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The Islamic state

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Based on witness accounts and satellite images, Human Rights Watch concluded that KRG forces, for the most part Peshmerga, demolished buildings in at least 21 villages and towns after recapturing them from ISIS, in apparent violation of the laws of war. The extent and timing of much of the destruction in the cases reviewed in this report suggest that it cannot be explained by ISIS-planted IEDs or damage from coalition airstrikes, shelling or other actions during battle.

Human Rights Watch spoke with about 15 villagers who said that in Qarah Tappah, 14 kilometers west of Kirkuk city, they saw a joint force of Peshmerga, Asayish, and Kirkuk police on May 5, 2016 destroy 26 houses in the village. They told Human Rights Watch that most of the houses belonged to villagers who, they said, had joined ISIS in mid-2014. In their September 22, 2016 response, KRG officials said that some Qarah Tappah homes were destroyed by IEDs that security forces were unable to defuse. The destruction came the day after saboteurs blew up nearby oil wells, which security officials blamed on persons from Qarah Tappah. The destruction of these houses did not meet the test of imperative military necessity.
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Does rather look like a consistent KRG policy. The Hashd have done similar things. For that matter it's fairly routine IDF policy in the Territories. They picked the habit up from the British.
 
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"They promised us independence after Saddam Hussein's regime fell," said the Kirkuki woman. "But now whenever our president [Massoud Barzani] appears on TV to talk about independence, we all laugh. We know he's trying to distract us from some crisis or corruption scandal. But nobody buys it any more."

Whether the crisis is Barzani's refusal to cede his presidential post (his term expired in August 2015) or the expected tsunami of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from Mosul, people are fed up.

Or as one politician told me, off the record: "Independence? What are you talking about? We can't afford to run the few cities we have under Kurdish regional control. This war isn't about grabbing lands. This isn't about independence. This is about holding on to what we have."
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Pervasive cynicism about their leaders is very Kurdish except the exalted Apo of course.

Ends on a kicker:
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Rumours are rife in town about IDPs in their midst supposedly sympathising with ISIL, or about Kurdish politicians making deals with neighbouring countries, purportedly giving away 50 percent of the region's oil wealth.

"They are accusing us of trying to change demographics, of burning down Arab villages ... But whose demographics are really changing?" asked one politician. "We have 1.5 millionArab IDPs living across the Kurdistan region today - in Erbil, in Sulaimania, in Dohuk - and who will likely never return to their hometowns because they can't. So whose demographics are changing?"
 
On ISW The Campaign for Mosul: November 8-15, 2016
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The ISF and Peshmerga have also been accused of human rights violations, which could undermine the mission to defeat and prevent the reconstitution of insurgent groups in Iraq. Amnesty International reported on November 10 that men in Federal Police uniforms had carried out extrajudicial killings of accused ISIS members in towns south of Mosul, while HRW accused in a November 15 report ISF members ofmutilating ISIS corpses and executing surrendered militants, both of which constitute war crimes. HRW also issued a report on November 10 accusing both ISF and Peshmerga officials of unlawfully detaining or disappearing suspected ISIS militants at screening centers and camps around Mosul. Officials from the Iraqi and Kurdistan Regional Governments have denied the reports. Nevertheless, reports of human rights abuses underscore the high risk that the violations will increase as forces move into the dense urban terrain and the line between civilian and militant blurs. If the ISF fails to prove itself a better champion to Mosul’s population than ISIS was in 2014, it sets conditions for another insurgent group to exploit the seams between civilians and the government and resurge in ISIS’s wake.
Tel Afar still looking like a flashpoint as well.

The assault on the Eastern bank progresses.
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On War On The Rocks STABILIZING IRAQ WITH AND WITHOUT THE ISLAMIC STATE
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One problem is that these de-facto arrangements may work at a provincial level, but they can undermine official state interests and institutions. For instance, Ma’sud Barzani and some Sunni Arabs, including former Ninawa governor Atheel al-Nujaifi, — influenced by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — jointly seek to divide Ninawa into several new provinces . The Iraqi parliament, however, opposes this plan and recently passed a law affirming that the borders of Ninawa and other territories would not be changed until Mosul city is liberated, and then only by local populations in a referendum. This reaction coincides with large-scale opposition across Iraq — from nearly all Arabs and most Kurds — to Turkish President Erdogan’s efforts to militarily engage in the Mosul campaign.

Consequently, the Iraqi government will be pressed not only to integrate Sunni Arabs into the state and make them feel that they are equal citizens but to provide security, jobs, and services across hyper-fragmented localities. It must do so while communal distrust is salient, regional states are challenging Iraqi sovereignty, populations are demanding a strong and effective federal government, but one also limited in its powers,and with Baghdad beset in its own political turmoil and economic crises. One way to set the stage for stability is to encourage pacts between local authorities and Baghdad based on joint extraction (and security) within existing provincial and regional (KRG) structures.

Indeed, transactional pacts will not necessarily remove local patronage and smuggling networks or resolve deep-rooted disputed over territories. They also have political trade-offs. Greater complexity and decentralization will likely increase political entropy across Iraq, particularly if the lines of authority between provincial, regional, and state authorities remain unclear or contested. Still, as long as the Iraqi state is weak, hyper-fragmented, and financially stressed, these arrangements may help create conditions for the necessary devolution of authority, shared governance, zones of stability, and economic reconstruction. They can help integrate some de-facto authorities, including local militias that have developed over the past two years, into official state institutions, and as part of provincial administrations or the KRG.
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Which seems sensible; elaborate devolved government structures probably only add to layers of corrupt politicians.

One of the recommendations that follows is building up local police. I do wonder if more could be done via the local judiciary. Create a more local sense of limited injustice.
 
On ISW Iraq Situation Report: November 9-17, 2016
ISIS escalated its execution campaign in and around Mosul, targeting former Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) officers and civilians accused of collaborating with the ISF in order to maintain control and inflict fear as the ISF closes in. The UN, Human Rights Watch (HRW), and local sources reported that ISIS has executed hundreds of civilians on charges of collaborating with the ISF and has executed or kidnapped over 600 former ISF officers when it withdrew from terrain, including Hammam al-Alil and near Tel Afar. ISIS is using the execution campaign to demonstrate control over its population, deter the ISF from advancing lest ISIS retaliates with executions, and tamp down on possible internal resistance. It will likely increase this tactic as the ISF closes in on Mosul where the majority of the estimated 1.5 million civilians still remain, raising the likelihood of high human causalities during the operation to retake the city.
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A marked difference with the siege of East Aleppo. The rebels there may intimidate some of the residents but punitive massacres are not how they control the population. Goes on to note IS sleeper units obviously still have local support in Anbar despite the Caliphate's little ways.
 
On Musings On Iraq Mosul Campaign Day Thirty-One, Nov 16, 2016
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Finally, U.S. and Kurdish officials made contradictory statements about the areas liberated by the Peshmerga. America’s Ambassador to Iraq Douglas Silliman told the press that the Kurdish forces would withdraw from the places that they had freed after the Mosul battle. This came after a meeting with Kurdish President Massoud Barzani. Two days later the president responded that 11,500 Peshmerga had been killed and wounded to take that territory and that the Kurds had no intention of withdrawing from any Kurdish areas. The Kurdistan Regional Government KRG) has made it clear time and again that the areas that they have taken are part of the disputed areas that they claim as historically being Kurdish and that they want to annex them. The status of these places was supposed to be resolved by 2007 according to the Iraqi constitution, but never was due to political disputes between Baghdad and Irbil. The Kurds have now established authority over them, and plan on keeping the majority of them.
Barzani had been pretty clear about that previously. Meant to be some pretty nice oil reserves East of Mosul.
 
In The Guardian Battle for Mosul: Iraq asks for UK help to get thermobaric weapons
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The Iraqi ambassador to London, Salih Husain Ali al-Tamimi, briefed Westminster MPs this week that the Iraqi forces may need further air support to close all the corridors being used by Islamic State fighters fleeing the city for the Syrian city of Raqqa, the other Isis stronghold.

He said that only 40,000 people had fled Mosul so far, but as the liberation battle continued, the number could rise to 500,000. He said civilians have been advised to stay in the city until an area is cleared.

Four refugee camps have been established and six more are in the process of being built. He added: “Islamic State are using civilians as human shields, and since the Iraqis are avoiding civilian casualties it will take time to liberate the city. The intense nature of the battle and the use of tunnels meant the liberation will take many more weeks.”
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Interesting that Baghdad is telling folk to stay put in Mosul. It's a big city that fighting is moving across and the Iraqis have no capacity to deal with huge IDP flows.
 
On AP 1 month in, Iraq still faces grueling urban combat in Mosul
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THE EASTERN FRONT

Iraqi forces have advanced the furthest and faced the heaviest resistance in Mosul's east. Iraq's special forces say they control significant pockets of four of Mosul's easternmost neighborhoods: Zahra, Qadisiya, Tahrir and Gogjali. The territory measures less than a tenth of the city's total area.

Inside those neighborhoods, Iraqi forces are now surrounded by thousands of civilians as they continue to push to the city center. The presence of civilians has already thwarted the use of overwhelming air power to clear territory.

Iraqi officers say they also worry that IS supporters among the civilians are helping the group.

"We control all of this area," Iraqi special forces Maj. Ahmed Mamouri said, speaking in the Zahra district. "We've cleared the territory of fighters, but some of the civilians still support Daesh," he said using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.

Mamouri said he believes IS supporters still living in this neighborhood are acting as spotters to aim mortar attacks and scout targets for suicide bombers. That forces his men to not only focus on the front-line fight, but also look backward and repeatedly screen the thousands living among his men's positions, supply lines and defenses.

When IS initially swept into Mosul in 2014 the group was met with significant popular support from residents, who are overwhelmingly from the Sunni Muslim minority that has long resented marginalization by the Shiite-dominated central government. That support has eroded under more than two years of harsh militant rule and dire living conditions, Iraqi and coalition officials believe.
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A peculiarly difficult battle; literally war amongst the people.

IS's impressive intelligence arm will have planned to have people stay behind who are not obvious supporters. They'll have had covert informers everywhere in the Baathist manner. That is their normal MO and here they'll be planning not just to hamper the taking of the city but subvert any attempt to administer it as they did a couple of years ago.

IS have not made themselves popular in Mosul but there probably are plenty of sympathisers especially in poorer districts. Inflows of rural folk were reported once IS was in control of Mosul. The Pesh pessimistically suspected a third of IDPs coming out of Mosul were Daesh supporters. In a city of over a million souls a base at least in the high tens of thousands is likely. To hold such a large city for two years with so little resistance implies part of the city is on their side. Folk also probably remember that after AQI's defeat in the city in 08 they never really went away. Running an intimidating mafia like operation to sustain a base of funding.

Just for scale a high end estimate for Stalingrad's population in 41 is 700K. Mosul has perhaps twice as many people and so far only about 60K have fled. The East Aleppo pocket may have 250K in it. That's more on the manageable scale of Fallujah which when the Marines stormed it in 04 was practically emptied out. The UN was saying the camps in the Mosul area could only handle about 100K more IDPs. It takes the Pesh a week to screen a fighting aged male. This is well short of the capacity probably needed to support a major evacuation.
 
On Al Monitor Will Iraq's Sinjar become a new base for the PKK?
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Autonomy and international protection wanted

Sociologist Azad Baris, chairman of the Yazidi Cultural Foundation, said after all the massacres they suffered under IS, Yazidis are seeking strong guarantees that, in their opinion, can be provided by setting up an autonomous region with its own self-defense units and ensuring international protection to the region. Many Yazidis are afraid to return to their homes from camps they live in, because they still fear recurrence of massacres. Baris told Al-Monitor, “Because of the squabbling among the Kurds, Sinjar’s future is uncertain. They don’t want Yazidis to decide the fate of Sinjar. They don’t take the fears and demands of the people seriously. Everyone wants to create his own Yazidi. In the process, Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan is lagging behind as the PKK and the KDP struggle [to dominate] Sinjar. Yazidis in peshmerga forces say after they get rid of IS, they may opt for autonomy. But people are sympathizing more and more to the PKK line. Many diaspora Yazidis also think they will be safer with the PKK. There are many who say their lives and properties will be protected by the KDP. True, they don’t trust the KDP, but they [are] also worried about what they see as communist propaganda by the PKK.”

Baris doesn’t agree that Sinjar is about to become a second Qandil. He said, “This analogy is not accurate. First of all, geographic and topographic conditions are different. You cannot make Sinjar a guerrilla base. On one flank you have flat ground and desert; on the other flanks there is a bare mountain. It may allow Yazidis an adequate defense, but it can’t be a guerrilla base like the Qandil Mountains. Such claims are exaggerated and politically motivated. Yes, there is a PKK ideological presence, but what we want is to organize Yazidis and provide them with means of defending themselves against a new massacre. The PKK doesn’t need a second Qandil. The PKK has been in Sinjar since 1993.”

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Ankara probably need to see this in the broader context of what Euphrates Shield is up to. Sinjar being more akin to an important PKK territorial node like Manbij.
 
On Al Monitor Iran, Turkey fight over Tal Afar
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What’s more, Turkey does not wish for Iran to have influence in Tal Afar, which is adjacent to the border with Syria; it would make it easier for Iran to transfer arms through the land route it is seeking to establish from the east to the west of Iraq. This is also seen as one of the reasons behind the dispute over Tal Afar.

Erdogan fears that Tal Afar, which lies 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the Turkish border, would become a haven for the Shiite factions close to Iraq. The Turkish president also has concerns over a possible alliance between the PMU and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in regard to attacks that could be launched on Turkey or a possible facilitation by the PMU of arms transfers to the PKK fighting the Turkish army.

It appears that there will be a new Turkish-Iraqi escalation that might evolve into a military standoff, especially since Abadi has previously stated, “[Iraq] does not wish to go to war with Turkey, but should Turkey insist on a war, we will be ready.”

However, should any military confrontation happen between Turkey and Iraq, the latter would not involve its regular troops but rather the PMU that view the Turkish troops in Iraq as an “occupation force,” which they would target if they happen to be in the same location.

Tal Afar has become an international disputed area between Turkey and Iraq, which is causing further instability in terms of security and opens the door to civil conflicts, thereby paving the way for any Iranian or Turkish military intervention.
Sinjar is 50kms West of Tal Afar.
 
On War Is Boring Iraqi Helicopters Are Dropping Dumb Bombs
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While the November video is among the first clear evidence of Iraqi choppers flying these bombing runs, the concept isn’t new. In neighboring Syria, government Mi-17s — similar to Iraq’s Mi-171s — dropping improvised “barrel bombs” have become a recurring sight in the country’s brutal civil war.

From the footage, it’s not immediately clear what sort of bombs or how many the Iraqi helicopter carried. Though the M-171’s primary job is to ferry troops and gear around the battlefield, the helicopter has four racks for various weapons, including rocket pods and gun packs.

In the clip, the crew drop four bombs — two each of distinctly different types. American-supplied M-240H machine guns are visible, too.
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You can see what they are dropping about 3:40 into the video. It's not the much hyped improvised bombs that the Syrians resort to but the large dumb military kind that also make a very big bang in a fairly indiscriminate way. It's like Vietnam era bombing only half a century ago where the US also resorted to barrel bombs sometimes. Not much of a sin when they were using B52s in massive far more lethal area bombing campaigns.

There have been frequent complaints from Iraqis about Coalition CAS being slow off the mark due to a very long kill chain and a very picky RoE. One factor here WIB points out is the US is reluctant to be seen directly supporting IRGC backed Shia militias who while largely a holding force have done a lot of the fighting against IS.

I can't get very excited about this. Some of the barrel bombs dropped in Syria are manufactured in Iraq. It's a bit surprising the Iraqi's have not resorted to similar desperate tactics more often. ISF artillery still gets a bit random when shelling enemy turf as is the custom in the region. Iraqi air clearly isn't as careful of non-combatants as the Coalition but to me it appears to compare well with KSA targeting in Yemen. But at the same time the Iraqis are fighting a brutal enemy that's sometimes massacring hundreds of their citizens in a day in what's the second phase of a brutal civil war. That provides a humanitarian imperative that gives them a lot of latitude in my book to take ground off IS however they can. The R+6 in Syria facing a far more faint hearted rebellion is much more atrocity prone.
 
On Musings On Iraq Mosul Campaign Day Thirty-Three, Nov 18, 2016
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Finally, there has been a growing chorus of pro-Iranian Hashd notables who have stated that after Mosul they will march into Syria. The latest was Badr leader Hadi al-Amiri who said that President Bashar al-Assad had invited the Hashd into his country. Members of the National Alliance, the main Shiite list responded saying that the Hashd had no authority to act on its own without the approval of the Iraqi government, parliament and Armed Forces General Command. A member of the Supreme Council went on to say that Iraq respected the borders of its neighbors and would not interfere in their affairs. There are already thousands of Iraqis fighting in Syria organized by Iran, but they do not have official sanction. Various pro-Tehran Hashd commanders have been talking about a formal invasion of Syria, but this was the first time the political class spoke up against that idea.
 
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On October 21, 2016, the Hashad al-Asha’ri Fares al-Sabawy militia occupied Douizat al-Sufla, 48 kilometers southeast of Mosul, after ISIS pulled out, arresting more than 50 men and holding them in an abandoned house in the village, a local resident told Human Rights Watch. The local resident said that at least two of the men had been beaten. Some others were moved to another site and have not returned home.

On October 30, members of the same militia detained 20 residents of a neighboring village, Tal al-Sha’eir, after ISIS pulled out, also moving them to another village and beating them, two brothers who were among those held said. They said the men were rescued by Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), who ensured they were no longer beaten by the militia and freed some of them, but took no action against the group that had detained and beaten them.
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On Buzzfeed News This Is How Ground Troops In Mosul Are Calling US Airstrikes On ISIS
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The 35-year-old colonel has spent more than a decade in the country’s most elite special forces unit, conducting raids alongside US troops during the Iraq War. Over the course of several trips to America, he also received extensive training from the US military. He paced the rooftop wearing wraparound sunglasses, with a touch of swagger in his step, as he plotted coordinates on laminated maps laid on a plastic table and taped to concrete walls.

Arkan’s role is unique because he has the authority to call in airstrikes himself, a task normally handled by Western special operations troops. He said a US commando, for instance, was calling in strikes for another JTAC team nearby. This means Arkan and his men do their work without the secretive Western troops among their ranks, though French officers from a separate intelligence liaison unit sometimes join them. JTAC teams can accompany soldiers in the field — Arkan’s team has an antennae-equipped armored vehicle for that — or set up outposts like the one on the rooftop.
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On Niqash.org Making A Killing: Anbar Desert Provides Extremists With Hiding Place - And Business Opportunities
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In general Rutba is an important stop on the road going through Anbar’s desert. Most of the people there work in trade or transportation and some of them have made a lot of money. The IS group has apparently also been targeting these wealthier individuals for extortion, in the same way they once did in Mosul, before they took that city over in 2014.

The district is a very important commercial area in Anbar, Rutba’s mayor, Imad al-Dulaimi, told NIQASH. “And the IS group has been able to exploit this, by blackmailing locals and securing trade routes.”

His own security forces are powerless against the IS group’s activities outside of the city. “Our security only goes about 150 meters outside the city borders,” he complains. “It’s like we are exiles from Iraq in the desert. The failure of the Iraqi government to re-open and maintain the border crossings, and their failure to control security in the Anbar desert, are the main reasons that business for the IS group is so good here.”
From remaining and expanding to remaining and extorting.
 
On ISW The Campaign for Mosul: November 16-21, 2016

ISW predicting a battle stretching into next year. That was the operational assumption beforehand but the fighting is proving very difficult.

Concerned about high rates of attrition to elite Iraqi CTS forces. The CTS is essentially an irreplaceable Praetorian Guard with an intimate relationship with the US. Points out the Eastern part of the city that they are currently assaulting was meant to be the easier part.

9th Armoured Division coming up on the South of the city. The 9th were complaining of lack of training for urban ops where they often are fighting as infantry up thread.

15th Division advancing along with IRGC backed Hashd on Tel Afar having taken the nearby airbase. I recall the 15th was essentially under Badr command in Diyala at times previously. The government plan here was for the militias to provide a holding force around Tel Afar while the ISF would take the city. ISW points out the 15th is probably also meant to deter the Turks from interfering.
 
On Musings On Iraq Mosul Campaign, Day Thirty-Six, Nov 21, 2016
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Finally, there was still blowback from some parties in Baghdad against comments made by Kurdish President Massoud Barzani. On November 14, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Douglas Silliman mentioned that Kurdistan had agreed to withdraw from all the territory that it liberated during the campaign as part of a deal Washington helped negotiate between Baghdad and Irbil. Two days later, Barzani said that the Kurds had no intention of leaving any Kurdish areas. The prime minister’s office reminded Barzani that their agreement was still in effect, and then Barzani replied that his statements were not translated correctly, and that Irbil would honor the deal. Later, comments by a member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq were posted on social media saying that the army and Hashd could take the ground from the Peshmerga. Barzani’s office hoped those remarks were not true, but also went on to say that Baghdad had tried using force of arms against Kurdistan many times, but had always failed. During the war with the Islamic State, the Kurds have been able to occupy almost all of the disputed territories they claim as historically theirs. The status of those areas will have to be negotiated after Mosul is freed. Barzani is such an unpopular figure however, that whenever he talks about them he just inflames the situation.
Well that's not good.
 
On War On The Rocks WAKING UP TO THE TRUTH ABOUT THE SUNNI AWAKENING
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But despite the on-going progress against ISIL, the coalition still has its work cut out for it. The addition of some variation of a Sahwa-like organization to this mélange of allies and its permanent integration into Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) may be crucial to reassure Iraq’s Sunni Arabs against the return to sectarian authoritarianism and prevent yet another resurgence of the Salafi-jihadist would-be-state. Yet, how such a force is created and integrated into Iraq’s broader security apparatus is critical. It cannot be properly accomplished without an appreciation for the deep seated distrust in Iraqi society (especially after the Camp Speicher massacre), its stubborn conspiracies, and entrenched political identities, which all can be understood only through a sophisticated command of Iraqi history — to include recent history

And here the nuanced story of the Sahwa has a specific role to play as a cautionary tale. The Sahwa’s eventual integration into Iraq’s security forces was anything but certain after having been nurtured and reared to adulthood by U.S. forces outside of government control. The Sahwa ultimately failed not because of Maliki’s sectarian policies — a symptom of a bigger problem — but because of the perceived political threat it posed to the Baghdad government and the profound lack of trust between the parties.

With this deep distrust in mind, a change from the Obama administration’s seemingly sluggish policy, which prizes coalition building over more expedient (unilateral) action, should be carefully considered against the risks of long-term failure. Even though the Baghdad government is obstructionist and a change in policy in the next administration might seem sensible, more “hawkish” action would inevitably result in a similar miscarriage of events. And while the prospect of further external attacks — whether directed or inspired — is truly terrifying for citizens not only in Europe and the United States, but in Turkey and the broader Middle East, only a deliberative policy, like the current one, that takes into account local Iraqis’ present-day multifaceted fears, mistrust, and individual attitudes can usher Iraq through a reconciliation into a more stable future. Perhaps this aspect of Obama’s anti-ISIL strategy is worth keeping.
The first Sunni rising's turning on itself. A far more complicated one off phenomenon than it's generally presented as.
 
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