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Iraq Rebels Stall North of Baghdad
This is the NYT take on the ISIL advance.
BAGHDAD -- A rebel juggernaut that captured Iraq's second-largest city and raced nearly 200 miles south in three days, raising fears of an imminent assault on Baghdad, stalled for a second day on Saturday about 60 miles north of the capital, leaving residents bracing for a siege that so far has not happened.
If the ISIL is as loosely organized and as thin on logistics as some are saying they may have hit their peak alright. Was their plan a lightning strike and hope to panic everyone to abandoning Baghdad?
While some Baghdad residents scrambled to leave, hoarded food or rushed to join auxiliary militias to defend the city, the militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and their allies halted their advance within a two-hour drive, and there was no indication that they were seeking to push into Baghdad proper.
Would they want Baghdad? If they have most of the Sunni areas is that enough for them? Dare the Iraqi army to regroup and come back at them?
The rebel leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who had boasted that he would soon take the capital and press on to the Shiite heartland in southern Iraq, fell silent as his followers worked to consolidate their gains in predominantly Sunni parts of the country, instead of trying to fight their way through more heavily defended, Shiite-dominated areas.

There were reports of fresh clashes in Dujail, Ishaqi and Dhuluiya in Salahuddin Province, just north of Baghdad, as newly armed Shiite militias surged to confront the largely Sunni insurgents. However, there did not appear to have been any decisive engagements between the insurgents and the Iraqi military, and there was no clear evidence to support an Iraqi general's claim on Saturday that the Iraqi Army had rolled the militants back in those towns.

The Iraqi authorities used the breather to recruit citizens to reinforce the country's beleaguered military, while worried Baghdad residents began to stockpile essentials, sending prices skyrocketing on Saturday, the end of the Iraqi weekend. Cooking gas quadrupled in price, to about $20 on Saturday from about $5 on Thursday for a 35-pound container. The dollar, normally stable here, spiked about 5 percent overnight. And the price of potatoes increased sixfold, to about $4.5o a pound.

A military spokesman, Gen. Qassim Atta, said government forces had reclaimed ground in the northern provinces of Salahuddin, Diyala and Nineveh, and insisted the capital was safe.

"The security in Baghdad is 100 percent stable," he said. "The majority of Salahuddin Province has been regained. The morale of the security forces is very high."
Sure, Qassim, and I'll believe you when you do a presser in Diyala...



Posted by: Steve White 2014-06-15
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=393252