You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Submit your comments on this article
Iraq
Iraq Militants Head to Baghdad
2014-06-12
From the NYT. As much as we dislike 'em, they do have reporters on the scene and they are telling us what is happening on the ground. I snipped all the 'analysis' from the story and present the facts as 'fair use.'
BAGHDAD -- Sunni militants consolidated and extended their control over northern Iraq on Wednesday, seizing Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein, threatening the strategic oil refining town of Baiji and pushing south toward Baghdad, their ultimate target, Iraqi sources said.

As the dimensions of the assault began to become clear, it was evident that a number of militant groups had joined forces, including Baathist military commanders from the Hussein era, whose goal is to rout the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. One of the Baathists, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, was a top military commander and a vice president in the Hussein government and one of the few prominent Baathists to evade capture by the Americans throughout the occupation.
It's that 'strong horse' thing again...
"These groups were unified by the same goal, which is getting rid of this sectarian government, ending this corrupt army and negotiating to form the Sunni Region," said Abu Karam, a senior Baathist leader and a former high-ranking army officer, who said planning for the offensive had begun two years ago. "The decisive battle will be in northern Baghdad. These groups will not stop in Tikrit and will keep moving toward Baghdad."
They need to topple the government, each for their own reasons. Each thinks that their group will end up top dog, or at least one of the big dogs. Each thinks that this is best for the people they claim to represent. And they're all united in thinking that democracy is bad -- at least for them...
The sudden successes of the militant forces sent hundreds of thousands of people running, some literally, from the new outbursts of violence, panicked leaders in Turkey and Syria and revived memories of bloody American struggles to wrest the same places — Mosul and Tikrit — from jihadist fighters a decade ago.

By late Wednesday, the Sunni militants, many aligned with the radical Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, were battling loyalist forces at the northern entrance to the city of Samarra, about 70 miles north of Baghdad. The city is known for a sacred Shiite shrine that was bombed in 2006, during the height of the American-led occupation, touching off a sectarian civil war between the Sunni minority and Shiite majority.

Militant commanders were reportedly threatening to destroy the shrine if its defenders refused to lay down their arms, while hundreds of Shiite fighters were said to be heading north from Baghdad to confront the attackers.
That's about where the line will be drawn. The Shi'a aren't going to allow Sunni terrorists into the land that traditionally has been theirs. The government may not fight but the Shi'a militias will.
As Iraqi government forces crumbled in disarray before the assault, there was speculation that they may have been ordered by their superiors to give up without a fight. One local commander in Salahuddin Province, where Tikrit is located, said in an interview Wednesday: "We received phone calls from high-ranking commanders asking us to give up. I questioned them on this, and they said, 'This is an order.' "

Residents of Tikrit reported remarkable displays of soldiers handing over their weapons and uniforms peacefully to militants who ordinarily would have been expected to kill government soldiers on the spot.

Mr. Maliki, a Shiite, himself suggested the possibility of a disloyal military in his exhortations on Tuesday for citizens to take up arms against the Sunni insurgents.

As the central government declared a 10 p.m. curfew in the capital and surrounding towns, an influential Iraqi Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, called for the formation of a special force to defend religious sites in Iraq. The authorities in neighboring Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, canceled all visas and flights for pilgrims to Baghdad and intensified security on the Iran-Iraq border, Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

Shiite militia leaders said that at least four brigades, each with 2,500 to 3,000 fighters, had been hastily assembled and equipped in recent weeks by the Shiite political parties to protect Baghdad and the political process in Iraq. They identified the outfits as the Kataibe Brigade, the Assaib Brigade, the Imam al-Sadr Brigade and the armed wing of the Badr Organization.
There you go. I'm only surprised that these militias had to be "hastily" reassembled -- I would have thought they would have been assembled and just laying low, keeping their powder dry...
Residents of Baiji, a city of 200,000 about 110 miles south of Mosul, awoke Wednesday to find that government checkpoints had been abandoned and that insurgents, arriving in a column of 60 vehicles, were taking control of parts of the city without firing a shot, the security officials said. Peter Bouckaert, the emergency services director for Human Rights Watch, said in a post on Twitter that the militants had seized the Baiji power station, which supplies electricity to Baghdad, Kirkuk and Salahuddin Province.

In Tikrit, residents said the militants attacked in the afternoon from three directions: east, west and north. They said there were brief exchanges of gunfire, and then police officers and soldiers shed their uniforms, put on civilian clothing and fled through residential areas to avoid the militants.

"They did not kill the soldiers or policemen who handed over their weapons, uniform and their military ID," a security official in Tikrit, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Wednesday. "They just took these things and asked them to leave."

On Wednesday, the insurgents claimed to have taken control of the entire province of Nineveh, Agence France-Presse reported, and there were reports of militants executing government soldiers in the Kirkuk region. Atheel al-Nujaifi, the governor of the province, criticized the Iraqi army commanders in Mosul, saying they had misled the government about the situation in the city.
Posted by:Steve White

#12  I have reason to question the 800 figure.

I read somewhere that reinforcements have been streaming in from Syria.
Posted by: Squinty   2014-06-12 22:53  

#11  I have reason to question the 800 figure. In other news sources a former US general mentioned how ISIL is using "conventional" military tactics and attacking Iraqi Army positions in "company and battalion sized units."

If they can do that, ISIL has a hell of a lot more men than 800 and some of the pictures on Drudge of ISIL driving HumVees in convoys looks like a lot more than 800. Can we propose the news accounts are designed to impugn the training efforts of the last administration.
Posted by: Bill Clinton   2014-06-12 22:36  

#10  Iraq had a trained force of something like 800,000? They have been routed by 800? The militants do not have unrealistic ROEs to slow them down it seems.
Posted by: JohnQC   2014-06-12 21:18  

#9  Well, for Belmont Club, read the whole thing: The Day Of Reckoning

There’s nothing in place available to stop al-Qaeda. The forces that might have are locked up in the Southwest Asia, sustained at the mercy of Russia and Pakistan. Obama has been faked out; the AQ have gone around him for a layup to the basket. He may lose Iraq and its border with Syria before the year ends. Afghanistan’s fall will follow almost immediately thereafter, behind the last American troops, whose safe exit from the landlocked country is now by no means guaranteed. The Russians lost more than 500 men going out in 1989 — and they only had to cross a land border a short distance away.

The only way things could be worse is for US troops in Afghanistan find themselves trapped, denied passage by Pakistan or Russia. Of course that could never happen because the press never considers the possibility and it considers Obama too “respected” for that to occur.

When you add in the Eastern European crisis and the growing expansion of China to the Middle Eastern collapse, it is not hard to see the obvious. Unless a miracle saves Obama, the nation will be facing a global and existential security crisis within a short time. America will face a supercharged Islamic terrorism with thousands of recruits in the West available as a 5th Column, supplied with vast amounts of money and in potential possession of most of the worldÂ’s oil. For how long until Saudi ArabiaÂ’s Islamic children eat its parents?

And that's just the beginning of a righteous rant that ends with Hillary (!). RTWT.
Posted by: KBK   2014-06-12 20:06  

#8  Maybe so - from Belmont Club:

The Tweets tell of a monumental collapse. ”Jesus. “30,000 men – simply turned and ran in the face of the assault by an insurgent force of just 800 fighters … Surreal scenes in #Mosul, #Iraq as US trained troops leave behind their uniforms and flee from #ISIS to #Kurdistan. ”
Posted by: KBK   2014-06-12 18:36  

#7  It seems a proxy war Saudi Arabia Versus Iran.

Which side should Mr Obama support?
Posted by: Slinelet Pelosi7787   2014-06-12 18:29  

#6  60 vehicles? So 500 jihadi routed a so-called army of "900,000" and a city of 200,000? That's some fierce mofo's.
Posted by: KBK   2014-06-12 18:19  

#5  The target rich environment would be tempting--just saying.
Posted by: JohnQC   2014-06-12 15:43  

#4  To equalize the Karma it is required that a Republican Congress cut off all aid to a corrupt and dying Iraqi regime. I can see the V-22s on the roof now.
Posted by: Shipman   2014-06-12 15:40  

#3  Maliki was playing footsie with Iran. Looks like his Sunni Arab neighbors objected.
Posted by: Squinty   2014-06-12 15:31  

#2  Obama talked today about possibly providing equipment and assistance. The Iraqis have abandoned what we gave them. We provided plenty of assistance during the nation building effort before we left.
Posted by: JohnQC   2014-06-12 15:07  

#1  Oil prices will go through the roof.
Posted by: Bubba Graiting8281   2014-06-12 14:41  

00:00