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Recent attacks in Iraq

An interesting piece here from Brecher - despite his annoying wannabe Hunter S Thompson style and all the others questions about him:

There’s been a lot of hysterical reaction to I.S.I.S.’s big land-grab in Central Iraq over the last two weeks. But there’s some wonderful bad news—“bad” from I.S.I.S’s perspective — in the fact that all their gains have been on the very flat, dry plains of Central Iraq. The Northern pincer of their big advance, which was supposed to swing north through Tal Afar, has stalled badly.
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Actually, topography has everything to do with what’s gone well or badly for I.S.I.S. in this latest push. If you know the ethnic makeup of the turf they’ve taken, their “shocking gains” don’t seem so shocking, or impressive. After all, we’re talking about a mobile force–mounted on the beloved Toyota Hilux pickup truck, favorite vehicle of every male in the Middle East—advancing over totally flat, dry ground in pursuit of a totally demoralized opponent. In that situation, any force could take a lot of country very quickly. It’s just a matter of putting your foot on the accelerator, moving unopposed on the long stretches of flat desert, then dismounting at the next crossroads town for a small, quick firefight against a few defenders who didn’t get the memo to flee. Once they’re dead, you floor it again until the next little desert town.

So this isn’t the second coming of Erwin Rommel by any means. Everything has conspired to push the Sunni advance, from the lousy opponent they’re up against to the terrain, which is a light mechanized commander’s dream.
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I'm not sure its ever possible to over emphasize the importance of terrain when discussing military conflict.
 
TomUS said:
Brecher is way over emphasizing terrain I think. The important thing is the totally demoralized opponent.
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Can you say why? Can you offer a counter-reason for the concentration of persecuted tribes in the hills? Did they suddenly get their morale back when they reached hard to attack and easier to defend areas?
 
Excellent cool-headed article from Michael Schwartz

Events in Iraq are headline news everywhere, and once again, there is no mention of the issue that underlies much of the violence: control of Iraqi oil. Instead, the media is flooded with debate about, horror over, and extensive analysis of a not-exactly-brand-new terrorist threat, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). There are, in addition, elaborate discussions about the possibility of a civil war that threatens both a new round of ethnic cleansing and the collapse of the embattled government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Underway are, in fact, “a series of urban revolts against the government,” as Middle Eastern expert Juan Cole has called them. They are currently restricted to Sunni areas of the country and have a distinctly sectarian character, which is why groups like ISIS can thrive and even take a leadership role in various locales. These revolts have, however, neither been created nor are they controlled by ISIS and its several thousand fighters. They also involve former Baathists and Saddam Hussein loyalists, tribal militias, and many others. And at least in incipient form they may not, in the end, be restricted to Sunni areas. As the New York Times reported last week, the oil industry is “worried that the unrest could spread” to the southern Shia-dominated city of Basra, where “Iraq’s main oil fields and export facilities are clustered.”
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Under the seething ocean of Sunni discontent lies a factor that is being ignored. The insurgents are not only in a struggle against what they see as oppression by a largely Shiite government in Baghdad and its security forces, but also over who will control and benefit from what Maliki -- speaking for most of his constituents -- told the Wall Street Journal is Iraq’s “national patrimony.”
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butchersapron said:
Can you say why? Can you offer a counter-reason for the concentration of persecuted tribes in the hills? Did they suddenly get their morale back when they reached hard to attack and easier to defend areas?
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I'll just address the Kurds. I think they have beaten back ISIS because they are motivated to fight for their "country" not because they are in hilly terrain.
 
From Twitter:

Insurgents have reportedly surrounded Balad airbase, are launching indirect fire attacks on base perimeter.
 
TomUS said:
I'll just address the Kurds. I think they have beaten back ISIS because they are motivated to fight for their "country" not because they are in hilly terrain.
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Yes but I don't think that's the point the author is making. One of the thing that has been so striking has been the amount of land they have been able to take in such a short timescale. The timescale is crucial here and has been enabled by easy terrain, if they had been fighting in mountainous regions with few roads they would have taken far less ground regardless of the morale of the defenders. I think that's the point that's being made.
 
Is it possible that the emphasis of the role of ISIS in the insurgency (in state and media reports) is deliberate, as a means to build consensus for intervention (rather than present it as a non-islamist dominated uprising)? In the same vein of every two-bit terrorist event in the world is always reported as being carried out by an 'Al-Qaeda linked group', with some states deliberately playing up the AQ link in the hope that the big boys will come and help them slap down the offending group. The US justification for invading Iraq involved claims of an AQ presence and a very tenuous attempt to link with 9/11 - are there similar machinations going on here?
 
I don't buy that for a minute- not that I'm an expert but if they were building a convenient enemy to go for intervention they'd do a poorer job of it and anyway nobody except the wignut portion of the right actually want iraq 3. Even them as do have seen how it political poison for those who led it last time
 
Yeah, I can understand that - though I guess depends who is putting the emphasis on the ISIS component and why - it doesn't have to be the US (could be Maliki, could be Iran, could just be media trying to sensationalise stuff). It's just I'm not seeing much mainstream discussion of a general uprising - it's presented as 5000 ISIS zealots running amok, yet that doesn't quite ring true.
 
Now this, i did not expect to hear:

ISIS recruits Kurdish youths

Kurdish authorities say a small contingent of Kurdish youths — around 150 in all, about a third of whom are from Halabja — has in recent months joined the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has seized a vast swath of Iraqi territory.

The young men’s allegiance to the extremist militant group represents a potential danger for the Kurds, who share the jihadists’ resentment of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite-dominated government but are wary of the extremists now massed on the edge of their territory. The Kurds have hoped to keep their largely autonomous region in northern Iraq from being entangled in the country’s increasingly bloody conflict.

Some Kurdish intelligence officials fear that with ISIS’s gains, more local youths will join the jihadists and that the radical ideology could creep beyond Arab Iraq and into Iraqi Kurdistan, which has so far remained an oasis of calm and order.
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Sheik Ali Hatem Suleiman, head of the Dulaim tribe, the largest Arab tribe in Iraq: “America shouldn’t think that the Maliki government can stop ISIS. Maliki is the real danger to us. We can get rid of ISIS whenever we want.”
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Sheikh Ahmed al-Dabash, a founder of the Islamic Army of Iraq: “We brought ISIS in to defend our religion, our money, our land and our people. We do not agree with dividing Iraq but think it should be governed as three autonomous regions. The Iraqi government is making it sound like ISIS is destroying everybody. They make it sound like all the Sunnis in Iraq are ISIS, and this is wrong.
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Anonymous Sunni fighter interviewed by the BBC: “I want to say to America and the world, this is not an ISIS revolution. This is a Sunni revolution. We ask the EU and America to support the Sunni people. We are not terrorists.”

The fighters’ political spokesman: “The Sunnis reject ISIS. There is a vendetta between the tribes and ISIS because of crimes they have committed before. The battle with them is simply postponed.”
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butchersapron said:
Now this, i did not expect to hear:

ISIS recruits Kurdish youths
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me neither - however, perhaps it helps explain the err... skitishness we've seen regarding ISIS's magical mystery tour of the Iraqi desert: we've believed that ISIS was being used as a sharp stick by the wider, less loony Sunni community to poke the Iraqi government into playing fair, but a disposable sharp stick to be ditched/liquidated when they've achieved the Sunni communities goals. this perhaps is an indicator that ISIS may be less disposable than we had believed, with a greater hold/attraction to the dissafected than their communities might have hoped.

have we been too cynical, and thinking too much of the 'Sunni Awakening' of 2007?
 
sod unity. I'd like to see the break up Iraq. Let the Kurds declare independence. The sunnis have their bit and the shia take the south. It's an artificial country anyway. once each group has its own territory, over time the hatred will erode and peace will reign.
 
RT are funded by the same people backing Asad and Maliki... so i would take it with a pinch of salt.

Doesnt really sound their style does it ?
 
thriller said:
sod unity. I'd like to see the break up Iraq. Let the Kurds declare independence. The sunnis have their bit and the shia take the south. It's an artificial country anyway. once each group has its own territory, over time the hatred will erode and peace will reign.
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Yeah it worked so well with the partition of India/Pakistan after all eh? I can't think of a single example where sectarian divides have been institutionalised (which is what partition amounts to) that's not been a complete disaster. In fact the yanks writing sectarianism into the Iraqi constitution is a major factor in the shite state of affairs Iraq is in right now. You're fucking nuts.

Can you give me an example of a non-artificial country?
 
ska invita said:
Israel's prime minister backs Kurdish independence
Binyamin Netanyahu claims creation of Kurdish state would aid in formation of alliance of moderate powers in Middle East
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/29/israel-prime-minister-kurdish-independence

Spokesman Indicates Turkey Ready to Accept Kurdish State in Iraq
http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/turkey/29062014

big development? I dont think the Turks are prepared to give away any land within their current border, but still....
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I think it is more to do with the desire to stopping the spread of Iranian/Shia influence than any love for Kurds (not to mention the 'Kurds are Zionist' slogans that might go down 'well' for some purposes in Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Iraq).
 
J Ed said:
Is this a joke?

Isn't ISIS full of foreigners? Are you really cheering on a group which chops fingers off as a penalty for smoking?
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If you had paid attention, I affirmed support of the popular uprising within Iraq that includes ISIS - as part of a broad alliance of forces with a nationalist character

If you listen to the comment on myself by the bitch, butchersapron - you are deaf anyway.

The announcement of the ISIS of a new caliphate is negative not only because that is the objective of that group as an extremist set; it is a means for that group to co-opt the revolution that is taking place and to preclude the development of the revolution beyond sectarian lines, which is also the threat which the criminal Maliki regime strategized to prevent with its massacres, as the Shiite were able to pose a threat against that regime before the murders perpetrated against those participating in the Iraqi Spring took place.
 
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ska invita said:
Spokesman Indicates Turkey Ready to Accept Kurdish State in Iraq
http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/turkey/29062014

big development? I dont think the Turks are prepared to give away any land within their current border, but still....
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You're certainly right on the last point. Turkey was dismembered by the West less than a century ago, and politicians of all stripes constantly emphasize that giving up a further inch of territory would bring endless war.

Which is why the PKK's campaign for a Turkish Kurdistan is hopeless.

But the smartest Turkish politicians (and Erdogan is definitely one of them) see that an Iraqi Kurdistan can function not as a precursor of, but as an alternative to a Turkish Kurdistan.

Obviously the price of any recognition would be the Iraqi Kurds formally renouncing any claims in Turkey, arresting the PKK etc. From Turkey's perspective, that's a damn good deal.
 
what do you mean by arresting the PKK? I think PKK will have legitimacy from this - wont they be the official power in the new Kurdistan?
 
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