WarSclerotic

Islamic State repels Iraqi military’s 3rd attempt to retake Tikrit, Long War Journal, Bill Roggio, August 19, 2014

The only places where the Islamic State and its allies have lost ground are in some areas of northern Iraq where they encroached into territory controlled by the Kurdish Peshmerga.

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One day after suffering a defeat at the Mosul dam by the Peshmerga and US and Iraqi forces, the Islamic State and its allies beat back an Iraqi Army assault that was designed to retake control of the central city of Tikrit. The Islamic State and its allies have now repelled three Iraqi military attempts to regain Tikrit, the capital of Salahaddin province, which has been out of government control for more than two months.

Earlier this morning, Iraqi forces launched “a wide military campaign to liberate the city of Tikrit from the Islamic State,” All Iraq News Agency reported. “The security forces will liberate the city and eliminate the ISIL [Islamic State] terrorists,” an Iraqi official told the news agency.

But the Iraqi forces, which attacked Tikrit from several directions, broke off their assault by the afternoon after taking “heavy machine gun and mortar fire” from the south, and encountering “landmines and snipers” west of the city, Reuters reported.

“Residents of central Tikrit said by telephone that Islamic State fighters were firmly in control of their positions and patrolling the main streets,” Reuters noted.

The Islamic State and its Baathist allies in Saddam Hussein’s home town of Tikrit have defeated two other attempts by the Iraqi military and supporting militias to reestablish government control of the provincial capital, which fell to the Islamic State and its allies on June 11.

At the end of June, Iraqi forces air assaulted into Tikrit University to the north of the city while ground forces advanced from the south. That offensive stalled and Iraqi forces withdrew from the city after heavy fighting.

And on July 15, Iraqi soldiers and supporting militias advanced on the city from the south, but withdrew one day later after being drawn into a deadly complex ambush that included IED traps, suicide bombers, and snipers.

The latest failed Tikrit offensive highlights the poor state of the Iraqi armed forces. The military has often been forced to cobble together units since at least four of Iraq’s 16 regular army divisions are no longer viable. The Long War Journal estimates that at least seven divisions have been rendered ineffective since the beginning of the year [see Threat Matrix report, US advisers give dark assessment of state of Iraqi military].

In many areas of Iraq, the military is fighting alongside poorly trained militias who are ill-suited to conducting offensive operations. Additionally, SWAT and special forces, while highly trained and likely more motivated than regular forces, are often being misused as infantry.

The Iraqi military and the government have been unable to regain control of large areas lost in Ninewa, Salahaddin, and Diyala provinces after the Islamic State and its allies began their offensive on June 10. Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, and other major towns and cities in northern and central Iraq are firmly under the control of the Islamic State or contested.

The Islamic State also holds most of Anbar as well as northern Babil province. Fallujah and other cities and towns fell after the Islamic State went on the offensive in Anbar at the beginning of January. The Iraqi military has been unable to retake areas in Anbar lost earlier this year. Half of Ramadi, the provincial capital, is said to be under the Islamic State’s control. The military recently airlifted 4,000 militiamen to Ramadi, a further indication that the two Iraqi divisions stationed in Anbar, the 1st and the 7th, are no longer cohesive fighting forces.

The only places where the Islamic State and its allies have lost ground are in some areas of northern Iraq where they encroached into territory controlled by the Kurdish Peshmerga. Earlier this month, the Islamic State took over the Mosul Dam, the city of Sinjar, and a series of towns and villages north and east of Mosul after the Peshmerga retreated, often without a fight. The Peshmerga recently retook the Mosul Dam and those same villages, but only after the US military intervened and launched a series of airstrikes that targeted Islamic State armored personnel carriers, technicals, convoys, mortar pits, and other military targets.

Islamic slaughter and displacement of “non-believers” continues, Dan Miller’s Blog, August 19, 2014

But the “free world” continues to focus on Israel’s “genocide” against “Palestinians” rather than on the Islamist terror groups aligned against her.

If the Obama Nation is serious about combating the Islamic State (IS), perhaps it should embed intelligence types with the Vice News teams to get better information on where its forces are located and what they are doing.

Does Obama’s American really want to prevent the IS’ creation of an Islamic caliphate? How about other Islamic terror organizations? Hamas?

As observed in an article titled Christians and Yazidis in Iraq – and a World’s Indifference,

For the United Nation’s (UN) and the international media, there is one standard for Palestinian people and refugees, and another for others. This can be deduced from the reaction to the plight of the Iraqi Christians and the Yazidis (a Kurdish ethno-religious group of people, concentrated primarily in the Nineveh Province in Northern Iraq, now occupied by the fanatical jihadists of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIL] now called the Islamic State – IS.)  The Yazidis practice a syncretic religion that fuses Shia and Sufi Islam along with indigenous regional folk traditions. They are considered infidels by the Sunni Muslim IS and the Gaza Palestinians. [Emphasis added.]

There are no protest marches in European capitals or American cities on behalf of the Christians and Yazidis of Iraq like those recently held in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. Nor has there been sustained media coverage of Christian and Yazidi suffering, as was seen during the Gaza war about the Palestinians. [Emphasis added.]

At an August 12, 2014 press conference UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon bemoaned the situation of the Yazidis. “The plight of the Yazidis and others (meaning Christians) on Mount Sinjar is especially harrowing.” While devoting a few obligatory lines about the Yazidis in Iraq, Ban Ki-Moon failed to provide the “harrowing” dimensions of their tragedy, including the murder of 500 Yazidis by decapitation and live burials and the 300 Yazidi women who were kidnapped and forced into sex-slavery by the IS jihadists.

Ban Ki-Moon did, however, elaborate on the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza. He said, “According to preliminary information, nearly 2,000 Palestinians have been killed –almost 75 percent of them civilians, including 459 children…more than 300,000 people are still sheltering in UNRWA (United Nation Relief and Works Agency for Palestine) schools, government and private schools and other public facilities or with host families.  At least 100,000 people have had their homes destroyed or severely damaged. Most of Gaza’s households have little or no water supply. Hospitals meant to cope with disaster are themselves disaster zones. The new school year was scheduled to start in less than two weeks, but a great many of the buildings will not be ready or are totally unusable in their current state.”

. . . .

[W]hile it is regretful that Palestinian children might not be able to start school on time (courtesy of Hamas), Christian and Yazidi children in Iraq have no schools or hospitals to go to at all. At least 1 million Christians and 500,000 Yazidis had to abandon their homes and, with no shelter on the mountain, are completely exposed to the elements. The exact number of Christians and Yazidis killed by the Islamic State is hitherto unknown, albeit, a one day toll of murdered Christians stood at 1,700 in what amounts to a genocide. These numbers are likely to be far greater than the Palestinians killed in Gaza. Moreover, their deaths might bring to an end the existence of one of the oldest Christian (Assyrian) sects in the world.

Might the different identities of those allegedly responsible in Gaza — Israeli Jews — and those actually responsible in Iraq and Syria as well as in Gaza — Islamists — be a principal basis? How about the multitude of Islamic terror organizations beyond IS? Hamas uses methods similar to those of IS to indoctrinate its youth. Its use of human shields in Gaza has been quite productive of propaganda with which to indoctrinate its youth and with which to try to tarnish Israel. Hamas’ propaganda efforts seem to be meeting with substantial success.

Although Hamas is now principally dedicated to the elimination of Israel, it has other long-term objectives.

ISIS has no direct connections with Hamas. Indeed, ISIS is a globalized movement that lacks deep roots in any particular society and has no nationalist project.

In contrast, Hamas, as well as Hezbollah, are nationalist movements. What they do have in common, however, is the use of violence and intimidation to implement a reactionary version of Islam that persecutes women and other religions. [Emphasis added.]

Whether or not Hamas leaders are emboldened by ISIS’s victories in Iraq, the two terrorist organizations share many of the same objectives, such as the establishment of a Muslim caliphate that operates according to Shari’a (Islamic law). [Emphasis added.]

If the objective of the “World Community” — which Obama’s America tries to “lead” from behind through pious preachments and bungled efforts — is to avoid creation of an Islamic caliphate, why has the principal focus been on trying to prevent Israel from fighting Hamas and other jihadistists allied with it, which have done substantially more than merely threaten to destroy her? That accomplished, Hamas’ next step would be to join in the creation of an Islamic caliphate.

Perhaps we will learn more next month when President Obama chairs a UN Security Council meeting convened to discuss

the phenomenon of foreign fighters travelling to conflict zones and joining terrorist organizations, as seen in the surge in foreigners joining ranks with such groups as Jahbat al-Nusra in Syria,” Think Progress reported.

TP does not, however, mention the terror threat posed by the Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria, where a July estimate suggested over 10,000 Western fighters are training for and executing attacks. [Emphasis added.]

Perhaps Valerie Jarrett will give President Obama a full and complete briefing, consistent with her and His ideologies and their resultant preconceptions.

Israel leaders’ stubborn belief in Hamas’ desire for war’s end led the country into war of attrition
DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis August 19, 2014, 9:40 PM (IDT)

(Most Israelis were stunned….really? Note: Post number 100! yea!-LS)

Most Israelis were stunned Tuesday afternoon, Aug. 19, when rocket fire suddenly erupted from the Gaza Strip against Beersheba and Netivot, after they had been lulled into a sense of false security by the suspension of Hamas attacks for 135 hours. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon sent the air force straight back into action to bomb “terror targets’ across the Gaza Strip, and recalled Israel’s negotiators from the indirect talks taking place with Hamas in Cairo through Egyptian intermediaries.

After a month of tough fighting and painful losses, Israelis were aghast to find themselves dumped back in the same old routine, which their leaders had vowed Operation Defensive Edge would end once and for all.

The reversion to this routine is best categorized as a war of attrition.

So what went wrong?

debkafile reports that, as recently as Monday, Aug. 18, a senior intelligence source asserted that Netanyahu and Ya’alon were satisfied with the Cairo talks, because their outcome would refute their critics, ministers and security chiefs alike, by bringing Hamas to its knees.

Asked how this would come about, the source repeated the mantra heard day after day during the fighting: Hamas is looking for a way out of the conflict and wants to end hostilities, he explained. That is what we are banking on.

AMAN chief Maj.Gen. Aviv Kochavi is believed by some cabinet sources to be the author of this prescription, to which the prime minister and defense minister have stubbornly adhered, against all the evidence to the contrary. They therefore held back from inflicting a final defeat on the Palestinian fundamentalists.

Even the pro-diplomacy Justice Minister Tzipi Livni faulted them by warning repeatedly that negotiating with terrorists was a bad mistake. You have to fight them and beat them hollow, she said.

Yet each time Hamas violated a ceasefire – and it happened six times in all – there was the excuse that its leaders were divided against themselves, and the heads of the Gaza faction were reasonable and logical individuals who would prefer to stop firing rockets at the Israeli population – if only it was only up to them.

Even when the rockets started falling Tuesday around Beersheba, Netivot, Ashkelon, Shear Hanegev and the Eshkol district, some knowledgeable Israelis were still saying that Hamas knew nothing about it.

However, Netanyahu and Ya’alon are not about to change course, athough it is obvious even to them that they have led the country into the blind alley of a war of attrition. They seem to be operating on a different level from Hamas – and even from the general Israeli population, which is sick and tired of the uncertainty and on the verge of kicking back at its leaders.

Last Saturday, 30,000 demonstrators from southern Israel and their many sympathizers turned out in Rabin Square, Tel Aviv, to make sure the government understood that their tolerance for the same old routine was at an end and the military must be allowed to root out the Hamas peril once and for all.

A sense of defiance is palpable in the streets of towns within regular rocket range from the Gaza Strip and even farther afield. Contrary to orders from the IDF Home Command, directions to open shelters have been issued by the mayors of Ashkelon, Ashdod, Rehovot, Rishon Lezion, Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, Gedera, Kiryat Malachi, Sderot, Netivot and Beersheba. Some have cancelled public events and entertaiments.

Parents of places next door to the Gaza Strip, who spent the summer holidays holed up indoors or away from home, now say they will not send their children to school at the start of the term in two weeks, if the present situation does not change radically.

Israel treads with cautious optimism, Hamas says ‘no use’ in extending truce

Cabinet minister tells Ynet there’s a consensus among the Israeli leadership on the need for a strong response to the renewed rocket fire, but that far-reaching decisions won’t be made in haste.

Roi Kais, Attila Somfalvi, Elior Levy

Latest Update: 08.19.14, 22:02 / Israel News

via Israel treads with cautious optimism, Hamas says ‘no use’ in extending truce… – Israel News, Ynetnews.

A Security Cabinet minister told Ynet on Tuesday evening that there was a consensus among the Israeli leadership on the need for a strong response to the renewed rocket fire.

It was unlikely, however, that far-reaching decisions are made in the immediate future, the minister said.

The minister also noted the negotiations might not be officially over.

“Last night there was a feeling the sides were close to (reaching) an agreement. Almost everything was done. And then Hamas decided to toughen its positions,” the minister said.

“We have to wait a few days and hear the updates from the returning delegation. We have to also wait and see if this is a last-minute power play in negotiations, or a real desire from Hamas to escalate. This is yet unclear, so waiting is critical at this moment.”

‘There’s no use in continuing talks’

While the Israeli side was treading with cautious optimism, the head of the Hamas delegation to the talks, Izzat al-Rishq, said that “there’s no use in extending the ceasefire,” adding that the Palestinian delegation would depart from Cairo on Wednesday morning.

Earlier, he lowered expectations, saying “the chances of (reaching) an agreement are very low.” Saying Israel has proven it does not wish to reach an agreement, he noted there was “no possibility in which the Palestinian delegation accepts a ‘slimmed down’ agreement.”

Azzam al-Ahmad, head of the Palestinian delegation in Cairo, said that delegates had submitted an official proposal to Egypt outline a roadmap to calm in Gaza and was only waiting for a response from Israel.

“We haven’t made any progress so far. The situation became complicated,” al-Ahmad said.

“Judging by Netanyahu’s most recent statements, he’s still trying to force his conditions, and that’s completely unacceptable,” he added.

He noted there were a few hours left to go for the current ceasefire, following which the Palestinians will decide their next move.

Hamas spokesperson Fawzi Barhoum also accused Netanyahu for the failure of the talks in Cairo saying that, “It’s up to him to be ready to pay the heavy price” for the collapse of the ceasefire talks.

Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri said that the organization, “is interested in reaching an agreement, but there’s no progress being made in peace talks and the Israeli attacks are meant to pressure the Palestinian envoy.”

He placed the blame on Tuesday’s escalation on Israel, saying “we have the right to respond.”

Earlier, Palestinian sources claimed the crisis in talks was not a result of the rockets fired at Be’er Sheva. “The problem in the talks is fundamental,” the sources said, noting that “the talks have reached a dead end.”

“Some fundamental disagreements remain, mostly on the issue of the Gaza seaport, the sources said. “The Palestinian delegation demands the ceasefire agreement specifically states a seaport will be built in Gaza, but the discussion on the details would be postponed for later.”

Israel refused, they said, and conditioned the seaport with the disarmament of the Palestinian factions, which brought the talks to a standstill.

“The efforts at the moment are solely focused on saving the negotiations from collapsing. The odds of reaching an agreement soon on a permanent ceasefire are very slim,” the sources said.

An Israeli source, however, stressed the talks did not collapse over disagreements, but rather “because they fired and blew up the talks.”

The rocket attack on Be’er Sheva came hours before a ceasefire deal was exepcted to be signed in Cairo, but in wake of the attack Israel decided to recall its delegation, which was still in Egypt holding indirect talks with Hamas when rockets began to fall. The move seems to indicate that attempts at reaching a deal have collapsed. Palestinians for their part claim the IDF targeted Gaza before the rocket fire.

The two sides were close to reaching an agreement on Monday, but the Israeli delegation demanded corrections to the agreement at the last moment, causing the Palestinians to pull back from the talks.

Even before the rocket fire, the Associated Press quoted Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum, who hinted of more rocket fire, saying: “If Netanyahu doesn’t understand … the language of politics in Cairo, we know how to make him understand.”

On Tuesday morning, both sides were still in Cairo working to reach a long term deal on Gaza after Israel announced it agreed to extend the temporary truce in Gaza for 24 hours while – at Egypt’s request. Reports about the content of the agreement have been plentiful and rife with contractions.

A senior Hamas official who returned to Gaza from the negotiations in Cairo said they had been tough but expressed some optimism.

“There is still a real chance to clinch an agreement,” Khalil al-Hayya told reporters, saying that it depended on Israel not “playing with language to void our demands”.

“The Egyptian mediators are entering a good effort and we wish them success in this negotiation battle.”

After more than a month of intense conflict, which killed over 2,000 Palestinians, many of them civilians, as well as 64 IDF soldiers and three civilians in Israel, there is little appetite on either side for a resumption of bloodshed.

Hamas and its allies want an end to the Israeli and Egyptian blockade on Gaza. But Israel and Egypt harbour deep security concerns about Hamas, the dominant Islamist group in the small, Mediterranean coastal enclave, complicating any deal on easing border restrictions.

Update

Why Is the Islamic State Behaving This Way?   

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book, Arab Winter Comes to America: The Truth About the War We’re In, is now available.

The Islamic State is turning into a huge public relations problem for groups like the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its allies. For years they have insisted that Islam is a religion of peace that has nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorism committed with alarming regularity in its name, and that the people responsible for linking Islam with terrorism were not Islamic jihad terrorists, but “Islamophobic” opponents of jihad terror. But then comes along a group calling itself The Islamic State, committing unimaginable atrocities and presenting each one as an authentic embodiment of Islamic texts and teachings, and the deception campaign at which CAIR officials have labored so assiduously for so many years, and with such great success, is in danger of crashing around their uneasy necks.Take, for example, the recent revelation that, according to the UN News Centre, “some 1,500 Yazidi and Christian persons may have been forced into sexual slavery.” A similar kidnapping by Islamic jihadists in Nigeria recently horrified the world, but much overlooked was the fact that such behavior is sanctioned by the Qur’an. According to Islamic law, Muslim men can take “captives of the right hand” (Qur’an 4:3, 4:24, 33:50). The Qur’an says: “O Prophet! Lo! We have made lawful unto thee thy wives unto whom thou hast paid their dowries, and those whom thy right hand possesseth of those whom Allah hath given thee as spoils of war” (33:50). 4:3 and 4:24 extend this privilege to Muslim men in general, as does this passage. “Certainly will the believers have succeeded: They who are during their prayer humbly submissive, and they who turn away from ill speech, and they who are observant of zakah, and they who guard their private parts except from their wives or those their right hands possess, for indeed, they will not be blamed” (Qur’an 23:1-6).

These passages have not gone unnoticed. The Egyptian Sheikh Abu-Ishaq al-Huwayni declared in May 2011 that “we are in the era of jihad,” and that meant Muslims would take slaves. In a subsequent interview he elaborated:

Jihad is only between Muslims and infidels. Spoils, slaves, and prisoners are only to be taken in war between Muslims and infidels. Muslims in the past conquered, invaded, and took over countries. This is agreed to by all scholars—there is no disagreement on this from any of them, from the smallest to the largest, on the issue of taking spoils and prisoners. The prisoners and spoils are distributed among the fighters, which includes men, women, children, wealth, and so on.

When a slave market is erected, which is a market in which are sold slaves and sex-slaves, which are called in the Qur’an by the namemilk al-yamin, “that which your right hands possess” [Koran 4:24]. This is a verse from the Qur’an which is still in force, and has not been abrogated. The milk al-yamin are the sex-slaves. You go to the market, look at the sex-slave, and buy her. She becomes like your wife, (but) she doesn’t need a (marriage) contract or a divorce like a free woman, nor does she need a wali. All scholars agree on this point—there is no disagreement from any of them. […] When I want a sex slave, I just go to the market and choose the woman I like and purchase her.

Around the same time, on May 25, 2011, a female Kuwaiti politician, Salwa al-Mutairi, also spoke out in favor of the Islamic practice of sexual slavery of non-Muslim women, emphasizing that the practice accorded with Islamic law and the parameters of Islamic morality.

A merchant told me that he would like to have a sex slave. He said he would not be negligent with her, and that Islam permitted this sort of thing. He was speaking the truth. I brought up [this man’s] situation to the muftis in Mecca. I told them that I had a question, since they were men who specialized in what was halal, and what was good, and who loved women. I said, “What is the law of sex slaves?”

The mufti said, “With the law of sex slaves, there must be a Muslim nation at war with a Christian nation, or a nation which is not of the religion, not of the religion of Islam. And there must be prisoners of war.”

“Is this forbidden by Islam?” I asked.

“Absolutely not. Sex slaves are not forbidden by Islam. On the contrary, sex slaves are under a different law than the free woman. The free woman must be completely covered except for her face and hands. But the sex slave can be naked from the waist up. She differs a lot from the free woman. While the free woman requires a marriage contract, the sex slave does not—she only needs to be purchased by her husband, and that’s it. Therefore the sex slave is different than the free woman.”

The Islamic State acts on these beliefs, which are Qur’an-based. The kidnappings, meanwhile, have taken place amid a backdrop of unimaginable slaughter. The victims were those who refused the Islamic State’s demand that they convert to Islam to save their lives: a Yazidi woman explained last week why thousands of Yazidis had fled the area of Iraq controlled by the Islamic State: “We came here because the terrorists said, ‘Either you convert to Islam or we slaughter you.’”

The Quran says “there is no compulsion in religion” (2:256) – a verse much beloved of Western non-Muslim multiculturalists, but it also says that Muslims must fight unbelievers until “religion is all for Allah” (8:39). And it insists that Muslims should “slay them” wherever they’re found (cf. 2:191; 4:89; 9:5).

It also says that Muslims must fight against the “People of the Book” – Jews, Christians, and others who are considered to have received previous revelations from Allah – until they “pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued” (9:29). That option of submission and subjugation, however, is not open to groups that have no written revelation that could qualify them for “People of the Book” status. Hence for the Yazidis, to convert or die are the only Qur’anic options open for them.

The Islamic State’s actions are an open book, and that book is the Qur’an. American Muslim spokesmen would do well to explain how they are misinterpreting the Islamic holy books, but claims to that effect have been vague and short of references to problematic passages. As long as that refusal to confront the problem continues, so will the killing.