Peti oktobar na bliskom istoku i arapskom svetu

[Prospero]

Iraqis Who Fled Mosul Say They Prefer Militants to Government

 

By TIM ARANGO[/size]

 

 

JUNE 12, 2014

 ERBIL, Iraq — After Islamic extremists swarmed his city this week, Saad Hussein fled here with his wife and six children. But after one night, he was on his way back home to Mosul, hearing that things were quiet there.

 

“What can we do?” said Mr. Hussein, at a checkpoint on the road from Erbil to Mosul. “You have to depend on your God.”

]Another man stood nearby, his two small sons tugging at his belt. He had left Mosul and was waiting to enter Erbil, about 50 miles to the east. “We don’t know what will happen in the future,” said the man, Ahmed Ali, 31. “The government is not there. It’s empty.”

 

As many as 500,000 Iraqis fled Mosul this week after the city was besieged by the extremist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, many of them Sunnis who seemed less fearful of the beheadings and summary justice that the group is known for than of their own government and the barrage it might unleash in an effort to take the city back.

 

That many Sunnis would prefer to take their chances under a militant group so violent it was thrown out of Al Qaeda sharply illustrates how difficult it will be for the Iraqi government to reassert control. Any aggressive effort by Baghdad to retake the city could reinforce the Iraqi Army’s reputation as an occupying force, rather than a guarantor of security.

 

Many of those who fled said they were terrified of possible airstrikes and indiscriminate shelling that they have seen, in news reports, against insurgents in Sunni-dominated Anbar Province, which has been out of government control for more than six months. Some, saying a rumor had been swirling through the local population, even worried that the Americans would be back to bomb their city. And most said the militants in Mosul had not terrorized the population and were keeping a low profile, with a small number of men in black masks staffing checkpoints.

 

]“We are afraid it will be the same situation as in Falluja and Ramadi,” said a municipal worker who gave his name only as Abu Mohammed, for fear of losing his job. He was referring to the two cities in Anbar that have borne the brunt of government airstrikes, which have killed hundreds of civilians.

 

A woman nearby, asked if the militants were harming people, waved her hands in the air and said: “No, no, no. On the contrary, they are welcoming the people.”

 

Comments like these represent a stark repudiation at the grass-roots level of the governing style of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite, and his policies that over the years have alienated the Sunni population.

 

“Maliki wants to end the Sunnis,” said Ahmed Hussain, a police officer in Mosul who abandoned his post after seeing the army leave. “Can you tell me how many Shiites are arrested on terror charges? Almost all those in prison are Sunnis. He is targeting us. I want to go back to Mosul, but we are afraid we’ll see another Falluja.”

 

Each security sweep that rounds up innocent Sunni men in the name of fighting terrorism has deepened resentment in the Sunni population toward the government, especially the Shiite-dominated army.

 

“They are not the Iraqi Army; they are the militia of Maliki,” said Abu Mohammed, 49. He also complained about corruption, which is endemic in the army and the police.

 

“If anyone gets into prison, he has to pay to get out,” he said. And there were smaller indignities, he said, such as when soldiers would demand money for allowing people to park on city streets.

 

As the militants advanced on the city this week, Iraqi Army soldiers quickly laid down their guns and fled, and many citizens were happy to see them go. “The Iraqi Army was tough on the people, not on ISIS,” said Abu Mohammed, referring to the extremist group.

 

The events over the last several days in Mosul — which is majority Sunni, although it has a sizable population of Kurds and some Shiites, too — highlight what critics have said for years: that Sunnis see the army not as a national force but as the protector of the Shiite population. A Western diplomat, in a recent interview, said that in places such as Mosul and Anbar Province, the security forces are regarded as “a foreign force in their own country.”

 

But residents of Mosul say that so far the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has handled the local population with a light touch. Some residents, hardened by their hatred of the army, spoke of the insurgents almost as if they were a liberating army. The militants, residents said, greet people at checkpoints and ask citizens if they are carrying a weapon, and if the answer is no, they let them on their way.

 

Many spoke of being able to move around the city more freely for the first time in years, after the militants unblocked roads that the army had shut down for security reasons and took down the blast walls that had become a permanent feature of nearly every major Iraqi city over the last decade.

 

“So far, the militants have not harmed any civilians, and they have freed the city from the checkpoints that choke us,” said Ammar Saleh, 32, who works in a hospital in Mosul. Still, he added: “I can’t trust that the gunmen are better than the army. I will leave my family here until things are quiet.”

 

And the militants’ cordiality toward the local population may not last long. A leaflet, said to be produced by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and distributed Thursday in Mosul, detailed a long list of coming rules, including the forbidding of alcohol and cigarettes, and requiring women to “stay home and not go out unless necessary.” The leaflet also said that anyone who worked for the government would be killed unless they sought “repentance.”

 

 

[Ravanelli]

je li ovo ista vojska koju je bašad išutirao nedavno iz sirije (4k je valjda pobeglo u irak) i sada prave posao amerima?

[Utvara]

Na jutubu 4.500 zarobljenika iračke armije ide u koloni...

 

http://youtu.be/e0sa9ro4mZs

[Bane5]

je li ovo ista vojska koju je bašad išutirao nedavno iz sirije (4k je valjda pobeglo u irak) i sada prave posao amerima?

 

nikoga asad nije isutirao iz sirije sem sto je rat stvorio par miliona izbeglica.

vojne snage zaracenih su tu gde jesu.

[Lord Protector]

Kakav je haos izazvan, Suniti i Šiiti su se uhvatili za vratove...zavadi pa vladaj

 

 

Iraq War III?

Posted By Justin Raimondo On June 12, 2014

Way back in the summer of 2009, when the US withdrawal from Iraq was being touted as yet another great triumph by the Obama administration, we wrotein this space:

"Was withdrawal from Iraq just another campaign promise, made to be broken – like Obama’s pledges on government secrecy and other civil liberties issues? The president’s record, so far, does not bode well for an answer in the negative.

"This administration of self-proclaimed ‘pragmatists’ has no problem dispensing with principles and promises when it’s convenient. And it is decidedly inconvenient to be getting out of Iraq at the very moment we are ratcheting up pressure on our new adversary in the region: Iran."

At the time, this may have seemed a bit of a stretch: after all, the President had secured his party’s nomination – and the White House – largely on the strength of his promise to get us out. And the country, by that time, was more than ready to see the last of Iraq.

So who could’ve foreseen that an American return to Iraq was in the cards? Well, anyone with half a brain, but unfortunately that doesn’t even come close to describing US policymakers and the alleged "experts" of Washington wonkdom.

The regional war many of us predicted would be the inevitable result of the Iraq invasion is now upon us. A group expelled from Al Qaeda known as the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant," or ISIS, has mysteriously arisen, fully armed, like a Muslim Minerva from the head of Allah. Now in possession of Iraq’s second largest city – Mosul, population 2 million – ISIS controls roughly the western third of the country. And they’re marching eastward, taking Tikrit and converging on Karbala and Najaf – the sites of Shi’ite shrines, which the Sunni militants of ISIS are intent on destroying.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is asking the White House for air strikes: Obama is saying "all options are on the table" – including, one presumes, troops on the ground. John McCain is already demanding it, and the outcry from the War Party is getting louder by the moment: Obama, they aver, must "do something." The Iraqi "army" we spent billions training and arming is useless: discarding their uniforms in the street, they can’t run away fast enough. Who will stop ISIS as they converge on the ultimate prize, Baghdad?

The answer is: Iran. Tehran has already answered Maliki’s call to arms, with the elite Quds force taking up positions in the country, including in Tikrit, where they are reportedly retaking the province on the Iraqi government’s behalf. They are also stationed in Karbala and Najaf, guarding those two symbols of Shi’ite power.

When the US invaded Iraq, and destroyed the secular Ba’athist regime, Washington effectively delivered the country to the Iranians. Indeed, Ahmed Chalabi, and his fellow "heroes in error" – who along with his neocon sponsors lied us into war – turned out to be Iranian agents: remember those US raids on his various Iraqi compounds? Tehran was the main beneficiary of the neocons’ war, and now they are moving to claim their prize – before it is ripped out of their hands by ISIS.

This augurs a perfect storm of regional rivalries, one that sets every religious and political faction in the ‘Middle East’ up for a war of all against all. The second phase of the Iraq War has begun: the only question remaining is how big a role will the US play in it?

As I noted in 2009, the Status of Forces agreement we signed with the Maliki government has plenty of escape hatches, which could easily be invoked to send US troops back into the country. Here’s one:

"When any external or internal danger emerges against Iraq or an aggression upon it violates its sovereignty, its political stability, the unity of its land, water, and airspace or threatens its democratic system or its elected establishments and according to the request of the Iraqi government, the two parties will immediately start strategic talks and according to what they will agree on between them the United States will undertakes the appropriate measures that include diplomatic, economic, military or any other measure required to deter this threat."

I can just hear the Obamaites justifying an American re-entry by claiming we have a "treaty obligation" to intervene. Whether this involves drone strikes or some type of air support and even sending in troops is irrelevant, at this point, since the reappearance of US soldiers on the ground is eventually going to be required if Washington decides to shoulder the responsibility of retaking Mosul and environs.

In any case, we have only to consult the theory of what I call "libertarian realism" – the idea that a nation’s foreign policy is determined by internal political factors rather than by objective considerations – to predict what the eventual outcome of this latest "crisis" will be. Rather than be haunted by theaccusation that he and his party "lost Iraq," and that the thousands of Americans killed and hideously wounded in that war sacrificed for nothing, the President will start us down the path to re-intervening in a big way. And if his successor in the Oval Office is Hillary Clinton – who supported the war, and up until just the other day, defended her vote in favor – the bigness of the American footprint will soon result in a confrontation with Iran.

This has been the War Party’s goal since well before the invasion of Iraq, and today we are at the end of that long and bloody road.

In a rational world, re-fighting the Iraq war would be inconceivable: in the world we are living in, however, it is all too probable. If we had a foreign policy that made any kind of sense, we would partner with Iran in keeping the peace in the region: they are in a much better position to clear out ISIS. In our world, however, this is a virtual impossibility: there is too much of a chasm between Washington and Tehran. Indeed, the present crisis could well mean an end to the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, if and when push comes to shove in Iraq.

Our present conundrum is entirely self-manufactured: there was no Al Qaeda presence in Iraq prior to the US invasion, in spite of the Bush administration’sridiculous attempts to hold Saddam Hussein responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The repressive measures taken by the government we installed – remember those purple-stained fingers that were supposed to symbolize a New Dawn for Iraq? – have done more to consolidate support for ISIS than any other single factor. Our efforts to overthrow Syria’s Ba’athist regime have given ISIS and other radical Islamist groups the space – and the means – to create their "caliphate" in northern Syria and Iraq, where ISIS recently dismantled the border posts. I wonder how many US-supplied arms to the "moderate" Islamists have gone into the hands of ISIS and its allies.

The present mess in Iraq has "Made in Washington" written all over it. But not everyone in Washington is crazy, and the proof is a bipartisan effort to repeal the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) in Iraq. Cosponsored by Senators Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York), the measure has widespread support, including from some very conservative Republicans like Mike Lee (R-Utah).

If this effort succeeds, it will be a huge roadblock in the path of the drive to start Iraq War III. After all, how is one to make the case for re-intervening at the very moment the official end to the war is being certified?

The last time the War Party tried to pull a fast one – during the alleged Syrian "humanitarian emergency," when Obama was intent on bombing the regime of Bashar al-Assad out of existence – the American people rose up and put a stop to it. It’s not hard to imagine a similar eruption in the case of this latest made-in-Washington "crisis."

This is the only factor keeping the Obama administration in check: fear of the political consequences. Which is why we need to keep up the pressure – and step up the fight for a noninterventionist foreign policy.

 

 

Edited June 13, 2014 by slow

[Lord Protector]

Iran Deploys Troops to Guard Baghdad, Fight al-Qaeda

Posted By Jason Ditz On June 12, 2014 @ 10:44 am In News | 18 Comments

Reports coming out of security sources in Iran say that two battalions of Quds Force troops from the nation’s Revolutionary Guard have deployed into neighboring Iraq to guard Shi’ite holy sites as well as taking the lead in defending the capital city of Baghdad. Some have also reportedly taken part in fighting in Tikrit.

The move comes in response to al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) taking most of the country’s Sunni west, and moving dangerously close to Baghdad on multiple fronts. Iraq’s Shi’ite government is on good terms with Iran.

Earlier today, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said his country can’t tolerate the growth of a terrorist group so close to their borders, and promised unspecified aid to the Maliki government.

Iran has already been aiding the Assad government in Syria against AQI’s advances there, albeit without much success. As the problem of this new AQI-run state grows, Iran is likely to try to increase support for its struggling allies, out of whose territory the state is being carved.

 

 

[namenski]

 

Kakav je haos izazvan, Suniti i Šiiti su se uhvatili za vratove...zavadi pa vladaj

 

Sadam je kriv za sve!

[Lord Protector]

Sunitskom kalifatu je namenjena uloga agresivne tampon zone između Sirije i Irana. Fantastično odrađena stvar. Irak i Sirija su uništeni, ostao je još ultimate cilj:uništenje Irana.

Edited June 13, 2014 by slow

[расејан]

Sadam je kriv za sve!

 

Да је на време отишао у полицију... тј да је остао веран Цијин ђак, можда. Овако, мислио је да нечим од тог школовања може и својој земљи да се одужи.

[namenski]

Sunitskom kalifatu je namenjena uloga agresivne tampon zone između Sirije i Irana. Fantastično odrađena stvar. Irak i Sirija su uništeni, ostao je još ultimate cilj:uništenje Irana.

Joj sto bih ja voleo da je to tako, da je sve planirano, da su neke ozbiljne cike^tm sve to isplanirale pa uzele da sprovode, sve pod konac i po planu.

Al nije, jebe lud zbunjenog, kovitla se, oni koji misle da nesto znaju znaju najmanje, kakva crna visoka politika, nikad na nizim granama nije bila, na glupe poteze se reaguje idiotskim, na idiotske kretenskim.

[Lord Protector]

To je kontrolisan haos, suviše je tu interesa da bi se situacija prepustila u potpunosti gospodinu slučaju.

Edited June 13, 2014 by slow

[namenski]

To je kontrolisan haos, suviše je tu interesa da bi se situacija prepustila u potpunosti gospodinu slučaju.

Аха.

А воле и онако мераклијски, да потраје, ко сви прави јебачи  :P

[Budja]

Ma, da, tako su i Talibani bili tampon zona...

 

Slow voli te deterministicke teorije. ISIS je unintended consequence saradnje sa Saudijskom Arabijom kako se meni, priznajem bez bilo kakvih informacija, cini. Sad ne znaju sta ce sa njim.

[Lord Protector]

Možda je u Avganistanu mogla situacija da izmakne kontroli ali pred vratima Izraela teško. Gledao sam sinoć sajtove Jerusalem Posta i Haaretz-a, vesti o dešavanjima u Iraku ih uopšte ne brinu, upadljivo je odsustvo velikih naslova iako se dešavaju tektonske promene pred vratima, prati se samo reakcija Irana i koliko je ISIL stigao daleko do Islamske republike. Slažem se sa tobom da je ovo između  ostalog posledica delovanja Saudijske Arabije ali ne verujem da bi kraljevska kuća Sauda sada činila toliko štete Amerikancima na terenu, tamo se upravo sprema smena generacija na tronu, nema šanse da Saudijci nešto tako rade na svoju ruku u veoma osetljivom trenutku za njih. Pretedenti na saudijski presto prolaze strogu američku ''bezbednosnu proveru''.

Sve mi se čini da će ovde svi biti zadovoljni sem šiita i Irana, Saudijska Arabija će dobiti novu šerijatsku sestru bliznakinju u vidu velikog kalifata a stari neprijatelji Amerike, Izraela i Saudijske Arabije će biti počišćeni, a ono što preživi biće okruženo i izloženo novim neprijateljstvima.

Edited June 14, 2014 by slow

[Bane5]

@slow,

ne kalifat vec emirat. mislim da se time malo vise personifikuje ta tvorevina i stvara se i podrzava kult vodje.