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Iraq militants walk fine line in seized areas

In the week since it captured Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, a Muslim extremist group has tried to win over residents and has stopped short of widely enforcing its strict brand of Islamic law, residents say. Churches remain unharmed and street cleaners are back at work. Getting around is easier now that much-despised blast walls and security checkpoints are gone. But the militants’ restraint may only be temporary: In Fallujah, a city west of Baghdad that the group and its tribal allies solidified control over at the start of the year, residents say the militants have begun meting out Shariah, or Islamic law, punishments in private, flogging lawbreakers and cutting off thieves’ hands. And across the Syrian border in their urban stronghold of Raqqa, the insurgents are much more open about their ideology, killing people execution-style in the main square, banning music and imposing an Islamic tax […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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As Sunnis Die in Iraq, a Cycle Is Restarting

As Sunni militants rampaged across northern Iraq last week, executing Iraqi soldiers and government workers and threatening to demolish Shiism’s most sacred shrines, Iraq’s Shiites suffered mostly in silence, maintaining a patience urged on them by their religious leaders through months of deadly bombings. On Tuesday, though, there were signs that their patience had run out. The bodies of 44 Sunni prisoners were found in a government-controlled police station in Baquba, about 40 miles north of Baghdad. They had all been shot Monday night in the head or chest. Then the remains of four young men who had been shot were found dumped Tuesday on a street in a Baghdad neighborhood controlled by Shiite militiamen. By evening, it was Shiites who were the victims again, as a suicide bombing in a crowded market in Sadr City killed at least 14 people, local hospital officials said. It is […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Fears of sectarian violence rise in Baghdad after killing of Sunni imam and prison inmates

Iraq’s capital lurched closer to a renewed cycle of sectarian slaughter Tuesday after the bodies of a Sunni cleric and his aides, allegedly kidnapped by Shiite militiamen, were found in a Baghdad morgue and dozens of inmates were killed in a prison as insurgents battled security forces about 35 miles north. The Association of Muslim Scholars said Imam Nihad al- Jibouri and two of his aides were executed after being abducted by men dressed as members of the security forces. The killings are reminiscent of the tit-for-tat violence of the worst days of Iraq’s 2005-2007 civil war. The Sunni group warned of retaliation. Baghdad has remained relatively calm amid a rampage in the north by al-Qaeda-inspired militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). But with thousands of Shiite volunteers answering a call to arms from religious leaders and the Shiite-led government, many Sunnis in […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Sunni militants pound Iraq’s biggest oil refinery

‘There is growing panic… they think the jihadis are coming in” Continue reading the main story Islamist-led militants have attacked Iraq’s biggest oil refinery with mortars and machine guns, reportedly attacking from two directions. Smoke billowed from a spare parts warehouse on the site at Baiji, 210km (130 miles) north of Baghdad, security and refinery sources told Reuters. Government forces have made new air strikes on militants advancing towards the capital. Fighting is also reported in the western city of Ramadi. The government is battling to push back ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) and its Sunni Muslim allies in Diyala and Salahuddin provinces, after the militants overran the second city, Mosul, last week. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki appeared on television with Sunni Muslim and Kurdish leaders on Tuesday to […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Sunni militants pound Iraq's biggest oil refinery

‘There is growing panic… they think the jihadis are coming in” Continue reading the main story Islamist-led militants have attacked Iraq’s biggest oil refinery with mortars and machine guns, reportedly attacking from two directions. Smoke billowed from a spare parts warehouse on the site at Baiji, 210km (130 miles) north of Baghdad, security and refinery sources told Reuters. Government forces have made new air strikes on militants advancing towards the capital. Fighting is also reported in the western city of Ramadi. The government is battling to push back ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) and its Sunni Muslim allies in Diyala and Salahuddin provinces, after the militants overran the second city, Mosul, last week. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki appeared on television with Sunni Muslim and Kurdish leaders on Tuesday to […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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ISIL’s advance puts Saudi Arabia between Iraq and a hard place

The battle between Iraq’s government and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) which threatens to  plunge Iraq back into the chaos of sectarian civil war  puts Saudi Arabia in an increasingly awkward position. The Saudis have long been at loggerheads with the Iran-backed Shia-dominated government   of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, seeing Iraq as a key theater of its battle for influence with Tehran that also plays out in Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere in the region. But while ISIL poses the deadliest challenge yet to Maliki, its rapid emergence as a key regional player threatens Saudi interests as well as those of Iran. Still, the military effort to reverse ISIL’s rapid gains over the past week with possible U.S. and Iranian assistance is likely, at least in the short term, to strengthen the hand of Riyadh’s adversaries in Iraq. The Saudis took several days to respond to […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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ISIL's advance puts Saudi Arabia between Iraq and a hard place

The battle between Iraq’s government and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) which threatens to  plunge Iraq back into the chaos of sectarian civil war  puts Saudi Arabia in an increasingly awkward position. The Saudis have long been at loggerheads with the Iran-backed Shia-dominated government   of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, seeing Iraq as a key theater of its battle for influence with Tehran that also plays out in Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere in the region. But while ISIL poses the deadliest challenge yet to Maliki, its rapid emergence as a key regional player threatens Saudi interests as well as those of Iran. Still, the military effort to reverse ISIL’s rapid gains over the past week with possible U.S. and Iranian assistance is likely, at least in the short term, to strengthen the hand of Riyadh’s adversaries in Iraq. The Saudis took several days to respond to […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Iraq’s largest oil fields reduce staff

The international oil companies in charge of Iraq’s two most prolific oil fields have significantly reduced their presence in Basra after a shockwave of violence struck northern Iraq and Shia militia activity and recruitment began to spike throughout the south. BP and ExxonMobil, which operate Rumaila and West Qurna 1, respectively, have sent most or all of their foreign staff out of the country, according to varying accounts given by Iraqi workers at those fields. There is no indication that… This content is for registered users. Please login to continue. If you are not a registered user, you may purchase a subscription or sign up for a free trial .

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Iraq blowback: Isis rise manufactured by insatiable oil addiction

Following the bulk of western reporting on the Iraq crisis, you’d think the self-styled ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ‘ ( Isis ) popped out of nowhere, took the west completely by surprise, and is now rampaging across the Middle East like some random weather event. The reality is far more complex, and less palatable. The meteoric rise of Isis is a predictable consequence of a longstanding US-led geostrategy in the Middle East that has seen tyrants and terrorists as tools to expedite access to regional oil and gas resources. Since the second world war, as British historian Mark Curtis documented extensively in his seminal study, The Ambiguities of Power , US and UK goals in the Middle East have focused on oil. As a secret British document from 1958 explained: "The major British and other western interests in the Persian Gulf [are] (a) to ensure free access […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple