Is the U.S. Embassy in #Baghdad able to protect Americans against an #ISIS attack? @eliselabottcnn reports: http://t.co/0WN39CBEOz
— CNN Video (@CNNVideo) June 14, 2014
Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric issued a rare call to arms to defend against attacking Sunni insurgents, portending a wider sectarian conflict as thousands of young men heeded his words. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who has millions of followers world-wide, called on all able men to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, an al Qaeda offshoot, whose lightning offensive across a large swath of western Iraq this past week sent tremors across the region.More.
"Given the current threat facing Iraq, defending the land, honor and holy places is a religious duty," said a statement from Ayatollah Sistani that was read by his representative at a Friday sermon in Karbala.
The statement came as the U.S. declared a "shared interest" with Iran in subduing the Islamist insurgents and President Barack Obama said his administration would consider a range of responses in the coming days to help Iraq's defense, including airstrikes.
Ayatollah Sistani's call was quickly answered by thousands of gun-toting men, who emerged in Baghdad, Basra and other Iraqi cities to declare their readiness to join a holy war. TV images showed young men lining up behind pickup trucks and outside of military bases.
Ayatollah Sistani's call followed a chorus of statements from prominent Shiite clerics in Qom and Najaf this week seeking unity among Shiites to join the government's armed struggle against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS.
The developments underscore the inability of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government to muster sufficient military force to blunt the rebel force. Four days after the insurgents captured Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, with little military resistance, the weakness of Iraq's forces was again evident on Friday during battles raging for control of the corridors leading to the capital Baghdad.
Ayatollah Sistani, whose influence across the Shiite world is unrivaled, rarely involves himself in politics and military strategy. He follows a Shiite doctrine known as "quietism," which promotes Islamic principles but shuns a political role for its clerics.
Even during the height of Iraq's civil war, the reclusive 83-year-old cleric refrained from issuing a fatwa to fight Americans or Sunni insurgents.
That he would do so now suggests that Ayatollah Sistani and the Shiite community views ISIS—and its loose alliance with disenfranchised Sunni tribes and insurgent groups—as the most significant threat Iraq's government has faced.
"Sistani wants to say he did his part under grave circumstances," said Mehdi Khalaji, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute and an expert in Shiite theology. "No one has been as anti-Shiite as ISIS, not the Sunnis and certainly not the Americans."
A new ad campaign appeared online on Wednesday, drawing attention to the New York University faculty member who heads the American Studies Association that is calling for an academic boycott of Israel.Keep reading.
Advocacy group The Israel Project funded the campaign. The ad was delivered by Google AdWords on news sites and went to a landing page entitled Peace Not Hate.
The campaign asks, “Why is NYU supporting academic bigotry?”
“Last year, the American Studies Association (ASA) joined the hate-campaign against Israel by voting to boycott Israeli professors,” it said. “NYU should have immediately pulled their funding of the group, like other universities. But NYU has continued to fund its ASA chapter.”
“By steering university funding to a group that fuels academic bigotry, NYU is betraying its students and its own commitment to academic openness.” The webpage linked to a petition before exhorting readers, including alumni who might be worried about the school’s “good name.”
It said, “Don’t let a fringe group of haters and extremists demonize Israel and dirty the good name of NYU.” “Tell NYU to live up to its highest principals. Add your name and email to tell NYU: Honor truth. Stop funding hate.”
While New York University’s president and provost have condemned the ASA’s boycott. the group’s new president, NYU Social and Cultural Analysis Professor Lisa Duggan, was pilloried for her stance, and muddled arguments, by Forbes Investigative Journalist Richard Behar, in a 15,000-word exposé.
The saga continued when Duggan, a lesbian, accused the veteran reporter of homophobia by noting that rather than any expertise in the Middle East, Duggan teaches ‘Queer Historiographies and Constructions of Whiteness in the United States.’
WSJ: Iaqi soldiers dressing in civies beneath their military uniforms "in case they have to flee" #Baghdad http://t.co/CHhvn007ga
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 13, 2014
@AmPowerBlog such cowards as they are. I read 10k of them fled 800 men.
— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) June 13, 2014
@AmPowerBlog I despair of modern men at times. Masculinity, honour is dead
— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) June 13, 2014
CAIRO — The video, set to sweetly lilting religious hymns, is chilling. Islamic militants are shown knocking on the door of a Sunni police major in the dead of night in an Iraqi city. When he answers, they blindfold and cuff him. Then they carve off his head with a knife in his own bedroom.Continue reading.
The 61-minute video was recently posted online by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an al-Qaida splinter group of Sunni extremists. The intent was to terrorize Sunnis in Iraq's army and police forces and deepen their already low morale.
That fear is one factor behind the stunning collapse of Iraqi security forces when fighters led by the Islamic State overran the cities of Mosul and Tikrit this week, sweeping over a swath of Sunni-majority territory. In most cases, police and soldiers simply ran, sometimes shedding their uniforms, and abandoned arsenals of heavy weapons.
Even after the United States spent billions of dollars training the armed forces during its 2003-2011 military presence in Iraq, the 1 million-member army and police remain riven by sectarian discontents, corruption and a lack of professionalism.
Many Sunnis in the armed forces are unprepared to die fighting on behalf of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Shiite-led government, which many in their minority community accuse of sharp bias against them. The Islamic State has exploited this by touting itself as the Sunnis' champion against Shiites.
Shiites in the armed forces, in turn, feel isolated and deeply vulnerable trying to hold on to Sunni-majority areas.
Desertion has been heavy the past six months among forces in the western province of Anbar, Iraq's Sunni heartland, where troops have been fighting in vain to uproot Islamic State fighters who took over the city of Fallujah, said two high officials — one in the government and the other in the intelligence services.
The militants who early this week swept into the northern city of Mosul included former Sunni army officers who had deserted out of frustration with al-Maliki's government, the two officials told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence reports.
As the militants approached, the two officials said, many of the top army commanders in Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, fled to the autonomous Kurdish region...
#ISIS raises the black flag in #Iraq, on the cover of today's @WSJ. pic.twitter.com/N7OTbW7QcL
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 13, 2014
Islamist militants are aiming to redraw the map of the Middle East. http://t.co/TEmuQGp9vu #ISIS pic.twitter.com/UZU27TzrR6
— Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) June 13, 2014
The magnitude of the debacle now unfolding in Iraq is becoming clearer by the day, with the terrorist army of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, marching ever closer to Baghdad. On Tuesday the al Qaeda affiliate captured Mosul, a city with a population greater than Philadelphia's, a day later it took Tikrit in the Sunni heartland, and on Thursday ISIS commanders announced they plan to attack the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.More.
No one should underestimate the danger this presents to the stability of the region and to America's national and economic security. An extended civil war seems to be the best near-term possibility. More dangerous is ISIS's ambition to establish a Muslim caliphate in the heart of the Persian Gulf, which would mean a safe haven for Islamic terrorism that would surely target the U.S. The danger to Iraq's oil exports of three million barrels a day is already sending prices up and global equities down.
***
The threat to Baghdad is real and more imminent than is widely understood. Four Iraqi divisions have melted away before the 3000-5,000 ISIS force, which is gaining deadlier weapons as it advances. One source says Iraqi soldiers who are supposed to protect Baghdad are dressing in civilian clothes beneath their military uniforms in case they have to flee. Iraq's air power, such as it is, could soon be grounded if civilian contractors are endangered.
President Obama finally addressed the spreading chaos during a photo-op with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Thursday, noting "a lot of concern" but making no commitments to help. The White House turned down an urgent appeal from Baghdad to intervene with air strikes, leaving Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki little choice but to turn to Iran to fill the breach—and extend its influence. Meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden is said to be on top of things from the Situation Room. Inshallah.
The prospect of Iraq's disintegration is already being spun by the Administration and its media friends as the fault of George W. Bush and Mr. Maliki. So it's worth understanding how we got here. Iraq was largely at peace when Mr. Obama came to office in 2009. Reporters who had known Baghdad during the worst days of the insurgency in 2006 marveled at how peaceful the city had become thanks to the U.S. military surge and counterinsurgency. In 2012 Anthony Blinken, then Mr. Biden's top security adviser, boasted that, "What's beyond debate" is that "Iraq today is less violent, more democratic, and more prosperous. And the United States is more deeply engaged there than at any time in recent history."
Mr. Obama employed the same breezy confidence in a speech last year at the National Defense University, saying that "the core of al Qaeda" was on a "path to defeat," and that the "future of terrorism" came from "less capable" terrorist groups that mainly threatened "diplomatic facilities and businesses abroad." Mr. Obama concluded his remarks by calling on Congress to repeal its 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force against al Qaeda.
If the war on terror was over, ISIS didn't get the message. The group, known as Tawhid al-Jihad when it was led a decade ago by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was all but defeated by 2009 but revived as U.S. troops withdrew and especially after the uprising in Syria spiraled into chaos. It now controls territory from the outskirts of Aleppo in northwestern Syria to Fallujah in central Iraq.
The possibility that a long civil war in Syria would become an incubator for terrorism and destabilize the region was predictable, and we predicted it. "Now the jihadists have descended by the thousands on Syria," we noted last May. "They are also moving men and weapons to and from Iraq, which is increasingly sinking back into Sunni-Shiite civil war. . . . If Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki feels threatened by al Qaeda and a Sunni rebellion, he will increasingly look to Iran to help him stay in power."
What’s happening in Iraq is a disaster and it is astonishing that the Iraqis and the Americans, who have been sharing intelligence, seem to have been caught flat-footed by the speed of the insurgent victories and the army defections.And this is classic cover for Obama's absolute Middle East cluster:
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is said to be in a panic. It is hard to be surprised by that, because more than anyone he is to blame for the catastrophe. Mr. Maliki has been central to the political disorder that has poisoned Iraq, as he wielded authoritarian power in favor of the Shiite majority at the expense of the minority Sunnis, stoked sectarian conflict and enabled a climate in which militants could gain traction.
With stunning efficiency, Sunni militants in recent days captured Mosul, the second-largest city; occupied facilities in the strategic oil-refining town of Baiji; and are now headed for Baghdad. Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been forced to flee their homes and untold numbers have been killed.
The insurgency’s gains will not be a threat just to Iraq if the militants, who have also been fighting in Syria, succeed in establishing a radical Islamic state on the Iraq-Syria border. No one should want that — not the Kurds, not the Turks and not the Iranians.
The deadly surge is the work of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which grew out of Al Qaeda in Iraq and is considered even more violent than its predecessor. Since the United States withdrew from Iraq at the end of 2011, the group has steadily gained strength and recruited thousands of foreign fighters; it broke with Al Qaeda earlier this year and is now viewed as a leader of global jihad.
As this week’s events unfolded, it was alarming to learn of the swift capitulation of thousands of Iraqi Army troops who surrendered their weapons to the enemy and disappeared. After disbanding Saddam Hussein’s army in 2003 after the invasion by coalition forces and dismantling the government, the United States spent years and many billions of dollars building a new Iraqi Army, apparently for naught. The militants have captured untold quantities of American-supplied weaponry, including helicopters, and looted an estimated $425 million from Mosul’s banks.
The United States simply cannot be sucked into another round of war in Iraq. In any case, airstrikes and new weapons would be pointless if the Iraqi Army is incapable of defending the country.Right.
Why would the United States want to bail out a dangerous leader like Mr. Maliki, who is attempting to remain in power for a third term as prime minister? It is up to Iraq’s leaders to show leadership and name a new prime minister who will share power, make needed reforms and include all sectarian and ethnic groups, especially disenfranchised Sunnis, in the country’s political and economic life — if, indeed, it is not too late.
If you like your armed al Qaeda terrorist takeover you can keep your armed Al Qaeda terrorist takeover! pic.twitter.com/y4MWEQVTO0
— el Sooper (@SooperMexican) June 13, 2014
Latest on #Iraq as WH mulls options for possible military action: http://t.co/nzqwp45T1q
— CNN NationalSecurity (@NatSecCNN) June 13, 2014
Official: US to move aircraft carrier to Persian Gulf for possibility of airstrikes against militants in Iraq http://t.co/a7pyHS9thy
— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) June 13, 2014
Obama to Iraq: You're on your own.
— toddstarnes (@toddstarnes) June 13, 2014At an annual security conference in Israel this week, the head of the military showed pictures of two long-dead diplomats.Keep reading.
Mark Sykes, an Englishman, and François Georges-Picot, a Frenchman, secured their place in history by cutting a deal that drew the borders of the modern Middle East.
The point of recalling the men: It suddenly appears those century-old borders, and the Middle Eastern states they defined, are being stretched and possibly erased.
"This entire system is disintegrating like a house of cards that starts to collapse," Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz said.
A militant Islamist group that has carved out control of a swath of Syria has moved into Iraq, conquering cities and threatening the Iraqi government the U.S. helped create and support with billions of dollars in aid and thousands of American lives.
The group—known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham—isn't a threat only to Iraq and Syria. It seeks to impose its vision of a single radical Islamist state stretching from the Mediterranean coast of Syria through modern Iraq, the region of the Islamic Caliphates established in the seventh and eighth centuries.
Governments and borders are under siege elsewhere, as well. For more than a year, Shiite militias from Lebanon have moved into Syria and operated as a virtual arm of the Syrian government. Meanwhile, so many Syrian refugees have gone in the opposite direction—fleeing into Lebanon—that Lebanon now houses more school-age Syrian children than Lebanese children.
And in Iraq, the Kurdish population has carved out a homeland in the north of the country that—with the help of Turkey and against the wishes of the Iraqi government—exports its own oil, runs its own customs and immigration operations and fields its own military, known as the Peshmerga.
The picture is difficult for the U.S., which is deeply invested in keeping the region stable, and the rapidly deteriorating situation in Iraq is setting off alarm bells inside the Obama administration. The U.S. is weighing more direct military assistance to the government of Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki, the White House said Thursday, and officials hinted that aid might include airstrikes on militants who have edged to within a half-hour's drive of Baghdad.
"There will be some short-term immediate things that need to be done militarily," President Barack Obama said. "Our national security team is looking at all the options." Mr. Obama also urged Iraq's Shiite-dominated government to seek political paths for moderate Shiites and Sunnis to work together against jihadists. "This should be also a wake-up call for the Iraqi government," he said.
Why are the borders of today's Middle Eastern states suddenly so porous and ineffectual? In short, the conflicts unleashed in Iraq and Syria have merged to become the epicenter of a struggle between the region's historic ethnic and religious empires: Persian-Shiite Iran, Arab-Sunni Saudi Arabia and Turkic-Sunni Muslim Turkey. Those three, each of whom has dominated the whole of the Middle East at one time or another in past millenniums, are now involved in the battle for influence from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.
