Meanwhile in Iraq... Islamic militants have seized half the country.
Thread starter alexd
Well that didn't take long. In a week they have seized half the country. I wonder if the US will re-deploy into Iraq this time or just let it go? Look for gas prices over $2 a liter by the end of the summer I bet.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham
Known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) — Al-Sham is generally regarded as Greater Syria, bordered by the Euphrates River on the northeast and by Egypt on the southwest. Also called the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)
Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, born in the Iraqi city of Samarra in 1971, is a man with a $10-million price on his head put there by the United States. He was detained by the U.S. for four years at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq but released in 2009. Well-organized and utterly ruthless, the ex-preacher is the driving force behind Al-Qaeda's resurgence throughout Syria and Iraq, putting it at the forefront of the war to topple President Bashar Al-Assad and starting a fresh campaign of mayhem against the Western-backed government in Baghdad.
To create one Islamic state under Shariah law. The emirate would straddle Syria and Iraq. Baghdadi has vowed to "tear apart" both governments in Syria and Iraq.
It is estimated that the group has 10,000 fighters. The jihadist group claims to have had fighters from Britain, France, Germany and other European countries, as well as the United States, and from the Arab world and the Caucasus. Richard Barrett, a former counter-terrorism chief at MI6, Britain's foreign intelligence service, told Agence France-Presse that "Baghdadi has done an amazing amount – he has captured cities, he has mobilised huge amounts of people, he is killing ruthlessly throughout Iraq and Syria. If you were a guy who wanted action, you would go with Baghdadi."
ISIS is so ruthless that they have beheaded fellow Islamists who were not deemed radical enough. This has put them at odds with Al-Qaeda chief Ayman Al-Zawahiri.
The Daily Telegraph, with files from Bloomberg News
the same thing has happened in every country that the US has invaded.
Bass-Invader
There's no way the militia could roll through the country so quickly without local support. This isn't just a group of militants skirmishing through the country as the current reporting is saying. It's a civil war.
Mission Accomplished!
It's shit like this that shows the base level of American incompetence/strategic failure.
All knowing - all powerful they are not
5 predictions revisited: Iraq's current woes were years in the making - CNN.com
the link title on the CNN home page reads
" Who saw this coming " ?
ummm everyone.
Plane-loads of Americans are leaving Bagdad even now to avoid the advancing Islamist army.
I can't help but be mystified at the surprise the U.S. media is approaching this with.
A civil war was pretty much a forgone conclusion - look at how badly the U.S. Military handled the various secular factions that were at each others throats - they pretty much paid numerous factions to not shoot at them.
I'm more surprised that it took this long for something to happen.
Jeffsus
Muslims. Why don't we just put up a big wall and keep them all over there till they blow each other up.
THen take the oil.
I_bRAD
The OP reads like a TOPPS terrorist trading card. I've got a first edition Osama bin laden!
wickedken
Jeffsus said:
I think that was the plan : Arab Spring part of ?US divide-and-conquer plan? ? RT News so your comment is both Funny and Interesting.
Is Humanity more politically fucked up today than it was 25, 50, 75, a hundred years ago? Honest question.
Bernnie Federko said:
Is the world more fucked up today than it was 25, 50, 75, a hundred years ago? Honest question.
1989 - the Cold War just ended and the Soviet Union has collapsed, grunge is about to make an appearance and disco has been dead for years.
1964 - There are nuclear missiles on hot standby with bombers continuously flying as the best way to prevent destruction.
1939 - People have been living through ten years of slow growth and inflation (sound familiar?) and people get jobs again with the massive stimulus spending of World War 2.
Less war, less crime, less poverty, less disease, less hunger, more freedom - its the macro trends on things like the environment and inequality and issues like water scarcity that are most concerning.
But the world is clearly in a better place.
Iran Deploys Forces to Fight Militants in Iraq - WSJ
Rouhani says Iran ready to 'fight and combat' terrorists in Iraq - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East
Iraq crisis: Sunni caliphate has been bankrolled by Saudi Arabia - Voices - The Independent
In Extremists' Iraq Rise, America's Legacy : The New Yorker
The U.S. and Iraq | The American Conservative
Iraq and the Illusion of Control | The American Conservative
Found all of these good reads on the subject
Ya praktik... I just saw that about Iran diving in to protect their holy shrine town in Iraq. This could spiral out of control really fast, if it isn't there already...
Iran's intervention in troubled Iraq could broaden regional conflict
The prospect of Iranian intervention in the Iraq crisis threatens to turn Iraq into a bloody battleground between Sunnis and Shiites.
Spurred by threats against Shia holy sites in southern Iraq, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced on Thursday his country was prepared to wage "combat" to repel the jihadist group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which is currently sweeping across north and central Iraq.
Indeed, two battalions of the elite Quds Forces from Iran are reported by the Wall Street Journal already to have been deployed to help the Iraqi Army deal with the militant forces.
In a speech on Thursday, Mr. Rouhani drew a line in the sand. "The Islamic Republic of Iran will not tolerate this violence and we will not tolerate this terror," he said. "We will fight and combat violence, extremism, and terrorism in the region and the world."
Iran was responding to threats issued by ISIL spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, who vowed that the jihadists, who have chalked up several conquests in Iraq from Mosul to Tikrit, would not stop there but press on to Baghdad and to Najaf and Karbala, site of the two most important Shia shrines, which millions of pilgrims visit every year.
"We have a score to settle," Mr. al-Adnani said in a video statement, urging on the ISIL fighters. And the score must be settled with the Shiites.
A senior security official of Iran, a Shia state, elaborated on Mr. Rouhani's message, accusing Saudi Arabia of being behind the ISIL campaign. The Saudis, he said, are trying to take revenge in Iraq for their failure to oust President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. In an interview with the independent Al Mayadeen satellite news channel, the unnamed official said the Saudis "will feel the heat soon."
Simon Henderson, an expert on Saudi Arabia at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, agrees with the analysis. ISIL's attack on Iraq "reflects the wider war between Shiites and Sunnis for control of the Middle East," he said.
In a paper published on Thursday, entitled The Battle for Iraq is a Saudi War on Iran, Mr. Henderson noted that ISIL's defeat of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's forces "has been the dream of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah for years. He has regarded [al-]Maliki as little more than an Iranian stooge," refusing to send an ambassador to Baghdad and encouraging other Gulf States to do likewise.
The trouble, Mr. Henderson says, is that ISIL "is a ruthless killing machine, taking Sunni contempt for Shiites to its logical, and bloody, extreme." As such, it is very likely that Iran will be drawn in to fight it, he writes, almost certainly by deploying elements of the Revolutionary Guards, such as the Quds Force, as they were in Syria to stop ISIL and other opponents of Mr. al-Assad.
If they deploy into Iraq and take the fight into the Sunni parts of the country, analysts agree, they will ignite a sectarian civil war.
"It will be just like 2005," Michael Knights, an Iraq analyst at the Washington Institute, said in reference to the outbreak of sectarian violence during the U.S. occupation of Iraq, a conflict that killed tens of thousands.
"They will bring all the Sunnis together against the common Shia enemy," said Bill Roggio, editor of the Long War Journal in Washington.
There are signs that a lot of Iraqi Sunnis already are welcoming the jihadists. Reports on Thursday indicated that part of the reason ISIL conquered so many Iraqi towns so quickly was the friendly response it received in many Sunni communities.
Former Baathists from the time of Saddam Hussein are reported to be fighting alongside the jihadists as they drive the Shia-led Iraqi security forces from the Sunni heartland.
Some Iraqi soldiers who deserted their posts told people they had received phone calls from commanding officers ordering them to surrender.
If Iranian forces are introduced into this Sunni heartland to stop the jihadists, even more Sunnis are likely to be driven into ISIL's arms and the war will be on.
Meanwhile, Iraqi Kurds have taken action to protect their interests in the north of the country. On Thursday, the Kurds' battle-trained militia known as the Peshmerga took control of oil-rich Kirkuk. Long coveted as the Kurds' historic capital, Kirkuk also is claimed by Arab Iraqis, who insist the city and its oil fields should not be within the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government.
Kurdish officials said that forces of the central government had abandoned the city and its surroundings and that the Peshmerga moved in only to safeguard it all.
The question is: For whom, exactly are they safeguarding it?
Iraq has the chance to turn into an Afghanistan - a weak country that becomes a playground for outside regional powers to jockey over together. The ethnic mix means you got the Sunni axis with the feeling a besieged minority needs their help, Iran needs a buffer and wants to exploit the ascendant shias for this purpose, you got the Kurds with an independent angle up north but that draw the interest and ire of Turkey.
Civil wars end quickly when no one cares in parts of the world with not much at stake. But when you have factions supported by powerful outsiders these can last decades. The thing Saddam did do was centralize power over a large area and possess the strength to be its own nation-state. This is merely describing the logic of power. Once removed Iraq was brought low - no longer able to control its destiny and becoming an object of power pursued by neighboring and nearby states with geopolitical aims of their own.
America could never succeed in Iraq cause they didn't have the credibility or the willingness to purse a Grand Bargain with Iran and settle the Iraq issue with serious engagement with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and all these powerful states at the table.
Only by settling with these meddlers could they have hoped to leave a stable country.
Ho||yw0oD
Poor Kurds. They're going to get fucked again.
Obama just bailed on intervening.
Iraq conflict: U.S. open to talks with Iran over Iraq - World - CBC News
Kerry says otherwise.
Military Action and the Illusion of Control | The American Conservative
BU - Interview with Bacevich on Iraq
Can Obama pull a Nixon with the Iraq crisis?-Los Angeles Times
More articles, was waiting for Bacevich to start weighing in...
Iraq Pulse
You'll get detail here you won't get in all the American-centred coverage on the currents of Iraq
can someone, anyone, please tell me why Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was simply let go from Camp Bucca in 2009 ?
praktik said:
Seems suspect to me. It smells like a psych-ops site run by a major world power. It is also based in DC. The Iran section has the sort of articles about Iran that you would find about Russia in RT, or China in Xinhua.