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US-backed offensive against Islamic State in Iraq stutters

In this photo from a militant website, “lion cubs” hold rifles and Islamic State flags as they exercise at a training camp in Tal Afar, near Mosul in northern Iraq. Photo: Supplied

Baghdad: A US-backed offensive against Islamic State faltered in its first week as several hundred militants entrenched in Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s Anbar province, withstood punishing airstrikes and held off a far-larger force of Iraqi ground troops, senior US and coalition commanders said.

The slow going in what officials portray as a major test of efforts to bring Iraq’s fractured security forces into a common front against IS comes as a truck bomb late on Friday killed more than 100 people, including women and children, in a mostly Shiite Muslim market town about 55 kilometres north of Baghdad.

The explosion in Khan Bani Saad, one of the deadliest since US combat troops withdrew from Iraq in December 2011, caught shoppers out for the Eid al-Fitr celebration that marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan. IS claimed responsibility, posting grisly pictures online of bodies and wreckage-strewn streets and saying the attack was aimed at government-allied Shiite militia fighters.

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Peshmerga forces kill dozens of ISIS elements, including 8 German leaders, near Mosul

(IraqiNews.com) Nineveh – On Sunday, an informed source within the Kurdish Ministry of Peshmerga revealed, that the Kurdish force had managed to kill 42 ISIS elements, including 8 ISIS leaders that are German nationals, during violent clashes in different areas near Mosul. The source told Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA), “Peshmerga forces managed to kill the

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The US Defense Secretary broached an Iraq possibility that the Obama administration wants to avoid

 

Ashton Carter

US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter acknowledged during a House Armed Services Committee hearing last week that Iraq might eventually fracture into separate territories for Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds, the Washington Examiner reports.

“What if a multi-sectarian Iraq turns out not to be possible?” Carter said, according to the Examiner. “That is an important part of our strategy now on the ground.

“If that government can’t do what it’s supposed to do, then we will still try to enable local ground forces, if they’re willing to partner with us, to keep stability in Iraq, but there will not be a single state of Iraq.”

The statement by Carter, who previously said that the Iraqi military “showed no will to fight” as ISIS captured the city of Ramadi, strays from the Obama administration’s official position about Iraqi unity.

“If this is a new policy position it should be stated. If these are personal views, that should be stated,” Michael Knights, a Washington Institute fellow who is an expert on military and security affairs in Iraq and Iran, told Business Insider in an email.

“But this is making it sound as if US policy is that the Iraqi army is finished and Iraq is splintering as a state. I doubt that is the overall assessment of the intelligence community or the White House’s read on Iraq.

“Iraqis will hear this as the US backing away and insulting their army and their state,” Knights added. “How does that help the war effort?”

ISIS control

President Barack Obama has said that including Sunnis in the fight against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh) is crucial to defeating the terrorists, but it doesn’t seem like that effort is succeeding.

Meanwhile, the conflict in Iraq is becoming increasingly sectarian. The Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad has been reluctant to arm Sunni fighters to defend their territory, and Shia militias backed by Iran are leading the ground fight against the Islamic State, a Sunni extremist group.

These Shia militias have been accused of committing atrocities against Sunni civilians, and many Sunnis who have attempted to flee Islamic State militants have been turned away as they try to get into Baghdad. This all furthers the mistrust that Sunnis have in the Iraqi government.

Given the circumstances, some experts argue that Carter’s hypothetical is already a reality.

“After four decades of misrule under Saddam Hussein and [former Shiite prime minister] Nouri al-Maliki … the [Iraqi] national identity has broken down and it has been replaced by the identities that existed before it — the tribal, the ethnic, the sectarian,” Ali Khedery, the longest continuously serving American official in Iraq, told Business Insider.

iraq shia militia

“[The administration] thinks that Iraq and Syria still exist when in fact they have already collapsed,” Khedery added. “On the ground, there is no Iraq left anymore, there is no Syria left anymore.”

Khedery went on to say that “the first step toward a viable American strategy in Iraq” is to admit that the nation is fractured and work within that reality by backing moderate Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish elements against radical militants, including ISIS and Al Qaeda as well as the Iran-backed militias.

But it’s unclear whether the Obama administration is willing to acknowledge the possibility of a fractured Iraq and go up against the Iran-backed Shia militias as he tries to negotiate a watershed nuclear deal with Iran.

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Taliban Splinters as ISIS Makes Inroads in Afghanistan

The Afghan Taliban is struggling to maintain a unified facade amid reports of splits within the group and some of the militants fighting each other in the east of the country.

According to two commanders within the Taliban — which has been fighting an insurgency against the Afghan government and foreign forces since being toppled by the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 — and two Afghan intelligence officers, the group has splintered into at least three parts.

The groups roughly are those still loyal to the original Taliban, others fighting under the name of ISIS and those who want to lay down arms and join the peace process with the Afghan government, a Taliban commander told NBC News on condition of anonymity. (Read More)

–NBC News, by FAZUL RAHIM , MUJEEB AHMED and MUSHTAQ YUSUFZAI
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These Americans return to Iraq as Christian warriors against Islamic State

Some say they’ve come to fight for their religion — others just to fight. But their first battle is with Iraqi bureaucracy. Feb. 25, 2015 Brett, a 28-year-old U.S. Army veteran who asked that his last name be withheld, walks the streets with Dwekh Nawsha, a recently founded Christian militia in Iraq’s Nineveh province. The militia says they have requests from veterans and volunteers from the United States to Australia. Ayman Oghanna/For The Washington Post

DAHUK, Iraq — In a smoky living room in a makeshift military headquarters, Brett, a former U.S. serviceman with tattoos of Jesus etched on his forearms, explained how he hopes to help keep the church bells of Iraq ringing.

“Jesus tells us what you do unto the least of them, you do unto me,” said the 28-year-old from Detroit who served an extended tour in Iraq in 2006 and 2007. He asked for his surname not to be published, to protect his family at home. “I couldn’t sit back and watch what was happening, women being raped and sold wholesale.”

So in December he traveled to northern Iraq, where he joined a growing band of foreigners leaving behind their lives in the West to fight with new Christian militias against the Islamic State extremist group. The leaders of those militias say they have been swamped with hundreds of requests from veterans and volunteers from around the world who want to join them.

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Americans’ views increasingly hawkish on terrorism, ISIS

 

DATE IMPORTED:November 24, 2014Iraqi Shi'ite fighters pose with an Islamic State flag which they pulled down on the front line in Jalawla, Diyala province, November 23, 2014. Iraqi forces said on Sunday they retook two towns north of Baghdad from Islamic State fighters, driving them from strongholds they had held for months and clearing a main road from the capital to Iran. Picture taken November 23, 2014.Last week, I posted a piece laying out the emerging evidence that the American people are shifting toward a more hawkish view of how we should respond to foreign threats, especially terrorism.  A Quinnipiac University poll released today underscores that shift.

As economic worries gradually subside, concern about terrorism is on the rise.  The survey finds that terrorism now trails only the economy on the list of top public priorities.  67 percent of the people regard ISIS as a “major threat” to the security of the United States.

The public is not satisfied with the Obama administration’s response to this threat.  Only 39 percent approve of the president’s handling of terrorism, down from 52 percent a year ago, while 54 percent disapprove.  And when it comes to ISIS, the public’s view is even more negative: only 35 percent approve of the president’s approach; 55 percent disapprove.

These sentiments translate into broad support for much more assertive policies.  The Quinnipiac survey found that by a stunning margin of 62 to 30 percent, the American people now support sending U.S. ground troops to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria.  That figure includes majorities of Democrats and Independents as well as Republicans, women as well as men, and young adults as well as seniors.  And 68 percent are “very confident” or “somewhat confident” that the United States and its allies can defeat ISIS.

Although the American people are aware of the risks, they have reached a judgment about where the greater risk lies.  53 percent are concerned that the U.S. response “will not go far enough” in stopping ISIS, versus only 39 percent who fear that we will go too far.

The public is less united on this point than on sending ground troops, however.  Women are more concerned than men about the possibility of overreaching; Americans under age 35 are more concerned than those over 35; and by a margin of 58 to 32 percent, Democrats are afraid of going too far.

Still, neither the congress nor the president can afford to ignore the rising public demand for a tougher response to ISIS.  Despite divisions among elected officials about the precise terms of a new authorization to use military force, members of congress would be well advised to hold hearings as soon as possible and resolve their disagreements expeditiously.  As for the president, Mr. Obama could be one beheading or immolation away from having his hand forced by a public that has grown increasingly impatient with halfway measures.

Those of us who lived through the 1973-1979 epoch, bookended by our evacuation from Vietnam and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, have seen this movie before, and it ended badly for doves.   It’s not 2009 anymore.  Welcome to the post-post-Iraq era.

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