Andrew Klavan: Attack of the But-Heads! Truth Revolt via You Tube, January 29, 2015
Posted tagged ‘Foreign Policy’
Andrew Klavan: Attack of the But-Heads!
January 29, 2015Yazidis ask Israel for help
January 29, 2015Yazidis ask Israel for help, Al-Monitor, Jacky Hugi, January 28, 2015
A man from the minority Yazidi sect stands guard at Mount Sinjar, in the town of Sinjar, Dec. 20, 2014. (photo by REUTERS/Ari Jalal)
[I]t is an unusual overture of friendship for the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and it will be interesting to see if and how Israel takes up the gauntlet. Given the sensitivity of the matter, it is quite uncertain whether anyone will hear about it.
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“They have already killed many of us. What do we have to fear?” Lt. Col. Lukman Ibrahim responded when I asked him if he was afraid to openly communicate with an Israeli in a recent long-distance phone conversation from Tel Aviv to Sinjar, in northwestern Iraq, near the Syrian border. Ibrahim, a Yazidi militia officer, is hoping to obtain military aid from the State of Israel.
“The Arab countries do not recognize us, nor do they recognize you,” he said. “They are telling us that we are infidels. Why should we be afraid to talk to you, when even neighboring Arab countries have become our enemies? We regard you as a friendly state, with an opportunity for relations on the basis of neutrality and respect. We do not want more than that.”
Ibrahim, a journalist by profession, serves as an assistant to Marwan Elias Badl, one of the senior field commanders of the Sinjar Protection Forces, the Yazidi militia established ad hoc in August 2014 to halt the Islamic State (IS) onslaught against Yazidi population centers west of Mosul. The militia numbers some 12,000 fighters, most of them untrained, ordinary men who rushed to take up arms to thwart IS’ designs. A few of them are rank-and-file fighters, while some are officers with the Kurdish peshmerga. According to internal estimates, the IS militants killed thousands in their pogrom against the Yazidis. About 5,000 Yazidis are still being held by IS.
The Yazidis have no formal relations with Israel, nor an organized leadership. Yet they need aid, in particular military assistance, and they have chosen to make a public plea for help. “We appeal to the Israeli government and its leader to step in and help this nation, which loves the Jewish people,” said Ibrahim. “We would be most grateful for the establishment of military ties — for instance, the training of fighters and the formation of joint teams. We are well aware of the circumstances the Israelis are in, and of the suffering they have endured at the hands of the Arabs ever since the establishment of their state. We, too, are suffering on account of them.”
When asked what kind of weapons they needed, Ibrahim cited protective measures. “We are not acting against anyone,” he clarified. “And we do not covet other people’s land. We just want to protect ourselves. For example, [we need] armored [Humvees], machine guns and light weapons.”
Contact with Israel is a dirty business in this neighborhood, military contact all the more so. Be that as it may, in a reality where all levees have been breached and the worst appears to have already befallen the Yazidis, what could they possibly lose by seeking a rapport with Jerusalem?
The conversation with Ibrahim was not the only call with Sinjar. Majdal Rasho, a native of Sinjar, had settled in Germany and built his life there. He married and had a family, making a living as a manufacturing supervisor at a chocolate plant. In his spare time, he served as a photographer for TV stations broadcasting in the Kurdish language. He returned to Sinjar as a fighter, but also in his capacity as a video photographer for German TV networks.
“What I have seen here, I just can’t describe,” he said by phone from a battle zone. “Our people had no choice but to flee. We are not Arabs, nor are we Muslims. We see ourselves as sharing a fate with the Israelis, who went through similar pogroms. Those besieged on the mountain approached me and asked, ‘Maybe our Israeli brethren could lend a hand?’”
Yazidism is a religion with no more than a million followers. Its adherents are centered around Mosul and the Sinjar mountain range, in northern Iraq. Their largest diaspora in the West is in Germany, estimated to number some 100,000.
A common destiny with the Jews is a recurring theme in the Yazidis’ discourse. “What happened to us is the biggest genocide since the Holocaust of the Jews in Europe,” said Dr. Mirza Dinnay, a pediatrician based in Germany. “In the Holocaust, the goal was to annihilate an entire people, the Jews. IS has a similar plan — to exterminate an entire people, the Yazidis. No such extermination process had taken place in the past 500 years, with the exception of the Holocaust and what came to pass in Sinjar.”
Dinnay left Germany for Sinjar at the outbreak of the pogrom, leading a delegation of human rights activists. During one of the aid flights arranged by the Iraqi air force, a helicopter carrying food supplies and medication to the besieged Yazidis crashed. Some of the passengers aboard, among them Dinnay, were injured.
The communication between the Yazidis and the Israeli media has been coordinated by Idan Barir, 34, a researcher at the Tel Aviv University Yavetz School of Historical Studies. In the months since IS’ offensive against Yazidi population centers, Barir has become Israel’s top expert on the Yazidis, thanks to his extensive connections with members of the Yazidi community.
“I can think of a range of activities that Israel is experienced in that would not undermine the world order,” Barir told Al-Monitor. “For example, providing military assistance to the Yazidi forces in Sinjar who are crying out for cooperation and aid; setting up a field hospital for medical and psychological treatment of the casualties among the displaced in northern Iraq — not only Yazidis, by the way; sending humanitarian aid to displaced Yazidis in the refugee camps in Iraqi Kurdistan; absorption of a symbolic number of displaced Yazidis in Israel, with preference given to humanitarian, whether medical or mental, cases; incorporation of young Yazidis into military service in Israel; and support of civil initiatives aimed at strengthening and deepening ties between Israelis and Yazidis. It all depends on the decision made by the Israeli government, on its determination and goodwill.”
So far, Israel has not officially responded to such calls, which have yet to be fully formulated and have only recently began over the last few days. In fact, no formal request has come from the Yazidis for asylum as refugees. Barir is currently trying to find a way to reach decision-makers in Israel to pass on the messages from his faraway friends. Without a doubt, it is an unusual overture of friendship for the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and it will be interesting to see if and how Israel takes up the gauntlet. Given the sensitivity of the matter, it is quite uncertain whether anyone will hear about it.
“It is a moral obligation to ring every bell and to do everything possible to stop the Yazidi tragedy,” said Attorney Zvi Hauser, the former Cabinet secretary in the most recent Netanyahu government (2009-13). “It is inconceivable that in the 21st century, someone’s attempt to eliminate an entire people, because of its faith and religion, is met with indifference.”
Hauser is the first senior figure in Israel who agreed to comment on the Yazidis’ call for help. As a private person, he refrained from reference to the Yazidis’ request for military aid, taking care to say nothing that might be interpreted as a promise. He believes, however, that Israel should favorably consider the Yazidis’ calls.
“The Yazidi narrative is evocative of ours. We, too, went through 2,000 years of existence without sovereignty, in the course of which we faced extermination schemes,” Hauser said. “Israel is a sovereign state, formed by an ethnic minority. It is the national manifestation of an ancient civilization. It would thus be appropriate to examine ways to establish relations and forge an alliance with them, if only to ensure a pluralistic Middle East. This issue has a universal aspect, as well. The development of human civilization is contingent on the diversity and multiplicity of [ethnic] groups and nations. Hence, the extinction of one of these would hurt not only the Yazidis, but also the entire fabric of human life.”
How to lose friends and empower radicals: the peace prize president’s more dangerous world
January 29, 2015How to lose friends and empower radicals: the peace prize president’s more dangerous world, Breitbart, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, January 29, 2015
(Please see the video at the link. — DM)
AP Photo/Susan Walsh
Since 2008, the world has become a significantly more dangerous place. In every region, new threats have emerged or old ones have reasserted them. The scorecard is clear: the bad guys are winning and America’s interests are being undermined daily.
As a nation, America has yet to recover from the experience of September 11th, 2001. Public opinion on our national response to the attacks against the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Flight 93 is today divided. On one side we have the “Bush lied, People Died!” crowd who portray President George W. Bush’s response in terms of a conspiracy, despite the fact that we now know Saddam Hussein indeed possessed thousands of WMD warheads (and had used them in the past).
On the other, we have conservatives who are themselves split between the unsophisticated isolationists/non-interventionists who believe that an American withdrawal from the world will make us safe, and the quietly resurgent neoconservatives who see in the rise of ISIS/The Islamic State a justification for more foreign engagements.
For a moment, let us put Operations Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), and Operations Iraqi Freedom (OIF), to one side. Instead, let us take an unemotional snap-shot of the global geostrategic situation to see whether the administration whose head was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize during his first year in office has indeed make the world a safer and more peaceful place.
Europe: During most of the last century, American security was tied directly to the continent of Europe. Whether is was the generational genocide of World War One, the racial genocide of WWII, or the class-based totalitarianism of the Cold War, Europe was the source of strategic, and at times existential, threats to America.
During the first Obama Administration, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton declared a “Pivot to Asia” which would deemphasize Europe’s importance and see Washington focus more on our Pacific partners than on old Atlantic Allies.
Since that announcement, an emboldened Vladimir Putin has seen fit to break an almost 70-year-old international taboo by using force to redraw national borders with his annexation of Crimea. This includes, incredibly, the shooting down of a civilian jet-liner by forces armed by Moscow.
At the same time, we have seen the European Union become evermore centralizing and undemocratic as untenable economic and fiscal policies are propped up by a Brussels bureaucracy in the name of “broader and deeper union.” This has naturally led to two types of responses: the unprecedented success of a paleo-conservative backlash,f best typified by the insurgent victories of UKIP in Great Britain, as well the reverse: Utopian socialist populists such as the victorious Syriza party of Greece.
Then there are Europe’s ties to the Global Jihadist Movement. The recent slaughter in Paris, the beheading of a British serviceman on the streets of the UK, and Spanish and Belgian terror-related arrests all attest to the failure of the current international campaign against Islamist terrorism.
The flawed immigration policies of many EU nations have also facilitated the establishment of literally hundreds of ethnic and religious enclaves across the continent where integration is seen as a bad thing and where radical talent spotters for groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS/IS identify, indoctrinate and recruit murderers such as the Charlie Hebdo killers, as well as thousands of fighters for The Islamic State.
This has led to a grass-roots response from Europeans afraid of the future survival of their countries embodied in the ever-broadening PEGIDA movement that Breitbart London has covered in great detail. The failure of multiculturalist immigration policies has not only encouraged the enclave phenomenon, but is also clearly linked to the disturbing rise of anti-Semitism on the continent which has led to unprecedented numbers of European jews deciding to leave the nations of their birth for good.
If we include Turkey in our European snapshot, the situation is even worse, as we have seen the one viable example of a secular Muslim state slip even deeper into the corruption-ridden maelstrom of Islamic fundamentalism under the Erdogan government which is either incapable or unwilling to prevent Turkey becoming a pre-deployment site for jihadist fighters traveling into Syria and Iraq. All this from a formal NATO ally of the US.
Asia: The much-vaunted Pivot to Asia has clearly not worked. China has, over the last several years, openly challenged the post-Cold War peace in the region with a commitment to its own military build-up coupled with a concerted campaign of intimidation against its smaller and weaker neighbors.
While challenging and intimidating our regional partners, China has continued to grow economically at such a rate that the nation which was once universally ridiculed as the maker of plastic toys for McDonalds Happy Meals has now surpassed the US economy in terms of gross output. At the same time, China is waging a covert war against America in the cyber domain, stealing not only state secrets for use in developing its new weapons systems, but also billions of dollars worth of intellectual property and commercial secrets from American businesses. See the remarkable report from Mandiant on scale of the threat.
North Korea has also used the internet to assault American interests as the Sony hacking attack attests, while Washington has proven totally ineffective in undermining the world’s last truly fully-fledged Stalinist regime, or its regionally destabilizing nuclear weapons capabilities.
Africa: A giant continent, with threats as bad as they were in 2008, or in several cases much worse. The Global Jihadist Movement continues to consolidate its control in Nigeria through the horrific attacks of Boko Haram, the group made famous for the kidnapping of the girls from Chibok, an attack which is just one part of a vast campaign targeting Christians and anyone who does not want to live under a theocratically run system based upon sharia and 7th century interpretation of the Koran.
In addition to the insurgent-like threat of Boko Haram, we have also witnessed horrific hit and run terrorist tactics used by other African jihadists, as in the Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi by Al Shabaab. At the same time, China proceeds to build its vast network of economic interests in the continent in ways that far outstrip American geostrategic investment in Africa.
Australasia: Of course, the Pivot to Asia should have pleased our Antipodean allies. But the concrete consequences of the declarations and speeches by Secretary Clinton and the White House have amounted to little more than the deployment of a handful of US Marines from Camp Pendleton to Australia. Instead of the security situation improving, Australia faced its own Jihadist attack just before Christmas last year as a self-styled imam took hostages and brought the violent jihad so familiar to New York, London, Madrid, and Paris, to the streets of Sydney.
The Americas: Canada likewise became a direct victim of the Global Jihadist Movement after a spate of attacks against its armed forces and even its parliament which was only stopped when a brave sergeant-at-arms applied deadly force in the face of a rampaging jihadi.
Those who like illicit quality cigars may be celebrating the White House’s “normalization” of relations with Communist Cuba, but if statements by the Castro regime are to be credited as expressing Havana’s true intentions, then the deal was good for the dictatorship and bad for America. And despite the US government’s historic decision, conditions inside Cuba have remained the same, or in many case deteriorated, with last year seeing record-breaking numbers of political arrests on the island nation. And Cuba’s anti-democratic influence is a problem for the region, not just its wretched population, with Raul Castro’s secret police providing aid and expertise in the oppression of dissidentsto the government of Venezuela.
The Middle East and North Africa: Leaving the worst for last we have, of course, the Middle East, and North Africa. The highs hopes for the Arab Spring turned very rapidly into a “Christian Winter” and a victory for the fundamentalist and anti-Democratic forces of the Muslim Brotherhood. One after another, one-man authoritarian regimes fell to Islamist MB governments, or collapsed into deadly civil wars which are still being fought in places like Syria and Libya. Throughout the region, proto-democrats and vulnerable minorities, especially ancient Christian communities, have been targeted for death or persecution, or have been forced to flee.
The one ray of hope, the people’s revolt in Egypt against the Brotherhood government of Mohammad Morsi, which led to his being ousted by a secular military, was rejected by the US administration as a coup, despite the fact that General, now President, Sisi, has been fighting his own war against Jihadi fundamentalists since he was the Chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces.
And now Yemen, which was lauded just a few months ago by President Obama as the poster-child of his successful counterterrorism strategy, has collapsed under insurgent attacks and the resignation of the government in Sanaa.
Then there is Iran, which, much like Cuba, has squeezed concession after concession out of the administration without either stopping its acquisition of nuclear weapons capability, or curtailing its support of Shiite terrorist fighters in either Iraq or Syria.
I said I would leave Afghanistan and Iraq of our the equation, but nevertheless, it is important to recognize that this is a new jihadist threat that is even more dangerous than Al Qaeda. ISIS, the Islamic State, is today a full-fledged insurgency, one that in four dimensions is much more of a threat that [Sic] Al Qaeda ever was.
The Islamic State is more than a terrorist group, it now functions as a quasi-state and controls territory equivalent to the size of the UK. It is the richest non-state threat group in human history. It has an incredibly sophisticated understanding of information warfare and how to use social media as a propaganda platform, and lastly – and relatedly – it has recruited ten of thousands of young Muslim men from around the world, including Europe and the US, to fight for the new Caliphate of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. Bin Laden dreamt of being this powerful. The Islamic State has turned his dream into a horrific reality.
There is not one area of the world of import to America in which we have either not lost friends, or failed to help our allies to defend themselves against the common enemies that threaten us all. Whatever your politics, or whomever you favor for the next Commander-in-Chief of the United States, one thing is certain: without resolute American leadership the world can become, and now is, a much more dangerous place.
Obama targets Netanyahu, Iran targets Israel
January 29, 2015Obama targets Netanyahu, Iran targets Israel, Israel Hayom, Richard Baehr, January 29, 2015
Obama will tell himself and anyone who wants to hear that he has brought Iran back into the community of nations. Obama, after all, is a rare man. How many others can make 118 self-referential mentions in a half hour talk, as Obama did in India this week?
Is it any wonder why someone who stands for something, say a country’s security, as Netanyahu does, gets under the skin of a man who is primarily concerned with little more than his own greatness, and whose presidency, in a word, has been a “selfie”?
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There is a bit of difference between Iran and U.S. President Barack Obama when it comes to Israel. Iran has never been reticent that its goal is to eliminate the State of Israel, and Israelis too while they are it. Iran’s proxy terror army of Hezbollah contributed their part on Wednesday, killing two Israeli soldiers and wounding seven with anti-tank fire from southern Lebanon directed at an Israeli convoy. Obama seems more interested, at least in the next two months, in eliminating one Israeli — namely, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
It has been a remarkable two weeks in U.S.-Israel relations. The president delivered his State of the Union address, in which he argued for staying the course with negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, overselling what has already been achieved, as well as what might be achieved. He also threatened to veto new sanctions legislation that might be passed by Congress, where some have called for tougher sanctions to be applied to Iran if a satisfactory deal were not struck between the P5+1 and the Iranians by June 30. Obama argued that passing such a measure now would be a sign of bad faith and drive the Iranians from the negotiating table. It was, of course, an odd prediction, since one area in which the Iranians have shown remarkable consistency has been in negotiating with European powers, or the now expanded negotiating group for over 10 years, always without a satisfactory outcome. The Iranians seem to like being seen as negotiating while their nuclear program advances.
Fact checkers awarded Obama a bunch of “pinocchios” for his latest effort, suggesting he was all but lying on the matter. No, the Iranians have not dismantled any centrifuges (they have more running than before), they have not removed any fissile material from the country for safekeeping, they have not allowed inspections on demand, they have not disabled their Arak heavy-water reactor, they have not agreed to end any missile program they are working on for delivery of a nuclear bomb.
”Our diplomacy is at work with respect to Iran,” Obama said, ”where, for the first time in a decade, we’ve halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material.”
James Robbins, a senior fellow in national security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council, begged to disagree:
”But has Iran’s stockpile shrunk? Under a deal concluded last November, Iran halted work on the most dangerous material, 20 percent refined uranium. However, Iran is still making lower-grade uranium. According to a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency last November, Iran’s stockpiles of low-enriched uranium gas and 5 percent enriched uranium were both growing. Also, the agency cautioned that their figures only covered ’declared sites,’ the nuclear facilities Iran has publicly acknowledged and allowed to be inspected.”
In the days after his address to Congress, the president repeated his threats about vetoing new sanctions legislation, when meeting with Democratic senators, several of whom, along with a few Republican colleagues, had been lobbied on the matter by Britain’s visiting Prime Minister David Cameron. The president upped the ante, accusing Democratic Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, a leader in the attempt to pass new sanctions, of not thinking long-term, but just trying to make his donors (could Obama have meant Jewish donors?) happy.
The idea of a foreign leader directly lobbying members of Congress on an issue like the Iranian sanctions bill took on a new life when House Speaker John Boehner invited Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress on the Iranian issue on February 11. The White House predictably blew its lid, accusing Boehner of breaking established protocol for such an invitation. (It should have been coordinated with the White House.) The usual Obama water carriers like Jeffrey Goldberg were quick to lambaste Netanyahu for stage managing the invitation so as to embarrass Obama, and in the process threaten U.S.-Israel relations. As Joel Pollak describes Goldberg’s argument:
”In his most recent Atlantic column, he claims, for example, that Obama worked ‘in tandem’ with Netanyahu to promote sanctions on Iran: ‘Netanyahu traveled the world arguing for stringent sanctions, and Obama did much the same.’
“That is simply factually untrue. Obama resisted Iran sanctions for months, defying even a unanimous vote in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Not only was Israel frustrated, and Congress, but Europe as well, which accused Obama of re-inventing the wheel, resetting diplomacy that had started under (gasp) George W. Bush.
“In fact, Obama pushed the world towards a more lenient position on Iran, allowing nuclear enrichment in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions.”
And then there is this doozy:
”It is Netanyahu’s job, Goldberg says, as ‘the junior partner in the Israel-U.S. relationship,’ to make concessions.”
When it comes to negotiating with Iran, Netanyahu does not sit at the table with the Iranians, but Obama’s representatives do. And it is U.S. negotiators who have been making concessions month after month since the talks began, in what appears to be a desperate attempt to salvage some deal they can broadcast as having achieved a minimal set of objectives. That objective has now been reduced to providing some minimum breakout time for Iran to achieve nuclear weapons capability if they ditch the deal. What will the West do in that time if Iran moves towards the bomb? It is pretty clear, any military response from Obama is out of the question.
The administration has further demonstrated its unhappiness about Netanyahu’s impudence in scheming with Boehner, by announcing that neither the president nor his secretary of state will meet with Netanyahu when he visits Washington, a date now moved back three weeks to overlap his visit to the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference. The excuse, couched in a diplomatic smokescreen, is that it would be improper for the president to meet with a candidate for office abroad so close to the time of that country’s election. That would be equivalent to electioneering and interference in the other country’s race. Presumably when President Bill Clinton met with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres just weeks before his election contest with Netanyahu in 1996, at a time when Israeli prime ministers were elected in a head-to-head battle, electioneering was the furthest thing from Clinton’s mind.
The Obama team may not meet with Netanyahu when he visits, but an experienced Obama campaign team from 2012 is now in Israel working to defeat Netanyahu. That, in and of itself, is nothing new for Israeli elections. Experienced American campaign teams have aided Israeli candidates from the Left and Right in recent decades. What is new is that the current anti-Netanyahu campaign includes a State Department funded group:
”U.S.-based activist group OneVoice International has partnered with V15, an ‘independent grass-roots movement’ in Israel that is actively opposing Netanyahu’s party in the upcoming elections, Haaretz reported on Monday. Former national field director for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign Jeremy Bird is also reportedly involved in the effort.
“OneVoice development and grants officer Christina Taler said the group would be working with V15 on voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts but would not engage in overtly partisan activities. She said OneVoice and V15 are still formalizing the partnership.”
Obama’s team has gone further to poison the waters for Netanyahu, planting a story in Haaretz that the Mossad was opposed to new sanctions legislation, a charge they publicly rebutted.
The Goldberg article was designed to deliver a message that Israel has two important objectives now — to keep Iran from going nuclear (for which their best hope of course is to count on Obama to do the job for them in negotiations), and second, to keep American close and happy with Israel’s behavior. Netanyahu, according to Goldberg, is killing the good vibes that presumably must have existed during the Obama years by his recent behavior.
There is an alternative interpretation for what is going on. Obama is really not terribly bothered by a nuclear Iran. A bad deal that looks like it delays Iran’s entry to the nuclear club is therefore not a bad option. It also allows Obama to check off one more box on his achievements list before his formal request to have his likeness carved into Mount Rushmore. Pakistan has a bomb. Israel has the bomb. Why not Iran, the leading Shiite nation? Iran, after all, is now our strategic partner, fighting with us to battle ISIS in Iraq.
The latest evidence that Obama is now on the Iranian team is the New York Times editorial calling for accepting that having Assad hang on in Syria is the least bad result, so backing a non-ISIS Syrian rebel team is a bad idea. The New York Times editorial page is little more than a conveyance tool for White House messaging at this point, and so this is now clearly Obama’s posture. How can we fight alongside Iran in Iraq, but support a side that is fighting Iran’s ally Assad in Syria?
Meanwhile, Hezbollah is stepping up its activities in the Golan. The Iranian goal appears to be to establish a base in Syria where Israel can be targeted by the Lebanese group, without getting an Israeli response in Lebanon itself. What is clear is that Hezbollah and Iran have Israel in their sights. If Iran gets the bomb, the retaliation options for Israel when Hezbollah pressure is applied, will be much more limited. There is no certainty that Iran subscribes to the mutually assured destruction deterrence club.
But not to worry. Obama will tell himself and anyone who wants to hear that he has brought Iran back into the community of nations. Obama, after all, is a rare man. How many others can make 118 self-referential mentions in a half hour talk, as Obama did in India this week?
Is it any wonder why someone who stands for something, say a country’s security, as Netanyahu does, gets under the skin of a man who is primarily concerned with little more than his own greatness, and whose presidency, in a word, has been a “selfie”?
The Imaginary Islamic Radical
January 28, 2015The Imaginary Islamic Radical, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, January 28,2015
(Ask Secretary Kerry.
Please see also Muslim Brotherhood-Aligned Leaders Hosted at State Department. — DM)
Our problem is not the Islamic radical, but the inherent radicalism of Islam. Islam is a radical religion. It radicalizes those who follow it. Every atrocity we associate with Islamic radicals is already in Islam. The Koran is not the solution to Islamic radicalism, it is the cause.
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The debate over Islamic terrorism has shifted so far from reality that it has now become an argument between the administration, which insists that there is nothing Islamic about ISIS, and critics who contend that a minority of Islamic extremists are the ones causing all the problems.
But what makes an Islamic radical, extremist? Where is the line between ordinary Muslim practice and its extremist dark side?
It can’t be beheading people in public.
Saudi Arabia just did that and was praised for its progressiveness by the UN Secretary General, had flags flown at half-staff in the honor of its deceased tyrant in the UK and that same tyrant was honored by Obama, in preference to such minor events as the Paris Unity March and the Auschwitz commemoration.
It can’t be terrorism either. Not when the US funds the PLO and three successive administrations invested massive amounts of political capital into turning the terrorist group into a state. While the US and the EU fund the Palestinian Authority’s homicidal kleptocracy; its media urges stabbing Jews.
Clearly that’s not Islamic extremism either. At least it’s not too extreme for Obama.
If blowing up civilians in Allah’s name isn’t extreme, what do our radicals have to do to get really radical?
Sex slavery? The Saudis only abolished it in 1962; officially. Unofficially it continues. Every few years a Saudi bigwig gets busted for it abroad. The third in line for the Saudi throne was the son of a “slave girl”.
Ethnic cleansing? Genocide? The “moderate” Islamists we backed in Syria, Libya and Egypt have been busy doing it with the weapons and support that we gave them. So that can’t be extreme either.
If terrorism, ethnic cleansing, sex slavery and beheading are just the behavior of moderate Muslims, what does a Jihadist have to do to be officially extreme? What is it that makes ISIS extreme?
Our government’s definition of moderate often hinges on a willingness to negotiate regardless of the results. The moderate Taliban were the ones willing to talk us. They just weren’t willing to make a deal. Iran’s new government is moderate because it engages in aimless negotiations while pushing its nuclear program forward and issuing violent threats, instead of just pushing and threatening without the negotiations. Nothing has come of the negotiations, but the very willingness to negotiate is moderate.
The Saudis would talk to us all day long while they continued sponsoring terrorists and setting up terror mosques in the West. That made them moderates. Qatar keeps talking to us while arming terrorists and propping up the Muslim Brotherhood. So they too are moderate. The Muslim Brotherhood talked to us even while its thugs burned churches, tortured protesters and worked with terrorist groups in the Sinai.
A radical terrorist will kill you. A moderate terrorist will talk to you and then kill someone else. And you’ll ignore it because the conversation is a sign that they’re willing to pretend to be reasonable.
From a Muslim perspective, ISIS is radical because it declared a Caliphate and is casual about declaring other Muslims infidels. That’s a serious issue for Muslims and when we distinguish between radicals and moderates based not on their treatment of people, but their treatment of Muslims, we define radicalism from the perspective of Islamic supremacism, rather than our own American values.
The position that the Muslim Brotherhood is moderate and Al Qaeda is extreme because the Brotherhood kills Christians and Jews while Al Qaeda kills Muslims is Islamic Supremacism. The idea of the moderate Muslim places the lives of Muslims over those of every other human being on earth.
Our Countering Violent Extremism program emphasizes the centrality of Islamic legal authority as the best means of fighting Islamic terrorists. Our ideological warfare slams terrorists for not accepting the proper Islamic chain of command. Our solution to Islamic terrorism is a call for Sharia submission.
That’s not an American position. It’s an Islamic position and it puts us in the strange position of arguing Islamic legalism with Islamic terrorists. Our politicians, generals and cops insist that the Islamic terrorists we’re dealing with know nothing about Islam because that is what their Saudi liaisons told them to say.
It’s as if we were fighting Marxist terrorist groups by reproving them for not accepting the authority of the USSR or the Fourth International. It’s not only stupid of us to nitpick another ideology’s fine points, especially when our leaders don’t know what they’re talking about, but our path to victory involves uniting our enemies behind one central theocracy. That’s even worse than arming and training them, which we’re also doing (but only for the moderate genocidal terrorists, not the extremists).
Secretary of State Kerry insists that ISIS are nihilists and anarchists. Nihilism is the exact opposite of the highly structured Islamic system of the Caliphate. It might be a more accurate description of Kerry. But the Saudis and the Muslim Brotherhood successfully sold the Western security establishment on the idea that the only way to defeat Islamic terrorism was by denying any Islamic links to its actions.
This was like an arsonist convincing the fire department that the best way to fight fires was to pretend that they happened randomly on their own through spontaneous combustion.
Victory through denial demands that we pretend that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam. It’s a wholly irrational position, but the alternative of a tiny minority of extremists is nearly as irrational.
If ISIS is extreme and Islam is moderate, what did ISIS do that Mohammed did not?
The answers usually have a whole lot to do with the internal structures of Islam and very little to do with such pragmatic things as not raping women or not killing non-Muslims.
Early on we decided to take sides between Islamic tyrants and Islamic terrorists, deeming the former moderate and the latter extremists. But the tyrants were backing their own terrorists. And when it came to human rights and their view of us, there wasn’t all that much of a difference between the two.
It made sense for us to put down Islamic terrorists because they often represented a more direct threat, but allowing the Islamic tyrants to convince us that they and the terrorists followed two different brands of Islam and that the only solution to Islamic terrorism lay in their theocracy was foolish of us.
We can’t win the War on Terror through their theocracy. That way lies a real Caliphate.
Our problem is not the Islamic radical, but the inherent radicalism of Islam. Islam is a radical religion. It radicalizes those who follow it. Every atrocity we associate with Islamic radicals is already in Islam. The Koran is not the solution to Islamic radicalism, it is the cause.
Our enemy is not radicalism, but a hostile civilization bearing grudges and ambitions.
We aren’t fighting nihilists or radicals. We are at war with the inheritors of an old empire seeking to reestablish its supremacy not only in the hinterlands of the east, but in the megalopolises of the west.
Muslim Brotherhood-Aligned Leaders Hosted at State Department
January 28, 2015Muslim Brotherhood-Aligned Leaders Hosted at State Department
Brotherhood seeks to rally anti-Sisi support
BY: Follow @Kredo0
January 28, 2015 5:00 am
via Muslim Brotherhood-Aligned Leaders Hosted at State Department | Washington Free Beacon.
The State Department hosted a delegation of Muslim Brotherhood-aligned leaders this week for a meeting about their ongoing efforts to oppose the current government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt, who rose to power following the overthrow of Mohamed Morsi, an ally of the Brotherhood, in 2013.
One member of the delegation, a Brotherhood-aligned judge in Egypt, posed for a picture while at Foggy Bottom in which he held up the Islamic group’s notorious four-finger Rabia symbol, according to his Facebook page.
That delegation member, Waleed Sharaby, is a secretary-general of the Egyptian Revolutionary Council and a spokesman for Judges for Egypt, a group reported to have close ties to the Brotherhood.
The delegation also includes Gamal Heshmat, a leading member of the Brotherhood, and Abdel Mawgoud al-Dardery, a Brotherhood member who served as a parliamentarian from Luxor.
Sharaby, the Brotherhood-aligned judge, flashed the Islamist group’s popular symbol in his picture at the State Department and wrote in a caption: “Now in the U.S. State Department. Your steadfastness impresses everyone,” according to an independent translation of the Arabic.
Another member of the delegation, Maha Azzam, confirmed during an event hosted Tuesday by the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID)—another group accused of having close ties to the Brotherhood—that the delegation had “fruitful” talks with the State Department.
“Maha Azzam confirms that ‘anti-coup’ delegation, which includes 2 top [Muslim Brothers], had ‘fruitful’ conversations at State Dept,” Egypt expert Eric Trager tweeted.
Assam also said that the department expressed openness to engagement, according to one person who attended the event.
Trager, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), told the Washington Free Beacon that the State Department is interested in maintaining a dialogue with the Brotherhood due to its continued role in the Egyptian political scene.
“The State Department continues to speak with Muslim Brothers on the assumption that Egyptian politics are unpredictable, and the Brotherhood still has some support in Egypt,” he said. “But when pro-Brotherhood delegations then post photos of themselves making pro-Brotherhood gestures in front of the State Department logo, it creates an embarrassment for the State Department.”
When asked to comment on the meeting Tuesday evening, a State Department official said, “We meet with representatives from across the political spectrum in Egypt.”
The official declined to elaborate on who may have been hosted or on any details about the timing and substance of any talks.
Samuel Tadros, an Egypt expert and research fellow at the Hudson Institute who is familiar with the delegation, said that the visit is meant to rally support for the Muslim Brotherhood’s ongoing efforts against to oppose Sisi.
“I think the Muslim Brotherhood visit serves two goals,” Tadros said. “First, organizing the pro Muslim Brotherhood movement in the U.S. among the Egyptian and other Arab and Muslim communities.”
“Secondly, reaching out to administration and the policy community in D.C.,” Tadros said. “The delegation’s composition includes several non-official Muslim Brotherhood members to portray an image of a united Islamist and non-Islamist revolutionary camp against the regime.”
The delegation held several public events this week in Maryland and Virginia, according to invitations that were sent out.
Patrick Poole, a terrorism expert and national security reporter, said the powwow at the State Department could be a sign that the Obama administration still considers the Brotherhood politically viable, despite its ouster from power and a subsequent crackdown on its members by Egyptian authorities.
“What this shows is that the widespread rejection of the Muslim Brotherhood across the Middle East, particularly the largest protests in recorded human history in Egypt on June 30, 2013, that led to Morsi’s ouster, is not recognized by the State Department and the Obama administration,” Poole said.
“This is a direct insult to our Egyptian allies, who are in an existential struggle against the Muslim Brotherhood, all in the pursuit of the mythical ‘moderate Islamists’ who the D.C. foreign policy elite still believe will bring democracy to the Middle East,” Poole said.
Iran-Syria-North Korea Nuclear Nexus
January 28, 2015Iran-Syria-North Korea Nuclear Nexus, Front Page Magazine,
As Iranian and American chief diplomats continue to meet to find ways to speed up nuclear negotiations and strike a final nuclear deal that would lead to the removal of all international sanctions on the ruling clerics, the Obama administration persists in ignoring the recent revelations about the Islamic Republic and its covert operations in the region.
A new Western intelligence assessment points to efforts by the Syrian government to renew its operations in an underground and clandestine nuclear facility near Qusair, close to the border of Lebanon, in order to produce nuclear weapons. Citing the Western intelligence assessment, the German weekly Der Spiegel pointed out that the reconstruction of the nuclear facility is being conducted with the assistance of the Islamic Republic, North Korea, and Hezbollah.
The intelligence report indicates that dialogue between Ibrahim Othman, head of the Syrian Atomic Energy Commission of Iranian, and North Korean and Hezbollah affiliates were “intercepted.” In addition, according Abu Muhammad al-Bitar, the Free Syrian Army has also noticed the “unprecedented” presence of Iranian and Hezbollah security members in the town of Qusair on the suburbs of Homs.
If Iran is engaged in such operations assisting Syrian President Bashar al Assad, it is breaching the protocols of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), as well as posing a great threat to security in the region.
If, even before obtaining nuclear weapons, the ruling clerics of Iran are assisting their allies to become nuclear states, how can we trust the Islamic Republic in nuclear negotiations and how can one rely on their claim that they are not seeking to build a nuclear bomb?
Iran-Syria and North Korean-Syria military and nuclear cooperation has been going on for a long time. When it comes to the issues of ballistic missiles, Syria has previously cooperated with both Iran and North Korea.
Syria possess approximately 50 tons of uranium which could be adequate enough to create 5 nuclear bombs. For developing nuclear weapons either highly enriched uranium or an adequate amount of plutonium is required.
Some might make the argument that Syria developed the uranium by itself without the assistance of other countries or other non-state actors. Nevertheless, technically, pragmatically and realistically speaking, Syria does not possess the capability of developing an estimated 50 tons of natural uranium. This suggests that the role of other states and non-state actors have definitely played a significant role. Some of the only allies that the Syrian government has still kept are Iran, North Korea and Hezbollah.
It is crucial to point out that, without a doubt, becoming a nuclear state for the Syrian and Iranian government would be a formidable tool in to suppress opposition, maintain power, and deter foreign intervention in case of crimes against humanity.
There are two major nuclear site in Syria. The first one is the Al Kibar reactor in the northeast of the city of Deir Ezzour and the second one is Marj Sultan in the outskirt of Damascus where the fuel is reportedly stored.
News with respects to the Syrian government renewing its nuclear program were previously reported in 2013. There had been reports that some activities were being carried out at an alleged Syrian nuclear facility close to an eastern suburbs of Damascus, Marj Sultan.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported previously that Damascus was building a nuclear reactor in Deir Ezzour. Reportedly tons of enriched uranium in Damascus are being protected by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah.
According to Der Spiegel, “Syria’s dictator has not given up his dream of an atomic weapon and has apparently built a new nuclear facility at a secret location…..It is an extremely unsettling piece of news.”
In addition to the aforementioned concerns about the undeclared Syrian nuclear site and nuclear proliferation, one of the crucial issues is that the nuclear material might fall in the hands of multiple other players and Islamist groups. In other words, if these nuclear sites are seized by some radical groups or Al Qaeda-linked affiliates, they might be capable of utilizing the highly enriched uranium and produce nuclear weapons.
Iran’s other indisputable and multi-layered activities and engagements in Syria — including the military, financial, intelligence, and advisory assistance to the Syrian government which have further radicalized and militarized the ongoing Syrian war — persist. In addition, the recent intelligence report and satellite images of secretly renewing nuclear activities with the assistance of the Iranian and North Korean governments poses a grave threat to stability and security in the region. Unfortunately, despite the seriousness of this issue, the Obama administration continues to ignore these issues and persists on trusting the Islamic Republic in the nuclear negotiations.
Iran says it sent warning to Israel via US officials
January 27, 2015Iran says it sent warning to Israel via US officials
As rockets hit Golan Heights, foreign minister in Tehran says Americans told to tell Israel to ‘await consequences’ of deadly airstrike last week
By AP and Times of Israel staff January 27, 2015, 7:14 pm
via Iran says it sent warning to Israel via US officials | The Times of Israel.
This is a banger, lets watch who is spinning this like an iranian centrifuge .
Civilians and members of the armed forces carry the flag draped coffin of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali Allahdadi during his funeral ceremony outside the Guard compound in Tehran, Iran, January 21, 2015 (photo credit: AP/Vahid Salemi)
Iran said Tuesday it has sent a warning to Israel through the United States over the recent killing of an Iranian general in an alleged Israeli airstrike, the official IRNA news agency reported.
The report came as Israel’s Golan Heights came under rocket attack from Syria, over a week after several Hezbollah and Iranian operatives were killed in the airstrike in Syria.
“We told the Americans that the leaders of the Zionist regime should await the consequences of their act,” Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian was quoted by IRNA as saying.
He added, “The Zionist regime has crossed our red lines.”
Iranian General Mohammad Ali Allahdadi, a senior commander in the Revolutionary Guard, was killed along with six Lebanese Hezbollah fighters in a January 18 airstrike in the Syrian-controlled part of the Golan Heights.
Both Iran and Hezbollah blamed Israel for the strike and vowed to respond; the Israeli government refused to comment.
Amirabdollahian said Iran delivered the message to US officials via diplomatic channels. He did not elaborate.
Amirabdollahian’s remarks came during a commemoration ceremony in Tehran for the slain general and the Hezbollah fighters. In the same ceremony, General Hossein Salami, acting commander of the Guard, said Iran will retaliate soon.
“We tell [Israel] to await retaliation, but we will decide about its timing, place and the strength,” he said, according to the IRNA report.
Allahdadi was one of the highest ranking Iranian officers known to have been killed abroad in decades.
On Tuesday afternoon, two rockets slammed into open Israeli territory in what was widely viewed as retaliation for the airstrike. Israel responded to the rockets by shooting 20 shells into Syria.
The Israeli military has been on high alert along the northern border since the airstrike, fearing retaliatory action from Hezbollah or its patron in Tehran.
At the same time Israeli leaders have warned that Hezbollah, Lebanon and Syria will pay a price for any attacks against Israel.
“They who play with fire – will be hit with fire,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday.
On Monday, Arabic daily al-Hayat reported that Israel had sent a message to Hezbollah via foreign diplomats warning against attacking Israeli or Jewish interests abroad.
Iran and the US cut diplomatic ties after militant Iranian students stormed the US embassy in Tehran during the 1979 revolution and held a group of American diplomats for 444 days.
The two nations normally exchange diplomatic messages through the Swiss embassy, which looks after US interests in Iran. But diplomats from both countries also meet directly on other occasions — such as the current negotiations to limit the scope of the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for easing harsh international sanctions against Tehran.
Also on Tuesday, Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan stressed that his country fully supported Hezbollah and added that Tehran would aim to heavily arm Palestinians in the West Bank, the Iranian Fars news site reported.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran’s position on the Zionist regime is unchangeable, and given the fact that the resistance stream is standing against the Zionists and the terrorist and Takfiri groups, we will make our utmost efforts to support and strengthen Hezbollah and the resistance of the Lebanese people,” Dehqan told reporters in Tehran on Tuesday.
“The constant and general policy of the Islamic Republic is arming the West Bank and strengthening the resistance stream and Hezbollah forces to confront the Zionists’ usurping and occupying regime,” Dehqan said.
Mission Accomplished: ISIS Overruns Libyan Hotel Used by United Nations
January 27, 2015Mission Accomplished: ISIS Overruns Libyan Hotel Used by United Nations
January 27, 2015 by Daniel Greenfield
via Mission Accomplished: ISIS Overruns Libyan Hotel Used by United Nations | FrontPage Magazine.
Remember the time that Obama lied and claimed that Gaddafi was committing genocide and began bombing Libya? That turned out really well. We currently don’t recognize the government in charge of Libya which almost got taken out by ISIS.
Which is now also in Libya. Because Obama’s regime change in Libya turned out almost as well as ObamaCare.
Gunmen stormed a luxury hotel in Libya’s capital Tuesday, killing at least five foreigners and three guards, authorities said.
The attack, which included a car bombing, struck the Corinthia Hotel, which sits along the Mediterranean Sea.
Another security official earlier said the gunmen killed three guards and took hostages, but had no further information on the captives’ identities.
Mahmoud Hamza, commander of the so-called Special Deterrent Force, said five foreigners were killed, without elaborating.
Another security official earlier said the gunmen killed three guards and took hostages, but had no further information on the captives’ identities.
He said the hotel had Italian, British and Turkish guests, but the hotel was largely empty at the time of the attack. He said the militia-backed Prime Minister Omar al-Hassi usually resides at the hotel, but was not there Tuesday.
Why is Hamza’s force so-called? Because we don’t recognize it either.
Fighters wearing black uniforms labeled “police” and loyal to the Tripoli government — one of two rival governments now fighting for control of Libya — responded to the attack, cordoning off streets and surrounding the hotel. Their forces entered a long standoff with assailants still inside.
A group calling itself the Tripoli Province of the Islamic State, the extremist group that has seized territory in Syria and Iraq, issued a statement on social media claiming responsibility for the attack just as it was beginning. The group portrayed the assault as retaliation for the abduction last year by American commandos of a Libyan Qaeda operative, Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, also known as Abu Anas al-Libi.
Mr. Ruqai, 50, died this month in a New York hospital of complications from liver surgery as he was waiting to stand trial for a role in Qaeda bombings of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
Tripoli is currently controlled by an alliance of Islamists ranging from the Muslim Brotherhood (as the New York Times calls them “moderate Islamists” to straight up Al Qaeda.
Since ISIS likes to pick fights with its own pals, it may have been targeting them. Or it may have been aiming for the UN. Or random foreign hostages.
The Malta-owned hotel is also where the United Nations support mission in Libya holds its meetings. The mission is currently hosting political talks with rival Libyan groups in Geneva.
So that’s going well.
Meanwhile here’s a brief overview of the latest headlines from the Libya Herald, not even counting this attack, to give you a snapshot of how screwed up things are.
United States reiterates it does not recognize GNC and its Tripoli Hassi government
Hardline Hassi claims US coming to the rescue
Confusion as Audit Bureau reverses its freezing of all government accounts
Abducted Deputy Foreign Minister freed; government probe begins
Tanker crew still held over fuel smuggling claim
Many reported dead in Benghazi as LNA moves to flush out Ansar Al-Sharia
Further clashes in both east and west despite ceasefire
Libyan Ambassador to Egypt insists he is still in post
Civilians involved in Zawia attacks
Health sector legal advisor kidnapped in Tripoli
Tripoli’s Dat Al-Imad office complex received ”serious destruction threat” – LANA
This is what happens when a really smart ‘smart power’ guy like Obama practices regime change. He walks away whistling and the media pretends nothing happened.
Kurdish Land-Grab Stuns Baghdad
January 27, 2015Kurdish Land-Grab Stuns Baghdad, Newsweek,
Kurdish Peshmerga fighters keep watch during the battle with Islamic State militants on the outskirts of Mosul January 21, 2015. AZAD LASHKARI/REUTERS
A senior Kurdish federal official, who declined to be named, said that Peshmerga forces would never hand back areas captured after Isis’s march across northern Iraq, which brought the group to within miles of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region.
While the threat of Isis remains significant, Kurds may have to put their independence dreams on hold and the Iraqi government will worry about Kurdish territorial claims later. As the terror group continues to grow, both parties need each other and the radical Islamist threat will bind them together, at least for now.
******************
Kurdish forces launched a barrage of Grad missiles against Islamic State (Isis) positions inside Mosul last week, for the first time since Isis overran Iraq’s second-largest city in June last year, marking a dramatic shift in the Kurds’ battle against the terrorist group.
The bombardment was preceded by a large-scale Kurdish operation against Isis in northern Iraq, which saw 5,000 Kurdish fighters, supported by US-led coalition airstrikes, sweep around Mosul to recapture an area larger than the size of Andorra, Liechtenstein and San Marino combined.
In the offensive, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters killed over 200 Isis militants, ousting the group from almost 300 square miles of territory, capturing a number of areas contested with Baghdad. As they advanced, encircling Mosul on three sides and cutting vital Isis supply lines to the nearby towns of Tal Afar and Sinjar, the Kurdish forces began a counter-offensive that analysts worry may be the start of a territory war between the Kurdish capital, Erbil, and Baghdad.
The Kurdish forces captured Makhmour, to the east of the city; the towns of Zimar and Wannah, and several Arab villages located in the Sinjar Mountains, west of Mosul; and the area around Mosul Dam, in what amounts to a Kurdish land-grab backed by Western airstrikes.
Iraqi Kurds believe that the recaptured territory around the city is rightfully theirs while the Iraqi government “fears that the Kurds will use territory as leverage during political negotiations”, according to Ranj Alaaldin, a visiting scholar at Columbia University.
A senior Kurdish federal official, who declined to be named, said that Peshmerga forces would never hand back areas captured after Isis’s march across northern Iraq, which brought the group to within miles of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region. “All the current military operations that involve the Peshmerga are implemented in coordination with the international military coalition and the central government is aware of it, but, in the Kurdish areas, we will never ever let Arabs control them again,” the official warned. “We are not ready to fight, terrify our fighters’ souls to liberate these areas and hand them to a traitor who would sell it to the killers. We will not allow this scenario to take place again in these areas.”
While the Kurds argue that they have taken control of this territory to defend against Isis, many Iraqis believe that the Kurds will never give up what they have captured because of their ambitions for an independent state.
“In the chaos that followed the Isis assault on Iraq in June, the Iraqi army melted away from its positions throughout northeastern and northwestern Iraq and the Peshmerga swiftly moved in to take their place – taking control of the whole of Kirkuk,” she said.
Despite these aspirations, Iraqi officials seem content to let Kurdish forces claim the territory from Daesh (as Isis is also known), for now. “As long as we are not ready to move as far as to fight in Mosul, it would be better to let them (Kurds) re-control these areas rather than leave it at the hands of Daesh,” a senior Iraqi military officer said. “Now, we will not raise any political disputes. Let [the Kurds] drive the militants away from these areas and we will think about the consequences later,” he added.
Hamed al-Khudari, a senior Shia lawmaker, agreed that Iraqis should “clear our lands” and “talk about this [territorial dispute] later”. Nevertheless, analysts do not believe that the Iraqi government in Baghdad is capable of ousting Kurdish forces from the territory they have seized in the recent advance. “Baghdad cannot do much to kick out the Kurds from any territory they have captured,” says Wladimir van Wilgenburg, analyst on Kurdish politics for the Jamestown Foundation.
The Kurds’ success on the battlefield, coupled with rumours of a potential Iraqi operation in Mosul, has put Isis on the back-foot but also caused disagreement between Erbil and Baghdad. Differences remain over involvement in any potential operation to recapture Mosul. Masrour Barzani, the head of Kurdistan’s regional security council, has said that Mosul will soon be “liberated” from the terror group’s self-proclaimed caliphate. “I don’t think anyone would envy the situation the people of Mosul are in,” he said. “The terror of Isis is too much for anyone to handle.”
But Kurdish officials believe that the responsibility for the recapture of the predominantly Sunni-Arab city lies solely with Baghdad. “Peshmerga are now 8km away from Mosul but they will not fight inside the city,” the official, who declined to be named, said. “When it comes to liberating Mosul, its people have to fight, not anyone else. We will just support them because we do not want anyone to say that Kurds are fighting Arabs. The [Iraqi] government understands that Mosul is not our battle or Shiites’ battle. Arab Sunnis in Mosul have to take the initiative to liberate their areas.”
Whereas Kurdish officials believe that Baghdad should take leadership over the battle for the city, where citizens now live under the group’s radical version of Islamic law, Iraqi officials claim that the battle against “Daesh is everyone’s to fight. The main goal now for all Iraqis is to fight Daesh and drive them away from all the Iraqi lands, so we will not allow anyone to talk about these [territorial] issues”, says al-Khudari. “This [fighting against IS] is the responsibility of everyone including the central government, the Kurdish forces, the public crowd (Shia militias and volunteers) and the anti-IS Sunni tribes.”
The lack of Kurdish motivation to enter into a battle for Mosul alongside Iraqi forces is due to the knowledge that any fight would be a drawn-out and lethal affair, according to van Wilgenburg. “They know the battle is going to be very heavy if it has to involve street to street fighting,” he says.
“The Kurds are already assisting the fight in Mosul. They recently fired into the city.” Erbil and Baghdad both have “to be pragmatic”, says Gonul Tol, executive director at the Center for Turkish Studies at the Middle East Institute. Baghdad is focused on recapturing Isis-held territory as opposed to Kurdish territory while Kurds “do not want to get involved” in Mosul to avoid “igniting a Kurdish-Arab war”.
While the threat of Isis remains significant, Kurds may have to put their independence dreams on hold and the Iraqi government will worry about Kurdish territorial claims later. As the terror group continues to grow, both parties need each other and the radical Islamist threat will bind them together, at least for now.
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