Iraq Back in 2020 Spotlight After Trump Orders Airstrikes

REAL CLEAR POLITICS

Iraqi Prime Minister Resigns in Deepening Political Crisis Anger over corruption and Iran’s influence on the country has driven weeks of unrest in Iraq’s streets. But choosing a successor may be a long, arduous task.

NY TIMES

Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi of Iraq submitted his resignation to Parliament on Saturday and planned to ask lawmakers in a televised national address to act quickly to replace him.

But Mr. Mahdi’s formal resignation may not spell the end of the turmoil that has racked the nation over the past two months. Parliament is scheduled to meet Sunday, but it has yet to agree on a successor, and several members said they were not even sure they would accept the resignation immediately.

A widening protest movement — driven by anger over corruption and Iran’s influence over Iraqi politics — and the government’s violent response had Mr. Mahdi under intense pressure to step down. 354 people have been killed in the unrest.

But even if Parliament accepts Mr. Mahdi’s resignation, the formation of a new government could be many months away, a realization that has tempered protesters’ jubilation.

Mr. Mahdi and his ministers would still serve in a caretaker government until a new prime minister is named by President Barham Salih. History shows that agreeing on a prime minister has been a long, arduous process of balancing competing political factions.

The only legislation a caretaker government can enact involves the budget and national security.

Mr. Mahdi’s resignation is a particular blow to Iran. Many of the parties that dominate Parliament are close to Iran, and Iranian officials helped set up the current government last year, brokering an agreement that brought in Mr. Mahdi and Mr. Salih.

Image

Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi of Iraq, left, during a visit to Beijing in September.Credit...How Hwee Young/EPA, via Shutterstock

But pressure had been building on the prime minister for some time, including the threat of a no-confidence vote in Parliament. On Friday, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the senior Shiite cleric in Iraq, urged Parliament to stop procrastinating or “the country will pay a high price, and everyone will regret it.”

This past week, security forces killed dozens of people in the southern city of Najaf after protesters burned the Iranian Consulate there.

In all, at least 354 people have been killed since the protests began in October, and more than 8,100 have been wounded, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said. Its most recent report notes, “The actual total is likely to be higher.”

Across Iraq’s turbulent south, skirmishes between the protesters and the police calmed somewhat on Saturday.

But in Nasiriya — where 21 people died on Friday and 25 on Thursday — tensions between the police and protesters mounted until tribal leaders and civil society groups recruited dozens of women to stand between the two groups. The situation eased, although it was unclear how long the women would have to stay to keep the peace.

In Najaf, the strains remained high, especially around the tomb of Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim.

Ayatollah al-Hakim was a respected senior cleric who was assassinated in 2003, but his family’s deep ties to Iran have made the tomb a target of protesters. The situation worsened when fighters drawn from a Shiite militia appeared to protect the tomb

Ex-Blackwater Guards Sentenced to Prison in 2007 Killings of Iraqi Civilians

Clockwise from top left: Dustin L. Heard, Nicholas A. Slatten, Evan S. Liberty and Paul A. Slough. Credit Jose Luis Magana/AP; Cliff Owen/AP; Cliff Owen/AP; Douglas C. Pizac/AP

NY TIMES


 One former Blackwater security contractor received a life sentence on Monday and three others received 30-year sentences for killing unarmed Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007.

The shooting left 17 people dead and was a gruesome nadir in the war in Iraq. It transformed Blackwater Worldwide from America’s wealthiest and most politically powerful security contractor into a symbol of unchecked and privatized military power.

Nicholas A. Slatten, a former Army sniper from Tennessee, was convicted of murder for firing the first fatal shots. Three others — Dustin L. Heard, also of Tennessee; Evan S. Liberty of New Hampshire; and Paul A. Slough of Texas — were convicted of manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and the use of a machine gun in a violent crime. The last charge carried a mandatory 30-year prison sentence under a law passed during the crack cocaine epidemic.

Mr. Slatten was sentenced to life in prison, and Mr. Heard, Mr. Liberty and Mr. Slough to 30 years. The men are all in their 30s.

Judge Royce C. Lamberth... said he supported the jury’s October verdict and applauded the Justice Department for uncovering the events and presenting to the world “the truth about what happened at Nisour Square.”

Nearly 100 supporters crowded the large courtroom, many of them wearing Blackwater shirts. Friends, relatives and former military friends spoke on behalf of the four men, describing them, through tears, as patriotic, small-town men who deeply loved their families and their country.

Judge Lamberth was also moved. He choked up as he described the defendants as “good young men who’ve never been in trouble, who served their country.” But he said the wild, unprovoked shooting could never be condoned.

The sentences were a long-fought diplomatic victory for the United States, which asked a skeptical Iraqi government and its people to be patient and trust the American criminal justice system. That faith was tested many times over the last eight years as the case suffered several setbacks, many of which were of the government’s own making.

In the end, the Justice Department said, the case showed the world that the United States judicial system worked, even in war zones, and even when the gunmen were Americans and the victims were Iraqis.

Photo by Michael Kamber for The New York Times.

The former Blackwater contractors said insurgents had ambushed them, and they described the civilians as the unfortunate unintended casualties of war. Prosecutors, however, described the killings as a massacre of innocent people.

“What happened on Sept. 16, 2007, was nothing short of an atrocity. There’s just no other way to describe it,” T.Patrick Martin, a federal prosecutor, said Monday before sentencing. He said that “the United States has shown that regardless of the nationality of the victims, it values justice for all.”

Mohammed Hafedh Abdulrazzaq Kinani, whose 9-year-old son, Ali, was killed, said that in Iraq, Blackwater had been regarded as so powerful that its employees could kill anyone and get away with it.

A fifth former guard, Jeremy P. Ridgeway of California, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and testified against his former colleagues. He has not been sentenced.

At the trial, Iraqi witnesses testified that the Blackwater contractors had fired unprovoked on unarmed civilians who had been going about their day in the crowded intersection. Former Blackwater employees who were in the convoy of armored trucks that day also testified against their colleagues.

6 Weeks of U.S. Strikes Fail to Dislodge ISIS in Iraq

A photo posted on a militant website last week shows fighters from the Islamic State group in front of a police station in Nineveh Province, Iraq. Credit via Associated Press        

N.Y. TIMES


After six weeks of American airstrikes, the Iraqi government’s forces have scarcely budged Sunni extremists of the Islamic State from their hold on more than a quarter of the country, in part because many critical Sunni tribes remain on the sidelines.

Although the airstrikes appear to have stopped the extremists’ march toward Baghdad, the Islamic State is still dealing humiliating blows to the Iraq government forces. On Monday, the government acknowledged that it had lost control of the small town of Sichar and lost contact with several hundred of its soldiers who had been besieged for nearly a week at a camp north of the Islamic State stronghold of Falluja, in Anbar Province.

 

The foundation of the Obama administration’s plan to defeat the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, is the installation of a new prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, who has pledged to build a more responsive government and rebuild Sunni support. But, though at least some Sunni Arabs are fighting alongside the army in places like Haditha, influential Sunni sheikhs who helped lead the Awakening say they remain unconvinced.

Sunni Iraqi men, who took up arms alongside security forces to defend the town of Dhuluiyah from the Islamic State militant group, held a position last week. Credit Ahmad Al-Rubaye/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images        

 

Sunni tribal leaders said they were already disappointed by Mr. Abadi, who has been hailed by President Obama as the face of a more inclusive government. They said that the military had not lived up to a pledge by the prime minister to discontinue shelling civilian areas in the battle against the Islamic State — an accusation that could not be confirmed. They also complained that the government had done nothing to reform abusive security forces, and that it continued to give a free hand to Iranian-backed Shiite militias whom Sunnis and human rights groups accuse of arbitrary killings.“Hundreds of poor people are in prison without being convicted, and today we have the militias as well killing our people, while the military is bombing our cities with barrel bombs and random missiles,” Sheikh Bajjari said. “If we ever put down our weapons, the militias would come over and kill us all.”

 

Islamic State, for its part, has kept up a public attitude of extreme confidence. Photographs and videos emerging from the cities it controls, including Falluja and Mosul, show its officials opening the school year with a puritanical Islamic curriculum, establishing Shariah courts, or even patrolling the streets in newly painted police cars labeled “the Islamic Police of the Islamic State of Iraq.

 

The army and some local Sunni tribal fighters captured the town of Barwana and much of Haditha, near a vital dam in the west. Shiite militias and American airstrikes helped the army take the towns of Amerli and Yusufia, as well as Adam, on an important road to the north. And American airstrikes helped Kurdish fighters recapture the critical Mosul dam just days after it fell to Islamic State, at the start of the campaign.

But even with the backing of Western air power, the broad battle lines have remained roughly static.

 

Obama’s strategy to fight Isis cedes too much control

THE GUARDIAN

By addressing the political and presentational aspects of the use of force in advance of military operations, President Obama has signalled a shift in American foreign policy culture, at least in the design of his strategy. In terms of delivery too he has indicated a greater emphasis on CIA-led counterterrorism operations compared with US military-led counterinsurgency operations. But almost every element is fraught with risk and, because he has subcontracted more to other nations than previous US presidents, he has less control over outcomes.

The timing of the speech, just two days after the announcement of a new Iraqi government, is no coincidence. It is evidence of intense behind-the-scenes diplomatic activity to ensure that the Maliki regime’s parochial Shia domination does not recreate the conditions that led to the crisis. There is, however, no indication that the new government will be able to unite a country whose identity faultlines are now fractured beyond repair. If that government fails then in a decade or so, the grievances that led to the rise of Islamic State (Isis) may breed another virulent rebellion.
The decision to involve regional, mostly Arab, countries in the conflict represents the most immature and risky part of the US strategy. Middle Eastern countries have spent billions on their defence capability but have shown a remarkable reluctance to deploy it beyond quelling mostly unarmed civilian rebellions. A history of petty squabbling and so little experience of political cooperation or joint military operations further reduces their potential impact. If the anti-Iranian attitude of the Saudis and other Gulf states is not checked before any troops from those countries arrive in Iraq then there is a danger of sparks flying if they come into contact with the Iranian military “advisers”, who appear to be advising very close to the frontline.
Increasing efforts to remove President Assad from power in Syria is probably the greatest strategic flaw. Identification and maintenance of a single clear aim is a maxim of strategic success. If defeating Isis is the main aim of this strategy then why complicate an already difficult task by simultaneously engineering regime change in Syria? It seems that US foreign policy has still to evolve through a realisation that the only thing worse than the tyranny of dictators is the anarchy that succeeds them, as illustrated by the removal of Saddam and Gaddafi.
In terms of delivery, too, the strategy has risks. Integration of air and land forces is a highly skilled task that even western forces struggle with. As the British discovered in Afghanistan, delivering air support to ground troops under fire in a timely and accurate fashion is not always possible, prompting one British army major to describe his air force as “utterly, utterly useless”. If the Iraqi, Iranian and Arab forces on the ground do not understand these difficulties then any delays or failures in US air support may be interpreted as a western ploy to permit losses to those forces.
President Obama’s primary objective of “degrading and destroying” Isis is to be achieved through counterterrorism operations where the CIA has a lead. This is the one element of strategy where the US has full control and a formidable track record of success. However, it is also one that is most full of pitfalls. It is no accident that Obama only mentioned Somalia and Yemen as examples where that strategy has been employed with success against al-Qaida instead of the Afghanistan and Pakistan tribal belt where its leadership and operational capability were mostly destroyed. A considerable number of civilian deaths occurred from the drone strikes there, resulting in a huge political backlash in the region with continuing insecurity and the emergence of a militant anti-western movement. Unless there is an improvement in intelligence and greater restraint in the use of drones, there is a danger that each successful attack on Isis could generate new recruits radicalised by the deaths of innocents.

Obama's War: Anything but Shock and Awe

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times        


DAILY BEAST, MICHAEL TOMASKY

So, another war in Iraq. On this superficial basis, some are saying that Barack Obama is somehow becoming George W. Bush, or that Bush is somehow vindicated. In a town where one frequently hears ridiculous things, I’ve rarely heard anything more ridiculous than this. What Obama laid out in his Oval Office address Wednesday is, within the context of war-waging, pretty much the polar opposite of what Bush did, the antithesis of shock and awe.

This is not necessarily to say it stands a better chance of success—the dice have to come up seven about 20 times in a row for Obama’s plan to work. But if somehow it does, it would offer a new model for how to engage in the world’s most volatile region and reduce its sectarian strife.

What Obama wants to do boils down to two goals.  The first concerns Iraq, where he wants to roll the Islamic State back through means both military and diplomatic. The military means include first and foremost U.S. airstrikes on ISIS positions, with the Iraqi security forces and the Kurdish Peshmerga doing the work on the ground. The diplomatic means involve, of course, getting new Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to assemble a truly representative government, one that gives Sunni leaders an actual share of power and makes regular Sunnis feel more invested in their nation-state’s government than in ISIS.

Of these two, the diplomatic part will probably be much harder, although we don’t really know how hard the military part will be. ISIS is rich and pays its soldiers very well, but the Peshmerga are tough fighters, as we just saw in Erbil, and the Iraqi army appears to be shaping up and at least not dropping their weapons and running as they did in Mosul. However, the Iraqi army is seen by many Sunnis as an arm of Shia Iran. And as for the diplomatic part, who knows? Al-Abadi has been prime minister for all of three days. We don’t yet know whether Tehran has him on the tight leash with which it controlled Nouri al-Maliki. There are lots of questions, lots of hurdles.

The second goal has to do with Syria, and it’s far more complex. It too involves both military and diplomatic elements, and both are much more complicated than in Iraq, which is saying something. Militarily, it’s clear that we are now throwing in with the Free Syrian Army, of which Obama has been needlessly and harmfully dismissive in the past. But the FSA is our only play. We can’t throw in with Bashar al-Assad, as some have suggested, and it seems clear that Obama is resolved not to do this.

So we will undertake airstrikes in Syria—themselves the subject of no small amount of controversy in Congress, although Obama clearly feels he has the constitutional authority to go after ISIS anywhere and everywhere because it constitutes a direct national security threat—aimed at ISIS strongholds. That part isn’t so hard. The hard part is the hope that once we’ve hit ISIS targets in eastern Syria, the FSA can go into those redoubts and gain some victories.

The United States is now going to put a lot more money into training and equipping the FSA than Obama has been willing to commit to in the past, and the administration is hoping that the FSA can take—and, crucially, hold—territory. If that happens, then the diplomatic part kicks in, because if the FSA actually takes territory from ISIS, then it, and the comparatively moderate Sunni opposition it represents, might have the leverage to get elements of the Assad regime to sit at a negotiating table. A post-Assad Syria is part of the larger plan here, if the FSA can take some ground and if the moderate Sunnis can be persuaded to accept a negotiated settlement and share power with members of Assad’s Alawite sect.

None of this is going to happen anytime soon. It’s a project that will outlast Obama’s presidency. And as if all the above weren’t fraught enough, its success really hinges on buy-in from Saudi Arabia and Turkey and Qatar and others.
This is the one aspect of all this that Obama didn’t explain in the speech to anywhere near the extent he might have, and he probably didn’t because, well, he doesn’t know. Those three countries are playing a lot of games and placing a lot of side bets here. If they can be persuaded to become true coalition partners here—if the Saudis really agree to put serious money behind the FSA, if the Turks do more to shut the Turkey-Syria border to ISIS—then this really might work.

It’s a big if, but even today, without knowing how all that will work out, we know that this coalition is at least an attempt to do something serious.

This is an attempt to operate within the parameters permitted by public opinion in our democracy, to get the major Sunni nations of the Arab world involved (for once!) in fighting extremism instead of winking at it or openly backing it, to stabilize the country that Bush wrecked, to direct (with any luck) a country led by a monster toward a new future, and to defeat a medieval terrorist organization, all without actually invading anyone.

There are a thousand ways it can go wrong. But what if it goes right? And how about—here’s a crazy thought—we all hope that it does? And not for Obama’s sake: This gambit will certainly—certainly—define his foreign policy legacy, but it’s not for that reason that we should hope it all works. It’s for the sake of Iraqis and Syrians, and ultimately, for us.

Obama didn’t communicate every aspect of this fight effectively in the speech, which was too short and too vague. But the goals are the right ones. It’s a strategy, and he didn’t wear a tan suit.

Obama Promises Sustained Effort to Rout ISIS Militants

Saul Loeb/Pool via The New York Times

Read it at Reuters:

In his address to the nation, President Obama outlined a multi-phase plan for combating ISIS, saying the United States would lead a “broad coalition to roll back this terrorist threat.” He said he was authorizing U.S. air strikes in Syria for the first time, and that the U.S. effort in Iraq would expand. The president repeatedly stressed the move would not be like the long ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said. While the U.S. will send 475 service members to Iraq, they will “not have a combat mission,” but rather, provide intelligence, training, and equipment. “We will not be dragged into another ground war,” said Obama. “We cannot do for Iraqis what they must do for themselves.” Already, France has agreed to support airstrikes and Saudi Arabia has agreed to provide a base for training.

The president compared the proposed campaign against ISIS to the counterterrorism strategies used in Yemen and Somalia, saying the U.S. will rely on “our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground.” He said that thus far the U.S. has “conducted more than 150 airstrikes in Iraq.” The U.S. will continue to work with the newly formed Iraqi government, so that “we’re hitting [ISIS] targets as Iraqi forces go on offense.”

Obama noted how broad a threat ISIS posed with its international recruitment. “Our intelligence community believes that thousands of foreigners—including Europeans and some Americans—have joined them in Iraq and Syria,” he said. While the president focused on a strategy for combating ISIS in Iraq, he made it clear that the U.S. “will not hesitate” to go into Syria if need be. “If you threaten America, you will find no safe haven,” he said. A year ago, the president declined to use air strikes against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad; his decision to take such action against ISIS amounts to a change in strategy spurred by the extremist group's growing threat.

Although Obama said he has the “authority to address the threat” posed by ISIS, he said he “welcomes congressional support to show the world that Americans are united in confronting this danger.” Obama has asked Congress to allocate $5 billion for counterrorism funding, which has yet to be approved.

N.Y. TIMES
He warned that “eradicating a cancer” like ISIS was a long-term challenge that would put some American troops at risk.

Unlike Mr. Bush in the Iraq war, Mr. Obama has sought to surround the United States with partners. Earlier on Wednesday, he called King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to enlist his support for the plan to step up training of the Syrian rebels.

Mr. Obama is acting as polls show rapidly shifting public opinion, with a large majority of Americans now favoring military action against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, even as they express deep misgivings about the president’s leadership,

Mr. Obama is also facing difficult crosscurrents on Capitol Hill, where Republican lawmakers, initially reluctant to demand congressional authorization of military action, have begun agitating for a vote, even as some Democrats warn of a stampede to war.

On Wednesday, Senate Democratic leaders prepared legislation on the narrow issue of authorizing the American military to train the Syrian rebels. House Republicans appeared ready to follow their lead.

The surge of activity means Congress is likely to weigh in on the military action before the midterm elections in eight weeks.

While Mr. Obama said that Mr. Assad had lost his legitimacy to govern Syria, he did not call again for his ouster. Instead, he spoke of strengthening the moderate rebels to give them a seat at the table in a political settlement with the Assad government.

Administration officials indicated that airstrikes in Syria could still be weeks away, while American surveillance planes continue to gather intelligence on the location of ISIS targets.

They also tried to manage expectations about whether the United States could truly destroy ISIS.

“What we can do is systematically roll back the organization, shrink the territory where they’re operating, decimate its ranks, cut off its sources of support in terms of funding and equipment, and have the threat methodically and relentlessly reduced,” a senior official said in a briefing for reporters, speaking on the condition of anonymity under White House ground rules.

  

 

Obama Enlists 9 Allies to Help in the Battle Against ISIS

             Video Credit By Christian Roman and Carrie Halperin on Publish Date September 5, 2014. Image CreditPool photo by Wpa                           



President Obama escalated the U.S. response to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, recruiting at least nine allies to help crush the organization and offering the outlines of a strategy that echoes the war on terror.

Secretary of State John Kerry said there's a need to "bolster the Iraqi security forces and others in the region who are prepared to take them on, without committing troops of our own," he said. "Obviously I think that's a red line for everybody here: no boots on the ground."

In his most expansive comments to date about how the United States and its friends could defeat ISIS, a once-obscure group of Sunni militants that has now upended the Middle East and overshadowed Al Qaeda, Mr. Obama said the effort would rely on American airstrikes against its leaders and positions, strengthen the moderate Syrian rebel groups to reclaim ground lost to ISIS, and enlist friendly governments in the region to join the fight.

While the president’s aides maintained that he has not yet decided to authorize airstrikes in Syria — which he has already done on a limited basis in Iraq — Mr. Obama likened his developing strategy on ISIS to the American effort against Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal regions, which has relied heavily on airstrikes.

   

ALL'S NOT QUIET IN THE MID-EAST: U.S. MIL ACTION AGAINST ISIS EXPECTED / CEASE FIRE IN ISRAEL- HAMAS CONFLICT.

As the United States begins mobilizing for possible military action in Syria, rebels on Tuesday were in a war-torn area of Aleppo. Credit Zein Al-Rifai/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images        

The United States has begun to mobilize a broad coalition of allies behind potential American military action in Syria and is moving toward expanded airstrikes in northern Iraq, administration officials said on Tuesday.

President Obama, the officials said, was broadening his campaign against the Sunni militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and nearing a decision to authorize airstrikes and airdrops of food and water around the northern Iraqi town of Amerli, home to members of Iraq’s Turkmen  minority. The town of 12,000 has been under siege for more than two months by the militants.

 

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Islamic State fighters parade in the group’s stronghold of Raqqa in north-eastern Syria. Photograph: Uncredited/AP

The US has [also] begun reconnaissance flights over Syria in preparation for a possible cross-border expansion of its aerial campaign against Islamic State militants in Iraq.
The flights, involving both manned aircraft and drones, began on Tuesday, an official confirmed to AP, after they were approved by the US president, Barack Obama, over the weekend.

Obama has been reluctant to take military action in Syria, but the flights are being seen as laying the groundwork for extending US air strikes against Islamic State militants (Isis) into the group's stronghold of Raqqa in north-eastern Syria, where it has been leading the fight against the regime of Bashar al-Assad in a civil war that has killed almost 200,000 people.

On Tuesday, Obama vowed to pursue the killers of American journalist James Foley.
 "Rooting out a cancer like ISIL won't be easy and it won't be quick," he said.
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Steven Senne/Associated Press        

As Mr. Obama considered new strikes, the White House began its diplomatic campaign to enlist allies and neighbors in the region to increase their support for Syria’s moderate opposition and, in some cases, to provide support for possible American military operations. The countries likely to be enlisted include Australia, Britain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, officials said.

Enlisting the Sunni neighbors of Syria is crucial, experts said, because airstrikes alone will not be enough to push back ISIS. The administration, Mr. Ford said, needs to pursue a sequential strategy that begins with gathering intelligence, followed by targeted airstrikes, more robust and better coordinated support for the moderate rebels, and finally, a political reconciliation process similar to that underway in Iraq.

 

Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat, recently wrote an opinion article declaring that the president needed congressional authorization for military action in Iraq. Credit Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images        

 The White House is also debating how to satisfy a second constituency, Congress. Mr. Obama’s advisers are considering whether to seek congressional authorization for expanded military action and if so, under what legal rationale. Lawmakers had been reluctant to vote on airstrikes in Iraq, but several have begun arguing that the broader action being contemplated by Mr. Obama would demand a vote in Congress.

 

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A San Diego native fighting for ISIS in Syria was killed over the weekend, according to the Free Syrian Army. NBC News reported Tuesday that a passport and tattoo positively identified the body as that of Douglas McArthur McCain, 33. Calling himself “Duale ThaslaveofAllah” on Facebook and Twitter, he declared “It’s Islam over everything.” In 2004, McCain “reverted” to Islam, according to his Twitter. “I’m with the brothers now,” he tweeted on June 9.

McCain was once an aspiring rapper in a blue-collar Minnesota neighborhood. His high school classmates described him as a "goofball" and "always smiling." He had multiple run-ins with police and was convicted of obstruction and disorderly conduct. McCain started school at San Diego City College and worked at a Somali restuarant in the city. “He was a normal guy, who was social, open-minded, like to smile always, and always wanted to be a good Muslim," said a person who knew him from the restaurant.
McArthur actively tweeted, and his messages ranged from homophobic hate to just plane stupid.  In December 2012, he tweeted "Wallahi I wants fried chicken." However, his account went silent in January 2013 until spring of this year. McCain appears to have gone to Turkey, which is a popular jihadi route to Syria. McAuthur is among hundreds of Westerns believed to have joined ISIS's war in Syria and Iraq, like Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, the British man suspected of beheading of James Foley.

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A Hamas militant fired into the air in Gaza City on Tuesday to celebrate a cease-fire that will open border crossings for aid and reconstruction supplies. Credit Roberto Schmidt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images        

After 50 days of fighting that took some 2,200 lives, leveled large areas of the Gaza Strip and paralyzed Israel’s south for the summer, Israeli and Palestinian leaders reached an open-ended cease-fire agreement on Tuesday that promised only limited change to conditions in Gaza and left unresolved the broader issues underpinning the conflict.

Hamas, the militant Islamist faction that dominates Gaza, declared victory even though it had abandoned most of its demands, ultimately accepting an Egyptian-brokered deal that differs little from one proffered on the battle’s seventh day. In effect, the deal put both sides back where they were at the end of eight days of fighting in 2012, with terms that called for easing but not lifting Israeli restrictions on travel, trade and fishing in Gaza.

 

In Israel, continual barrages of rocket fire and fears about starting school on Monday without a cease-fire had increased pressure on the government from citizens exhausted by what had become a war of attrition. Yuval Steinitz, a senior Israeli minister, said in a television interview Tuesday night that he accepted the cease-fire “with a sour taste of missed opportunity.”

 

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations welcomed the cease-fire but said in a statement, “The blockade of Gaza must end; Israel’s legitimate security concerns must be addressed.” He warned, “Any peace effort that does not tackle the root causes of the crisis will do little more than set the stage for the next cycle of violence.”

 

In Israel, support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s performance dropped by more than half this weekend from a high of more than eight in 10 Israeli Jews in the battle’s early days, according to polls conducted for Channel 2 News. Israel’s central bank cut interest rates on Monday to their lowest level ever to counter economic fallout, and Mr. Netanyahu has lashed out in recent days against senior ministers critical of the campaign, which commentators and politicians have increasingly argued was ill conceived.

 

Israel achieved its original stated goal, to restore quiet, but Hamas’s repeated penetration of Israeli territory through tunnels, the deaths of the most Israeli soldiers since the 2006 Lebanon war, and the killing on Friday of 4-year-old Daniel Tregerman in a kibbutz near Gaza have scarred the country’s psyche.

 

Israeli analysts said that since 1973, no prime minister has emerged from a war unscathed. Yehuda Ben Meir, an expert on public opinion at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, cautioned that it was too early to assess the outcome of the campaign.

 

 

U.S. General Says Raiding Syria Is Key to Halting ISIS

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel

Publish Date August 21, 2014. Image CreditYuri Gripas/Reuters

While fielding questions at a Pentagon briefing on Thursday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel declared that ISIS is as “sophisticated and well-funded as any group that we have seen." Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey said it will take more than airstrikes to beat ISIS. When asked about hitting the group in Syria, Dempsey responded, “To your question, can they be defeated without addressing that part of their organization which resides in Syria? The answer is no. That will have to be addressed on both sides of what is essentially at this point a nonexistent border.”

Kurdish soldiers stood guard at the Mosul Dam after recapturing it from Sunni militants. Credit Youssef Boudlal/Reuters        

   

N.Y. TIMES

But General Dempsey and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who both spoke at a Pentagon news conference, gave no indication that President Obama was about to approve airstrikes in Syria.

General Dempsey also was circumspect in describing the sort of broad effort that would be required to roll back ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

 

In the current battle with ISIS inside Iraq, Mr. Obama’s military strategy has been aimed at containing the militant organization rather than defeating it, according to Defense Department officials and military experts. Pressed on whether the United States would conduct airstrikes on ISIS targets in Syria, Mr. Hagel said that “we’re looking at all options.”

Any use of air power involves risk, including the possibility that innocent civilians may be hurt or killed, or that a piloted aircraft might be shot down. Airstrikes in Syria would also draw the White House more deeply into a conflict from which it has sought to maintain some distance. But there is also risk in not acting, because it is very difficult to defeat a militant group that is allowed to maintain a sanctuary.

 

Estimates of the number of fighters that might be affiliated with ISIS vary from more than 10,000 to as many as 17,000.

The situation also is complicated by Iran’s presence in Syria. Iran has been sending arms and Quds Force personnel to support the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Iran also arranged for Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group it supports, to join the fighting in Syria on the side of the Assad government.

Much of eastern Syria is now under the control of ISIS, which announced that it has established a caliphate that extends from its base in Syria into northern and western Iraq. Mr. Obama has said he will not accept the establishment of an ISIS state but had not publicly articulated a detailed strategy to stop the group.

 

Jonathan Ernst for The New York Times        

When the United States began airstrikes in Iraq this month, senior Obama administration officials went out of their way to underscore the limited nature of the action.

“This was not an authorization of a broad-based counterterrorism campaign,” a senior Obama administration official told reporters at the time.

But the beheading of an American journalist and the possibility that more American citizens being held by the group might be slain has prompted outrage at the highest levels of the United States government.

 

As proved during the initial American military mission to rout Al Qaeda and the Taliban from Afghanistan after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, American airstrikes would be more effective if small teams of Special Operations forces were deployed to identify ISIS targets and call in attacks.

Deploying such teams is believed to be one option the Pentagon is considering. Another step that some experts say will be needed to challenge the militant groups is a stepped-up program to train, advise and equip the moderate opposition in Syria as well as Kurdish and government forces in Iraq.

But both Pentagon leaders reflected the prevailing view within the Obama administration — that the United States should not move aggressively to counter ISIS without participation from allies in the region.

A mortar strike by Islamic State in Mosul, northern Iraq, this July. Photograph: Maria de la Guardia/Barcroft Media

THE GUARDIAN

Isis continues to entrench itself within Sunni areas of Iraq, making it difficult to dislodge them through the bombing options that the administration has embraced. Kurdish and Iraqi security forces, as well as cleavages between Iraqi Sunnis and Isis, remain the administration’s hope to roll back the group that has redrawn the map of the Middle East.

Meanwhile, Isis has reportedly seized a dozen new villages north of Aleppo in Syria, providing it with greater strategic depth.

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Since August 4, Saudi Arabia has beheaded at least 19 people reports Human Rights Watch. According to local news reports, eight of those executed were convicted of nonviolent offenses. Seven were killed for drug smuggling, one for sorcery. “Any execution is appalling, but executions for crimes such as drug smuggling or sorcery that result in no loss of life are particularly egregious,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director for the organization.---Human Rights Watch (via Daily Beast)
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In Retaking of Iraqi Dam, Evidence of American Impact



JOY AT IRAQI DAM A Kurdish fighter with a black ISIS flag kissed the Kurdish flag at the recaptured Mosul Dam. Credit Lynsey Addario for The New York Times        

N.Y. TIMES

MOSUL DAM, Iraq — The two bodies lay festering in the midday sun on Tuesday, some of the only remnants of the Sunni militant force that until Monday night controlled the strategically important Mosul Dam.

Around them was the evidence of not just a fierce battle but also a different sort of fight: buildings reduced to rubble; cars churned into twisted metal; mammoth craters gouged from the road.

All bore testament to the deadly effect American airstrikes were having on the militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, who until this month were marauding over northern Iraq with little resistance and who two weeks ago seized control of the dam.

 

It was not until President Obama authorized airstrikes by the United States military on Aug. 7 that the Sunni fighters’ advance was halted. Two days of concerted air assaults starting Sunday around the dam then paved the way for Iraqi and Kurdish forces to reclaim the site. The dam itself, backed by a turquoise lake and surrounded by dun-colored mountains, was in fine condition, with little evidence of damage either from the fighting or from two weeks in militant hands.

 

The body of a dead ISIS fighter found within the Mosel Dam complex the morning after pesh merga and Iraqi Special forces retook the dam.        Credit Lynsey Addario for The New York Times        

 

The pesh merga have received the majority of the credit for retaking the dam. But the Iraqi Special Forces troops who worked alongside them, who were created in the image of their American counterparts, have gotten far less attention. Known as the Golden Force, fighters interviewed Tuesday said they came from Baghdad and were called into the fight several days ago.

 

 

Rise of a Rebel. Baghdadi of ISIS Pushes an Islamist Crusade

A look at Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a militant group that now rivals Al Qaeda in power and popularity.

Video Credit By Mona El-Naggar and Sofia Perpetua on Publish Date August 11, 2014. Image Credit-/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images                           

N.Y. TIMES

When American forces raided a home near Falluja during the turbulent 2004 offensive against the Iraqi Sunni insurgency, they got the hard-core militants they had been looking for. They also picked up an apparent hanger-on, an Iraqi man in his early 30s whom they knew nothing about.

The Americans duly registered his name as they processed him and the others at the Camp Bucca detention center: Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badry.

That once-peripheral figure has become known to the world now as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-appointed caliph of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and the architect of its violent campaign to redraw the map of the Middle East.

“He was a street thug when we picked him up in 2004,” said a Pentagon official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. “It’s hard to imagine we could have had a crystal ball then that would tell us he’d become head of ISIS.”

 

Mr. Baghdadi has seemed to revel in the fight, promising that ISIS would soon be in “direct confrontation” with the United States.

Still, when he first latched on to Al Qaeda, in the early years of the American occupation [of Iraq], it was not as a fighter, but rather as a religious figure. He has since declared himself caliph of the Islamic world, and pressed a violent campaign to root out religious minorities, like Shiites and Yazidis, that has brought condemnation even from Qaeda leaders.

Despite his reach for global stature, Mr. Baghdadi, in his early 40s, in many ways has remained more mysterious than any of the major jihadi figures who preceded him.

 

American and Iraqi officials have teams of intelligence analysts and operatives dedicated to stalking him, but have had little success in piecing together the arc of his life. And his recent appearance at a mosque in Mosul to deliver a sermon, a video of which was distributed online, was the first time many of his followers had ever seen him.

Mr. Baghdadi is said to have a doctorate in Islamic studies from a university in Baghdad, and was a mosque preacher in his hometown, Samarra. He also has an attractive pedigree, claiming to trace his ancestry to the Quraysh Tribe of the Prophet Muhammad.

 

Beyond that, almost every biographical point about Mr. Baghdadi is occluded by some confusion or another.

The Pentagon says that Mr. Baghdadi, after being arrested in Falluja in early 2004, was released that December with a large group of other prisoners deemed low level. But Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi scholar who has researched Mr. Baghdadi’s life, sometimes on behalf of Iraqi intelligence, said that Mr. Baghdadi had spent five years in an American detention facility where, like many ISIS fighters now on the battlefield, he became more radicalized.

 

Mr. Hashimi said that Mr. Baghdadi had grown up in a poor family in a farming village near Samarra, and that his family was Sufi — a strain of Islam known for its tolerance. He said Mr. Baghdadi had come to Baghdad in the early 1990s, and over time became more radical.

 

Early in the insurgency, he gravitated toward a new jihadi group led by the flamboyant Jordanian militant operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Though Mr. Zarqawi’s group, Al Qaeda in Iraq, began as a mostly Iraqi insurgent organization, it claimed allegiance to the global Qaeda leadership, and over the years brought in more and more foreign leadership figures.

 

 

It is unclear how much prominence Mr. Baghdadi enjoyed under Mr. Zarqawi. Bruce Riedel, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer now at the Brookings Institution, recently wrote that Mr. Baghdadi had spent several years in Afghanistan, working alongside Mr. Zarqawi. But some officials say the American intelligence community does not believe Mr. Baghdadi has ever set foot outside the conflict zones of Iraq and Syria, and that he was never particularly close to Mr. Zarqawi.

 

The American operation that killed Mr. Zarqawi in 2006 was a huge blow to the organization’s leadership. But it was years later that Mr. Baghdadi got his chance to take the reins.

As the Americans were winding down their war in Iraq, they focused on trying to wipe out Al Qaeda in Iraq’s remaining leadership. In April 2010, a joint operation by Iraqi and American forces made the biggest strike against the group in years, killing its top two figures near Tikrit.

A month later, the group issued a statement announcing new leadership, and Mr. Baghdadi was at the top of the list. The Western intelligence community scrambled for information.

 

In June 2010, Stratfor published a report on the group that considered its prospects in the wake of the killings of the top leadership. The report stated, “the militant organization’s future for success looks bleak.”

Still, the report said, referring to the Islamic State of Iraq, then an alternative name for Al Qaeda in Iraq, “I.S.I.’s intent to establish an Islamic caliphate in Iraq has not diminished.”

 

The Sunni tribes of eastern Syria and Iraq’s Anbar and Nineveh Provinces have long had ties that run deeper than national boundaries, and ISIS was built on those relationships. Accordingly, as the group’s fortunes waned in Iraq, it found a new opportunity in the fight against Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria.

As more moderate Syrian rebel groups were beaten down by the Syrian security forces and their allies, ISIS increasingly took control of the fight, in part on the strength of weapons and funding from its operations in Iraq and from jihadist supporters in the Arab world.

 

That fact has led American lawmakers and political figures, including former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, to accuse President Obama of aiding ISIS’ rise in two ways: first by completely withdrawing American troops from Iraq in 2011, then by hesitating to arm more moderate Syrian opposition groups early in that conflict.

 

But ...Mr. Baghdadi ...is Iraqi to the core, and his extremist ideology was sharpened and refined in the crucible of the American occupation.

The American invasion presented Mr. Baghdadi and his allies with a ready-made enemy and recruiting draw. And the American ouster of Saddam Hussein, whose brutal dictatorship had kept a lid on extremist Islamist movements, gave Mr. Baghdadi the freedom for his radical views to flourish.

In contrast to Mr. Zarqawi, who increasingly looked outside Iraq for leadership help, Mr. Baghdadi has surrounded himself by a tight clique of former Baath Party military and intelligence officers from the Hussein regime who know how to fight.

 

Analysts and Iraqi intelligence officers believe that after Mr. Baghdadi took over the organization he appointed a Hussein-era officer, a man known as Hajji Bakr, as his military commander, overseeing operations and a military council that included three other officers of the former regime’s security forces.

Hajji Bakr was believed to have been killed last year in Syria. Analysts believe that he and at least two of the three other men on the military council were held at various times by the Americans at Camp Bucca.

 

Mr. Baghdadi has been criticized by some in the wider jihadi community for his reliance on former Baathists. But for many others, Mr. Baghdadi’s successes have trumped these critiques.

 

“He has credibility because he runs half of Iraq and half of Syria,” said Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism researcher at the New American Foundation.

Syria may have been a temporary refuge and proving ground, but Iraq has always been his stronghold and his most important source of financing. Now, it has become the main venue for Mr. Baghdadi’s state-building exercise, as well.

 

Although the group’s capture of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, appeared to catch the American intelligence community and the Iraqi government by surprise, Mr. Baghdadi’s mafia-like operations in the city had long been crucial to his strategy of establishing the Islamic caliphate.

His group earned an estimated $12 million a month, according to American officials, from extortion schemes in Mosul, which it used to finance operations in Syria. Before June, ISIS controlled neighborhoods of the city by night, collecting money and slipping in to the countryside by day.

[But] by now, the group is almost entirely self-financing, through its seizing oil fields, extortion and tax collection in the territories it controls. As it gains territory in Iraq, it has found new ways to generate revenue. For instance, recently in Hawija, a village near Kirkuk, the group demanded that all former soldiers or police officers pay an $850 “repentance fine.”

Though he has captured territory through brutal means, Mr. Baghdadi has also taken practical steps at state-building, and even shown a lighter side. In Mosul, ISIS has held a “fun day” for kids, distributed gifts and food during Eid al-Fitr, held Quran recitation competitions, started bus services and opened schools.

 

Mr. Baghdadi appears to be drawing on a famous jihadi text that has long inspired Al Qaeda: “The Management of Savagery,” written by a Saudi named Abu Bakr Naji.

Mr. Fishman called the text, “Che Guevara warmed over for jihadis.” William McCants, an analyst at the Brookings Institution who in 2005, as a fellow at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, translated the book in to English, once described it as “the seven highly effective habits of jihadi leaders.”

 

American officials say Mr. Baghdadi runs a more efficient organization than Mr. Zarqawi did, and has unchallenged control over the organization, with authority delegated to his lieutenants. “He doesn’t have to sign off on every detail,” said one senior United States counterterrorism official. “He gives them more discretion and flexibility.”

 

A senior Pentagon official said of Mr. Baghdadi, with grudging admiration: “He’s done a good job of rallying and organizing a beaten-down organization. But he may now be overreaching.”

But even before the civil war in Syria presented him with a growth opportunity, Mr. Baghdadi had been taking steps in Iraq — something akin to a corporate restructuring — that laid the foundation for the group’s resurgence, just as the Americans were leaving. He picked off rivals through assassinations, orchestrated prison breaks to replenish his ranks of fighters and diversified his sources of funding through extortion, to wean the group off outside funding from Al Qaeda’s central authorities.

“He was preparing to split from Al Qaeda,” Mr. Hashimi said.

Now Mr. Baghdadi commands not just a terrorist organization, but, according to Brett McGurk, the top State Department official on Iraq policy, “a full blown army.”

Speaking at a recent congressional hearing, Mr. McGurk said, “it is worse than Al Qaeda.”