Barack Obama's full statement on approving airstrikes in Iraq

President Barack Obama meets with the National Security Council in the Situation Room of the White House Photo: Pete 

Good evening. Today I authorized two operations in #Iraq -- targeted airstrikes to protect our American personnel, and a humanitarian effort to help save thousands of Iraqi civilians who are trapped on a mountain without food and water and facing almost certain death. Let me explain the actions we’re taking and why.

First, I said in June -- as the terrorist group #ISIL began an advance across Iraq -- that the United States would be prepared to take targeted military action in Iraq if and when we determined that the situation required it. In recent days, these terrorists have continued to move across Iraq, and have neared the city of Erbil, where American diplomats and civilians serve at our consulate and American military personnel advise Iraqi forces.

To stop the advance on Erbil, I’ve directed our military to take targeted strikes against ISIL terrorist convoys should they move toward the city. We intend to stay vigilant, and take action if these terrorist forces threaten our personnel or facilities anywhere in Iraq, including our consulate in Erbil and our embassy in Baghdad. We’re also providing urgent assistance to Iraqi government and Kurdish forces so they can more effectively wage the fight against ISIL.

Second, at the request of the Iraqi government -- we’ve begun operations to help save Iraqi civilians stranded on the mountain. As ISIL has marched across Iraq, it has waged a ruthless campaign against innocent Iraqis. And these terrorists have been especially barbaric towards religious minorities, including Christian and Yezidis, a small and ancient religious sect. Countless Iraqis have been displaced. And chilling reports describe ISIL militants rounding up families, conducting mass executions, and enslaving Yezidi women.

In recent days, Yezidi women, men and children from the area of Sinjar have fled for their lives. And thousands -- perhaps tens of thousands -- are now hiding high up on the mountain, with little but the clothes on their backs. They’re without food, they’re without water. People are starving. And children are dying of thirst. Meanwhile, ISIL forces below have called for the systematic destruction of the entire Yezidi people, which would constitute genocide. So these innocent families are faced with a horrible choice: descend the mountain and be slaughtered, or stay and slowly die of thirst and hunger.

I’ve said before, the United States cannot and should not intervene every time there’s a crisis in the world. So let me be clear about why we must act, and act now. When we face a situation like we do on that mountain -- with innocent people facing the prospect of violence on a horrific scale, when we have a mandate to help -- in this case, a request from the Iraqi government -- and when we have the unique capabilities to help avert a massacre, then I believe the United States of America cannot turn a blind eye. We can act, carefully and responsibly, to prevent a potential act of genocide. That’s what we’re doing on that mountain.

I’ve, therefore, authorized targeted airstrikes, if necessary, to help forces in Iraq as they fight to break the siege of Mount Sinjar and protect the civilians trapped there. Already, American aircraft have begun conducting humanitarian airdrops of food and water to help these desperate men, women and children survive. Earlier this week, one Iraqi in the area cried to the world, “There is no one coming to help.” Well today, America is coming to help. We’re also consulting with other countries -- and the United Nations -- who have called for action to address this humanitarian crisis.

I know that many of you are rightly concerned about any American military action in Iraq, even limited strikes like these. I understand that. I ran for this office in part to end our war in Iraq and welcome our troops home, and that’s what we’ve done. As Commander-in-Chief, I will not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq. And so even as we support Iraqis as they take the fight to these terrorists, American combat troops will not be returning to fight in Iraq, because there’s no American military solution to the larger crisis in Iraq. The only lasting solution is reconciliation among Iraqi communities and stronger Iraqi security forces.

However, we can and should support moderate forces who can bring stability to Iraq. So even as we carry out these two missions, we will continue to pursue a broader strategy that empowers Iraqis to confront this crisis. Iraqi leaders need to come together and forge a new government that represents the legitimate interests of all Iraqis, and that can fight back against the threats like ISIL. Iraqis have named a new President, a new Speaker of Parliament, and are seeking consensus on a new Prime Minister. This is the progress that needs to continue in order to reverse the momentum of the terrorists who prey on Iraq’s divisions.

Once Iraq has a new government, the United States will work with it and other countries in the region to provide increased support to deal with this humanitarian crisis and counterterrorism challenge. None of Iraq’s neighbors have an interest in this terrible suffering or instability.

And so we’ll continue to work with our friends and allies to help refugees get the shelter and food and water they so desperately need, and to help Iraqis push back against ISIL. The several hundred American advisors that I ordered to Iraq will continue to assess what more we can do to help train, advise and support Iraqi forces going forward. And just as I consulted Congress on the decisions I made today, we will continue to do so going forward.

My fellow Americans, the world is confronted by many challenges. And while America has never been able to right every wrong, America has made the world a more secure and prosperous place. And our leadership is necessary to underwrite the global security and prosperity that our children and our grandchildren will depend upon. We do so by adhering to a set of core principles. We do whatever is necessary to protect our people. We support our allies when they’re in danger. We lead coalitions of countries to uphold international norms. And we strive to stay true to the fundamental values -- the desire to live with basic freedom and dignity -- that is common to human beings wherever they are. That’s why people all over the world look to the United States of America to lead. And that’s why we do it.

So let me close by assuring you that there is no decision that I take more seriously than the use of military force. Over the last several years, we have brought the vast majority of our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. And I’ve been careful to resist calls to turn time and again to our military, because America has other tools in our arsenal than our military. We can also lead with the power of our diplomacy, our economy, and our ideals.

But when the lives of American citizens are at risk, we will take action. That’s my responsibility as Commander-in-Chief. And when many thousands of innocent civilians are faced with the danger of being wiped out, and we have the capacity to do something about it, we will take action. That is our responsibility as Americans. That’s a hallmark of American leadership. That’s who we are.

So tonight, we give thanks to our men and women in uniform -— especially our brave pilots and crews over Iraq who are protecting our fellow Americans and saving the lives of so many men, women and children that they will never meet. They represent American leadership at its best. As a nation, we should be proud of them, and of our country’s enduring commitment to uphold our own security and the dignity of our fellow human beings.

God bless our Armed Forces, and God bless the United States of America. The Telegraph

Iraq NGO: ISIS likely to implement FGM fatwa

The radical Islamic State of Iraq and Syria group has issued a religious edict (Fatwa) that all females aged 11-46 in and around the northern city of Mosul undergo genital mutilation (FGM). (File photo: Reuters)

An Iraqi human rights organization said Friday that the al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State of #Iraq and #Syria (ISIS) will likely implement a religious edict (Fatwa) that all females aged 11-46 in and around the northern city of Mosul undergo genital mutilation (FGM).

“We’re sure ISIS will follow through with what they’ve announced,” William Warda, head of media relations at Hammurabi Human Rights Organization, told Al Arabiya News

Women working for ISIS may be used to check whether or not females are genitally mutilated, said Warda, a leading member of the Assyrian Democratic Movement.

“ISIS has women, who have their faces veiled, carrying weapons to intimidate families,” he said.

Asked if these women were Iraqi, he said: “Their accents were particularly from Mosul itself.”

He added: “These women were either lured to work with ISIS or were forced.”

Women in Mosul are scared to leave their homes, Warda said.

Jacqueline Badcock, the number two U.N. official in Iraq, told reporters on Thursday that the ISIS order would potentially affect 4 million women and girls.

“This is something very new for Iraq, particularly in this area, and is of grave concern and does need to be addressed,” she said, according to Reuters.

“This is not the will of Iraqi people, or the women of Iraq in these vulnerable areas covered by the terrorists,” she added.

Meanwhile, ISIS has not officially confirmed or denied the report.

Doubts over the fatwa

The text of the purported “fatwa” being circulated on the internet, however, has raised questions of authenticity. It appeared dated July, 11, 2013 and referred to the group as the “The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.” Since the group declared an “Islamic Caliphate” last month, it rebranded itself as the “Islamic State.”

Besides, the document appeared to be stamped in the city of Aazaz, north of the Syrian province of Aleppo. ISIS has reportedly withdrawn from Aazaz under pressures by the Syrian Free Army several months ago.

Bushra al-Obaidi, a member of the independent Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights, said FGM is illegal in Iraq and can cause death.

Obaidi said the commission has compiled a list of human rights violations by ISIS, and has sent it to the United Nations and the European Union.

Hundreds of Christians have fled Mosul after ISIS issued a deadline to either convert to Islam, pay a tax or leave.

Warda said the city’s tribes, which initially accepted ISIS out of resentment towards the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, will eventually rebel against the group.

The tribes “didn’t know about ISIS’ dark ideas,” he added.

Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, was seized in a lightening offensive on June 10 after ISIS allied with other forces seeking to oust Maliki. Al Arabiya

Iraqi Christians facing a ‘crime against humanity’

An Iraqi Christian family fleeing the violence in the Iraqi city of Mosul, sleeps inside the Sacred Heart of Jesus Chaldean Church in Telkaif near Mosul, in the province of Nineveh, July 20, 2014. (Reuters)

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Sunday that the persecution of #Iraqi #Christians who have been driven from their homes in Mosul by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (#ISIS) militants could constitute a crime against humanity, Agence France-Presse reported.

Hundreds of Christian families fled their homes in the northern city Saturday as an ultimatum threatening their community’s centuries-old presence there expired.

Ban “condemns in the strongest terms the systematic persecution of minority populations in Iraq by Islamic State [of Iraq and Syria] and associated armed groups,” a U.N. statement said.

The United Nations chief highlighted that “any systematic attack on the civilian population or segments of the civilian population, because of their ethnic background, religious beliefs or faith may constitute a crime against humanity.”

The militants, who have run the city for almost six weeks, issued an ultimatum to Mosul’s Christians to either convert, pay a tax, leave or face imminent execution.

The city’s new rulers said there would be “nothing for them but the sword” if Christians did not abide by those conditions by 0900 GMT Saturday.

Related Story:  Christians flee Mosul after ISIS ultimatum to convert or leave 


While some families initially appeared prepared to pay the “jizya” Islamic tribute to stay in their homes, messages broadcast by mosques on Friday sparked an exodus.

Ban was “particularly disturbed by reports of threats against Christians in Mosul and other IS-controlled parts of Iraq,” the statement read.

It added that he was also concerned by “reports that Turkoman, Yazidis and Shabaks are facing abductions, killings or the destruction of their property, and that the homes of Christian, Shia and Shabak residents in Mosul have been marked.”

Before the 2003 U.S. invasion, more than a million Christians lived in Iraq, including more than 600,000 in Baghdad and 60,000 in Mosul, as well as a substantial number in Kirkuk and in Basra.

Until their forced exodus over the weekend, Christians had been continuously present in Mosul for about 16 centuries. Al Arabiya

Christians flee Mosul after ISIS ultimatum to convert or leave

Worshippers attend mass on Christmas Eve at a Christian church in Mosul, about 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, December 24, 2009. (Reuters)

Christians were fleeing #Iraq’s jihadist-held city of Mosul en masse Friday after mosques relayed an ultimatum giving them a few hours to leave, the country’s Chaldean patriarch and witnesses said.

“Christian families are on their way to Dohuk and Arbil,” in the neighboring autonomous region of Kurdistan, Patriarch Louis Sako told AFP. “For the first time in the history of Iraq, Mosul is now empty of Christians.”

Witnesses said messages telling Christians to leave the city by Saturday were blared through loudspeakers from the city’s mosques Friday.

A statement dated from last week and purportedly issued by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) jihadist group that took over the city and large swathes of Iraq during a sweeping offensive last month warned Mosul’s Christians they should convert, pay a special tax, leave or face death.

“We were shocked by the distribution of a statement by the Islamic State calling on Christians to convert to Islam, or to pay unspecified tribute, or to leave their city and their homes taking only their clothes and no luggage, and that their homes would then belong to the Islamic State,” Sako said.

The patriarch, who is one of the most senior Christian clerics in Iraq, and residents contacted by AFP said Islamic State militants had in recent days been tagging Christian houses with the letter N for “Nassarah”, the term by which the Koran refers to Christians.

The statement, which was seen by AFP, said “there will be nothing for them but the sword” if Christians reject those conditions. Al Arabiya

Sunni insurgents take over nuclear materials in northern Iraq

FILE photo. A member loyal to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) waves an ISIL flag. (Reuters)

Iraq says “terrorist groups” have seized #nuclear materials used for scientific research at a university in the country's north. #Iraq's #UN envoy has appealed for help to "stave off the threat of their use by terrorists in Iraq or abroad."

According to Iraq's UN ambassador, Mohamed Ali Alhakim, about 40 kilograms of uranium compounds were kept at Mosul University. He added that such materials "can be used in manufacturing weapons of mass destruction."

"Terrorist groups have seized control of nuclear material at the sites that came out of the control of the state," Alhakim told UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in the July 8 letter obtained by Reuters on Wednesday.

Alhakim warned that the materials could be smuggled out of Iraq.

The stolen materials are not believed to be enriched uranium, which would make it difficult for them to be made into weapons, a government source told Reuters.

"The Republic of Iraq is notifying the international community of these dangerous developments and asking for help and the needed support to stave off the threat of their use by terrorists in Iraq or abroad," Alhakim said in a letter.

Iraq acceded to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material on Monday, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Members of the convention agree to protect nuclear facilities and material to be used for peaceful domestic use, storage, and transport.

"It also provides for expanded cooperation between and among states regarding rapid measures to locate and recover stolen or smuggled nuclear material, mitigate any radiological consequences of sabotage, and prevent and combat related offences," the IAEA stated.

The report comes just one day after Iraq told the UN that insurgents took control of a former chemical weapons facility located north of Baghdad. Alhakim said in a letter to the UN that “armed terrorist groups” took over the Muthanna complex on June 11. The facility holds the remnants of a former chemical weapons program.

In his letter to the UN chief, which was made public on Tuesday, Alhakim also pleaded for help from the international community. "The Government of Iraq requests the States Members of the United Nations to understand the current inability of Iraq, owing to the deterioration of the security situation, to fulfill its obligations to destroy chemical weapons," he said.

Read more: Iraq loses control of chemical weapons depot to ISIS militants

The rapid gains by Sunni insurgents led by the Islamic State group – formerly known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant – have allowed them to declare the territory in Iraq and Syria under their control, to be a new Islamic state, or caliphate. The group is primarily composed of radical Sunni Muslims, and has won the support among those in Iraq disgruntled with the exclusive nature of the country's Shia-dominated central government.

The group took control of the country's second largest city of Mosul on June 10 when Sunni militants drove Iraq’s army out of the city, forcing thousands of civilians to flee. During the takeover, ISIS demolished sacred sites throughout the city, including shrines and mosques.

ISIS destroys shrines, Shiite mosques in Iraq

Pictures posted on the Internet by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) showed Sufi shrines were demolished by bulldozers. (Photo: Twitter)

Jihadists who overran Mosul last month have demolished ancient shrines and mosques in and around the historic northern Iraqi city, residents and social media posts said Saturday.


At least four shrines to Sunni Arab or Sufi figures have been demolished, while six Shiite mosques, or husseiniyahs, have also been destroyed, across militant-held parts of northern Nineveh province, of which Mosul is the capital.

Pictures posted on the Internet by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) showed the Sunni and Sufi shrines were demolished by bulldozers, while the Shiite mosques and shrines were all destroyed by explosives.

The photographs were part of an online statement titled “Demolishing shrines and idols in the state of Nineveh.”

Local residents confirmed that the buildings had been destroyed and that militants had occupied two cathedrals as well.

“We feel very sad for the demolition of these shrines, which we inherited from our fathers and grandfathers,” said Ahmed, a 51-year-old resident of Mosul.

“They are landmarks in the city.”

An employee at Mosul’s Chaldean cathedral said militants had occupied both it and the Syrian Orthodox cathedral in the city after finding them empty.

They removed the crosses at the front of the buildings and replaced them with the Islamic State’s black flag, the employee said.

ISIS-led militants overran Mosul last month and swiftly took control of much of the rest of Nineveh, as well as parts of four other provinces north and west of Baghdad, in an offensive that has displaced hundreds of thousands and alarmed the international community.

The city, home to two million residents before the offensive, was a Middle East trading hub for centuries, its name translating loosely as “the junction.”

Though more recently populated mostly by Sunni Arabs, Mosul and Nineveh were also home to many Shiite Arabs as well as ethnic and religious minorities such as Kurds, Turkmen, Yazidis and other sects.
AL Arabiya

Evil ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi makes first public appearance in chilling video calling on all Muslims to obey him

Dressed in black from head to toe, and wearing a flowing robe, this is the first image seen in years of the world’s most wanted man, whose terrorist group has butchered thousands and stolen more than a billion pounds in gold and cash.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the elusive leader of the Al Qaeda splinter group Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (Isis), walked out of the shadows and delivered a sermon at the Great Mosque in Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city.

He addressed the packed congregation – which included  Isis fighters and local sympathisers – on the first Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in the heart of a city  his fighters took control of barely a month ago.

The man thought to be ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, aka Caliph Ibrahim, adresses Muslim at a mosque in the militant-held northern Iraqi city of Mosul

His sermon came only days after he declared himself caliph, or ruler, of the world’s 1.2  billion Muslims. He also declared large swathes of northern Syria and  Iraq seized by his fighters as his new caliphate.

A video of Baghdadi’s sermon was released on the internet yesterday and went viral instantly on jihadist forums and websites.

Speaking from the pulpit of the mosque, Baghdadi, 42, urged the world’s Muslims to flock to the new Islamic caliphate. He praised the victory of his 14,000 fighters spread across Iraq and Syria.
The speech was an audacious move for a man who has a £6 million bounty on his head and who would be a target of attacks by drones or US forces.

Until yesterday, there were only two known images of Baghdadi. They were at least four years old and taken by US soldiers when he was in detention in Iraq.



When he became leader of Isis in 2010, he forbade any images or videos of him being issued, and experts have said that he even met some of his closest aides with his face covered, fearing spies.
Until he delivered his Friday sermon, intelligence experts were not even sure which country he was in, some claiming he was in Syria, while others said he may have been in Iraq.

Raffaello Pantucci, a security expert at the think-tank RUSI, said: ‘The video is emblematic of the confidence that Baghdadi and Isis feel about themselves.

‘They have consolidated a large part of Syria and Iraq into what they call a caliphate, and he is asserting his leadership.’

Nour al-Maliki, Iraqi Prime Minister has sacked some key sdvisers

Last month Isis began an onslaught in northern Iraq,  taking over Mosul and Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s birthplace.

They executed hundreds of soldiers, and raided the city’s  bank of cash and gold bullion.
They boast 11,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria and 3,000 foreign jihadis, including 500 Britons.
Last night, the Iraqi government issued a statement casting doubt that the video Isis issued was  of Baghdadi.

Iraq’s interior ministry spokesman, Saad Maan, said: ‘We have analysed the footage, and found it a farce.’
The Iraqi government claims  Baghdadi was injured in an air strike earlier in the week. Daily Mail

Iraq crisis: beached Indian nurses freed

Iraqi forces are trying to take back towns and cities seized by Sunni rebels

A group of 46 Indian nurses trapped in fighting engulfing parts of #Iraq have been freed, #Indian authorities say.

The nurses have been handed over to Indian officials in the Kurdish city of Irbil and are due to be flown home on Saturday.

The nurses were working at a hospital in the northern city of Tikrit and had been stranded there for more than week.

Tikrit is among a number of towns and cities seized by jihadist-led Sunni rebels in recent weeks.

"All the 46 nurses in Iraq are safe," chief minister of the southern Indian state of Kerala Oommen Chandy told a news conference on Friday, adding that they were to be transferred to Irbil airport.

The nurses, all from Kerala, are due to arrive in the southern city of Kochi on Saturday morning.

On Thursday, Indian officials said the nurses were "unharmed", but had been moved out of Tikrit.

Indian media reports said they had been pressured into boarding buses and leaving the hospital by jihadist fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis).

But there are few details about the exact circumstances of their release.

Earlier in the week, some of the nurses told the BBC by phone that fighting had reached the hospital compound and there had been several explosions close to their hiding place.

Isis-led Sunni rebels have occupied vast swathes of northern and western Iraq, declaring a large region straddling Iraq and Syria a caliphate or Islamic state.

Isis rebels have been methodically hunting down non-Sunnis and those opposed to the militants, refugees from rebel-held towns told the BBC on Thursday.

Officials and soldiers had been ordered to pledge allegiance to the caliphate or face execution.

More than a million people have fled their homes as a result of the recent conflict, and at least 2,461 people were killed in June, the UN and Iraqi officials say.

'Regrettable failure'
In a symbolic boost to the Iraqi military's hopes of repelling the jihadist advance, the government said on Friday its forces had retaken the village of Awja, birthplace of former President Saddam Hussein, south of Tikrit.

The government also said its forces carried out air strikes on insurgents still trying to capture the key Baiji oil facility in the north, killing 30 rebels.

The success of the jihadist advance has been blamed in part on what some see as the Shia Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's marginalisation of Iraq's minority Sunni population.

Senior Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani criticised parliament on Friday for failing to choose a speaker earlier this week - another setback in Mr Maliki's attempts to form a new unifying government.

The cleric described it as a "regrettable failure" and urged Iraqis to "avoid the mistakes of the past". BBC News

Chechen fighter emerges as face of Iraq militant group

This image made from undated video posted during the weekend of June 28, 2014 on a social media account frequently used for communications by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), which has been verified and is consistent with other AP reporting, shows Omar al-Shishani standing next to the group's spokesman among a group of fighters as they declare the elimination of the border between Iraq and Syria.AP/militant social media account via AP video

BEIRUT –  A young, red-bearded ethnic Chechen has rapidly become one of the most prominent commanders in the breakaway Al Qaeda group that has overrun swaths of #Iraq and #Syria, illustrating the international nature of the movement.

Omar al-Shishani, one of hundreds of Chechens who have been among the toughest jihadi fighters in Syria, has emerged as the face of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, appearing frequently in its online videos — in contrast to the group's Iraqi leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who remains deep in hiding and has hardly ever been photographed.

In a video released by the group over the weekend, al-Shishani is shown standing next to the group's spokesman among a group of fighters as they declare the elimination of the border between Iraq and Syria. The video was released just hours before the extremist group announced the creation of a caliphate — or Islamic state — in the areas it controls.

"Our aim is clear and everyone knows why we are fighting. Our path is toward the caliphate," the 28-year-old al-Shishani declares. "We will bring back the caliphate, and if God does not make it our fate to restore the caliphate, then we ask him to grant us martyrdom." The video is consistent with other Associated Press reporting on al-Shishani.

Al-Shishani has been the group's military commander in Syria, leading it on an offensive to take over a broad stretch of territory leading to the Iraq border. But he may have risen to become the group's overall military chief, a post that has been vacant after the Iraqi militant who once held it — known as Abu Abdul-Rahman al-Bilawi al-Anbari — was killed in the Iraqi city of Mosul in early June. The video identified al-Shishani as "the military commander" without specifying its Syria branch, suggesting he had been elevated to overall commander, though the group has not formally announced such a promotion.

As the militant group's operations in Iraq and Syria grow "more and more inter-dependent by the day, it is more than possible that someone like (al-Shishani) could assume overall military leadership," said Charles Lister, Visiting Fellow with the Brookings Doha Center.

The extremist group began as Al Qaeda's branch in Iraq, and many of its top leaders are Iraqi. But after it intervened in Syria's civil war last year, it drew hundreds of foreign fighters into its operations in Syria. Now with victories on the two sides of the border, the two branches are swapping fighters, equipment and weapons to an even greater extent than before, becoming a more integrated organization. Its declaration of the caliphate — aspiring to be a state for all Muslims — could mean an even greater internationalization of its ranks.

Alexei Malashenko, an expert with the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow office, said ethnicity is not a major factor in jihadi movements, only dedication to jihad. Al-Shishani "is a fanatic of Islam with war experience, and he obviously has had a strong track record (among fellow fighters)," he said.

Syria's civil war, in its fourth year, has attracted militants from around the world. Some estimates run as high as 10,000 foreign fighters in the country. But the Chechens — hardened from years of wars with Russia in the Caucasus region — are considered some of the best fighters.

Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia's Federal Security Service, the main KGB successor agency known under its Russian acronym FSB, said last October that about 500 militants from Russia and hundreds more from other ex-Soviet nations are fighting in Syria.

Al-Shishani, whose real name is Tarkhan Batirashvili, is an ethnic Chechen from the Caucasus nation of Georgia, specifically from the Pankisi Valley, a center of Georgia's Chechen community and once a stronghold for militants.

He did military service in the Georgian army but was discharged after an unspecified illness, said one of his former neighbors, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. At one point, Georgian police arrested him for illegal possession of arms, the neighbor said. As soon as he was released in 2010, Batirashvili left for Turkey. Georgian police refused to comment.

He later surfaced in Syria in 2013 with his nom de guerre, which means "Omar the Chechen" in Arabic, leading an Al Qaeda-inspired group called "The Army of Emigrants and Partisans," which included a large number of fighters from the former Soviet Union. A meeting was soon organized with al-Baghdadi in which al-Shishani pledged loyalty to him, according to Lebanon's al-Akhbar newspaper, which follows jihadi groups.

He first showed his battlefield prowess in August 2013, when his fighters proved pivotal in taking the Syrian military's Managh air base in the north of the country. Rebels had been trying for months to take the base, but it fell soon after al-Shishani joined the battle, said an activist from the region, Abu al-Hassan Maraee.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant entered the Syria conflict in 2013, and initially it was welcomed by other rebels. But rebel groups — including other Islamic militant factions — turned against it, alienated by its brutal methods and kidnappings and killings of rivals, and accusing it of trying to take over the opposition movement for its own ambitions of creating a transnational Islamic enclave. Rebel factions have been fighting against the group since last year in battles that have left thousands dead. Al Qaeda's central command ejected the extremist group from the network.

For the past two months, al-Shishani has led an offensive in Syria's eastern Deir el-Zour province against rival rebels, seeking to solidify his hold on a stretch of territory connected to neighboring Iraq.

In May, some Arab media organizations reported that al-Shishani was killed in the fighting. An activist in Iraq in contact with members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant said al-Shishani suffered wounds in his right arm and was taken into Iraq where he underwent treatment before returning to Syria. He spoke on condition of anonymity for security concerns.

Since then, al-Shishani has appeared multiple times in photos and videos put out by the group. The photos and videos are consistent with the AP's reporting from activists on the ground. In a recent photograph, the young, round-faced al-Shishani, wearing a black cap and beige gown, is seen with a big smile as he examines a Humvee said to have been captured in Iraq and brought into Syria.

Hussein Nasser, spokesman for the Islamic Front coalition group of rebels, said Chechens are among the most feared fighters in Syria.

"A Chechen comes and has no idea about anything (in the country) and does whatever his leader tells him," Nasser said. "Even if his emir tells him to kill a child, he would do it." Fox News

Caliph’ urges skilled jihadists to join ISIS

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi heads the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group which on the weekend declared a "caliphate" in territories it controls in Iraq and Syria. (Photo courtesy: svd.se)

The leader of the #al-Qaeda offshoot now calling itself the Islamic State called on Muslims with military, medical and managerial skills to flock to its newly-declared pan-Islamic state, in an audio recording released Tuesday.

“Those who can immigrate to the Islamic State should #immigrate, as immigration to the house of Islam is a duty,” said Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The newly named “#caliph” said the appeal especially applied to “judges and those who have military and managerial and service skills, and doctors and engineers in all fields.”

Baghdadi also addressed the group’s fighters, saying that “your brothers in all the world are waiting” to be rescued by them.

“Terrify the enemies of Allah and seek death in the places where you expect to find it,” he said. “Your brothers, on every piece of this earth, are waiting for you to rescue them.”

The audio message, titled “A Message to the Mujahideen and the Muslim Ummah in the Month of Ramadan,” was posted online through the group’s media arm. Another account affiliated to the group posted translations in English, Russian, French, German and Albanian.

“By Allah, we will take revenge, by Allah we will take revenge, even if after a while,” Baghdadi said. “Fighters should “embrace the chance and champion Allah’s religion through jihad,” he added.

He called on Muslims to immigrate to the self-styled caliphate, saying it was their duty. In a direct, confident message, he urged them to “listen, realize and stand and free yourself from the shackles of weakness, and stand in the face of tyranny.”

“Let the world know that we are living today in a new era. Whoever was heedless must now be alert. Whoever was sleeping must now awaken. Whoever was shocked and amazed must comprehend.

The Muslims today have a loud, thundering statement, and possess heavy boots,” said Baghdadi, according to the posted translation.
“They have a statement that will cause the world to hear and understand the meaning of terrorism, and boots that will trample the idol of nationalism, destroy the idol of democracy and uncover its deviant nature.”

It was his first purported message since the group - previously known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Syria (ISIS) - proclaimed the caliphate on Sunday and declared him its leader, in an audacious bid to sweep away state borders and redraw the map of the Middle East.
The militant group, which operates in both Iraq and Syria, said their caliphate would spread from Aleppo in northern Syria to Diyala in eastern Iraq, and ordered Muslims in those areas to “obey” and pledge allegiance to their new leader.

“Vanguard of new Islamic awakening”

The declaration of the caliphate followed a three-week drive for territory by ISIL militants and their allies among Iraqi’s Sunni Muslim minority.

Dominating swathes of territory in an arc from Aleppo in Syria to near the western edge of Baghdad, the caliphate aims to erase colonial-era borders and defy the U.S.- and Iranian-backed government of Iraq’s Shi’ite prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki.

It also poses a direct challenge to the global leadership of al-Qaeda, which has disowned ISIS.

Julian Barnes-Dacey, a senior policy fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations, said Baghdadi had made a “bold call in proclaiming this caliphate and speaking out so vigorously now.”

“He perceives this as his moment, having been able to seize this unprecedented amount of territory. It’s a bold, all-in strategy wherein he is trying to present himself as the vanguard of this new Islamic awakening,” Barnes-Dacey said.

Earlier on Tuesday, Shi’ites failed to name a prime minister to replace Maliki at the first meeting of a new parliament session, dashing hopes that a unity government would be swiftly built to save Iraq from collapse. Al Arabiya News

Blackwater threatened to kill US investigator in Iraq: report

Contractors of the US private security firm Blackwater secure the site of a roadside bomb attack in central Baghdad, July 5, 2005. (AFP Photo/Ahmad al-Rubaye)

Washington (AFP) - The top manager in #Iraq of the notorious private security firm #Blackwater threatened to kill a #US State Department investigator for probing the company's performance, the New York Times reported Monday.

The Times, citing an internal State Department memorandum, said the threat came just weeks before Blackwater guards shot and killed 17 civilians on September 16, 2007 in Baghdad's Nisour Square.

However US embassy officials in Baghdad sided with Blackwater and the State Department investigators were ordered to leave, The Times said.

Four former Blackwater employees are currently on trial in a US court for the Nisour Square deaths.

The killing, seen as an example of the impunity enjoyed by private security firms on the US payroll in Iraq, exacerbated Iraqi resentment toward Americans.

The lead State Department investigator, Jean Richter, warned in the memo dated August 31, 2007, that little oversight of the company, which had a $1 billion contract to protect US diplomats, had created "an environment full of liability and negligence."

Blackwater guards "saw themselves as above the law," Richter wrote.

The Times posted a link to the document at http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/30/us/30blackwater-documents.html

According to a State Department memo, Daniel Carroll, Blackwater’s project manager in Iraq, told Richter after an argument "that he could kill me at that very moment and no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq."

Richter wrote: "I took Mr Carroll’s threat seriously. We were in a combat zone where things can happen quite unexpectedly, especially when issues involve potentially negative impacts on a lucrative security contract."

A fellow State Department investigator who witnessed the exchange corroborated Richter’s report in a separate statement.

Blackwater, whose license to work in Iraq was revoked by Baghdad, has since been renamed twice and after merging with a rival firm is now called Constellis Holdings.

The State Department canceled its contract with the company soon after President Barack Obama took office in January 2009. AFP

Iraq advances, Qaeda side-shoot claims Islamic “caliphate”

(Reuters) – An offshoot of al Qaeda which has seized territory in #Iraq and #Syria has declared itself an Islamic “caliphate” and called on factions worldwide to pledge their allegiance, a statement posted on Islamist websites and Twitter said on Sunday.

The move poses a direct challenge to the central leadership of al #Qaeda, which has disowned it, and to conservative Gulf Arab rulers who already view the group as a security threat.

A member loyal to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) waves an ISIL flag in Raqqa June 29, 2014. REUTERS/Stringer

The group, previously known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and also known as ISIS, has renamed itself “Islamic State” and proclaimed its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as “Caliph” – the head of the state, the statement said.

“He is the imam and khalifah (Caliph) for the Muslims everywhere,” the group’s spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani said in the statement, which was translated into several languages and read out in an Arabic audio speech.

“Accordingly, the “Iraq and Sham” (Levant) in the name of the Islamic State is henceforth removed from all official deliberations and communications, and the official name is the Islamic State from the date of this declaration,” he said.

The Sunni Muslim militant group follows al Qaeda’s hard-line ideology but draws its strength from foreign fighters battle-hardened from Iraq.

It seeks to re-create a medieval-style caliphate erasing borders from the Mediterranean to the Gulf. It deems Shi’ite Muslims to be heretics deserving death.

“It is incumbent upon all Muslims to pledge allegiance to (him) and support him…The legality of all emirates, groups, states, and organizations, becomes null by the expansion of the khalifah’s authority and arrival of its troops to their areas,” the statement said.

Fighters from the group overran the Iraqi city of Mosul last month in a lightning action and have advanced towards Baghdad. In Syria they have captured territory in the north and east, along the frontier with Iraq.

In Syria, the group has alienated many civilians and opposition activists by imposing harsh rulings against dissent, even beheading and crucifying opponents, in areas it controls. In Iraq it has been accused by rights groups of carrying out mass executions in the northern city of Tikrit and in Lebanon the group claimed a suicide attack at a hotel on Wednesday.

“Whatever judgments are made in terms of its legitimacy, (the) announcement that it has restored the Caliphate is likely the most significant development in international jihadism since 9/11,” said Charles Lister, Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Doha Center.

“The impact of this announcement will be global as al Qaeda affiliates and independent jihadist groups must now definitively choose to support and join the Islamic State or to oppose it.”

GULF REACTION

Gulf Arab states such as Saudi Arabia are likely to be alarmed by the open declaration of a caliphate that challenges their power and the dynastic system on which it rests. Saudi Arabia fought al Qaeda militants for several years, finally crushing their campaign in 2006.

“Gulf rulers will view the statement as evidence that the organization poses a grave external threat to their stability,” said Kristian Ulrichsen, Gulf expert at the U.S-based Baker Institute.

They will could also use it to defend themselves against any Western accusations they have been providing material and logistical support to the group by arguing that they stand in the front line against it, he added.

But some dismissed the idea that this would have a significant effect on the Gulf region.

“It might sound good to some circles who always have this dream of an Islamic state of a sort, but we all know that this Baghdadi, ISIL, they are not the kind of entities that could bring back the Islamic state,” said Emirati political scientist Abdulkhaleq Abdullah.

“This guy (Baghdadi) doesn’t have one iota of the credibility and credentials that (Osama) bin Laden had,” he said, referring to al Qaeda’s late leader.

The group crucified eight rival rebel fighters in Syria, a monitoring group said on Sunday, and it has frequently fought against al Qaeda’s Syrian wing and other armed Islamist groups.

Such infighting has killed around 7,000 people in the country so far this year and complicated the three-year uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. MB

ISIS Execution Site Located: Iraq

(Baghdad) – Analysis of photographs and satellite imagery strongly indicates that the Islamic State of #Iraq and #Syria (#ISIS) conducted mass executions in Tikrit after seizing control of the city on June 11, 2014.

The analysis suggests that ISIS killed between 160 and 190 men in at least two locations between June 11 and 14. The number of victims may well be much higher, but the difficulty of locating bodies and accessing the area has prevented a full investigation, Human Rights Watch said.

On June 12, ISIS claimed to have executed 1,700 “Shi’a members of the army” in Tikrit. Two days later, it posted to a website photographs with groups of apparently executed men. On June 22, Iraq’s human rights minister announced that ISIS had executed 175 Iraqi Air Force recruits in Tikrit.

“The photos and satellite images from Tikrit provide strong evidence of a horrible war crime that needs further investigation,” said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director. “ISIS apparently executed at the very least 160 people in Tikrit.”

On June 12, ISIS first announced on its now-closed Twitter feed that it had “exterminated” 1,700 Iraqi troops. The same day, the group posted videos of hundreds of captured men in civilian clothes, who it claimed had surrendered at the nearby Iraqi Speiker military base. On June 14, ISIS posted roughly 60 photographs, some of which show masked ISIS fighters loading captives in civilian clothes onto trucks and forcing them to lie in three shallow trenches with their hands bound behind their backs. Some of the images show masked gunmen pointing and firing their weapons at these men.

By comparing ground features and landmarks in the photographs released by ISIS, Human Rights Watch established that two of the trenches were at the same location. By comparing these photographs with satellite imagery from 2013 and publicly available photographs from Tikrit taken earlier, Human Rights Watch located the site in a field about 100 meters north of the Water Palace in Tikrit – a former palace of Saddam Hussein next to the Tigris River. The location of the third trench has not been identified.

Human Rights Watch also reviewed satellite imagery of the area recorded on the morning of June 16. The imagery does not reveal evidence of bodies at the site with the two trenches, but does show indications of recent vehicle activity and surface movement of earth that is consistent with the two shallow trenches visible in the ISIS photos. Without visiting the site it is impossible to know if bodies are buried there or were moved.

On June 22, the Iraqi human rights minister, Mohamed Shia Sudani, said at a news conference that the bodies of some of the 175 air force recruits who had been killed were thrown into the Tigris River and that others were buried in a mass grave. A spokesman for the minister confirmed that statement to Human Rights Watch on June 23.

An Iraqi security official said that as many as 11 bodies of the executed recruits had been recovered from the Tigris River downstream from the execution site.

The execution photographs that ISIS distributed suggest that gunmen killed the men at the site in at least three groups. The photographs show one group of men lying in one trench and a second group of men lying on top of the first. A third group of men is seen lying in a second trench.

Based on a count of the bodies visible in the available photographs, Human Rights Watch estimates that ISIS killed between 90 and 110 men in the first trench and between 35 and 40 men in the second.

A preliminary review of the shadow length and angle in the photographs suggests the two groups of men in the first trench were possibly executed around 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. The men in the second trench were possibly executed around 2:30 to 3:30 p.m.

Photographs from ISIS show a fourth group of approximately 30 to 40 prisoners on, and later next to, one of the two transport trucks on the main road between the execution site and the Water Palace. The photos were probably taken later that day, between 4 and 5 p.m.

One of the photographs that ISIS distributed suggests that the group killed prisoners at a second site around the same time, but Human Rights Watch has been unable to locate that site. That photograph shows a large trench with between 35 and 40 prisoners being shot by at least 8 ISIS fighters. Based on the shadow length and angle, the photograph was probably taken between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. One of the ISIS gunmen visible at that site was also visible in photographs from the killing site with the two trenches near the Water Palace.

The photographs and satellite imagery strongly suggest that ISIS transported its captives by trucks to the two killing sites. Human Rights Watch identified the same ISIS fighters and captured men in multiple photographs, including captives who were photographed in trucks and then again being unloaded from the same trucks next to the execution site at the Water Palace.

Human Rights Watch spoke with one man who said he fled Tikrit after the killings. The man said he watched from the rooftop of his home in the Hay al-Qadsia neighborhood in the late afternoon just after ISIS arrived as armed members of ISIS loaded hundreds of captured men onto trucks and drove them away:

I saw them with my own eyes. It was late afternoon. It was a long line. I saw about 10 armed gunmen with their guns pointed at the line of men, walking them to military trucks. Some of the gunmen had masks and others showed their faces. The [captured] men were not handcuffed. They wore civilian clothes.

The man said he did not know where the men took their captives and could not remember the exact date. Tikrit residents told him later they saw bodies floating in the Tigris, he said.

During an armed conflict, the murder of anyone not taking an active part in hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those in detention, is a war crime. Murder, when systematic or widespread and committed as part of a deliberate policy of an organized group, can be a crime against humanity. Both war crimes and crimes against humanity are considered international crimes, with criminal liability attaching to those who commit or order the crime, but also those who assist, and commanders who should have known of the crime but fail to prevent it.

Human Rights Watch has previously documented serious crimes by ISIS in other areas of Iraq and Syria, including car and suicide bomb attacks in civilian areas, summary executions, torture in detention, discrimination against women, and destruction of religious property. The evidence documented by Human Rights Watch strongly suggests that some of these acts may amount to crimes against humanity.

“ISIS is committing mass murder, and advertising it as well,” Bouckaert said. “They and other abusive forces should know that the eyes of Iraqis and the world are watching.” HRW News

Iraq helicopter crashes in airborne commando assault on Tikrit

(Reuters) – Iraqi forces launched an airborne assault on rebel-held Tikrit on Thursday with commandos flown into a stadium in helicopters, at least one of which crashed after taking fire from #insurgents who have seized northern cities.

Witnesses said battles were raging in the city, hometown of former dictator Saddam Hussein, which fell to Sunni Islamist fighters two weeks ago on the third day of a lightning offensive that has given them control of most majority Sunni regions.

The helicopters were shot at as they flew low over the city and landed in a stadium at the city’s university, a security source at the scene said. Government spokesmen did not respond to requests for comment and by evening the assault was still not being reported on state media.

The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said fierce clashes ensued, centered around the university compound.

Ahmed al-Jubbour, professor at the university’s college of agriculture, described fighting in the colleges of agriculture and sports education after three helicopters arrived.

“I saw one of the helicopters land opposite the university with my own eyes and I saw clashes between dozens of militants and government forces,” he said.

Shi’ite volunteers, who have joined the Iraqi army to fight against the predominantly Sunni militants from the radical Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), take part in a parade on a street in Kanaan, Diyala province, June 26, 2014. REUTERS/Stringer

Jubbour said one helicopter crash-landed in the stadium. Another left after dropping off troops and a third remained on the ground. Army snipers were positioning themselves on tall buildings in the university complex.

Iraq’s million-strong army, trained and equipped by the United States, largely evaporated in the north after Sunni fighters led by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant launched their assault with the capture of the north’s biggest city Mosul on June 10.

But in recent days, government forces have been fighting back, relying on elite commandos flown in by helicopter to defend the country’s biggest oil refinery at Baiji.

A successful operation to recapture territory inside Tikrit would deliver the most serious blow yet against an insurgency which for most of the past two weeks has seemed all but unstoppable in the Sunni heartland north and west of Baghdad.

MALIKI UNDER PRESSURE

In the capital, the president’s office confirmed that a new parliament elected two months ago would meet on Tuesday, the deadline demanded by the constitution, to begin the process of forming a government.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whose Shi’ite-led State of Law coalition won the most seats in the April election but needs allies to form a cabinet, is under strong pressure from the United States and other countries to swiftly build a more inclusive government to undermine support for the insurgency.

Maliki confirmed this week that he would support the constitutional deadlines to set up a new government, after pressure from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who flew to Baghdad for emergency crisis talks to urge him to act.

The 64-year-old Shi’ite Islamist is fighting for his political life in the face of an assault that threatens to dismember his country. Sunni, Kurdish and rival Shi’ite groups have demanded he leave office, and some ruling party members have suggested he could be replaced with a less polarizing figure, although close allies say he has no plan to step aside.

Fighters from ISIL – an al Qaeda offshoot which says all Shi’ites are heretics who should be killed – have been assisted in their advance by other, more moderate Sunni armed groups who share their view that Sunnis have been persecuted under Maliki.

Washington hopes that armed Sunni tribal groups, which turned against al Qaeda during the U.S. “surge” offensive of 2006-2007, can again be persuaded to switch sides and back the government, provided that a new cabinet is more inclusive.

Kerry held talks with the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates on Thursday as part of a diplomatic push on Iraq. He was to travel to Saudi Arabia on Friday for talks with King Abdullah on Iraq and Syria.

In Riyadh, King Abdullah ordered measures to protect his nation against “terrorist threats” after heading a security meeting to discuss the fallout from Iraq, the state news agency said.

The United States, which withdrew its ground forces in 2011, has ruled out sending them back but is dispatching up to 300 military advisers, mostly special forces troops, to help organize Baghdad’s military response.

The Pentagon said on Thursday that an additional 50 troops had arrived in Baghdad and the first of two Joint Operations Centers had been activated.

The fighters have been halted about an hour’s drive north of Baghdad and on its western outskirts, but have pressed on with their advances in areas like religiously mixed Diyala province north of the capital, long one of Iraq’s most violent areas.

On Thursday morning, ISIL fighters staged an assault on the town of Mansouriyat al-Jabal, home to inactive gas fields where foreign firms operate, in northeastern Diyala province. An Iraqi oil ministry official denied fighters had taken the field.

A roadside bomb in Baghdad’s Shi’ite northern district of Kadhimiya killed eight people on Thursday, police and hospital sources said.

SYRIA STRIKES

The ISIL-led advance has put the United States on the same side as its enemy of 35 years Iran, the Middle East’s main Shi’ite power, as well as Iran’s ally President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who is fighting ISIL in his country.

Locals in the Iraqi border town of al-Qaim, captured by ISIL several days ago, say Syrian jets carried out strikes against militants on the Iraqi side of the frontier this week, marking the first time Assad’s air force has come to Baghdad’s aid.

Publicly, Baghdad, which operates helicopters but no jets, said its own forces carried out the air strike. But a senior Iraqi government official confirmed on condition of anonymity that the strike was mounted by the Syrian air force.

Iran, which armed and trained some of Iraq’s Shi’ite militias, has pledged to intervene in Iraq if necessary to protect Shi’ite holy places. Thousands of Shi’ites have answered Maliki’s call to join the armed forces to defend the country.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague arrived in Baghdad on Thursday, reinforcing the international push for Maliki to speed up the political process.

Under the official schedule, parliament will have 30 days from when it first meets on Tuesday to name a president and 15 days after that to name a prime minister.

In the past the process has dragged out, taking nine months to seat the government in 2010. Any delays would allow Maliki to continue to serve as caretaker. MB News

Iraq forces clash with ISIS, U.S. meets Arab allies

A member of the Iraqi security forces opens fire during clashes with fighters from Sunni militant group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. (File photo: Reuters)

Iraqi government forces moved to regain territory lost to militants from the Islamic State of #Iraq and #Syria (#ISIS) in the north of the country on Thursday as the United States held talks with its Arab allies to discuss the growing threat of extremist militants in the region.

The developments on the ground in Iraq, where Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is facing a growing insurgency, coincided with steps by Iraq's vice president to convene Parliament, in a move considered a first step toward the formation of a new government.

In the rebel held-city of Tikrit in the north, Iraqi forces launched an airborne assault with commandos flown into a stadium in helicopters, at least one of which crashed after taking fire from insurgents who have seized northern cities, Reuters news agency said.

Eyewitnesses told the agency that battles were raging in the city, hometown of former dictator Saddam Hussein, which fell to Sunni Islamist fighters two weeks ago on the third day of a lightning offensive that has given them control of most majority Sunni regions.

The helicopters were shot at as they flew low over the city and landed in a stadium at the city's university, a security source at the scene said.

Reuters said government spokesmen did not respond to requests for comment and by evening the assault was still not being reported on state media.

In the French capital, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with top Sunni state allies in the Middle East to consider how to confront the region's growing turmoil.

"The move of [ISIS] concerns every single country here," Kerry said at the start of the meeting held at the U.S. ambassador's residence in Paris.

He said the talks with foreign ministers from Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also would touch on a "number of critical issues” including negotiations about Iran's nuclear program and the stalled peace effort between Israel and Palestinian authorities.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal called the discussions “of immense importance for our countries.”

“I think with the cooperation between these countries we can affect, hopefully, the situation in a better way,” the Saudi official said.

The United Kingdom through its foreign secretary also warned of the growing danger of ISIS during a surprise visit to the Iraqi capital.

William Hague urged opposing parties in Iraq to unite against what he called a “mortal threat” from ISIS militants. Kerry made a similar unannounced visit to Iraq’s capital earlier this week to send out a similar message for leaders to unite against the militants.

Iraq's vice president called on parliament to convene next week, taking the first step toward forming a new government to present a united front against the Sunni insurgency as a bombing killed 12 people in a Baghdad Shiite neighborhood and police found eight more bullet-riddled bodies south of the capital.

Maliki's Shiite-led political bloc won the most seats in April 30 elections - with 92 seats out of the 328 - but he needs support from other parties for a majority that would give him the right to govern.

An increasing number of critics, both in Iraq and abroad, now want him to step down, saying his failure to promote national reconciliation fueled the insurgency by needlessly angering minority Sunnis.

Compounding the pressure on Maliki, Iraq's powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called late Wednesday for a national unity government of "new faces" representing all groups.

Al-Sadr, whose followers fought fiercely against both U.S. forces and Sunni extremists during the height of the war nearly a decade ago, also vowed to "shake the ground" under the feet of the Al-Qaeda breakaway group that has threatened to advance toward Baghdad and holy Shiite cities in the south.

Maliki has faced pressure, including from his onetime Shiite allies, to step down and form an interim government that could provide leadership until a more permanent solution can be found. He has insisted the constitutional process must be allowed to proceed.

In a statement, Vice President Khudeir al-Khuzaie ordered the new parliament to hold its first session on Tuesday, to be chaired by the eldest member.

Constitutionally the next step would be to elect a speaker and two deputies, then within 30 days to choose a new president who then has 15 days to ask the largest bloc to choose a prime minister and form the new government.

The prime minister-designate has 30 days to present his cabinet to the parliament.

The discovery in recent weeks of bullet-riddled bodies dumped on the streets also has raised the specter of the past sectarian warfare Iraqis had hoped was behind them.

On Thursday, authorities found eight men believed to be in their 30s and 40s who had been shot to death in Mahmoudiya, about 30 kilometers south of Bagdad, police and hospital officials told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The men had no ID cards with them, reminiscent of the past when Shiite and Sunni extremists would take the identification to dehumanize those killed or to use as trophies.

Shortly before sunset, a bomb exploded near a clothing shop in Baghdad's northern Shiite neighborhood of Khazimiyah, killing 12 people and wounding 32, said police and hospital officials. Al Arabiya

Iraqi PM confirms Syria carried out airstrikes on militants

© Photo: AFP (Iraqi government forces on patrol in Ramadi, Anbar province on June 24)

Syrian forces carried out airstrikes against militants in Iraqi territory this week, Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told the BBC on Thursday, confirming earlier reports of the raid.

Maliki said that while Iraq did not ask for the attack – which took place on militant positions around the border town of al-Qaim on Tuesday – he "welcomed" any such strikes against the insurgents, led by the Sunni militant group the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater #Syria (#ISIS).

The strikes came after insurgents took control of al-Qaim on the Iraqi side of the frontier, providing them a strategic route into conflict-hit Syria, where ISIS is also active.

Iraq’s government has struggled to hold back the insurgency and militants have overrun vast swathes of five provinces north and west of Baghdad in an offensive that has alarmed the international community, left more than 1,000 people dead and displaced hundreds of thousands.

The United States government and a senior Iraqi military official first reported the strikes by Syrian warplanes on Wednesday, though Syrian state media has denied the country was responsible for the attacks.

US Secretary of State John Kerry warned against other nations getting involved in the conflict, saying it risked further destabilising the situation in Iraq.

“We’ve made it clear to everyone in the region that we don’t need anything to take place that might exacerbate the sectarian divisions that are already at a heightened level of tension,” Kerry said, speaking in Brussels at a meeting of diplomats from NATO nations.

“It’s already important that nothing take place that contributes to the extremism or could act as a flash point with respect to the sectarian divide.” AFP

Iraqi Kurds strengthen their positions while Isis advances on Baghdad

Tensions are high in Kirkuk after control of the historic Iraqi city was taken over by the Kurds after the Iraqi army abandoned its positions. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Iraqis in #Baghdad and the country's south are already calling the events of the past two weeks "the catastrophe". Not so inhabitants of the would-be #Iraqi Kurdish capital of Irbil, where joy is unrestrained and a long-held sense of destiny is ever closer to being realised.

As the central government teeters under the insurgent onslaught, the fate of Irbil appears more assured then ever. Kurdish politicians, in the past not shy to criticise Arab Iraqi leaders, but coy about their national ambitions, are now openly touting "a new reality".

To Kurdish officials and locals alike, a tectonic shift in the balance of power between Iraq's two power bases, and peoples, has taken place. And Kirkuk, the bitterly contested oil hub, is at the epicentre.

In the heady days following the fall of Mosul and Tikrit, the Kurdish Peshmurga forces crossed into Kirkuk to head off the fast advancing jihadist group Isis. The Iraqi army, meanwhile, was fast retreating south, abandoning in hours a city that had been at the heart of the dispute between the Kurds and the Arabs for more than 70 years.

For the Kurds, the army's stunning capitulation has now settled the matter for good.

"Kirkuk will finally produce oil for the Kurds," said Muhama Khalil, the Kurdish head of the economic committee in Iraq's national parliament. "For 70 years oil has been used to buy weapons to kill us. Finally we have our own oil and it will only be for the Kurds."

The significance of Kirkuk changing hands sits uncomfortably with Iraqis in Baghdad. Many express shame at the Iraqi military's collapse. Others blame the rout on a conspiracy concocted between generals and Kurdish leaders and involving vast amounts of cash. Whatever the cause, most hold little hope that the city will return to Iraqi control anytime soon.

And nor do they believe the a fast crumbling state can assert its control over oilfields that the Kurds have long coveted.

Kurdish leader, Massoud Barzani helped stoke those fears this week, with his most outspoken comments yet since Isis launched its headlong offenisve. "Iraq is obviously falling apart," he told CNN. "We did not cause the collapse of Iraq. It is others who did. And we cannot remain hostages for the unknown."

Pressed on whether Iraqi Kurds would seek to push for their 'holy grail' of independence, Barzani added: "The time is here for the Kurdistan people to determine their future and the decision of the people is what we are going to uphold."

Barzani has long calculated that having a state in all but name has served both his and the Kurdish peoples' interests. His role as leader of Iraq's Kurds has also made him one of several defacto leaders of the 40 million strong Kurdish population, scattered between northern Iraq, eastern Syrian, south-eastern Turkey, and western Iran, all of whom seem happy enough with Kurdish autonomy, but – Turkey especially – would feel gravely threatened by a proclamation of statehood.

The fate of the Kurds, who were denied a state when the Middle East was carved up almost a century ago, has greatly influenced the region ever since and their steady consolidation in northern Iraq has been watched by neighbouring states with keen interest.

The Kurds had employed a dual strategy of forging close strategic ties with Turkey, while relentlessly testing their boundaries with Baghdad, which has vehemently tried to retain control of the northern oilfields and, in return, given Irbil 17.5% of national budget revenues.

Now though, Kurdish officials and locals alike appear more tempted than ever before to make a direct play for Kirkuk's oilfields and to consolidate their grip on the disputed territories to the south of the city, which were also abandoned by the Iraqi army. Baghdad had twice pledged it would hold a referendum on the territories, which would enable residents of the area to vote on their alliegance.

Saddam Hussein had enticed Arabs to the area from the early 1970s in a bid to shift the fragile demographics. Since Baghdad fell 11 years ago, Kurds have returned to the area and Kurdish officials believe the territories would return to them if a referendum was held now.

Such is the new power base, however, that holding a plebicite now seems redundant.

"People in Kirkuk and Singar should be the decision makers about their destiny," said Khalil. "Now we are applying this right. The people in Kirkuk called for our help after the Iraqi Army fled. Now we are not leaving until they hold a referendum."

Safeen Dizayee, Kurdish regional government (KRG) spokesman, was at pains on Wednesday to highlight the region's resources. "In the governorates under KRG administration, vast quantities of natural resources have been discovered over the last few years – estimates point to more than 45bn barrels of oil and significant quantities of natural gas.

The Kurdistan region has already landed on the global energy map. Regarding the so-called disputed territories, Peshmerga forces have entered these areas after the Iraqi army abandoned their positions. The KRG had and still has an obligation to protect civilians in these areas and to ensure that army bases, cities, and land areas do not fall into the hands of terrorists.

Aref Maroof, 52, a Kirkuk school inspector, said: "I think 85-90% of Kurds want independence. Kurdistan has two options; one is to declare independence without 'separated territories' [disputed territories] in which case it will fail, or to declare independence by including the 'separated territories' in which case the Kurds will face a war with [Nouri al-]Maliki.

"It is in the interest of Kurds (to do so) if the central government and its army is weak. (But) If the KRG assists Iraq ... to rebuild their army, it is like committing suicide."

In Baghdad, a sense of gloom pervades many in government who see little chance of shifting the Kurds from Kirkuk, or even defending their interests while an insurgency and political crisis rages.

"They are getting what they want," said one minister. "While Baghdad burns, and while we all sit back and watch the fire."

Obama’s Dangerous New Terror War

T

he spectacle of Iraqi troops stripping off their uniforms and ditching U.S. materiel worth millions of dollars in their headlong flight out of Mosul, leaving much of Iraq’s north and east in the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, casts doubt on a main tenet of U.S. security strategy: its heavy focus on host-nation militaries, irrespective of the governments they serve.

Yet the latest formulation of U.S. counterterrorism strategy, outlined by President Barack #Obama at West Point late last month, is built around that very tenet. It is time to take stock of the hard lessons from America’s inglorious history of dealing with local proxies and revise the approach.

In #Iraq and #Afghanistan, the United States poured prodigious resources into building and partnering with local forces, while officials turned a blind eye to the toxic sectarianism and corruption (respectively) of the two countries’ governments. Events in Iraq show the fundamental bankruptcy of this approach.

ISIS’s lightning advance across Iraq’s Sunni heartland had less to do with its strategic acumen or compelling vision than with how Iraqi security institutions have come to embody the sectarianism, corruption and nepotism of the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Even back in 2008, the Iraqi security forces stubbornly blocked the reintegration of American-backed “Sons of Iraq” that had fought against al Qaeda.

Some have suggested that more sustained U.S. mentoring and advising—a residual force after the main withdrawal—could have averted the current catastrophe by making the Iraqi Army more competent and less partisan. But such notions vastly overstate U.S. leverage and influence.

It’s important to understand the limits of U.S. assistance: It can help build security institutions, but it cannot shape how those institutions are commandeered for personal, political or communal aims. Nor can it substitute for a government seen as reasonably equitable and legitimate.

Although cases of mass desertion have been rare in Afghanistan, and Afghan soldiers and police have stood their ground and borne a terrible toll in the ongoing counterinsurgency campaign—losing more than 100 men per week during last year’s most intense period of fighting—more than a third of the force trickles away each year through attrition. Today’s events in Iraq bode ill for what will happen when the last U.S. forces leave in 2016.

In the meantime, units that receive U.S. training and support have committed blood-chilling depredations against local civilians. The chief of police of Kandahar province, a key U.S. ally during the 2010 troop surge into the Afghan south, is notorious for having his men take members of a rival tribe into the desert and shoot them. A spike in the number of internally displaced persons beginning 2011 has been attributed not to Taliban excesses, but to those of the undisciplined local militias organized by U.S. Special Forces.

Yet, in spite of these object lessons, the counterterrorism approach Obama outlined at West Point would essentially subcontract America’s war on al Qaeda to the armed forces of governments that are just as counterproductive as Iraq’s and Afghanistan’s. As ISIS’s advance demonstrates, this strategy runs the risk of exacerbating terrorist threats instead of containing them.

At the National Defense University a year ago, Obama himself recognized the limits of any exclusively military approach to jihadism. “In the absence of a strategy that reduces the wellspring of extremism,” he emphasized then, “a perpetual war … will prove self-defeating.” And yet, apart from his vaguely worded insistence that Iraqis be “prepared to work together,” no subsequent speech has unveiled such a concerted strategy. And, despite his laudable reservations about rushing to the aid of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki without some sign of political reform, Obama still envisions a perpetual war—just fought by others.

In his West Point speech, the president called for a new “Counterterrorism Partnership Fund” – on top of at least $26 billion the United States already earmarks for foreign security forces – “to train, build capacity and facilitate partner countries on the front lines.”

In this war, the United States will be aligned with the armies and security services of governments—Obama mentioned Yemen’s and Somalia’s—that are no more legitimate in the eyes of their people than those of Maliki in Iraq or Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan. And the likelihood that such allies will either collapse at the first serious military challenge or prove actively counterproductive is high.

Sarah Chayes is senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Frederic Wehrey is a senior associate in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Military support, when lent to armies in repressive, authoritarian states, tends to reinforce unpopular government and enable practices that nourish extremism. In Egypt, under former dictator Hosni Mubarak, or Nigeria today, for example, heavy-handed and rapacious police forces have preyed upon ordinary people, shaking them down at market stalls or in public transportation, arresting them on invented charges or descending on their neighborhoods in vicious sweeps. The judicial system offers no recourse. In prison, indignant men easily fall prey to terrorist propaganda and initial training. Under the guise of “counterterrorism,” such regimes crack down on political opponents.

To provide U.S. military equipment and training to governments like these—even if the assistance is not directly used in physical repression—still reinforces those governments and identifies the United States with the abuses.

Consider U.S. military support to the Mubarak regime: More than $1.5 billion in U.S. aid per year for the last three decades has yielded few personal relationships or influence over military officers, but served as an important source of funding and prestige, the equivalent of a U.S. imprimatur for regime excesses. It is perhaps no wonder that Egyptians occupy the top ranks of al Qaeda leadership, including the position left vacant by Osama Bin Laden.

When U.S. support is provided to fragile, fractured states with weak central authority—such as those with nominal sway over ungoverned swathes of the Sahara and Sahel, Yemen or Afghanistan—it can contribute to warlordism or the rise of sectarian or ethnic-based forces, as it has done in Iraq. Their depredations fuel internal strife that can rapidly spin out of control.

In Libya, the United States is training elite counterterrorism forces and is planning to train the larger Libyan army. But the country’s political landscape is so fractured that no single national army exists. Entire air force and special operations units—the focus of a planned U.S. assistance effort—have now defected to a retired general who has vowed to “cleanse” Libya of Islamists. Any future U.S. support will be in de facto partnership not with the state, but with one of many armed factions now vying for control. In such a fractured landscape, outside military assistance will lead to one of two equally undesirable outcomes: a strengthening of the militias or a drift toward praetorianism or a possible coup.

A previous U.S. effort to train a Libyan counterterrorism unit collapsed last year when its camp was raided by competing tribal militias—resulting, before Mosul, in a massive transfer of U.S. military materiel into the attackers’ hands. That unit, one of us discovered in interviews, was drawn almost exclusively from western mountain tribes, rather than representing Libya’s diverse regions and political affiliations.

Without careful effort to avoid such pitfalls, the new counterterrorism approach – which largely expands past practices – will likely produce the opposite of its intended effect. Holding the United States responsible for colluding with local powers, what were originally local groups with local aims might set their sights on U.S. interests, as they have already, in some cases, done.

Nevertheless, even within what may be the least bad in a range of imperfect options, there are ways U.S. assistance to local counterterrorism forces can avoid inadvertently contributing to the very extremism it seeks to curb.

First, where at all possible, law-enforcement approaches to extremist violence are preferable to military ones. Any counterterrorism support should be linked to a reform of local law enforcement agencies and local judiciaries. Police and judicial officials need salaries they can live on so as to reduce the pretext for corruption. Rules of evidence and procedure should be tightened, and, when detainees are released, local communities should be engaged to serve as guarantees for their ongoing good behavior, as was piloted in Afghanistan in 2011.

Before a decision to work with local military units is made, secondly, they and their prospective recruits must be carefully evaluated. Is the unit a mainstay of an authoritarian, kleptocratic government, or of a particular political leader? Is a single tribe, sect, ethnic group or other network overrepresented in its ranks? Is U.S. support being used as a revenue stream to enrich corrupt networks, or relieve the local government’s own responsibility to provide for national defense? Have they refused to take remedial measures when large-scale abuses have been documented? Any of these factors are warning signs that U.S. counterterrorism support can be bent to ulterior purposes, and might end up fueling popular grievances.

In cases where vetted units are judged to be appropriate partners, America should not issue a blank check. Rigorous conditions and oversight should govern military assistance and training. Indications of financial irregularity, of gross recruiting bias or of inappropriate targeting or other serious wrongdoing on the part of supported units should trigger an automatic suspension of aid while an investigation is launched. Current U.S. law provides for such procedures. Substantiated abuses should result in termination of assistance and reimbursement of expenditures.

Finally, it is time for President Obama to back up his proposition that force alone is not a sufficient response to extremist violence. After two major counterterrorism speeches devoted to varieties of military action, the president should unveil a civilian strategy that helps push America’s allies in the fight against terrorism to undertake meaningful political, economic and judicial reforms—in other words, to address the well-springs of extremism—before insurgents are baying at the gates of the capital city.

Sarah Chayes is senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Frederic Wehrey is a senior associate in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Politico.