and by Friday morning
you could see burning helicopters everywhere and the fighting had
stopped,” the resident said.
He
said many of the captured soldiers had been executed. “They are
parading prisoners through the streets of Tikrit,” the resident
said.
A
military officer from the Kurdish peshmerga militia, who until the
recent political split between the Kurdistan Regional Government and
Baghdad had served in the Iraqi military’s special forces,
confirmed the defeat.
“The
government forces, which were a mix of regular army, special forces
units and Shiite militias, have been destroyed,” he said, speaking
only on the condition of anonymity so as not to aggravate the already
poisonous relationship between the Kurds and the government of Prime
Minister Nouri al Maliki in Baghdad.
“When
they were unable to push past Ajwa with reinforcements on Wednesday,
their fate was sealed,” the officer said.
The
Kurdish officer said he doubted the residents’ account of 150
Iranians present in the fighting, though he said it was possible that
Iranians had taken command of Shiite militias fighting with
government soldiers. He said he thought that Iran’s commander in
Iraq, Gen. Qassem Suleimani, had begun to re-evaluate the strategy
for assisting the government in recapturing territory taken by the
Islamic State.
“Hajj
Qassem,” he said, referring to Suleimani with an honorific, “has
given up on the Iraqi army. His plan in Iraq is to replicate the plan
which worked for him in Syria: to use the army to hold checkpoints
but properly train elite fighters to do the real fighting, like he’s
done with Hezbollah and other Syrian militias.”
The
officer cast doubt, however, on the quality of those forces. “In
Iraq, there is no Hezbollah,” he said, referring to the Lebanese
militia renowned for its fighting prowess.
Prothero
is a McClatchy special correspondent. Email:
mprothero@mcclatchydc.com; Twitter: @mitchprothero
ISIS Sieges East Syria Airport, Aims to Control Main Oil Province
18
July, 2014
The
conflict was inevitable, as ISIS has already taken materially the
entire Deir Ezzor Province of Syria under their control. Today they
looked
to take that last major piece, the Syrian military airport.
The
air base is not only it as far as territory in Deir Ezzor outside of
ISIS hands, but is also Syria’s government’s last major airport
in the nation’s east, from which strikes along the Iraq border have
come.
ISIS
has been slowly seizing the villages around the airport for weeks,
and has been
expelling rivals from what little territory they
had left in the province, a major oil producing region.
The
first clashes were reported today outside the airport, as ISIS tried
to force its way in through the front gate.
By evening the
indications are that Syria still holds the airport, but history
suggests ISIS will siege it for days or weeks if necessary to get
what it wants, and with the airport so far out of Assad government
territory, keeping it is going to be next to impossible in the face
of a protracted siege.
Deir
Ezzor is thought to have the largest oil reserves of any Syrian
province, and between it and ISIS’ other possessions they
are believed
to have about 60% of Syria’s
production capacity under their direct control now.
After Sweeping Gains, ISIS
Tries to Govern Iraq, Syria
18
July, 2014
If
there’s one thing ISIS can do it’s take over cities. The group
has swept through some of the most valuable parts of Syria, then
proceeded to take not only Iraq’s restive Anbar Province, but major
cities like Mosul as well.
The
conquering comes easy for them. Administration
is the challenge now,
as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is no longer just a
speculative name, it’s a very real state.
That’s
proving tricky for ISIS, as their extreme interpretation of Shariah
Law wasn’t necessarily popular among the locals in places they’ve
taken over, and the group has tried to balance their ideology with
political expediency, toning down rules and punishments in newly
seized cities like Mosul, while cracking down harshly in their de
facto capital of Raqqa.
Courts
are the easy part for ISIS, which has plenty of would be Islamic
court leaders to turn loose on those sorts of problems, but the group
aims to also do all the things modern states do, and that means
health care provision, road repair, welfare, and general city
services in places under their immediate control.
In
smaller towns, ISIS appears to be content to mostly turn over
day-to-day operations to allied tribal leaders. That may be easier
for locals to deal with as well, because unlike other Islamist
factions that have come to power, the ISIS leadership is largely
outsiders who came to Syria and Iraq specifically for jihad, and
don’t have local ties.
If
Raqqa is the model for the long-term, however, it a stark one, as
ISIS not only imposes extremely harsh penalties for violators of
Islamic law, but has set up something of a command economy, where
their large bankroll is keeping things afloat, but private commerce
is all but impossible.
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