ISIS: Remaining and Expanding

[Magda Hassan]

Marching Toward Baghdad
2014/06/16

BAGHDAD/DAMASCUS/BERLIN
(Own report) - The advance of the "Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant" ISIL - also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIL) - a product of the Syrian war, which Berlin has been energetically spurring on, is shaking up the Middle East. ISIL's current strength is the result of the radicalization that has taken place in the course of the insurgency against President Bashar al Assad's government in Syria, of which observers had been warning since early in the conflict. However, these warnings had fallen on deaf ears in the German government, which had continued to strengthen the insurgents. The ISIL has also benefitted from weapons deliveries and other support provided by Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf dictatorship that is one of Berlin's most important partners in the Syrian war. The German political establishment also maintains close contact to a Saudi prince, who, during the 1980s, while serving as head of the intelligence services of his country, had furnished arms to the Mujahidin in Afghanistan, including Osama bin Laden, and who, still today, wields considerable political influence. Berlin has never insisted that the Saudis cease their support for ISIL. That Salafist militia has now taken control of wide areas of Iraq and has begun to attack Lebanon. ISIL activists are also active in Europe. One of them is being accused of having committed the quadruple murder in the Jewish Museum in Brussels.


Brutal Combat
Last weekend, the "Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL), an al Qaida subsidiary, encountered serious military resistance, for the first time since it began its march on Baghdad. Last week, that militia took Mosul, the second largest Iraqi city, which is very important because of its oil and gas industries. Then, charging further toward the capital, it took several other localities, for example Tikrit and the industrial city of Baiji. The ISIL seeks to establish a "caliphate" on the territories of Syria and Iraq. In the areas under its control, there is a reign of terror, including mass executions of those of other religious persuasions. Even though the Iraqi military initially fled from the militia, this past weekend, they launched their first offensive against the charging ISIL troops. They were supported by Shiite militias. Brutal combat has ensued.[1]

Unleashed
The Middle East is again shaken by the advance of the ISIL - a product of the Syrian war, which Berlin has been energetically spurring on.

War's Momentum
Observers began to warn at an early stage in the conflict that if the insurgency in Syria is not quickly terminated, it could lay the groundwork for an extensive radicalization. Already on December 23, 2011, there was the first suicide bombing in Damascus, killing 44 and injuring 160, which bore the signature of Salafist terrorists. Today, it is widely believed to have been the work of the al Qaida subsidiary, the "Jabhat al Nusra," which, at the time, was being formed. The Greek Melkite Archbishop of Aleppo complained in February 2012 that also many "extremists" were among the mercenaries being "infiltrated into Syria from Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Libya and Palestine." "Armed Islamist groups" had begun to spread "death and horror" throughout areas of the country.[2] The number of the suicide bombings attributed to the Jabhat al Nusra militia has grown from one attack per month, at the beginning of 2012, to four, during the month of April of that same year, to five and six in the months that followed. But this has not stopped Berlin from continuing to fuel the war. Coordination for Syrian exile opposition groups were carried out and plans for post-war Syria were made in the German capital.[3] The German Federal Intelligence Service gathered intelligence on Damascus and the war zones,[4] and the German government used development and aid organizations ultimately to help establish rudimentary state structures in rebel-held areas.[5] The fact that a long drawn out civil war usually leads to the reinforcement of "extremists," has been reiterated in a recent analysis published by Washington's "Brookings Institute." This has also been the case in Syria.[6]

The Weapons Trail
Berlin has been and is still cooperating closely with Arabian dictatorships - particularly Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Already in February 2012, German government advisors had pointed out that Riyadh and Doha are supporting Islamist forces in Syria. (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[7]) Since the beginning of 2012, at the latest, this support has included arms deliveries as well as other means of aid for Salafist militias. It has often been pointed out that these weapons have repeatedly found their way into the hands of al Qaida subsidiaries. For example, the Brookings Institute in Washington D.C. has reported that anti-tank weapons and grenade launchers provided to "moderate forces in southern Deraa" governorate by Saudi Arabia, quickly ended up in the hands of Jabhat al-Nusra and eventually into the hands of ISIL militants in Iraq.[8] According to experts, Saudi and Kuwaiti Salafist clerics, as well as "private" persons, have begun to support al-Nusra and ISIL with financing, weapons and training in Syria, Iraq and now also in Lebanon. They explain that the Saudi royal family is probably not directly involved, however, turns a blind eye to these activities to reap the short term benefits of the war against the Shiite axis in those countries mentioned above.[9]

"A Very Important Partner"
The close German-Saudi cooperation on the war in Syria has at no time been hampered. During his visit in Riyadh in March 2012 - to discuss, among other things, the war in Syria - Germany's foreign minister at the time, Guido Westerwelle, declared, "Saudi Arabia is one of Germany's very important partners."[10] During the month that preceded that visit, SPD chair, Frank-Walter Steinmeier had also paid Riyadh a visit to discuss the war in Syria. During his visit, he met with the Saudi foreign minister as well as with Javier Solana, who had been NATO's General Secretary before becoming the EU's head politician for Foreign Policy, who, at the time, was also visiting Riyadh. Beyond official government relations, Berlin maintains contact to the long-time head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki al Faisal, who, during his term of office in the 1980s, had coordinated Western and Saudi support for the mujahidin in Afghanistan. At the time, he had also been working with a certain Osama bin Laden. Prince Turki, who still wields a significant amount of influence in Riyadh, is a member of the "Advisory Council" of the Munich Security Conference. German media have provided him various interview opportunities, to express his demand for an arms buildup for the Syrian insurgents to a broad public. That this includes support for Salafist militias of al Qaida subsidiaries from Saudi Arabia, had not been mentioned.[11]

Only the First Step
In their efforts to overthrow Bashar al Assad, Berlin, Washington and the other western powers have virtually even tolerated Saudi support for the ISIL - until, at the beginning of the year, it became apparent that it was getting out of hand, not unlike Osama bin Laden had done earlier in Afghanistan. At the beginning of January, ISIL carried out its first attack in Lebanon (Beirut) and took control of the major Iraqi city of Fallujah. It cannot be ruled out that there may be other expansive offensives. In March, western powers pressured Riyadh into classifying ISIL a "terrorist organization" and to undertake measures to turn other Salafist militias operating in Syria against it - albeit, too late. Nevertheless, the ISIL has been able to march to the outskirts of Bagdad. As Guido Steinberg, a Middle East expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), explains, Iraq is "but the first step." Following Bagdad, "it will be the government in Damascus that is supposed to fall, therefore, Syria is the target." Albeit, ISIL refers to "'Syria' in the historical sense of the Ottoman Empire" and "that includes Lebanon and Jordan as well as Israel and Palestine."[12]

Attacks in the West
Steinberg also points out that the ISIL "seeks to become the leadership of a worldwide jihadist movement." "If this is the intention," explains Steinberg, "then it must also carry out spectacular attacks in the West, with US, British or Israeli targets." Therefore, even though the reinforcement of ISIL means dealing "initially, with a local problem," it then, "however, will have a very concrete impact on Europe."[13] In late May, a suspect, who had spent a year in Syria, probably as an ISIL combatant, was arrested in France under charges of having committed a quadruple murder in the Jewish Museum in Brussels.[14] Last Saturday the Federal Police in Berlin took another repatriate from Syria into custody, under suspicion of his seeking to recruit more militiamen or even to prepare terror attacks in Germany. Once again, a wave of repression is being launched against forces, which are spin-offs of Germany's foreign policy and which, in fact, had been tolerated and even - as the enemy of its enemy - supported by Germany's allies, until they began to turn on the West.

[1] Irakische Armee meldet Erfolge gegen Dschihadisten. http://www.faz.net 15.06.2014.
[2] See Iran's Achilles Heel.
[3] See The Day After, The Day After (III) and The Day After (IV).
[4] See Verdeckte Kriegspartei.
[5] See In Rebel Territory (IV).
[6] Charles Lister: Dynamic Stalemate: Surveying Syria's Military Landscape. Brookings Doha Center Policy Briefing, May 2014.
[7] See Die kommenden Kräfte.
[8] Charles Lister: Dynamic Stalemate: Surveying Syria's Military Landscape. Brookings Doha Center Policy Briefing, May 2014.
[9] Udi Dekel, Orit Perlov: The Saudi Arabia and Kuwait "Outposts Project": Al-Qaeda and Its Affiliates. The Institute for National Security Studies, INSS Insight No. 517, 16.02.2014.
[10] Deutschland und Saudi-Arabien. http://www.riad.diplo.de.
[11] See Good Guys, Bad Guys.
[12], [13] Ein neuer Bin Laden? http://www.deutschlandfunk.de 13.06.2014.
[14] See Der Krieg kehrt heim


http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/58760

[Peter Lemkin]

In case you missed it...Iraq [or what passes for a client government there] has officially asked the USAAF to bomb the ISIL fighters....but the US apparently for now has begged off...saying that the ISIL fighters are too scattered and too hard to spot from the civilians. This is all going to turn out very badly, I fear. What I don't hear much of is the OBVIOUS conclusion that it was the US [and lapdog other nations] invasion of Iraq under FALSE pretenses and near destruction of that country that has destabilized it and the payback/blowback is ongoing..... Bush, Rumsfeld and Chaney should all be in court now being sentenced for nearly 1 million deaths....but no one even considers it...after all, they are/were 'just' Iraqis....and it might bring up the WHOLE 911/terror 'thing'.

[Magda Hassan]

Iraq crisis exclusive: US rules out military action until Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki stands down

Patrick Cockburn

Baghdad

Thursday 19 June 2014



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The US has told senior Iraqi officials that the Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, must leave office if it is to intervene militarily to stop the advance of Sunni extremists, The Independent has learnt. The Sunni community sees Mr Maliki as the main architect of its oppression and the Americans believe there can be no national reconciliation between Sunni and Shia unless he ceases to be leader of the country.


Mr Maliki is showing every sign of wanting to cling to power despite the disasters of the past 10 days during which his army of 350,000 men, on which $41.6bn (£24.5bn) has been spent by Iraq since 2011, has disintegrated after being attacked by a far less numerous foe. He has blamed Saudi Arabia, the Kurds and treacherous generals, but has offered no real explanation nor taken responsibility for the defeat.
Mr Maliki was effectively appointed by the US in 2006 but is today seen as being under the influence of Iran. The Iranian leadership is divided on whether or not to withdraw its support from Mr Maliki and see Shia dominance and Iranian power in Iraq diluted. Iranian commanders have taken over central direction of the Iraqi army, but Iraqi politicians do not believe that Iran has a coherent plan to rescue the Baghdad government from the crisis. The Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani, said that "the great Iranian nation will not hesitate to defend the holy [Shia] shrines". These are at Samarra in the front line, al-Kadhimiya in Baghdad and Najaf and Karbala further south.
The most effective shape for US military support would be air strikes on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) fighters called in by American forward air controllers operating with Iraqi units. Drones would be largely useless against an elusive and lightly armed enemy, though US air strikes of any type would raise the morale of the Iraqi military and the Shia population.




There is a constitutional way of getting rid of Mr Maliki when the Iraqi parliament meets before the end of June. It must choose a speaker and a president who will then ask a member of the largest party to form a government. It is unlikely that Mr Maliki would be chosen Prime Minister as other parties unite against him. "It is impossible that he should serve a third term," said an Iraq politician who did not want to be named.
But parliamentary procedures may be too slow to remove Mr Maliki and put in place a new Iraqi leadership capable of withstanding an uprising by Iraq's five or six million Sunni population, led by Isis but including seven or eight other armed groups. The pace of the Isis advance has slowed north of Baghdad in recent days, but it is still capturing Sunni towns and villages where much of the armed male population joins it. The original force of Isis fighters, sometimes put at 10,000 men, is thereby multiplied many times.
This happened in the Sunni town of Hibhib near Baquba, which is 40 miles north-east of Baghdad, over the last two days. A local woman speaking by phone said: "Less than 100 Daesh [Isis] came into the town and soon became more than 2,000 armed men. Even teenagers aged 14 and 15 are carrying rifles and setting up checkpoints."

The general support for the Sunni revolt in northern and western Iraq will make it very difficult for any counter-offensive, which would be facing far more opponents than Isis originally fielded. Isis now controls almost all the Euphrates valley from Fallujah west of Baghdad through western Iraq and eastern Syria as far as the Turkish border. Any long-term campaign against Isis by the Iraqi government backed by US air power would require air strikes in Syria as well as Iraq. The two countries have effectively become a single battlefield.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (AP)
The success or failure of the US and Mr Maliki's domestic opponents in replacing him in the next few weeks will be crucial in determining the future of the conflict. A chief reason why Isis, Sunni armed groups and the Sunni population have been able to form a loose common front against the government is the antipathy of the Sunni population to Mr Maliki. They see him as systematically reducing them to second-class citizens and putting as many as 100,000 in jail, with prisoners often held because of confessions extorted by torture or without any charge at all. Hostility to Mr Maliki provides part of the glue that holds the Sunni coalition together.

But the Iraqi government's problems are immediate and require intelligent leadership which continues to be lacking. This was shown in Mosul last week where two senior generals took off their uniforms and fled to Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government's semi-independent zone. Overall, some 230,000 soldiers are reported to have deserted their units.
Mr Maliki continues to take many military decisions himself. Iraqi sources say that just before Isis stormed Tal Afar, a Shia Turkoman city of 300,000 west of Mosul, last weekend the KRG President Masoud Barzani sent a message to Mr Maliki offering to send peshmerga (Kurdish soldiers) to defend it. Mr Maliki rejected the proposal. Such peshmerga as were in Tal Afar were withdrawn and Isis took over.
Unless it is too over-extended to make further advances, Isis may think it in its interests to strike quickly at Baghdad before the US and Iran decide what to do and while the political and military leadership in Baghdad is in turmoil. The Shia are the majority in the capital but there are Sunni enclaves in west Baghdad which might rise up.
House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce meets with Iraqi Ambassador to the United States Luqman Abd al-Rahim Fayli on Capitol Hill (Getty)
Living conditions all over northern and central Iraq will get more difficult as the economic unity of the country is broken. Baghdadis mostly cook on bottled propane gas, but this can no longer be supplied from Kirkuk because the road is cut by Isis. The insurgents have also taken three-quarters of Baiji refinery according an official speaking from inside the plant. The government's version of what has happened at Baiji according to state television is that 44 Isis fighters were killed and survivors fled.

Mr Maliki's best chance of staving off calls for his departure is that the threat to Baghdad will get so severe that Washington and Tehran will have to give support even if he stays. He has already been strengthened by the Shia clerical leadership in Najaf calling for people to join the Iraqi army. Not everything that has gone wrong in Iraq is Mr Maliki's fault, but his responsibility for the present catastrophe is too great for him to play a positive role in averting a sectarian civil war.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/...47311.html

[Lauren Johnson]

Moon of Alabama

Three days ago we said:

The U.S. has conditioned any involvement on the Iraqi government side on a change in its structure towards some "unity government" that would include representatives of the rebellious Sunni strains. Prime Minister Maliki, who received good results in the recent elections, will see no reason to go for that.

As expected Maliki declined to follow orders out of Washington DC and he is right to do so. Isn't Iraq supposed to be a sovereign state?
No says Washington. It is us who are choosing a new Iraqi prime minister:

Over the past two days the American ambassador, Robert S. Beecroft, along with Brett McGurk, the senior State Department official on Iraq and Iran, have met with Usama Nujaifi, the leader of the largest Sunni contingent, United For Reform, and with Ahmad Chalabi, one of the several potential Shiite candidates for prime minister, according to people close to each of those factions, as well as other political figures. "Brett and the ambassador met with Mr. Nujaifi yesterday and they were open about this, they do not want Maliki to stay," Nabil al-Khashab, the senior political adviser to Mr. Nujaifi, said Thursday.

This move lets arouse suspicions that the recent insurgency against the Iraqi state, with ISIS takfiris in the front line, did not just by chance started after Maliki's party, the State of Law Coalition, won in the parliamentary elections a few weeks ago. It had been decided that he had to go. When the elections confirmed him, other methods had to be introduced. Thus the insurgency started and is now used as a pretext for "regime change".

The U.S. media and policies again fall for the "big bad man" cliche portraying Maliki as the only person that stands in the way of Iraq as a "liberal democracy". That is of course nonsense. Maliki is not the problem in Iraq:

The most significant factor behind Iraq's problems has been the inability of Iraq's Sunni Arabs and its Sunni neighbors to come to terms with a government in which the Shias, by virtue of their considerable majority in Iraq's population, hold the leading role. This inability was displayed early on, when Iraq's Sunnis refused to take part in Iraq's first parliamentary elections, and resorted to insurgency almost immediately after the US invasion and fall of Saddam Hussein. All along, the goal of Iraqi Sunnis has been to prove that the Shias are not capable of governing Iraq. Indeed, Iraq's Sunni deputy prime minister, Osama al Najafi, recently verbalized this view. The Sunnis see political leadership and governance to be their birthright and resent the Shia interlopers.

The U.S., with strong support from its GCC allies who finance the insurgency, now seems to again lean towards the Sunni minority side in Iraq and wants to subvert the ruling of a Shia majority and its candidate. Maliki doesn't follow Washington orders, is somewhat friendly with Iran and even wins elections. Such man can not be let standing.

So the program is again "regime change" in Iraq, now with the help of Jihadists proxies, even after the recent catastrophic "successes" in similar endeavors in Libya, Egypt and Ukraine and the failure in Syria.

Phil Greaves seems thereby right when he characterizes the insurgency and ISIS as a expression of Washington's imperialism:

The ISIS-led insurgency currently gripping the western and northern regions of Iraq is but a continuation of the imperialist-sponsored insurgency in neighboring Syria. The state actors responsible for arming and funding said insurgency hold the same principal objectives in Iraq as those pursued in Syria for the last three years, namely: the destruction of state sovereignty; weakening the allies of an independent Iran; the permanent division of Iraq and Syria along sectarian lines establishing antagonistic "mini-states" incapable of forming a unified front against US/Israeli imperial domination.

The best thing Maliki could now do is to shut down the U.S. embassy and request support from Russia, China and Iran. South Iraq is producing lots of oil and neither money nor the number of potential recruits for a big long fight are his problem. His problem is the insurgency and the states, including the United States, behind it. The fight would be long and Iraq would still likely be parted but the likely outcome would at least guarantee that the will of the majority constituency can not be ignored by outside actors.

[David Guyatt]

The US has told senior Iraqi officials that the Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, must leave office if it is to intervene militarily to stop the advance of Sunni extremists, The Independent has learnt.

This explains the entire situation to me, and also why the US won't use air power to strike against the ISIL forces.

[David Guyatt]

US should launch targeted military strikes on 'terrorist army' Isis, says General David Petraeus

US President Barack Obama signalled military action could be taken if necessary

General David Petraeus Photo: GETTY IMAGES








By Con Coughlin, Defence Editor, and Tom Whitehead

10:00PM BST 19 Jun 2014


America should launch "targeted" military attacks against an emerging "terrorist army" in Iraq if it jeopardises the security of the West, the former head of Coalition forces in the country said.

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Telegraph, David Petraeus, one of the most senior figures in the American military over the past decade, said that he would now support limited strikes against the leadership of Isis.

Gen Petraeus's intervention came as Barack Obama, the US President, announced that America was sending 300 special forces advisers to Iraq to help support the fight against Isis. Mr Obama also said that the US was prepared to launch military strikes if future intelligence recommended such action.



However, William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, ruled out any British involvement in military intervention in Iraq which has seen large swathes of the country overrun by the al-Qaeda inspired Isis group in recent days. David Cameron said earlier this week that Isis now represented a direct threat to Britain's national security, with hundreds of British-born jihadis thought to have joined the banned organisation.

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On Thursday, the group overran Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons complex at al-Muthanna in central Iraq sparking heightened international concern.
In today's interview with the Daily Telegraph Gen Petraeus said: "If President Obama and other leaders conclude that the threat posed by Isis is significant then I would support actions to target high value Isis elements.
"If Isis is seen as a terrorist organisation with the potential to engage in terrorist acts beyond the Middle East, then that could warrant the targeting of high value targets."
America has been known to use drones, special forces and precision bombs to take out known terrorists. It is understood that Gen Petraeus' proposal would involve specifically targeting Isis leader Abu Bakr el Baghdadi, a former detainee of the US in Iraq with a US$10 million bounty on his head.
Gen Petraeus said: "We must be careful not to take sides if we offer military support. But the growing threat posed by Isis means that military action will be necessary.
"We must realise that Isis poses a threat not only to Iraq but to the UK and other countries as well.
"Isis poses two challenges, to the stability of Iraq, and also the emerging threat it poses beyond Iraq and Syria."
He added that an "Isis sanctuary" in Iraq and Syria would be a potentially serious development for the West.
Speaking during a visit to London, the retired general said: "It seems to be much more than a terrorist group: it seems to be turning into a terrorist army, one that has acquired vast financial resources from looting banks and other criminal enterprises."
He joined calls for the Iraqi Government to "reach out to the Sunnis and the Kurds" to help resolve the divisions which are tearing the country apart.
In the interview, Gen Petraus also expressed his "disappointment" that, eight years after he masterminded the military surge in Iraq that destroyed al-Qaeda, the country is once more under threat by Islamist militants.
"It is very disappointing. It is a tragic development for a country that was given an enormous opportunity in the wake of the surge."
But he did not think American sacrifices had been in vain.
"I certainly do not think it was in vain," he said. "The surge provided Iraq with an excellent opportunity. However it is undeniably very sad to see the tragic turn of events in Iraq knowing personally how great the sacrifice and the cost was for the US, Britain, Iraq and all the other coalition partners."
He also questioned whether Iraqis would welcome the return of American combat forces to their country.
"I suspect most Iraqis, despite the desperate situation, would not welcome outside assistance."
Speaking in the White House last night, President Obama said he was sending up to 300 military advisers to help train and advise Iraqi forces while intelligence services will be "significantly" increased to build up a better picture of what is happening on the ground.
A joint operation centres with Iraqi forces will also be set up.
But he warned: "We will be prepared to take targeted and precise military action if and when we determine that the situation on the ground requires.
"If we do I will consult closely with Congress and leaders in Iraq and the region."
The American action came as Saudi Arabia warned the US and UK not to "meddle" in the "alarming situation"in Iraq and risk escalating it.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf Al Saud, the Saudi ambassador to the UK, said it would be"madness" and "beyond our comprehension" for the US to launch air strikes.
He said he"despaired" for the innocent families trapped in the conflict but that it was"Iraq's problem" to sort out.
He wrote:"We also absolutely oppose all foreign intervention and interference.
"So the call by the Iraqi foreign minister for President Obama and the US government to launch air strikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham (Isis) rebels is beyond our comprehension.
"An air strike will not just eliminate extremists whom we do not support but will effectively sign the death warrant of many Iraqi citizens, innocent families trapped and terrified by this crisis. "
Prince Mohammed also blamed the Iraqi leadership for creating the divisions between Sunni and Shia that has fuelled the crisis with an "unashamedly sectarian agenda".
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned on Twitter that Isis was serving the interests of US in the Middle East and signalled his intense distrust of any proposed cooperation with US to resolve the Iraq situation by accusing Washington of sowing the seeds of division between the country's sects.
In the US, senior figures including Senator John McCain and Senate Intelligence Chairman Dianne Feinstein added to the calls for Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki to step down.
But Zuhair al-Nahar, a spokesman for Mr al-Maliki's Dawa party, said the country's leaders felt "abandoned" and likened the crisis to the Nazi occupation of Europe.
Isis has overrun large swathes of Iraq since taking the second city, Mosul, last week, and US State Department officials warned that Isis fighters had seized a chemical weapons facility built by Saddam Hussein which contains a stockpile of old weapons.
The stockpiles were in the Al Muthanna complex but it was unlikely the militants would be able to turn them in to a functional chemical weapons, it was believed.
There was also intense fighting around the country's biggest oil refinery in Baiji, north of Baghdad.
There were mixed reports over the sprawling refinery, which supplies much of the country's domestic fuel, with Government forces insisting they had regained control after an assault by the militants.
Lahoor Talabani, director of counter terrorism for the Kurdistan Regional Government warned that up to 450 Britons were fighting with Isis either in Syria or Iraq.
David Cameron said that Britain's spy agencies were now "focused on to this area" and everything that could be done to stop Britons travelling or return radicalised was being done.
Isis was formally banned as a terrorist organisation in the UK yesterday, meaning membership of it can carry a maximum jail term of 10 years.
It was proscribed along with four other groups connected to the conflicts in Syria and Iraq.

.

[Peter Lemkin]

Iraq Crisis: ISIS Terrorists were Trained by US in 2012 for Syria Conflict

By Johnlee Varghese

As the American government is contemplating on whether or not to launch an airstrike on ISIS that is threatening to destroy Iraq, reports have now surfaced that way back in 2012, the US Army had trained members of the same terrorist group in Jordan.

As per several corroborated reports, hundreds of ISIS militia were indeed trained by US instructors for covert operations to destabilize Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government, though the training was strictly for Syria.
ISIS has made an astonishing advance into the country since last week. Thousands of residents, police and soldiers have fled the fighting in key cities including Mosul and Baquba. Reports also state that ISIS terrorists have beheaded soldiers, besides taking up mass executions and posting it online.
In a recent development, the Al Qaeda-inspired group have also taken control of Iraq's largest oil refinery, located 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Baghdad.
Back in February 2012, WND had reported that the US, with the help of Turkey and Jordan, was running a training base for Syrian rebels in the Jordan. German weekly Der Spiegel also confirmed in 2013 that the US was still training Syrian rebels in Jordan.
The report noted that the organizers of the training wore US Marine uniforms, and the training focused on the use of anti-tank weaponry. The ISIS terrorists, who now hold almost the entire north of Iraq, have quite effectively neutralized most Iraqi tank battalions put against the invading forces.
The German magazine had also reported that the US would be training a total of 1,200 members of the Free Syrian Army in two camps in the south and the east of Jordan.
The Guardian had also reported back in March 2013 that US trainers were aiding Syrian rebels in Jordan, along with British and French instructors.
ISIS, also known as ISIL, has let loose a reign of terror both in Syria and Iraq. The group has been denounced even by Al-Qaeda for its brutality and violence.
A USA-ISIS tie-up is plausible, considering the fact how the CIA was responsible for the strengthening of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. It is widely reported that during the anti-Soviet war, Osama Bin Laden and his fighters received American and Saudi funding. Defence analysts strongly believe that Bin Laden himself had received security training from the CIA.
The US, which is closely monitoring the situation in Iraq, is reportedly flying F-18 surveillance missions in the country from an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, officials confirmed to Fox News.
The F-18 surveillance missions are being launched from the USS George HW Bush. While the Obama administration is yet to decide on airstrikes, the US government has authorized "manned and unmanned" surveillance flights for collecting information.
http://www.ibtimes.co.in/iraq-crisis-isi...ict-602594

[Lauren Johnson]

[URL="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article38909.htm"]William Engdahl, June 24
[/URL]
For days now, since their dramatic June 10 taking of Mosul, Western mainstream media have been filled with horror stories of the military conquests in Iraq of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, with the curious acronym ISIS. ISIS, as in the ancient Egyptian cult of the goddess of fertility and magic. The media picture being presented adds up less and less.
Details leaking out suggest that ISIS and the major military surge' in Iraq - and less so in neighboring Syria - is being shaped and controlled out of Langley, Virginia, and other CIA and Pentagon outposts as the next stage in spreading chaos in the world's second-largest oil state, Iraq, as well as weakening the recent Syrian stabilization efforts.
Strange facts

The very details of the ISIS military success in the key Iraqi oil center, Mosul, are suspect. According to well-informed Iraqi journalists, ISIS overran the strategic Mosul region, site of some of the world's most prolific oilfields, with barely a shot fired in resistance. According to one report, residents of Tikrit reported remarkable displays of "soldiers handing over their weapons and uniforms peacefully to militants who ordinarily would have been expected to kill government soldiers on the spot."
We are told that ISIS masked psychopaths captured "arms and ammunition from the fleeing security forces" - arms and ammunition supplied by the American government. The offensive coincides with a successful campaign by ISIS in eastern Syria. According to Iraqi journalists, Sunni tribal chiefs in the region had been convinced to side with ISIS against the Shiite Al-Maliki government in Baghdad. They were promised a better deal under ISIS Sunni Sharia than with Baghdad anti-Sunni rule.
According to the New York Times, the mastermind behind the ISIS military success is former Baath Party head and Saddam Hussein successor, General Ibrahim al-Douri. Douri is reportedly the head of the Iraqi rebel group Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order as well as the Supreme Command for Jihad and Liberation based on his longstanding positions of leadership in the Naqshbandi sect in Iraq.
In 2009, US Iraqi surge' General David Petraeus, at the time heading the US Central Command, claimed to reporters that Douri was in Syria. Iraqi parliamentarians claimed he was in Qatar. The curious fact is that despite being on the US most wanted list since 2003, Douri has miraculously managed to avoid capture and now to return with a vengeance to retake huge parts of Sunni Iraq. Luck or well-placed friends in Washington?
The financial backing for ISIS jihadists reportedly also comes from three of the closest US allies in the Sunni worldKuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
US passports?

Key members of ISIS it now emerges were trained by US CIA and Special Forces command at a secret camp in Jordan in 2012, according to informed Jordanian officials. The US, Turkish and Jordanian intelligence were running a training base for the Syrian rebels in the Jordanian town of Safawi in the country's northern desert region, conveniently near the borders to both Syria and Iraq. Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the two Gulf monarchies most involved in funding the war against Syria's Assad, financed the Jordan ISIS training.
Advertised publicly as training of non-extremist' Muslim jihadists to wage war against the Syrian Bashar Assad regime, the secret US training camps in Jordan and elsewhere have trained perhaps several thousand Muslim fighters in techniques of irregular warfare, sabotage and general terror. The claims by Washington that they took special care not to train Salafist' or jihadist extremists, is a joke. How do you test if a recruit is not a jihadist? Is there a special jihad DNA that the CIA doctors have discovered?
Jordanian government officials are revealing the details, in fear that the same ISIS terrorists that today are slashing heads of infidels' alongside the roadways of Mosul by the dozens, or hundreds if we believe their own propaganda, might turn their swords towards Jordan's King Abdullah soon, to extend their budding Caliphate empire.
Former US State Department official Andrew Doran wrote in the conservative National Review magazine that some ISIS warriors also hold US passports. Now, of course that doesn't demonstrate and support by the Obama Administration. Hmm...
Iranian journalist Sabah Zanganeh notes, "ISIS did not have the power to occupy and conquer Mosul by itself. What has happened is the result of security-intelligence collaborations of some regional countries with some extremist groups inside the Iraqi government."
Iraq's Chechen commander

The next bizarre part of the ISIS puzzle involves the Jihadist credited with being the military mastermind' of the recent ISIS victories, Tarkhan Batirashvili. If his name doesn't sound very Arabic, it's because it's not. Tarkhan Batrashvili is a Russian - actually an ethnic Chechen from near the Chechen border to Georgia. But to give himself a more Arabic flair, he also goes by the name Emir (what else?) Umar al Shishani. The problem is he doesn't look at all Arabic. No dark swarthy black beard: rather a long red beard, a kind of Chechen Barbarossa.
According to a November, 2013 report in The Wall Street Journal, Emir Umar or Batrashvili as you prefer, has made the wars in Syria and Iraq "into a geopolitical struggle between the US and Russia."
That has been the objective of leading neo-conservatives in the CIA, Pentagon and State Department all along. The CIA transported hundreds of Mujahideen Saudis and other foreign veterans of the 1980s Afghan war against the Soviets in Afghanistan into Chechnya to disrupt the struggling Russia in the early 1990s, particularly to sabotage the Russian oil pipeline running directly from Baku on the Caspian Sea into Russia. James Baker III and his friends in Anglo-American Big Oil had other plans. It was called the BTC pipeline, owned by a BP-US oil consortium and running through Tbilisi into NATO-member Turkey, free of Russian territory.
Batrashvili is not renowned for taking care. Last year he was forced to apologize when he ordered his men to behead a wounded enemy' soldier who turned out to be an allied rebel commander. More than 8,000 foreign Jihadist mercenaries are reportedly in ISIS including at least 1,000 Chechens as well as Jihadists Saudi, Kuwait, Egypt and reportedly Chinese Uyghur from Xinjiang Province.
Jeffrey Silverman, Georgia Bureau Chief for the US-based Veterans Today (VT) website, told me that Batrashvili "is a product of a joint program of the US through a front NGO called Jvari, which was set up by US Intelligence and the Georgian National Security Council, dating back to the early days of the Pankisi Gorge."
Jvari is the name as well of a famous Georgian Orthodox monastery of the 6th century. According to Silverman, David J. Smithhead of something in Tbilisi called the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, as well as the Potomac Institute in Washington where he is listed as Director of the Potomac Institute Cyber Centerrplayed a role in setting up the Jvari NGO.
Silverman maintains that Jvari in Rustavi, near the capital, Tbilisi, gathered together Afghan Mujahideen war veterans, Chechens, Georgians and sundry Arab Jihadists. They were sent to the infamous Pankisi Gorge region, a kind-of no-man's lawless area, for later deployment, including Iraq and Syria.
Batrashvili and other Georgian and Chechen Russian-speaking Jihadists, Silverman notes, are typically smuggled, with the assistance of Georgia's Counterintelligence Department and the approval of the US embassy, across the Georgia border to Turkey at the Vale crossing point, near Georgia's Akhaltsikhe and the Turkish village of Türkgözü on the Turkish side of the Georgian border. From there it's very little problem getting them through Turkey to either Mosul in Iraq or northeast Syria.
Silverman believes that events in Northern Iraq relate to "wanting to have a Kurdish Republic separate from the Central government and this is all part of the New Great Game. It will serve US interests in both Turkey and Iraq, not to mention Syria."
Very revealing is the fact that almost two weeks after the dramatic fall of Mosul and the capture' by ISIS forces of the huge weapons and military vehicle resources provided by the US to the Iraqi army. Washington has done virtually nothing but make a few silly speeches about their concern' and dispatch 275 US special forces to allegedly protect US personnel in Iraq.
Whatever the final details that emerge, what is clear in the days since the fall of Mosul is that some of the world's largest oilfields in Iraq are suddenly held by Jihadists and no longer by an Iraqi government determined to increase the oil export significantly. More on this aspect in an upcoming article.

[Albert Doyle]

There's a tradition in the Middle East that every time the arabs try to form any democracy it is broken up. Even ones formed by American war crimes and illegal invasions.

[David Guyatt]

Very revealing is the fact that almost two weeks after the dramatic fall of Mosul and the capture' by ISIS forces of the huge weapons and military vehicle resources provided by the US to the Iraqi army. Washington has done virtually nothing but make a few silly speeches about their concern' and dispatch 275 US special forces to allegedly protect US personnel in Iraq.

It was this curious and continuing indifference that told me the US was behind ISIS. There was no talk about US "vital interests" being threatened.

As usual, Engdahl gets a slam dunk, I think. Another good article.