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| Iraq |
| Iraq's First Christian Brigade Formed to Battle IS |
| 2015-03-13 |
| [AnNahar] Iraq's first Christian-only brigade of regular forces graduated Thursday to help retake the community's towns and villages from the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... group. The new brigade will answer to the government of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, whose peshmerga fighters are playing a leading role in the war against the jihadists. Fighters paraded and jumped through fiery ...a single two-syllable word carrying connotations of both incoherence and viciousness. A fiery delivery implies an audience of rubes and yokels, preferably forming up into a mob... rings in front of Kurdish and Assyrian officials in the northwestern town of Fishkhabur, near the borders with Syria and ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... Most of Iraq's Christians lived in the Nineveh plain, an area between the main IS hub of djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... and the Kurdish capital of Arbil, before IS fighters swept in seven months ago. "Around 600 peshmerga from our Christian brothers in the Nineveh plain joined this course, which focused on physical training, military lectures and shooting exercises," said Abu Bakr Ismail, the commander of the training academy. "All the participants are volunteers... and want to liberate their land from IS and then protect it," the Kurdish special forces major general said. The new brigade is called the "Tiger Guards" and was formed out of the remnants of an Assyrian force first created in 2004 to protect churches in the region. Up to 100,000 Christians fled their homes overnight in early August when IS fighters who had already conquered large parts of Iraq thrust into areas controlled by the peshmerga. The exodus has been described as the worst disaster to befall the minority, which is one of the world's oldest Christian communities. Iraq's Christians have not traditionally had strong home-grown militias and adopted a low profile when sectarian violence flared across the country a decade ago. But those who haven't already fled the country have in recent months shown a willingness to take up arms and take their future into their own hands. Several other Christian groups have formed in recent months in northern Iraq. They do not fall under the peshmerga's command but are hosted and supported by Kurdistan. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #4 We might have overestimated the Peshmerga: How the Kurds still may fail |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2015-03-13 21:21 |
| #3 Jumping through burning hoops? What is this - a circus act? It's becoming clear why the Kurds were steamrolled by ISIS - they're almost as worthless as the Shiites. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2015-03-13 21:15 |
| #2 "During the past five thousand years, the Christainist Crusaders have not ceased in the ceaseless bloodletting in diverse, peaceful Moslem democracies." (part of next years prayer breakfast harangue) |
| Posted by: Anice Nim 2015-03-13 16:16 |
| #1 Expect a suitable comment by Mr. Obama at the next prayer breakfast. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2015-03-13 11:14 |