Short Analysis:
I put this on top because I feel it is very, very important. It talks about the escape of a Shia recruit from Daash in Tikrit during the Spykar base massacre by playing dead. His captors are merciless takfiris, who don’t think twice about killing the Shia.
The beginning of his account is depressing and tragic, but what he talks about later is nothing short of amazing and touching. Sunni families give this Shia boy shelter, fear for their lives and guide him to another Sunni Tribe. There they help him hide, feed him, provide him with fake identification, and secure him to the north. They have done this for a number of Shia men, running an Underground Railroad.
These are honourable people, honourable Arabs, honourable Muslims, honourable Sunnis, honourable Iraqis. These are the people who will build Iraq and who are, in my opinion, loved by God:
http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/a-great-will-to-live-how-one-man-survived-an-islamic-state-massacre-586566?pfrom=home-topstories
4th Sep: Hadi Al Ameri, Minister of Transport in the earlier Iraqi Government and head of the Badr Organization that had mobilised its forces to fight Daash, states that the Peshmergas are not a constitutional entity, and that they need to withdraw from all areas that are disputed between Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan. He states that he will work with the Iraqi Army to make sure that Baghdad controls these areas including Kirkuk.
The Kurdistan Regional Government has stated that it will not withdraw from any of its positions nor that it had any plans to do so.
4th Sep: A car bombing in the north of Baghdad, Kadhimiya suburb, kills 9 people and leaves 45 others injured.
A second car bombing hits Baghdad’s Sadoun Street killing one and injuring 10
4th Sep: A car bombing in Ramadi targets Iraqi troops, kills one soldier and injured two. It was a suicide car bombing targeting an Iraqi army armoured personnel carrier.
4th Sep: A car bomb in Kirkuk goes off outside a shop selling alcohol; casualties unknown.
4th Sep: Syrian national and assistant to Baghdadi, Abu Hajer, is killed in a government air strike in Mosul.
4th Sep: Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Secretary General of NATO States that it will consider any request for assistance made by Iraq.
4th Sep: Interpol picks up a wanted individual in Erbil Iraqi Kurdistan. The individual is wanted for drug trafficking.
4th Sep: The Iraqi Ministry of Justice announces plans to extend amnesty to prisoners that had escaped Badush prison in Mosul. The prison had been stormed by Daash. Many prisoners are reported to be turning themselves in.
4th Sep: Ashti Hawrami, Minster of Natural Resources in Iraqi Kurdistan, States that the damaged caused to Baiji refinery by Daash fighters will take over a year to fix.
4th Sep: Iraq and BP sign a fresh deal over the Rumaila Gas Fields. The production of the giant fields is expected to fall to 2.1 million bpd from the current 2.85 bpd.
4th Sep: Profiting from Misery: Turkey announces that it has received more than 10 million barrels of crude oil from Kurdistan.
4th Sep: Ibrahim Al Jaafari, President of the National Alliance, is tipped to become the next Vice President of Iraq.
5th Sep: Al Manar is reporting an attempted deal where Israel tried to pay a 10 million USD ransom for Steven Sotloff:
http://www.almanar.com.lb/english/adetails.php?eid=169321&cid=41&fromval=1&frid=41&seccatid=101&s1=0
5th Sep: Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq’s Outgoing Foreign Minister, clarifies that there are no Iranian troops in Iraq.
5th Sep: Daash executes three women in Mosul
5th Sep: A car bomb outside Speicher Base targeting a military convoy kills 3 soldiers and injures 9 others
5th Sep: The Iraqi Army is preparing a major push for Northern Mosul
5th Sep: A mortar attack on Northern Baghdad leaves 2 dead and 5 injured
5th Sep: A loosing Daash, loosing its appeal: Indian authorities return 4 engineering students/dropouts who planned to travel to Iraq and fight for Daash to their families. The students claim they were influenced by propaganda online.
Related:
5th Sep: Al Nusra Front releases a video showing captured Lebanese soldiers being made to denounce Hizballah:
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/nusra-releases-video-lebanese-abductees-denouncing-hezbollah
5th Sep: Who won in Syria? Bashar Al Assad. The West only talks to/respects winners:
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/09/syria-us-islamic-state-cooperation-terror-assad-italy.html
Further Reading:
Interesting:
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/politics/2014/09/turkey-usa-iraq-syria-isis-fuller.html
Do you think if this soldier was a sunni it would make any difference?
Thank you, Mindfriedo. Could you please post links, wherever possible, to some of your news. E.g. I’d like to know more about the Indian engineering students wanting to join ISIS.
Top item Tumbl’d, with a few personal observations about sectarianism, and the similarity between ISIS and Zionism
http://auntieimperial.tumblr.com/post/96713756624
What a heart-breaking mess? Btw, where is Tony Blair? Still searching for WMDs or advising Al-Sisi
. . . .
But that off-shoot of AQ, — now rebranded IS; ISIS, ISIL, Daash – – -who are their sponsors on funding and training? How about the Same old, same old master with a little help from allies.
Do you suppose it’s all a ruse?
(a) to bomb Syria, depose Assad. David Came-ro-moron stated UK does not need Assad’s permission for air strikes in Syria
(b) leverage a return to Iraq. We will show you some cruelty, the extent of our reach; should have signed the Status of Forces Agreement, give our soldiers immunity. We need to protect our oil fields and our 104-acre Embassy compound.
~ ~ ~
AM
Excellent! That Al-Monitor article on Syrian-Western cooperation on the ISIS situation is fascinating. The conclusion is right in a way. It says Syria has to give the US something to get a deal. Well, I’d say Syria has to appear to give something and they’ll get a deal.
If there is a joint Western-Syrian response to ISIS, then the conflict in Syria changes significantly to Syria’s benefit.
QUESTION: The US was training rebels in Jordan about 12 months ago. The trained group went into Syria from the south and were beaten. Were any of these US trained folks ISIS members? I’d love a good source or two on that. Thanks!
Maybe something is being cooked right now.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-09-05/meanwhile-skies-above-isis-capital
Great news here (choke):
NEWPORT, September 5 (RIA Novosti) – The United States, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and a further six countries should form an international coalition to fight the Islamic State (IS) extremist group, the US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Friday at the NATO Summit in Wales.
“This group here this morning is the core coalition. It is the core group that will form the larger and extended coalition that’s going to be required to deal with this challenge,” Hagel told the defense ministers of the 10 countries involved. The other countries comprising Canada, Australia, Turkey, Italy, Poland, and Denmark.
“We need to attack them in ways that prevent them from taking over territory, to bolster the Iraqi security forces and others in the region who are prepared to take them on, without committing troops of our own,” stressed US Secretary of State John Kerry, who was also present at the meeting.
http://en.ria.ru/world/20140905/192677010/US-Urges-10-NATO-Nations-to-Form-Coalition-Against-Islamic-State.html
It’s almost like we’ve got ADHD, fergawdsakes. Just can’t keep focused on one place long enough to totally destroy it before we distracted by somewhere else. I wouldn’t recommend Ritalian though; more like the international equivalent of a (permanent) straitjacket.
@Nora: It’s almost like we’ve got ADHD, fergawdsakes. Just can’t keep focused on one place long enough to totally destroy it before we distracted by somewhere else. I wouldn’t recommend Ritalian though; more like the international equivalent of a (permanent) straitjacket.
Hahaha ~:)
Classical Witty Nora ~:)
Best regards,
Mohamed.
Salam,
about this story of the young Shia protected by Sunni people: my heart rejoices that there are honourable people in the Arab-Muslim world who are able to take distance from all the hate generating propaganda. We are Muslims, we should act as brothers, whether Shia or Sunni. Dividing us is the basic policy of the kafirun. We should resist that in all occasions.
Salam
For MC
the first one was also covered by RT
http://beforeitsnews.com/politics/2014/08/former-cia-contractor-isil-completely-fabricated-enemy-by-us-2647456.html
http://1newsjunkie.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/snowden-bombshell-isis-leader-ciami5.html
Snowden file on the net cover this
@Mindfriedo,
Salam,
THE JUST GOD
It is good that we both agreed on the definition of Freewill and Predestination.
I left you the final (one more) post in the “Who Are The Boko Haram?” thread.
The concept of Just God, which is the Second Pillar of Shia Islam, is very much difficult for me to explain and or understand.
Let us take The Just God under the concept of Freewill vs. Predestination. The definition of Islam is that our wills are subservient to the Will of God. If we willing submit our wills to the Will of God, then our wills are in Salam (Peace) with the Will of God.
iSLaM and SaLaM, is the same root SLM.
Let us say that a farmer plows his field, saws his seeds, does all the work and then waits for the rain. He waits for the Providence. No rain and his family goes hungry. Under The Just God, he with his Freewill did his part, but the God in His Will decided no rain. The farmer is not responsible and it is God’s responsibility to take care of the farmer and his family in some other way.
Take another farmer in another town. Under his Freewill the farmer decided not to do anything with his fields. The Providence comes and it rains like cats. The farmer has no food and he with his family goes hungry. Here, the farmer is responsible for his deeds.
Thus, I never try to quote Quran and Hadiths. Each verse of Quran has at least 7 meanings, and Hadiths have multiple meanings too.
Very rarely, I quote Quran to people of other religions. LOL! Maybe, understatement of the year! ~:)
Best regards,
Mohamed.
@Mindfriedo,
Salam,
THE JUST GOD
Food For Though!
Let us take two girls, one Shia girl and Hindu girl. The Shia girl worship Allah and the Hindu girl worship idols. Though in reality the Hindus are monotheist too.
Both these girls are good. They honor their parents, they are good to mankind, they give charity and perform their religious duties on time.
They both come to The Just God on the Judgement Day.
How will The Just God decide between them?
Best regards,
Mohamed.
@Mindfriedo,
Salam,
Food For Thought!
Under Maliki the Iraqi troops were incompetent. Under Abadi within 2 weeks, they have become competent and beating the asses of ISIS?
Best regards,
Mohamed.
@Anon Mongoose:
No, Mongoose, you’re not alone. I’ve suspected exactly the same thing from the start myself. Most people at MoonOfAlabama think so, too.
It is pretty plain that the Real Evil Empire intends to use attacking IS as a pretext to attack the Syrian Government. They are clearly not hitting their creation IS hard, bombing a few abandoned vehicles for propaganda purposes. And already some of the more belligerent amongst the psychopaths who comprise the US ruling ‘elite’ are openly declaring that ‘Syrian targets’ will be bombed, and that Syrian permission is not required.
This, of course, is against international law (ha, ha!)and Syrian resistance will be the pretext for a massive bombing campaign that will, tragic ‘mistake’, bomb IS to power in Syria. If the Syrians produce no pretext, the psychopaths will invent one, a la Tonkin Gulf and numerous other occasions. The filth of the Western MSM sewer will loyally peddle the lies, of that you can be sure.
US military contractors on plane forced to make abrupt landing in Iran
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/05/us-military-plane-land-iran-charter-contractors
Iran ‘backs US military contacts’ to fight Islamic State
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-29079052
re: China
@Alientech „Well at least the Chinese dont bully you. They are not all that much better than the American bosses but the Chinese do consider your culture and sensitivity. „
I have some reasons to believe that the Chinese mindset is different:
reason number 1: my personal experience.
After a 30-years good (and still ongoing) relationship with a Chinese family all of us have drawn the conclusion that their mindset is very different from ours. I do not want to repeat the detailed explanation that I posted ~1 week ago but the gist of our understanding was that the Chinese mindset respects only strength. They believe that they are not responsible for others, only for themselves and if somebody is weak he is automatically prey for them. And they consider their own feeling of racial superiority as patriotism. @ Larchmonter: I was very interested in your answer and I posted ~ the following reply: „You feel that you have met sensitive and caring people in the PRC: I believe that if you had come as a Tibetan or an Uighur your reception would have been very different.“
reason number 2: my experience with a Tibetan support organization.
I was for some years responsible for the newsbulletin of a Tibet-support organisation and I had access to a lot of information. I also met enough people who had visited Tibet itself and I visited Tibetan refugees in India myself. All these sources of information said the same thing, namely that China is colonizing a conquered country with extreme brutality. So far the PRC has sent 15 million Han to Tibet so that the Tibetans (6 million) have become a minority in their own country. The Tibetan culture, language and tradition is being purposely and completely destroyed, and the Tibetans who want to save their culture are being persecuted, shot, put into prisons and systematically tortured. This is known to all Tibet-supporting organisations in the world.
Reason number 3: two statistics.
You can probably imagine that I’ve been very interested in Chinese culture all of my life. And during my Tibet-support years I found out that the mindset of the Han of the PRC was very close to the mindset of the family that we befriended (btw they are a very interesting people – but extremely dangerous too). But the 2 statistics I found very illuminating are the following which you can check at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_minorities_in_China :
– more than half of the the territory of the PRC is made up of territories conquered over the last ~2000 years. You can convince yourself by having a quick look at the map of the „minorities languages“ or you can delve into their history.
– Now if more than 50% of the territories are conquered lands, what part of the population would you expect the minorities to be? You may look it up in the same article of Wikipedia or you may check it elsewhere: it’s around 8%. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions but I will add that this confirms my other personal experiences.
All comments are welcome.
@ from India said
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Four-Hyderabad-students-who-planned-to-join-ISIS-in-Iraq-picked-up-by-police/articleshow/41798385.cms
http://www.deccanchronicle.com/140905/nation-current-affairs/article/four-hyderabad-boys-who-planned-fight-isis-arrested-kolkata
http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/four-hyderabad-students-planned-to-fight-with-isis-police-587204
Regards
Mindfriedo
@Joe6pac
Thanks for those leads. Helpful. Good to see you again!
“It talks about the escape of a Shia recruit from Daash in Tikrit during the Spykar base massacre by playing dead. His captors are merciless takfiris, who don’t think twice about killing the Shia.
The beginning of his account is depressing and tragic, but what he talks about later is nothing short of amazing and touching. Sunni families give this Shia boy shelter, fear for their lives and guide him to another Sunni Tribe. There they help him hide, feed him, provide him with fake identification, and secure him to the north. They have done this for a number of Shia men, running an Underground Railroad.”
Thanks for bringing attention to this, Mindfriedo, and thanks for the sitrep, as well.
вот так
Thanks for your sit reps Mindfriedo.
Its very hard for me to start rejoicing on the supposedly beginning of the end of Daash.
It appears to me that they have vastly served their purpose very well such as:
1) Portraying an evil and barbaric picture of Islam and Muslims in the world with all the media coverage they got esp. unlimited access rights on the Twitter.
2) Deepening of sectarian and tribal divides in the country.
3) Empowering Kurds and Peshmergas every more and providing them a chance to acquire more territories under their control very conveniently ”under the cover of US airstrikes”. I can easily remember that Netanyahu very openly supported an independent and sovereign Kurdistan not so long ago.
4) Enabling US and NATO to re-enter IRAQ again for second invasion. As you mentioned, there is already a steady increase in ” advisors”.
On top of it all, the political situation isn’t improving at a fast enough rate. I am sorry but I can’t see Iraq surviving as an entity as it was before. The Yonen plan appears to be on track.
I would be most happy to see it not happening but I don’t have enough reasons on ground to remain optimistic.
Thank you, Mindfriedo. Very much appreciate the information.
@Nora – terrifically funny and apt observation.
Pat
I read this story in a Dutch newspaper, one of the many that is built on anecdotes and not supported by evidence. Normally these stories are taken from an American source and only serve one goal: to show how muslims (we have generally know idea that there are differences) are barbaric and we should start bombing the middle east as soon as possible. And already start the divide: Shia is bad, Sunni is good; Serbians are bad, Kosovarians are good; Russians are bad, Ukrainians are good, Egyptian soldiers rape babies, the opposition does no harm etc.
The story itself is hard to believe as I have seen the movies from ISIS where they make absolutely sure that everyone is dead, and continue shooting until no one moves anymore. The guy also claims that the guy in the picture is him, but we don’t really know.
Think this article is a “Keeper”. What do you think?
http://rt.com/op-edge/185360-reuters-chief-iraq-useless/
For whatever it’s worth, you especially (Saker) and Orlov, have become the go to sources for what’s up in Ukraine.
Congrats and keep up the good work…
Cheers
@NotSoFast re: China (specifically Tibet)
Tibet ‘liberation’ was one of the first CIA operations even as it was metastased (politely… ‘metamorphed’) from the corpse of the OSS. I had the good fortune to know a commentator who traveled the region in the days when ‘beatniks’ and hipster adventurers ran free and wild.
[March 18 2008] Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: No Angels – Tibet, Genocide, The Dalai Lama, And The CIA
The rest of his commentaries about Tibet at Archive.org.
In the Middle East, infighting doesn’t “begin”, because it never stopped in the first place.
How else can a tiny, 6-million-people country without any resourses consistently defeat 300 million-strong adversary?
By playing one tribe against another, with very preictable result.d
People what do you think of this write-up? Is Khan a major monkey-wrench for Saudi Arabia?
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article47225.html
Also wepollock on youtube emphasizes keeping an eye on pakistan developments.. I think you need to have a siterep from pakistan, Saker!
@Anonymous said: I think you need to have a siterep from pakistan, Saker!
Dearest Anonymous,
How True!
Yes, Pakistan and Nawaz Sharif.
I hope Mindfriedo more to concentrate on the above, rather than on Iraq.
Best regards,
Mohamed.
The two big problems for Saudi Arabia are Kingdom of Bahrain and Houtis in Yemen.
And, then Israel has to learn to live with its neighbors. The neighbors of Israel are not Europeans but Semites.
An image of US Senator John McCain in Syria in April 2013 has generated controversy for claims that it pictures him with ISIS member Mohammad Nour and even ISIS leader Baghdadi himself. Some have cast doubt on whether the man in the photograph is Baghdadi, but the man does bear an uncanny resemblance to the official picture of Baghdadi on the State Department “Rewards for Justice” website.
Just like Osama Bin Ladens picture with ZB and even inviting some of them to the white house.