Iraq & Syrian Civil Wars - Page 367

On June 02 2016 22:47 lastpuritan wrote:
Typical Assyrianking approach, been following him for almost a year. He hates Turks, he hates non-christian Arabs, he hates Kurds, he hates Iranians and Saudis, he was hating Assad before then suddenly started boot licking god knows why. Probably Assad said something promising to his people. This is what's wrong with all of the Syrian people, they all claim the land is theirs.

And for the US wearing Kurdish badges, or US wearing any opposition badge is a shame to country and what it fights for decades. They can help them, they can arm them, but wearing badge is something big. Think of a scenario KKK fighting Taliban on US soil somehow and Russia wearing KKK badges.

Iraqi forces recaptured the municipal building in Falluja from Islamic State militants, state television said on Friday, nearly four weeks after the offensive to retake the city, an hour's drive west of Baghdad, began.

The ultra-hardline militants still control a significant portion of the city, where the conflict has forced the evacuation of most residents and many streets and houses remain mined with explosives.

A military statement said the federal police had raised the Iraqi flag above the government building and were continuing to pursue the insurgents, who continued to hold other areas.

The police were advancing along Baghdad Street, the main east-west road running through the city, and counter-terrorism forces had surrounded Falluja hospital, the statement said.

Those forces, along with the army, Shi'ite Muslim militias, Sunni tribal fighters and U.S.-led coalition air strikes, launched a major operation on May 23 to retake Falluja, an historic bastion of the Sunni insurgency against U.S. forces that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, in 2003, and the Shi'ite-led governments that followed

The city is seen as a launchpad for Islamic State bombings in the capital, making the offensive a crucial part of the government's campaign to improve security. U.S. allies would prefer to concentrate on Islamic State-held Mosul, Iraq's second largest city in the far north.

On June 22 2016 03:04 REDBLUEGREEN wrote:
There was a merger of several smaller rebel groups about a month ago into a group called Khalid ibn al-Walid Army. Afaik the group consists mostly of local Syrians. The groups that merged got more radical over time. If I remember correctly LSY(one of the merged groups) for example was a SF group in the past and received support from US led MOC. Accusations that they are ISIS affiliates are around since at least 2014 but I am not sure if the ever overtly said so.

It was barely more than a squiggle, but the mark of a single letter sprayed overnight on a wall in the heart of Islamic State's self-proclaimed caliphate was a daring act of dissent.

The next day, ultra-hardline Islamic State fighters came and scrubbed out the "M" -- the first letter of the word for "resistance" in Arabic -- which appeared in an alley near the Grand Mosque in the Iraqi city of Mosul about three weeks ago.

A video of the single letter, scrawled about a meter long on the wall, was shared with Reuters by an activist from a group called "Resistance", whose members risk certain execution to conduct small acts of defiance in areas under Islamic State rule.

Nearly two years since Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi delivered a sermon from that same mosque summoning Muslims worldwide to the "caliphate", it is fraying at the edges.

As an array of forces make inroads into their territory spanning Iraq and Syria, the jihadis are becoming even harsher to maintain control of a population that is increasingly hostile to them, according to Iraqi officials and people who managed to escape.

"They are harsh, but they are not strong," said Major General Najm al-Jubbouri, who is in command of the operation to recapture Mosul and the surrounding areas. "Their hosts reject them."

Many local Sunnis initially welcomed the Sunni Muslim militants as saviors from a Shi'ite-led government they perceived as oppressive, while thousands of foreigners answered Baghdadi's call to come and wage holy war.

For a time, the militants claimed one victory after another, thanks as much to the weakness and division of the forces arrayed against them as their own strength. They funded themselves through sales of oil from fields they overran, and plundered weapons and ammunition from those they vanquished.

But two years since the declaration of the caliphate, the tide has begun to turn in favor of its many enemies: Iraqi and Syrian government troops, Kurdish forces in both countries, rival Syrian Sunni rebels, Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias, and a U.S.-led coalition which has bombed the militants while conducting special operations to take out their commanders.

Of the 43 founders of Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh, 39 have been killed, said Hisham al-Hashimi, a Baghdad-based expert who advises the Iraqi government.

The self-proclaimed caliph, Baghdadi, is moving in a semi-desert plain that covers several thousand square kilometers west of the Tigris river and south of Mosul, avoiding Syria after two of his close aides were killed there this year: "war minister" Abu Omar al-Shishani and top civilian administrator and second-in-command Abd al-Rahman al-Qaduli, Hashimi said.

The most senior commanders after Baghdadi are now Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, the group's spokesman who took over military supervision after Shishani's death, and Abu Muhammad al-Shimali, who oversees foreign fighters and succeeded Qaduli as civilian administrator, he said.

Kurdish and Iraqi military commanders say the group is deploying fighters who are less experienced and less ideologically committed to defend what remains of its quasi-state, which is under attack on multiple fronts.

Iraqi forces recently entered the Islamic State bastion of Falluja just west of Baghdad, and are pushing north towards Mosul, by far the biggest city Islamic State controls with a pre-war population of 2 million.

In neighboring Syria, U.S.-backed forces are closing in on the militant stronghold of Manbij, and President Bashar al-Assad's Russian-backed army has advanced into the province surrounding the de facto Islamic State capital Raqqa.

On a front south of Mosul, a group of women displaced by the offensive said Islamic State fighters' grip had begun to loosen as Iraqi forces advanced, to the point that they no longer punished people for not wearing the full face veil.

The number of foreign fighters has fallen significantly, and renewed efforts by the group to recruit locals have proven largely unsuccessful, except amongst the young and destitute, according to people who recently fled, including three repentant Islamic State members.

"When you are a young man and you don't own 250 dinars and someone comes and offers you 20,000, 15,000 or 30,000, you will do anything," said a former Islamic State militant from Iraq's northern Hawija district who recently gave himself up to Kurdish forces.

Members of Islamic State's vice squad, the Hisba, are increasingly being sent to the frontlines as designated fighters are killed off, according to people who escaped as well as Iraqi and Kurdish military and intelligence officials.

That means there are fewer militants to enforce the group's draconian rules and dress code. But a 28 year-old teacher who recently fled Mosul said people were so afraid of the militants they did not disobey them even when they were not around.

"If they say black is white, you agree," said the teacher, who asked not to be identified because he still has family inside the city and feared they could be targeted.

School courses were redesigned by the militants to reflect their war-like ideology. He gave an example of a math problem given to his pupils: "The Mudjahid is carrying seven magazines for his rifle, each with 30 bullets; how many rounds can he fire at the unbelievers?"

He said Arabic lessons were also redesigned, with pupils asked to fill in blanks in slogan-like sentences such as "The Islamic State is xxxx and xxxx". The answer is "staying and expanding".