city:baghdad

  • Poles apart - Le Monde diplomatique - English edition
    http://mondediplo.com/2003/03/01polesapart

    FUNDAMENTAL global issues are clearly at stake in Iraq. Alarm bells ring as international relations disintegrate. The United Nations is sidelined, the European Union divided and Nato fractured. In February 10 million people took to the streets around the world: anti-war protesters, convinced that tragic events had been set in motion, renounced the return of brutality to the political stage and the rise in violence, passion and hatred.

    Collective fears produce anxious questions. Why should we wage war on Iraq? Why now? What are the real intentions of the United States? Why are France and Germany so adamant in their opposition? Does this conflict point to a new geopolitical arrangement? Will it change worldwide balances of power?

    Many observers believe that the real reasons for this war are secret. People of good will who have paid close attention to US arguments remain sceptical. Having failed to make its case for war, Washington has forcefully presented feeble justifications while causing doubt around the world.

    What is the official rationale? In September President George Bush addressed the Security Council, outlining seven charges against Iraq in a document, A Decade of Defiance and Deception. This made three main accusations: Iraq has flouted 16 UN resolutions; it possesses or is seeking ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction (WMD), nuclear, biological and chemical; it is guilty of human rights violations, including torture, rape and summary executions.

    There are four more charges. The US blames Baghdad for abetting terrorism by harbouring Palestinian organisations and sending $25,000 to families of those who carry out suicide attacks on Israel (1). It accuses Iraq of holding prisoners of war, including a US pilot; of confiscating property, including artworks and military material, during its invasion of Kuwait; and of diverting revenues from the UN oil-for-food programme.

    These accusations led to a unanimous Security Council vote in November. Resolution 1441 mandated “an enhanced inspection regime with the aim of bringing to full and verified completion the disarmament process”. Considering these disturbing charges, should all countries see Iraq as the world’s number one enemy? Is it the biggest threat to humanity? Do US accusations justify all-out war?

    The US and some allies - the United Kingdom, Australia and Spain - say yes. Without the approval of any recognised international body, the US and UK have dispatched some 250,000 troops to the Gulf. This a formidable fighting force with massive powers of destruction. But, backed by substantial international public opinion, Western countries such as France, Germany and Belgium say no. Although they acknowledge the seriousness of the charges, they contend that accusations of flouting UN resolutions, violating human rights and possessing WMD could be levelled against other countries, especially Pakistan and Israel. But since both are close US allies, no one will declare war on them. There is no shortage of dictatorships (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Tunisia, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Equatorial Guinea) that trample on human rights (2). Because they are allies, Washington is silent.

    In the eyes of France, Germany and Belgium, the Iraqi regime does not immediately threaten its neighbours because of 12 years of non-stop surveillance, restrictions on its airspace and that devastating embargo. About the endless search for impossible-to-find weapons, many agree with Confucius:"You can’t catch a cat in a dark room, especially when there is no cat." They believe that the inspectors from the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, led by Swedish diplomat Hans Blix, and the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), headed by Egyptian disarmament expert Mohammed al-Baradei, are making steady progress, as their reports to the Security Council, in particular at the 7 March meeting, indicate. The goal of disarming Iraq could be achieved without war.

    The French president, Jacques Chirac, through his foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, has used this sensible reasoning at the UN. In the minds of those opposed to war, Chirac person ifies resistance to overwhelming US firepower. Although we may be overstating the case, Chirac has now achieved a level of international popularity enjoyed by few French leaders before him. Like “General Della Rovere” in Roberto Rossellini’s celebrated film, fate may have thrust him into the role of resistance fighter, but Chirac has taken up the challenge (3). The US has failed to make its case for war. It is vulnerable to France’s potential veto and has already suffered two setbacks in the Security Council. The first was on 4 February, when US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation of evidence against Baghdad flopped; and the second was on 14 February, when Hans Blix delivered a fairly positive report, in which he implied that some of Powell’s evidence was barely cred ible. The same day the French foreign minister made a similar statement: “Ten days ago the US Secretary of State reported the alleged links between al-Qaida and the regime in Baghdad. Given the present state of our research and intelligence, in liaison with our allies, nothing allows us to establish such links.” Establishing links between Osama bin Laden’s network and Saddam Hussein’s regime is a crucial factor that could justify war, particularly to the US public, still in shock after 11 September 2001.

    Because there appears to be no demonstrable case for war, many are rallying in opposition. So we must question the real motives of the US, which are threefold. The first stems from a US preoccupation, which became a total obsession
    Europe and America: poles apart

    After 11 September, with preventing links between rogue states and international terrorists. In 1997 President Bill Clinton’s defence secretary, William Cohen, voiced US fears: “The US faces a heightened prospect that regional aggressors, third-rate armies, terrorist cells and even religious cults will wield disproportionate power by using, or even threatening to use, nuclear, biological or chemical weapons” (4). In a statement in January 1999 Bin Laden indicated that the threat was real: “I do not consider it a crime to try to obtain nuclear, chemical and biological weapons” (5). Last September President Bush acknowledged that such dangers haunted him: “Our greatest fear is that terrorists will find a shortcut to their mad ambitions when an outlaw regime supplies them with the technologies to kill on a massive scale.” (6)

    For Bush this outlaw regime is Iraq. Hence the unprecedented US national security directive of preventive war, issued last September. Former CIA director James Woolsey summed up the Bush doctrine, saying that it was born of the asymmetric battle against terror, and about advanced dissuasion or preventive war. Since terrorists always had the advantage of attacking in secret, he said, the only defence was to find them wherever they were, before they got into a position to mount an attack (7). The US will hardly be seeking UN authorisation for this new mode of warfare. The second, albeit unspoken, motive, is to control the Gulf and its oil resources. More than two thirds of the world’s known reserves are in Gulf states: Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. For the developed countries, particularly the US with its vast appetite for oil, the Gulf is critical to assure economic growth and maintain a way of life. The US would immediately interpret any attack on the Gulf states as a threat to its vital interests. In 1980 President Jimmy Carter (later winner of the 2002 Nobel peace prize), outlined in his State of the Union address the US policy in the Gulf: “Any attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the US, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force” (8).

    Placed under British control after the first world war and the dismantling of the Ottoman empire, the Gulf came under growing US influence after the second world war. But two countries resisted US domination: Iran after its Islamic revolution in 1979, and Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Since 11 September 2001, there have been suspicions about Saudi Arabia and its links with militant Islamists and alleged financial support for al-Qaida. The US takes the position that it cannot afford to lose a third pawn on the Gulf chessboard, especially one as important as Saudi Arabia. Hence the temptation to use false pretences to occupy Iraq and regain control of the region.

    Aside from military difficulties, it will not be easy for US occupation forces to run Iraq in the post-Saddam era. When he was still lucid, Colin Powell described the intricacies of such an undertaking (9). He said in his autobiography that although the US had condemned Saddam for invading Kuwait, the US had no desire to destroy Iraq. According to Powell, the US’s major rival in the Gulf in the 1980s was Iran, not Iraq; in those years the US needed Iraq to counterbalance Iran. Powell also insisted that Saudi Arabia opposed a Shi’ite rise to power in southern Iraq; Turkey did not want the Kurds in northern Iraq to secede; and the Arab states did not want Iraq to be invaded and then divided into Sunni, Shi’ite and Kurdish factions; that would have dashed US hopes for stability in the Middle East. Powell concluded that to prevent such scenarios, the US would have had to conquer and occupy a faraway nation of 20 million people, which would have run counter to the wishes of the American people. Yet that is what Bush wants today.

    The third, also unspoken, US motive is world supremacy. For years Bush’s rightwing advisers - including the vice-president, Dick Cheney, the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, the deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle, the chairman of the Pentagon’s Defence Policy Board - have hypothesised that the US would become a global imperial power (see United States: inventing demons, page 6). These men held similar positions from 1989 to 1993 in the administration of President George Bush Senior. The cold war was ending: although most strategists favoured a reduced role for US armed forces, they gave preference to restructuring the military, relying on new technologies to re-establish war as a foreign policy tool.

    One observer explained: “The Vietnam syndrome was still alive. The military didn’t want to use force unless everyone was in agreement. The stated conditions required virtually a national referendum before force could be used. No declaration of war would have been possible without a catalysing event such as Pearl Harbor” (10). In December 1989 White House hawks, with General Colin Powell’s agreement and without congressional or UN approval, instigated the invasion of Panama, ousting General Manuel Noriega and causing 1,000 deaths. The same men prosecuted the Gulf war, in which US military might left the world thunderstruck.

    After returning to the White House in January 2001, Bush’s hawks recognised that 11 September was their long-awaited “catalysing event”. Now nothing restrains them. They used the USA Patriot Act to give the government alarming powers against civil liberties; they promised to exterminate terrorists; they put forward their theory of global war against international terrorism; they conquered Afghanistan and overthrew the Taliban; they sent troops to Colombia, Georgia and the Philippines. They then developed the preventive war doctrine and used their propaganda to justify war on Iraq.

    The hawks ostensibly agreed that the US should focus its efforts on globalisation’s power centres: the G7, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank. But they have sought incrementally to end US involvement in multilateral organisations. That is why they urged Bush to condemn the Kyoto protocol on global warming; the anti-ballistic missile treaty; the International Criminal Court; the treaty on anti-personnel mines; the biological weapons protocol; the convention on small arms; the treaty banning nuclear weapons; and the Geneva conventions on prisoners of war relevant to the Guantanamo detainees. Their next step could be to reject the authority of the Secur ity Council, jeopardising the UN’s existence. Under the guise of lofty ideals - freedom, democracy, free trade - these rightwing ideologues seek to transform the US into a new military state. They have embraced the ambitions of all empires: reshaping the globe, redrawing frontiers and policing the world’s peoples.

    These were the intentions of previous colonialists. They believed, as historians Douglas Porch and John Keegan have argued, that the spread of trade, Christianity, science and efficient Western-style administration would push forward the frontiers of civilisation and reduce zones of conflict. Thanks to imperialism, poverty would turn into prosperity, savages find salvation, superstition become enlightenment, and order arrive in places of confusion and barbarism (11).

    Thanks to their distinctive conception of the EU, France and Germany seek to forestall growing US hegemony, and choose to act as a non- belligerent counterweight to the US within the UN (12). As Dominique de Villepin said: “We believe that a multipolar world is needed, that no one power can ensure order throughout the world” (13). The shape of a bipolar world is becoming evident. The second pole could either be the EU (if its member states can overcome their differences), a new Paris-Berlin-Moscow alliance or other formations (Brazil, South Africa, India, Mexico). France and Germany have taken a bold and historic step that could enable Europe to overcome its fears of the past 60 years and reaffirm its political will. They have exposed the pusillanimity of European countries (including the UK, Spain, Italy and Poland) that have been vassal states for far too long.

    The US had been making itself comfortable in a unipolar world dominated by its military forces; the war on Iraq was meant to display new US imperial power. But France and Germany have joined together to remind the US that political, ideological, economic and military considerations are crucial to the exercise of power. Globalisation led some to believe that economics and neoliberal ideology were the only essential factors; political and military considerations were relegated to the back burner. That was a mistake. As the world is being formed anew, the US focuses on the military and the media. France and Germany have opted for a political strategy. In their attempt to address global problems, France and Germany bet on perpetual peace. Bush and his entourage of hawks seek perpetual war.

    ]]

  • Interview de Hassan Nasrallah hier soir sur al Mayadeen: Sayyed Nasrallah: Hezbollah Ready to Invade Galilee, beyond Galilee
    http://www.almanar.com.lb/english/adetails.php?eid=190782&cid=23&fromval=1&frid=23&seccatid=14&s1=1

    Saudi Arabia’s battlefield influence turned to be so meager after the Kingdom committed a major mistake by implementing the Afghani pattern in Syria, Sayyed Nasrallah pointed out.

    Hezbollah Secretary General confirmed that Turkey funds and supports ISIL and Nusra that obtain battlefield facilities from the government in Ankara, but he also mentioned the Turkish-Iraqi relations may improve with the advent of the new government in Baghdad.

  • La menace de Baghdad, à partir de Doulouïya, recule
    http://www.argotheme.com/organecyberpresse/spip.php?article2388

    L’offensive de l’alliance de l’OTAN, et de ses partenaires, contre le Deash n’a pas encore prouvé son efficacité. Voire elle n’a pas justifié son existence, pour prévenir les génocides et autres massacres commis encore par les terroristes. Mais les forces présentes au sol, c’est-à-dire les irakiens, aidées par les frappes aériennes de l’armée irakienne et non ceux de l’alliance internationale, viennent de réussir une avancée non-négligeable, avec la pénétration de la bourgade de Doulouïya, au nord de (...)

    conflits, situation, points chauds, monde, international, efforts, position, opinion, interventionnisme,

    / Terrorisme , islamisme , Al-Qaeda , politique , , #Irak,_prison,_pétitions,_chiite,_sunnite,_journaliste, #fait_divers,_société,_fléau,_délinquance,_religion,_perdition, Afrique, Monde (...)

    #conflits,situation,_points_chauds,_monde,_international,_efforts,_position,_opinion,_interventionnisme, #Terrorisme_,islamisme,Al-Qaeda,politique,_ #Afrique,_Monde_Arabe,_islam,_Maghreb,_Proche-Orient, #Arabie_Saoudite,_Qatar,_Moyen-Orient,_monarchies,_arabes,_musulmans

  • A Boy in ISIS. A Suicide Vest. A Hope to Live. - NYTimes.com
    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/27/world/middleeast/syria-isis-recruits-teenagers-as-suicide-bombers.html?emc=edit_th_20141227&

    BAGHDAD — Before war convulsed his hometown in Syria, Usaid Barho played soccer, loved Jackie Chan movies and adored the beautiful Lebanese pop singer Nancy Ajram. He dreamed of attending college and becoming a doctor.

    His life, to say the least, took a detour.

    On a recent evening in Baghdad, Usaid, who is 14, approached the gate of a Shiite mosque, unzipped his jacket to show a vest of explosives, and surrendered himself to the guards.

  • Ankara’s influence over Barzani wanes - Al-Monitor : the Pulse of the Middle East
    http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/politics/2014/12/ankara-barzani-turkey-influence-krg.html

    The agreement that Iran, the United States and Europe have been pushing for months was finally signed last week when Erbil and Baghdad agreed to regulate their oil production and revenue sharing.

    It wasn’t for nothing that Iran, the United States and Europe worked so hard for this accord that has important ramifications for future of Iraq. The same accord will have important consequences for Turkey.

    A mon avis, de la plus grande importance pour la suite... On notera que l’Iran, les USA (et l’Europe) négocient de concert pour donner un peu d’air au Kurdistan irakien vis-à-vis de son dialogue avec la Turquie, et pour donner un peu de crédibilité à l’Etat irakien.

  • Baghdad: Life in the Pitiless City
    http://www.fairobserver.com/region/middle_east_north_africa/baghdad-life-in-the-pitiless-city-56435

    International media coverage of recent events in Iraq has been especially appalling. Reporting tends to fluctuate between the inevitable doomsday scenario and the righteous indication of Western politicians, whose failed policies have directly set the conditions for the growth of the Islamic State. This failure also negates the very real sacrifice that normal Iraqis have made; those, who contrary popular belief, have dug in and are fighting the Islamic State with a spirited ferocity, defending their homes and families against a marauding army of fanatics and sociopaths.

    And while it is easy to parody bureaucratic failures, corruption, or the vagaries of a foreign army, the people of Baghdad continue to live their lives under the physical threat of daily terrorist attack. Accepting bombings, shootings, kidnappings, murders, assassinations, extortion, and sectarianism – day after day, month after month, for over a decade, with no clear end in sight. It is hard to imagine what this kind of life is like unless you have lived it or lived amongst it. There is a lesson to be learned from the people of Baghdad – not just of extraordinary resilience and steadfastness, but also humility and respect. And that is the real story of life in the Pitiless City.

  • Après l’émissaire pour la paix qui appelle à armer les milices kurdes, le Grand Ayatollah iranien appelle à armer les milices sunnites. Pour résumer : tout le monde appelle à armer tout le monde. (#Je_ne_vois_pas_comment_ça_pourrait_mal_tourner.)

    Sayyed Sistani Calls on Baghdad to Help Sunni Tribes against ISIL Threat
    http://www.almanar.com.lb/english/adetails.php?eid=178946&cid=23&fromval=1&frid=23&seccatid=24&s1=1

    Iraq’s most senior cleric Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ali al-Sistani called on the government on Friday to rush to the aid of Sunni tribes battling the ISIL terrorist group, after the group executed at least 220 tribesmen west of Baghdad this week.

  • Iraqi battle seen as key victory in Iran - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East
    http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/10/iran-sees-iraq-battle-jurf-al-sakhar-key-control-isis.html

    The battle for the strategic city south of Baghdad is significant in that control of Jurf al-Sakhar will enable the Iraqi army to cut off IS from its strongholds in Anbar province. The city was won solely by Iraqi forces without coalition air power, and set the blueprint for the next battle between the Iraqi army and IS in the strategic cities of Amiriya and Fallujah.

  • Dempsey : US Used Attack Helicopters Near Baghdad - ABC News

    http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/dempsey-us-attack-helicopters-baghdad-26140738

    The top U.S. military officer says the U.S. called in Apache helicopters to prevent Iraqi forces from being overrun by Islamic State militants in a recent fight near Baghdad’s airport.

    Gen. Martin Dempsey says the extremists were within about 15 miles and had they overrun the Iraqis, “it was a straight shot to the airport.”

  • Les forces de l’Etat Islamique sont arrivées à 15 km de #Bagdad
    http://french.peopledaily.com.cn/International/n/2014/1011/c31356-8793495.html

    L’offensive de l’État islamique vers la capitale irakienne s’est intensifiée : les combattants djihadistes se sont avancés jusqu’à Abu Ghraib, une banlieue située à seulement 15 km de l’aéroport international de Bagdad. La banlieue d’Abou Ghraib est également le site de la tristement célèbre prison de l’armée américaine qui fut utilisée pour humilier et torturer les détenus irakiens.
    Selon certains rapports de l’armée irakienne, les islamistes sont en possession de missiles anti-aériens #MANPAD. Ces missiles à courte portée tirés à l’épaule peuvent abattre des avions dans un rayon de 5 000 mètres.

    L’armée irakienne, assistée par des militaires américains, n’a jusqu’à présent pas réussi à entraver la marche vers Bagdad de la milice de l’Etat islamique, qui a étendu son contrôle sur des pans entiers de l’#Irak et la Syrie, malgré l’augmentation des frappes aériennes menées par les #Etats-Unis.

    Selon un officier irakien, un total de 60 000 soldats irakiens sont affectés à la défense de la capitale, aux côtés de 12 équipes de conseillers américains. Des progrès rapides ont également été enregistrés par la milice jihadiste à #Anbar, où des responsables irakiens ont demandé une aide militaire ouverte, mettant en garde que la ville risque bientôt de tomber entre les mains de l’Etat Islamique. La situation à Anbar, une ville à l’ouest de Bagdad, est « fragile », a dit un responsable américain à l’AFP. L’Etat Islamique s’est emparé de bases de l’armée dans la province d’Anbar, et bombardé les la capitale provinciale, #Ramadi, située à 120 km de Bagdad.

    Le lourd bilan de l’Anbar, l’« oubliée » d’Irak
    http://www.irinnews.org/fr/report/100695/le-lourd-bilan-de-l-anbar-l-oubliée-d-irak

    Depuis janvier, le gouvernement irakien a recours à des frappes aériennes pour tenter d’entraver l’avancée de l’EI. Selon des organisations comme Human Rights Watch, le gouvernement aurait également utilisé des barils explosifs, c’est-à-dire des engins explosifs improvisés largués depuis des avions et remplis de ferraille qui se disperse lors de la détonation, causant d’importants dommages et de graves blessures. Le gouvernement irakien a également été accusé à plusieurs reprises d’avoir mené des campagnes aériennes apparemment à l’aveugle dans l’Anbar.

  • Iraqi Journalist Who Embedded with Shia Militias on Fighting ISIS & Why US Strategy is Bound to Fail
    http://www.democracynow.org/2014/10/9/iraqi_journalist_who_embedded_with_shia

    GHAITH ABDUL-AHAD: ... ISIS is not one monolithic organization. The insurgency, the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, as Patrick [Cockburn] knows very well, is not one dominated by ISIS. I went to Ramadi a few times before the fall of Mosul, and let’s remember that the whole Sunni war against the central government had started back in December 2013. So, in 2014, I went to Ramadi, and Ramadi had already fell out of the control of central government. The government had a few bases inside the city, but the streets were controlled by the insurgents. Who were the insurgents? They were a coalition of Baath army officers, former generals, different groups of the insurgency, all having their grievances with the Shia-dominated government in Iraq.

    So, the war that ISIS is waging on—at least in Iraq, on the Iraqi government, is a coalition of many different tiny, little wars. The Sunni insurgents in Ramadi are different from the Sunni insurgents in Diyala. The Sunni insurgents in Mosul are different from the guys in South Baghdad. So, everyone has his own grievances against the central government of Iraq, yet ISIS have managed to include them all and under a single one umbrella. So that is one, you know, very important point.

    If we decide, if you decide, if America decides to fight ISIS as this monolithic organization, it’s bound to fail. You know, fragmented into its own components, what are the people of Ramadi fighting for? When I was in Ramadi in April, it wasn’t a Sunni-Shia war. It was a Sunni-Sunni war—Sunnis allied with the government of Iraq, Sunnis allied with the insurgents. Why these people of Ramadi are fighting against the central government of Iraq? Because the unequal distribution of wealth and economy, you know, amongst the tribes of Ramadi. The people of Diyala and the people of South Baghdad are fighting for a different cause. They’re fighting because they see their area dominated by the Shia, while in Ramadi you don’t see any Shia. So, that’s the main point that I would like to make, is this is not one monolithic war that stretches from the borders of Iran all the way to Lebanon, to Balbec. This is a combination of many different local wars.

  • FP’s Situation Report: Syrian rebels still not happy with U.S. strikes; ISIS targets civilians in Baghdad; A missing Marine; Pierson out at the Secret Service; and a bit more.
    http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/10/02/fps_situation_report_syrian_rebels_still_not_happy_with_us_strikes_is

    A big red flag: Moderate Syrian rebels, who are central to President Barack Obama’s fight against the Islamic State, aren’t happy with U.S. airstrikes. There are a handful things about the U.S. air campaign that are alienating civilians and rebel groups on the ground but at the top of the list are reports of civilians deaths caused by U.S. bombs. The Islamic State will no doubt try to use these reports — true or not — to its advantage. Still, it’s concerning when the very people the strikes are supposed to benefit don’t see it that way.

  • http://www.gloria-center.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/v18n03a01_Jawad_PDF.pdf

    Overall, resistance movements to IS are localized and do not yet constitute a wider, coordinated
    Sunni Arab rebel movement against IS. For the anti-IS movement to gain significant momentum, members of other insurgent groups—in particular, JRTN, which is second to IS in terms of overall influence over the Sunni Arab insurgency—will have to drop the agenda of “revolution”48 and turn against IS across Sunni Arab areas. Yet they will likely only do this once they realize that the dreams of “liberating Baghdad”49 are delusional and that an IS-dominated landscape outside of
    government control is only bringing economic and societal ruin to Sunni Arabs.
    A major driving force behind the insurgent sentiments of “revolution” is the erroneous belief that
    Sunni Arabs constitute either a demographic plurality or majority in Iraq and should therefore be ruling from the center of power. Though the sectarian civil war centered around Baghdad ought to
    have corrected this perception, it is clear that it has at least seen a revival over the past year or so.
    Further, a key aspect of the Sunni insurgent narrative is the characterization of the government as
    “sectarian” and “Safavid” (i.e. a client of Iran, referring to the Persian Shi’a Safavid Empire): this narrative is bolstered by the Shi’a “militiafication” of government-aligned forces, Iranian proxy or
    otherwise.50

  • Perpetual War, and Shame, Is Our Policy
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-hoh/isis-iraq-perpetual-war_b_5801952.html

    Towards Iraq, the president offered familiar axioms about the necessity of a political resolution, but he gave no assurances that Sunni grievances would be addressed nor did he explain how the United States would force the government in Baghdad to make much needed concessions in order to achieve political order. Rather, the reality of what America has pledged to do in Iraq is to assist in Shia subjugation of the Sunnis by U.S. bombing of Sunni villages, towns and cities. The American military will also ensure the Kurds keep the oil fields they seized this summer in Northern Iraq, effectively strangling the Sunnis economically. In turn, the Sunnis, in existential desperation, will give full support to the Islamic State. How this does not bring Iraq back to the violence of 2006, or worse, I do not know.

    With regards to Syria, the president did not even attempt to make comments towards a political process to end the fighting and the killing. The United States will simply add more to Syria’s death and destruction. Yes, that is all; we will simply add more to it.

    #Etats-Unis #guerre_perpétuelle

  • Iraq: on the frontline with the Shia fighters taking the war to Isis | World news
    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/24/iraq-frontline-shia-fighters-war-isis/print

    In Baghdad a senior Shia politician, whose own party has started arming and equipping a militia force of its own, said that he feared the Shia were becoming as radical as the enemy they were fighting. "We are in the process of creating Shia al-Qaida radical groups equal in their radicalisation to the Sunni Qaida.

    “By arming the community and creating all these regiments of militias, I am scared that my sect and community will burn. Our Shia project was building a modern, just state but now it’s all been taken by the radicals. Think of 20 years ahead – these are all schools graduating militias, creating a mutant that is killing people, that is amassing weapons. Where will they go when the fight is over here? They will take their wars and go to Saudi and Yemen. Just like the Sunni jihadis migrated, so will the Shia militias.”

  • The Peacock Angel and the Pythagorean Theorem
    http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/08/08/the_peacock_angel_and_the_pythagorean_theorem_yazidis_christians_isla

    As compared with its brutal would-be imitators today, the real Islamic state — the Umayyad caliphate, which ruled the region from Damascus from AD 661, and the Abbasid caliphate, which ruled it from Baghdad from AD 750 — was kinder. In theory, the modern-day Islamic State has the same rules as the ancient caliphate, whose approach resembled that of its Christian predecessor, the Byzantine Empire: promulgate the imperial faith, penalize the followers of other religions and forbid them from promoting their faith through external signs, and forbid polytheism — “paganism,” as it was called — altogether. In practice, however, the early Muslims were often more tolerant than their Christian predecessors.

    One prominent pagan, for example, complained bitterly about the Byzantine hostility to paganism. Pagans built the world’s great cities, he argued; without their achievements, the world would be destitute and ignorant. This pagan, Thabit ibn Qurra, was a member of a group called the Harranians, whose beliefs somewhat resemble those of the modern-day Yazidis. Here is the irony: He was given safe haven by the Abbasid caliphate in the ninth century and lived out his life in Baghdad. While there, he was able to develop Pythagoras’s theorem of triangles to the form in which we know it today. Without such scholars, Baghdad would never have been a great imperial capital — built as it was with the help of a Hindu astronomer, a Zoroastrian, Jews, and Christians.

    Here is the essential difference between the old Islamic state and the self-styled new one: The old one tolerated what would have been considered heretical beliefs, and in doing so built a great culture imbued with knowledge and learning. The new one is determined to stamp out all differences of opinion in a nihilistic orgy of destruction.

  • Iraq Crisis : Kurdish Forces Reverse Militant Gains as U.S. Continues Airstrikes

    BAGHDAD—Islamist extremists who have overrun swaths of Iraq made a rare retreat in an area hit by U.S. airstrikes and gave up some territory they had won from Kurdish forces, in an early sign of impact from the three-day-old American campaign.


    http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-s-officials-say-airstrikes-in-iraq-having-effect-on-militant-offensive

    #Irak #visualisation #carte #cartographie #guerre #Kurdistan

  • Iraq crisis : Troops swell in Baghdad amid ISIS threat, humanitarian nightmare

    A crisis so dire that families are fleeing to Syria. A militant threat so strong that U.S. forces are striking from the sky. And political strife so tense that it could derail hopes for government stability.

    As Iraq’s political and humanitarian crises escalate at the same time, foreign countries are getting more deeply involved. Here’s where things stand:

    http://edition.cnn.com/2014/08/10/world/meast/iraq-crisis/index.html?sr=sharebar_twitter

    #ISIS #EIIL #Syrie #Irak #cauchemar #crise_humanitaire

  • Fear of ‘Another Benghazi’ Drove White House to Airstrikes in Iraq - NYTimes.com
    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/09/world/middleeast/fear-of-another-benghazi-drove-white-house-to-airstrikes-in-iraq.html

    “The situation near Erbil was becoming more dire than anyone expected,” said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe the White House’s internal deliberations. “We didn’t want another Benghazi.”

    (...)

    “We have an embassy in Baghdad, we have a consulate in Erbil, and we have to make sure that they are not threatened,” Mr. Obama said in an interview on Friday with Thomas L. Friedman of The New York Times. “Part of the rationale for the announcement yesterday was an encroachment close enough to Erbil that it would justify us taking shots.”

  • Patrick Cockburn – Isis consolidates
    http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n16/patrick-cockburn/isis-consolidates

    A conspiracy theory, much favoured by the rest of the Syrian opposition and by Western diplomats, that Isis and Assad are in league, has been shown to be false.

    Isis may well advance on Aleppo in preference to Baghdad: it’s a softer target and one less likely to provoke international intervention. This will leave the West and its regional allies – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey – with a quandary: their official policy is to get rid of Assad, but Isis is now the second strongest military force in Syria; if he falls, it’s in a good position to fill the vacuum. Like the Shia leaders in Baghdad, the US and its allies have responded to the rise of Isis by descending into fantasy. They pretend they are fostering a ‘third force’ of moderate Syrian rebels to fight both Assad and Isis, though in private Western diplomats admit this group doesn’t really exist outside a few beleaguered pockets. Aymenn al-Tamimi confirms that this Western-backed opposition ‘is getting weaker and weaker’; he believes supplying them with more weapons won’t make much difference. Jordan, under pressure from the US and Saudi Arabia, is supposed to be a launching pad for this risky venture but it’s getting cold feet. ‘Jordan is frightened of Isis,’ one Jordanian official in Amman said. ‘Most Jordanians want Assad to win the war.’ He said Jordan is buckling under the strain of coping with vast numbers of Syrian refugees, ‘the equivalent of the entire population of Mexico moving into the US in one year’.

    *

    The foster parents of Isis and the other Sunni jihadi movements in Iraq and Syria are Saudi Arabia, the Gulf monarchies and Turkey. This doesn’t mean the jihadis didn’t have strong indigenous roots, but their rise was crucially supported by outside Sunni powers. The Saudi and Qatari aid was primarily financial, usually through private donations, which Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, says were central to the Isis takeover of Sunni provinces in northern Iraq: ‘Such things do not happen spontaneously.’ In a speech in London in July, he said the Saudi policy towards jihadis has two contradictory motives: fear of jihadis operating within Saudi Arabia, and a desire to use them against Shia powers abroad. He said the Saudis are ‘deeply attracted towards any militancy which can effectively challenge Shiadom’. It’s unlikely the Sunni community as a whole in Iraq would have lined up behind Isis without the support Saudi Arabia gave directly or indirectly to many Sunni movements. The same is true of Syria, where Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to Washington and head of Saudi intelligence from 2012 to February 2014, was doing everything he could to back the jihadi opposition until his dismissal. Fearful of what they’ve helped create, the Saudis are now veering in the other direction, arresting jihadi volunteers rather than turning a blind eye as they go to Syria and Iraq, but it may be too late. Saudi jihadis have little love for the House of Saud. On 23 July, Isis launched an attack on one of the last Syrian army strongholds in the northern province of Raqqa. It began with a suicide car-bomb attack; the vehicle was driven by a Saudi called Khatab al-Najdi who had put pictures on the car windows of three women held in Saudi prisons, one of whom was Hila al-Kasir, his niece.

    Turkey’s role has been different but no less significant than Saudi Arabia’s in aiding Isis and other jihadi groups. Its most important action has been to keep open its 510-mile border with Syria. This gave Isis, al-Nusra and other opposition groups a safe rear base from which to bring in men and weapons. The border crossing points have been the most contested places during the rebels’ ‘civil war within the civil war’. Most foreign jihadis have crossed Turkey on their way to Syria and Iraq. Precise figures are difficult to come by, but Morocco’s Interior Ministry said recently that 1122 Moroccan jihadists have entered Syria, including nine hundred who went in 2013, two hundred of whom were killed. Iraqi security suspects that Turkish military intelligence may have been heavily involved in aiding Isis when it was reconstituting itself in 2011. Reports from the Turkish border say Isis is no longer welcome, but with weapons taken from the Iraqi army and the seizure of Syrian oil and gasfields, it no longer needs so much outside help.