Iraq: Out of the desert into Mosul (closed)

[JWing]

Outlaw that article is actually about a raid on prostitution houses in Zayouna Baghdad. No one is sure whether it was militias or insurgents. Either way was not a sign of fighting within Baghdad but rather murderous morality police like the regular bombing of liquor stores.

[OUTLAW 09]

Outlaw that article is actually about a raid on prostitution houses in Zayouna Baghdad. No one is sure whether it was militias or insurgents. Either way was not a sign of fighting within Baghdad but rather murderous morality police like the regular bombing of liquor stores.

JWing---typical for the old AQI--they often attacked the houses and alcohol establishments even in 2005-thru to 2009.

That led to clashes between the locals in Baqubah in 2005/2006 when they tried to make women walk on one side and men of the other side. Locals won out and AQI pulled back off the streets.

Shia tried the same things in the zones they controlled in Diyala.

[Bill Moore]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/07/1...2F100%2F&ihp=1

Witnesses describe how Islamists leveled Sunni village as a warning

The Islamic State heralded the “cleansing” of the village, which is near Tikrit in northern Iraq, in an Internet posting, bragging that it had blown up villagers’ homes, which it called “hideouts,” killed 28, wounded many more and driven the remainder from the village. It warned that “all those who may even think about fighting the Islamic State and conspiring against the caliphate can know what their fate will be.”

The threat was clearly aimed at any suggestion that Sunni Muslim tribes would organize to fight the Islamic State _ a strategy that the U.S. military used to defeat al Qaida in Iraq during the American occupation. The extremist rebels now have seized roughly half the country with little resistance from Iraq’s hobbled army, and it’s unclear how they could be routed short of a tribal uprising or foreign airstrikes.

“

Our men were ready to fight, but it was the mortar barrage that won the battle,” Jubouri said. “Negotiators were calling everyone they knew on the other side, but the other side refused.”

Assuming this report is accurate, at least there are sources indicating it is, I think it points out two things: the IS are very worried about tribal uprisings and are attempting to quell them before they can gather steam through the use of terror. The same type of terror Saddam used to quell any tribes or organizations that were plotting to rise up against him.

Second, and I realize this is reach based on one statement in the article, but "if our men were ready to fight" is true, then the divisions between IS and the tribes may already being taking place.

[Bob's World]

ISIS's hardest fight and greatest challenges will come after they "win."

They will find that their state sponsors will shift their support to more moderate voices that are more likely to govern in a manner that is not a challenge to their interests.

They will find that many who either joined them or simply stood on the sidelines as they surged to push back current state control will form into discrete and active organizations with their own popular bases of support to compete for turf, influence or even dominance.

They may have to deal with a Shia based, Iranian backed counterattack that will come in a wide range of asymmetric and irregular forms. To include Shia foreign fighters from India and elsewhere who are every bit as motivated as the Sunni foreign fighters working with ISIS today.

The better governance the people hope for will likely elude them for a decade or a generation or two or three. It is a process.

Like the US learned in 03, ISIS will get the big strategic lesson learned - "winning" is the easy part.

[JWing]

Here's my latest interview "Explaining Kurdish Nationalism Interview With Tenn Tech Univ Prof Michael Gunter". I talked with Prof Michael Gunter of Tennessee Technical Univ. about the development of Kurdish nationalism. Many Kurds date their nationalist drive back to the 5-7th Centuries but Prof Gunter argues that nationalism didn't develop in the Middle East until the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WWI and Kurds didn't use modern nationalism rhetoric until the 1960s-1990s.