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Reuters
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A key Iraqi border crossing was taken Saturday by Sunni militants, another blow against the crumbling authority of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government. ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) fighters captured the crossing of Qaim on the border with Syria, which will not only facilitate deployments of equipment across the border but also advance their goal of erasing the border entirely in order to establish a single Islamic state.
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| Muntadar Naji Khalife held the Iraqi flag as Shiite men lined up in Najaf to register to fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Credit Lynsey Addario for The New York Times |
N.Y. Times
The militants seem intent on methodically consolidating their hold on the large Sunni provinces to the west and north as the Iraqi Army’s attention is focused on securing Baghdad.
The militants already have considerable strength in Anbar Province, but it has been primarily in remote villages and towns, with the exception of Falluja, which they have also seized. Now, with the taking of the border post of Al Qaim after a three-day fight, and the nearby towns of Ana and Rawaa, they will be able to move on the road that leads to Haditha, where there is a major dam.
[If the dam and adjoining power station were destroyed, it could cripple the country's power grid and cause widespread flooding.Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2664954/Four-key-Iraqi-towns-fall-ISIS-militants-backed-Sunni-Muslim-fighters-country-teeters-brink-sectarian-conflict.html#ixzz35RJxSmKs ]
N.Y.Times
Behind the image of savagery that the extremists of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria present to the world, as casual executioners who kill helpless prisoners and behead even rival jihadis, lies a disciplined organization that employs social media and sophisticated financial strategies in the funding and governance of the areas it has conquered.
The insurgents seized as much as $400 million from the central bank in Mosul, said Atheel Nujaifi, the governor of Nineveh Province, and reportedly emptied the vaults in all the other banks in a city of more than one million residents.
In a bloody seesaw battle for control of Iraq’s biggest oil refinery at Baiji, halfway between Baghdad and Mosul, the insurgents worked with the families of employees there to broker a cease-fire — so the workers could be safely evacuated.
It was no humanitarian gesture. “They want them to run the refinery when the fighting is over.
Its extortion rackets in Mosul netted as much as $8 million a month, according to Gen. Mahdi Gharawi, until recently the Nineveh Province police commander, in an interview with Niqash, an Arabic-language news website. And that was even [before] the ISIS insurgents took over. Once in charge, they typically levy “taxes,” which are just as lucrative. So-called road taxes of $200 on trucks are collected all over northern Iraq to allow them safe passage. The Iraqi government claims that the insurgents are now levying a “tax” on Christians in Mosul, who were a significant minority there, to avoid being crucified.
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| An Iraqi young boy holds a gun from the window of a vehicle carrying volunteers joining Iraqi security forces in the fight against Jihadist militants ... Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced the Iraqi government would arm and equip civilians who volunteer to fight, and thousands have signed up. AFP PHOTO/AHMAD AL-RUBAYE (Photo credit sh | AHMAD AL-RUBAYE via Getty Images |
While the Iraqi capital is not under any immediate threat of falling to the Sunni militants who have captured a wide swath of the country's north and west, battlefield setbacks and the conflict's growing sectarian slant is turning this city of 7 million into an anxiety-filled place waiting for disaster to happen.
Traffic is nowhere near its normal congestion. Many stores are shuttered and those that are open are doing little business in a city where streets empty hours before a 10 p.m. curfew kicks in. Arriving international and domestic flights are half empty, while outgoing flights to the relatively safe Kurdish cities of Irbil and Suleimaniya are booked solid through late July as those who can flee.
The number of army and police checkpoints has grown, snarling traffic. Pickup trucks loaded with Shiite militiamen roam the city, including in Sunni and mixed areas, chanting religious slogans....
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Across the plaza, a giant screen displayed the text of June 13 edict by Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite cleric, calling on Iraqis to join the security forces to fight the Islamic State fighters, and reminding them that the insurgents have threatened to march on Shiite shrines in Baghdad, Samarra, Najaf and Karbala.
Just outside the mosque gates, Shiite clerics addressed dozens of Shiite militiamen in ski masks and combat fatigues. Though unarmed, their presence near one of Iraq's most revered Shiite shrines added to the sense of impending war — and was a reminder of the quick erosion of government authority following the security forces' humiliating defeat in the north, where Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, fell after troops abandoned their positions and weapons.
Since then, tens of thousands of Shiite militiamen of the so-called "Peace Brigades" have staged parades in Baghdad and the predominantly Shiite south,...in Baghdad's sprawling Shiite Sadr City district, home to some 2 million Shiites,...The Peace Brigades is the latest name for the Mahdi Army, a brutal militia loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, which took the lead in targeting Sunnis during the sectarian bloodletting nearly a decade ago.
The latest evidence [indicates] the Sunni-Shiite conflict carries the potential for a civil war that could herald the division of Iraq. It is a scenario that spells the most trouble for Baghdad. Baghdad's Sunnis already are terrified.
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| Militants from Sunni rebel group ISIS (pictured) seized four more towns in Iraq yesterday while Shiite soldiers marched through Baghdad as the country heads towards sectarian warfare Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2664954/Four-key-Iraqi-towns-fall-ISIS-militants-backed-Sunni-Muslim-fighters-country-teeters-brink-sectarian-conflict.html#ixzz35RIHWH7o |
As Iraqi Army forces try to rally on the outskirts of Baghdad after two weeks of retreat, it has become increasingly clear to Western officials that the army will continue to suffer losses in its fight with Sunni militants and will not soon retake the ground it has ceded.
Recent assessments by Western officials and military experts indicate that about a quarter of Iraq’s military forces are “combat ineffective,” its air force is minuscule, morale among troops is low and its leadership suffers from widespread corruption.
As other nations consider whether to support military action in Iraq, their decision will hinge on the quality of Iraqi forces, which have proved far more ragged than expected given years of American training.
The picture that emerges is of an Iraq where the lines on the map mean little. The north and west have become a haven for Sunni extremists who have largely succeeded in erasing the border between their territory in Syria and Iraq.
A measure of the military’s desperation is that its chief assistance now comes from hundreds of thousands of volunteers and a smaller number of highly trained militia members. For army units — and there are a number of them — that are fighting hard, often under difficult circumstances, adding volunteers who have little or no experience has been of questionable benefit. Hundreds of volunteers have been killed or wounded in ambushes on their way to the battlefield, for example. That is not true of the trained militias, which have far fewer fighters but are experienced and highly trained, mostly by the Iranians, and who augment the regular army’s morale, said commanders.
Western officials describe ISIS as a far tougher enemy than the one the American military faced when it was battling Al Qaeda in Iraq from 2004 through 2009. Assessments of the militants’ capabilities vary, but there is a consensus that despite their small numbers they are well equipped, trained and financed. They also appear dedicated to their cause of vanquishing the forces of the modern world and returning the territory they take to an earlier form of Islam.
With an estimated 10,000 fighters, ISIS has been able to seize stores of military equipment and plan small offensive missions that, when coupled with a propaganda campaign, have proved highly effective. So far the fighters seem impervious to combat losses, quickly replenishing their ranks with fighters from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Chechnya and Europe, who appear to be drawn by the successes in Iraq. They have also found recruits by freeing prisoners in brazen prison breaks.