Iraq: Out of the desert into Mosul (closed)

[OUTLAW 09]

My latest article "Iraq’s Southern Front Babil Province Where The Islamic State Has Free Reign". IS was never driven out of northern Babil even during the Surge. It now has been building up its network there for over a year. In response Baghdad has launched 6 security operations there so far this year. After each one the government claims success and then starts another one. In fact IS has been able to destroy a huge amount of ISF equipment and is using northwest Babil as a base to infiltrate into southern Baghdad as well as launch car bombs into southern Iraq. Despite official claims IS is as entrenched in northern Babil today as ever showing the failures of the security forces.

JWing---the villages around Abu Ghraib were never fully cleared by the Army thus I am willing to bet their old rat runs are the same today.

It was those villages along the main highway from the back side of Victory that ran through Abu G up to Fulluja that in 2004 had a major Army convoy ambushed that led to the longest MIA until his body was recovered I believe in late 2009.

There was a planned insurgent attack against the Abu Ghraib prison in mid 2006 to free prisoners that consisted of the 1920/ASA/IAI and AQI that totaled over three hundred fighters that was side tracked by early attacks by the 10th Mountain. The threat was serious enough to bring in additional manpower ie the 11ACR inside the prison to beef up the MP security units.

This was a repeat of the attack in April 2005 by the same insurgent groups that had over 150 fighters in the attack that came actually close to succeeding.

[OUTLAW 09]

JWing---looks like you were right --the fighting has moved south of Baghdad now.

BAGHDAD: Iraqi officials say 50 bodies have been discovered outside a city south of Baghdad, many of them blindfolded and with their hands bound.
Military spokesman Brig. Gen. Saad Maan Ibrahim says the bodies were discovered Wednesday in an agricultural area outside the city of Hillah.
Hillah is a predominantly Shiite city about 95 kilometers (60 miles) south of Baghdad.
Ibrahim says an investigation is underway to determine the identities of the dead as well as the circumstances of the killings.
The discovery of bullet-riddled bodies was common during the worst days of Iraq’s sectarian bloodletting in 2006 and 2007.

[TheCurmudgeon]

An interesting view from inside the Muslim world:

If there is one positive that has come out of the announcement of a caliphate by the Islamic State (the group formerly known as the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant or ISIL), it is the debate it has triggered in Arabic media. “ISIL’s actions are but an epitome of what we’ve studied in our school curriculum,” tweeted Saudi commentator Ibrahim Al Shaalan. “If the curriculum is sound, then ISIL is right, and if it is wrong, then who bears responsibility?”

It is significant that such remarks come as part of a collective soul-searching from intellectuals, religious scholars and ordinary people from within the region.

Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi columnist, published a piece in Al Hayat on Saturday under the title “What went wrong for us to reach this situation?” He referred to a sentence attributed to the vicious Mongolian conqueror Hulagu Khan when addressing Muslims in Baghdad: “I am your sins befalling you.” Khashoggi wrote: “Perhaps it is time to ponder that sentence and work to rectify the mistakes of our ancestors as we live a similar situation, seeing angry young men with a backward thinking and understanding of life and religion eradicating the heritage of centuries.

“As for those who look for a foreign conspiracy, they are escaping the truth, which is that there is something wrong with us. What is it? No one wants to admit that something wrong has happened, and the only things that are moving dynamically forward are the flood [of extremism] and history.”

A second dissection has come from Dr Mohammed Habash, a religious scholar and a former member of the Syrian parliament, in an article titled “Where did ISIL really come from?” Dr Habash argues that extremism is born out of a dangerous mix: the systematic repression carried out by tyrannical regimes along with a “desperate religious discourse” that preaches a “just world” that can only materialise through the caliphate.

Placing blame on preachers, not excluding himself, he wrote: “We did not speak about the caliphate as a political system that is fallible. No, we spoke about it as a sacred symbol of unity and that anything – even values and principles – has to be subordinate to the realisation of it … ISIL did not arrive from Mars; it is a natural product of our retrograde discourse. Talk about the caliphate has always provided a way to justify our defeats, failure, losses and inability to catch up with the rest of the world.”

Dr Habash concludes with a counsel: “What we need is a revolution within the Muslim mindset that takes it back to the true Islamic values of freedom, justice, human dignity; away from the sacredness of the caliphate … to a political system that simply governs the affairs of people.”

Looked at from this perspective, Al Baghdadi, or Caliph Ibrahim, is playing out what Christians would recognize as "the second coming", the restoration of God's glory on earth via the resurrection of a religious symbol of perfection. In Christianity it is the second coming of Christ. In Islam, it is the return of the Caliphate. Apparently this is something that many children were taught as part of their Islamic education. That someday Muslim pride would be restored in the re-establishment of the Caliphate. Now that it has occured, there is some soul searching to be done.

But that is secondary. If Al Baghdadi is using this widely taught religious myth his actions will have repercussions in places that he does not control. It will be interesting to see how the intersection of myth and reality play out in Saudi Arabia or Libya. I would really like to hear from a Muslim about what they were taught about the return of the Caliphate.

If accurate, it also means that what is occurring has a greater significance to the larger Muslim community than mere politics. Westerners, as outsiders, should tread cautiously when deciding what to do about ISIS.