Iraq in Crisis- Merged Superthread

[tomahawk6]

AQ's ISI has taken Mosul after police and troops fled leaving behind their weapons.Iraq wants more US weapons but why provide them if they are just going to arm the insurgents ? A huge question about the security forces being able to function.

 

[Transporter]

Regrettable and all the more so given the number of guys killed or injured there. Can't say I'm surprised though.

I've always believed that any issues the West had with Iraq would have been far "less costly" to navigate with Saddam still at the helm than the price paid - and that which will continue to be paid - vis-a-vis his overthrow. Bit of a moot point now I guess.

History will judge whether it was the right thing to do or not but I'm not sold (no disrespect to those who fought, died or were injured there).

 

[Nemo888]

Fallujah, then Ramadi and now Mosul.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Henry V

BATES
"Ay, or more than we should seek after; for we know
enough, if we know we are the king's subjects: if
his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes
the crime of it out of us."

WILLIAMS
"But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath
a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and
arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join
together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at
such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a
surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind
them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their
children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die
well that die in a battle; for how can they
charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their
argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it
will be a black matter for the king that led them to
it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of
subjection. "(4.1.3)

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Iran is going to have it's hands full, they can't afford a failure of the shiite government there, so they will have to support both Syria and Iraq. Now if Assad can come to grips with the rebels within Syria, then he and the Hezzbollah will be well placed to attack the Sunni area's. Meanwhile I expect the Kurds to be preparing for independence if they feel Iraq is to weak to do anything about it.

 

[CougarKing]

In the midst of the collapsing Iraqi military in face of resurgent Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants in the new Iraq...

...Deja vu again, anyone?

Military.com

Bush Carrier Put on Standby for Iraq Air Strikes

Jun 13, 2014 | by Richard Sisk
The U.S. aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush and her more than 50 attack aircraft were available to conduct airstrikes against Islamic militants in Iraq if President Obama gives the order, Pentagon officials said Friday.

The Bush and her accompanying battle group of ships "were in the region and ready for any tasking," said Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary. Kirby would not confirm several reports that the Bush had already moved into the Persian Gulf.

The 1092-foot, nuclear-powered carrier, named for former President George H.W. Bush, deployed from her homeport in Norfolk, Va., in February on a regular rotation to the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf region.

(...EDITED)

 

[Tibbson]

Its sadly ironic that the Carrier involved is the George H.W. Bush.

 

[tomahawk6]

Intel seems to be all over the place on the size of the enemy force from 8000 on up.Its open country and if they advance down the highways they will be destroyed - if the USAF or USN aircraft are deployed.

 

[Kirkhill]

Good news, I suppose.  If Obama does introduce air strikes into the theater, and concurrently Iran introduces the Revolutionary Guard, the fly boys will be in the enviable position of not having to worry about the occasional "friendly fire" incident.

In fact targeting could be as simple as finding any converging forces and dropping rounds in the middle.

But that's just the cynic in me.

 

[CougarKing]

Intel seems to be all over the place on the size of the enemy force from 8000 on up.Its open country and if they advance down the highways they will be destroyed - if the USAF or USN aircraft are deployed.

Other news reports say a force of 850 insurgents routed TWO Iraqi Army divisions or a total of 30,000 men in Mosul. How does that happen?

Did the new Iraqi Army expand too fast before men could be effectively trained?

 

[tomahawk6]

Outside of their special forces units,the IA has devolved with poor leadership,corruption and with the focus on internal security as opposed to warfighting,the IA isnt much better than under Saddam.What kept Saddam in power was the terror apparatus and the Republican Guard.Maliki treated the Sunni's and Kurds badly which has enabled support for ISI.

 

[Transporter]

A good (albeit abridged) overview of how the current ISIS situation in Iraq came to be, from Peter Bergan at CNN.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/13/opinion/bergen-iraq-isis-bush/index.html?hpt=hp_t4

Editor's note: Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst, a director at the New America Foundation and the author of ""The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda," which this story draws upon.

(CNN) -- ISIS, the brutal insurgent/terrorist group formerly known as al Qaeda in Iraq, has seized much of western and northern Iraq and even threatens towns not far from Baghdad.
From where did ISIS spring? One of George W. Bush's most toxic legacies is the introduction of al Qaeda into Iraq, which is the ISIS mother ship.
If this wasn't so tragic it would be supremely ironic, because before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, top Bush officials were insisting that there was an al Qaeda-Iraq axis of evil. Their claims that Saddam Hussein's men were training members of al Qaeda how to make weapons of mass destruction seemed to be one of the most compelling rationales for the impending war.

After the fall of Hussein's regime, no documents were unearthed in Iraq proving the Hussein-al Qaeda axis despite the fact that, like other totalitarian regimes, Hussein's government kept massive and meticulous records.

The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency had by 2006 translated 34 million pages of documents from Hussein's Iraq and found there was nothing to substantiate a "partnership" between Hussein and al Qaeda.

Two years later the Pentagon's own internal think tank, the Institute for Defense Analyses, concluded after examining 600,000 Hussein-era documents and several thousand hours of his regime's audio- and videotapes that there was no "smoking gun (i.e. direct connection between Hussein's Iraq and al Qaeda.)"

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded in 2008, as every other investigation had before, that there was no "cooperative relationship" between Hussein and al Qaeda. The committee also found that "most of the contacts cited between Iraq and al Qaeda before the war by the intelligence community and policy makers have been determined not to have occurred."

Instead of interrupting a budding relationship between Hussein and al Qaeda, the Iraq War precipitated the arrival of al Qaeda into Iraq. Although the Bush administration tended to gloss over the fact, al Qaeda only formally established itself in Iraq a year and a half after the U.S. invasion.

On October 17, 2004, its brutal leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi issued an online statement pledging allegiance to Osama bin Laden. Zarqawi's pledge was fulsome: "By God, O sheikh of the Mujahideen, if you bid us plunge into the ocean, we would follow you. If you ordered it so, we would obey."

Zarqawi's special demonic genius was to launch Iraq down the road to civil war. In early 2004, the U.S. military intercepted a letter from Zarqawi to bin Laden in which he proposed provoking a civil war between Sunnis and Shia.

Zarqawi's strategy was to hit the Shia so they would in turn strike the Sunnis, so precipitating a vicious circle of violence in which al Qaeda would be cast as the protector of the Sunnis against the wrath of the Shia. It was a strategy that worked all too well, provoking first sectarian conflict in Iraq and later civil war.

Al Qaeda in Iraq, or AQI, regularly attacked Shia religious processions, shrines and clerics. The tipping point in the slide toward full-blown civil war was al Qaeda's February 2006 attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra, which is arguably the most important Shia shrine in the world.

Three years into the Iraq War, AQI seemed all but unstoppable. A classified Marine intelligence assessment dated August 17, 2006, found that AQI had become the de facto government of the western Iraqi province of Anbar, which is strategically important because it borders Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia and makes up about a third of the landmass of Iraq.

In addition, AQI controlled a good chunk of the exurban belts around Baghdad, the "Triangle of Death" to the south of the capital and many of the towns north of it, up the Tigris River to the Syrian border.

Thus AQI controlled territory larger than New England and maintained an iron grip on much of the Sunni population.

In other words, the Bush administration had presided over the rise of precisely what it had said was one of the key goals of the Iraq War to destroy: a safe haven for al Qaeda in the heart of the Arab world.

By 2007, al Qaeda's untrammeled violence and imposition of Taliban ideology on the Sunni population provoked a countrywide Sunni backlash against AQI that took the form of Sunni "Awakening" militias. Many of those militias were put on Uncle Sam's payroll in a program known as the "Sons of Iraq".

The combination of the Sunni militias' on-the-ground intelligence about their onetime AQI allies and American firepower proved devastating to al Qaeda's Iraqi franchise. And so, between 2006 and 2008, AQI shrank from an insurgent organization that controlled territory larger than the size of New England to a rump terrorist group.

But AQI did not disappear. It simply bided its time. The Syrian civil war provided a staging point over the past three years for its resurrection and transformation into the "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria," or ISIS. And now ISIS has marched back into western and northern Iraq. Only this time there is no U.S. military to stop it.

 

[tomahawk6]

Blaming Bush when Obama has been President for 7 years is absurd.Obama watched as one by one radical elements took power in North Africa.He intiated the pullout of US forces over a status of forces agreement so he could claim credit for ending the war.He has done the same in Afghanistan.Now its Iran that is coming to the aid of Iraq's government.Not good at all.If you are an American that lost loved one's there its a slap in the face.

 

[Nemo888]

If only we had a guy who we could use to make the country a stable secular dictatorship to kick some shiite ass and destabilize Iran.

 

[Transporter]

Blame should be laid where blame is due. Iraq was invaded under false pretense six years before Obama became president. That anyone would seek to lay blame at the feet of anyone but the Bush administration is laughable. There, I've said it.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Over the years I have suggested that the many problems we, the secular, liberal, democratic West (and the equally secular but conservative and not always democratic East) have with many (most?) of nations of the Islamic Crescent (which stretches from the Atlantic coast of North Africa across Africa, through the Middle East and West and Central Asia and into East Asia (Malaysia and Indonesia, the largest of all Muslim states) is, essentially cultural and that Islam, the religion, is just a lever that some leaders use to motivate their followers.

I have suggested that the process of changing that culture is both essential (for everyone) and urgent. I have also suggested that the model for cultural change might be Europe/Christendom over the 15th through the 19th centuries: religious reformation, war, more religious reformation and, finally, cultural enlightenment. (I do not suggest that all Islamic states need enlightenment, some have highly advanced culture by they are under cultural attack by religious leaders from culturally 'retarded'* regions (mainly Arabia and Iran).)

I have also suggested that what we (liberal Western democracies and conservative Eastern oligarchies, alike) need is something akin to as Islamic Luther (and some already exist, I believe, in East Asia - maybe elsewhere, too) and a series of revolts, revolutions, civil wars and internecine wars - an Islamic equivalent of the Thirty Years War, but on a bigger and bloodier scale.

I wonder if the Arab Spring and the ongoing turmoil in e.g. Syria and, now, Iraq, might be the beginning of a sad, but, ultimately beneficial period - the 'work' of a couple of generations.

_____
* re·tard  [ri-tahrd, for 1–3, 5; ree-tahrd for 4]
  verb (used with object)
      1. to make slow; delay the development or progress of (an action, process, etc.); hinder or impede.
  verb (used without object)
      2. to be delayed.
  noun
      3. a slowing down, diminution, or hindrance, as in a machine.

 

[George Wallace]

I wonder if the Arab Spring and the ongoing turmoil in e.g. Syria and, now, Iraq, might be the beginning of a sad, but, ultimately beneficial period - the 'work' of a couple of generations.

I hope that your interpretation is the right one.  If not, and the opposite happens, with the factions who want to retard cultural advancement gaining the upper hand, then we are facing an even larger problem.  One that could result in a far dirtier global war than we have ever experienced in the history of man, which I suppose may fit into your scenario of

the model for cultural change might be Europe/Christendom over the 15th through the 19th centuries: religious reformation, war, more religious reformation and, finally, cultural enlightenment. (I do not suggest that all Islamic states need enlightenment, some have highly advanced culture by they are under cultural attack by religious leaders from culturally 'retarded'* regions (mainly Arabia and Iran).)

This, however, would not be in the content that it will be an internal Islamic fight, but a fight of all religions against the retarded culture of Islam that overwhelmed the more progressive Muslim populations.

Currently, the pacifist West in adopting multiculturalism, by permitting radical cultures to flourish fairly much unchecked, may be sowing the seeds of their own destruction.  Alarmists are being mocked around the world, but predominately in the UK and Europe.  There has been a few instances where some European nations are starting to pass what may be considered "racist" laws in the attempt to preserve their cultures from "contamination".  Will those measures be enough?  Only time will tell.

 

[Brad Sallows]

The problem isn't that "the West" is going to be overcome.  The problem is that the longer the intolerable rot is allowed to creep, the uglier the resulting backlash will be.  We have mastered industrial warfare.  They have not.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I'm pretty sure that, in 1618, no one saw the Bohemian Revolt as a prelude to a was that would rock Europe for a generation. And I'm not sure that the Arab Spring or anything else, going all the way back to the overthrow of King Farouk in 1952, is the prelude to an Islamic/Afro-Arabian-West Asian equivalent. What I am comfortable with is the idea that we, the US led West, should let it, whatever it is, unfold without interference - it's OK to sell arms to all sides but direct intervention ought to be avoided. (I think the Ottoman emperor's (Osman II) support of the Hungarian protestants (1620) actually provoked the Catholics into major actions that might, absent Ottoman interference, have otherwise been avoided.)

I do not think that Islam and anything like liberal democracy are compatible. Islam, it seems to me, offers a 'complete package' to its adherents: solutions to their spiritual, social, economic and political problems. That seems to to be a great strength, especially when it is able, through governments, to control the school system, and, simultaneously, a great weakness - I believe that Islam is rather akin (by design) to Christianity (and Judaism) and I also believe that it was economics and politics that shattered Christianity in the West, depriving it of its political, economic and even much of its social power. (That doesn't mean Islamic states cannot be democratic: Malaysia is an example of an Islamic democracy, albeit a very illiberal democracy, but it is also the most enlightened of all Islamic states.) I suspect the same thing will, likely, happen to Islam: it will either remain a profoundly conservative force in the world (but far, far different from the Asian/Confucian idea of conservative) or it will cast off its political and economic pretensions and will look, to most of its adherents, rather like Judaism and Christianity.

 

[Old Sweat]

This exceedingly pessimistic (or maybe realistic) piece by Bruce Everiss, a very conservative UK analyst addresses the situation in the Middle East with the invasion of Iraq and the fall of Mosul as its starting point, hence its posting here. It is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act.

What is ISIS?

June 16th, 2014 | Foreign policy, News analysis

ISIS have recently attracted attention by invading Iraq. The Western media and many online commentators have been describing them as al Qaeda, or as Syrian opposition fighters. They are neither of these things. So what are they?

Firstly to understand where we are we have to look how we got here, which means going back a long way. Islam was invented by Muhammad, who died in the year 632. As with Christianity he stole much from Judaism, around this he concocted rules for a whole way of life suited to desert nomads. His successor leaders were called Caliphs and their territory a Caliphate till this title was taken over by the Ottoman sultans in about 1453 as part of their success in conquering most Muslim lands.

Long before this, about the years 670 to 680 Islam split into two,  most accepted the legitimacy of the three Caliphs prior to Ali, and are called Sunnis. A smaller number believed that only Ali and some of his descendants could be Caliphs, these are the Shia. These two factions have been fighting at every opportunity ever since, it was largely the Ottoman empire which put a lid on this for a few hundred years. Each faction regards the other as apostate and therefore worse than a Christian or a Jew. The Ottomans didn’t trust Shias so tended to choose Sunnis to administer their territories. It is the factional disputes that make democracy almost impossible in Muslim countries, a fairly nasty strong man is needed to bang heads together.

80 to 90% of Muslims are Sunni. So to make life easier it is best to look at who some of the Shias are:

Bahrain, a largely Shia country with a small ruling elite who are Sunni. Hence the problems.

Iran, a huge concentration of Shia.

Iraq, about 80% Shia, but tradition of the Ottoman’s favouring of Sunni administrators continued up to Saddam Hussein. It only gained Shia leadership in the elections after Blair and Bush’s war.

Syria, the reverse of Bahrain, this is a largely Sunni country run by an Alawite (an offshoot of Shia) ruling elite.

Next in the jigsaw we have to look at the The Sykes-Picot Agreement which divided up the Ottoman empire, when it collapsed at the end of WW1, by drawing lines on a map to create countries, each of which came under the control of a colonial power. Iraq was created (roughly) of three Ottoman administrative districts, Vilayet of Mosul in the north, where there was a large Kurdish population,  Vilayet of Baghdad in the middle, which is where the Sunni population lived and Vilayet of Basra in the south which is concentrated Shia. After GW2 is would have been sensible to divide the country back up. On the ground the Kurds in the north were able to establish semi-autonomy.

So now we have some historical context lets look at more recent events. On September 11th 2001 the largely Saudi, Sunni terrorist group called al-Qaeda attacked the USA using hijacked aircraft as suicide weapons. In response GW Bush declared a “war” on terrorism and the axis of evil, which included Iran and Iraq. This was utterly unbelievable as both these countries had done a lot to suppress al-Qaeda. Bush and Blair went after the wrong people when they invaded Iraq. They also destabilised the whole region which led to civil wars in many countries and the events we see today with ISIS.

There is a branch of Sunni called Salafism (all religions are subject to infinite schism) who believe that the only true Islam is an exact and literal enforcement of everything that Muhammad said. They want everyone on planet earth to be compelled to return to the Dark Ages.  They are much, much stricter than the Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia that we think of as strict. Mostly they are peaceful, but some believe in direct action.

ISIS/ISIL, Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham, is a Salafist organisation which wants to re-create the Caliphate. They were founded and grew out of GW2 and were eventually put down by the Americans and the Shia government of Iraq. They then moved to Syria, where the chaos of the ongoing civil war gave them a home.

The strong Alwaite rulers of Syria have a ruthless history of suppressing discontent, however the “Arab Spring” that evolved from events in Iraq led to many local uprisings of the Sunni majority. These local militias are often known under the collective banner of Free Syrian Army, but being mainly local militias they are and were reluctant to conduct a broader war, so they received little support from outside. Eventually a fairly fundamentalist Sunni opposition group formed who did take on Assad more, called al Nusra. They received quite a lot of help from Sunni Arab nations.

Into this mix just over a year ago came ISIS, their current leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has a PhD, three previous leaders were killed in their struggle. Initially they recruited a lot of battle hardened fighters from North Africa and Westerners, including about 500 British men. Their aim is to gain territory for the Caliphate, so they fight EVERYONE else. They have received huge amounts of money from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait who see them as conducting a proxy war against the hated Shia. With this money they can pay their fighters which led many from the FSA and al Nusra to defected to them. In all their conquered territory they apply incredible strict Sharia law, banning cigarettes and alcohol, keeping women indoors, banning music. And they apply this law with maximum brutality, removing limbs and heads for minor transgressions.  Captured enemies have their heads hacked off with kitchen knives, or if there isn’t time they are just shot.

ISIS has received quite a lot of help from Assad in Syria, firstly because they attack all his opposition, secondly to polarised the West’s choice into either Assad or ISIS. When the West threatened to act against Assad and then did nothing it gave ISIS an immense boost, many in the moderate opposition realised that theirs was a lost cause, so they either gave up or joined ISIS. ISIS has never received any help of any kind from the West. They are seen as the problem, not the solution.

ISIS has invaded Iraq to gain territory for their Caliphate. They want to take the historic Vilayet of Baghdad back. In doing so they have captured huge amounts of munitions and money and their ranks have been swelled by Iraqi Sunnis. ISIS is now, effectively, a country that straddles the Sykes-Picot nations of Syria and Iraq. Their territorial aims encompass Jordan, Israel, Lebanon and Turkey.

So who is going to stop ISIS?

Iraq. Mostly the Iraqi soldiers so far have run or surrendered only to be shot. The Shia militias have been invited to join the war which will make things worse with their inevitable sectarian atrocities. Further south the population is just about 100% Shia so ISIS can only get so far.

Iran. Iraq and Syria have been battlegrounds for a proxy war between Shia and Sunni. Now the gloves are off and Iran cannot let ISIS succeed. Expect them to suddenly become everyone’s best friend.

Kurds. These people have a huge historic grudge and want their state back. They already have north Syria and some of north Iraq. But they also want a chunk of Turkey, which doesn’t please the Turks. They have fought ISIS in Syria and won.

USA. America has plenty of bases in the region and almost certainly has intelligence gathering drones following events. They missed a huge opportunity last Thursday to carpet bomb the ISIS columns. Obama is an incredibly weak president but surely even he must do something.

Israel. The Israelis haven’t overtly started smiting ISIS yet. But unless someone else does they will eventually have no option. Their problem is that ISIS is growing exponentially so the longer they leave it the greater the threat.

Turkey. The regional superpower. In much the same position as Israel.

Jordan. They must be wondering when it is going to be their turn and who will help them. It really does look like they are next.

Syria. Assad is laughing his head off. Soon the West will be his allies in the war against ISIS.

As you can see we are headed for interesting times, this cannot end well. Large numbers of young men are being radicalised into extremist violent Salafism and are being taught how to fight with extreme brutality. Quite a lot of these are Westerners who will eventually bring this baggage home with them. Whole swathes of the Middle East will become battle grounds and very many innocent people will die. Also the long enmity between Shia and Sunni will be inflamed which will lead to further ongoing conflicts.

The catalyst for all that has gone wrong are Bush and Blair and the utter stupidity of GW2. Whatever their aims were they obviously never thought through the potential downsides. They will go down in history with utter ignominy.

 

[cupper]

Blaming Bush when Obama has been President for 7 years is absurd.Obama watched as one by one radical elements took power in North Africa.He intiated the pullout of US forces over a status of forces agreement so he could claim credit for ending the war.He has done the same in Afghanistan.Now its Iran that is coming to the aid of Iraq's government.Not good at all.If you are an American that lost loved one's there its a slap in the face.

What would you have had Obama do, when the Iraqi president refused to revisit the status of forces agreement to provide US forces prosecutorial immunity within the Iraqi judicial system, and any prosecutions of US forces would be solely under US jurisdiction.

I'm pretty sure that if Obama had compromised on that issue, the troopies would have been all in favour of staying over there.

The Bush Administration rode to war under misleading if not outright false circumstances. They won the battle then completely botched the subsequent rebuild and reconstitution of Iraq. As a result, the seeds of a three way civil war between the Sunnis, Shia and Kurds were sown and the inevitable breakup of the country is now coming to pass. Maliki exacerbated the problem by marginalizing the Sunnis.

You don't have to go that far back in history to find a similar example of what happens when you remove a dictator that had a strong hold on a country that was made up of distinct populations that have long histories of ethnic infighting. Yugoslavia blew apart after the death of Tito.