Syria War and Iran Backed Shiite Government of Maliki to Blame

11 Comments

1. 

   Oui on June 13, 2014 at 1:43 pm

   Obama: No ground troops in Iraq  (Video)

   (CNBC) – Faced with a jihadist insurgency crisis in Iraq, President Barack Obama said Friday he would not be putting U.S. troops on the ground and that any other decisions will take days of planning.

   “Although events on the ground in Iraq have been happening very quickly, our ability to plan … is going to take several days, so people should not anticipate that this is something that is going to happen overnight,” Obama said in a nationally broadcast address at the White House.

   Obama’s overarching message was that he would prefer to rely on a political solution that involved Iraqi leaders making concerted efforts to overcome sectarian divides.

   Obama reflected on the U.S.’s decade of involvement in Iraq, saying that oil-rich country had been provided an opportunity “to claim their own future” at the expense of American soldiers and taxpayers, but its leaders had been unable to overcome sectarian disagreements that have long plagued the region. Because of this, the president said, the current crisis in Iraq “is not solely or even primarily a military challenge,” but a situation calling for “intensive diplomacy.”

   ISIS militants steal $450M, advance on Baghdad

   Militants also marched into the towns of Saadiyah and Jalawla in the eastern province of Diyala after security forces abandoned their posts early on Friday, security sources told Reuters.

   ISIS declared Shariah law was in effect in the areas they controlled, outlawed other forms of Islamic worship and ordered women to wear the hijab – a traditional Muslim head and body covering. They also declared that no other armed forces would be tolerated except ISIS.

   ○ Oil demand to jump as Iraq pushes prices higher
2. 

   Marie2 on June 13, 2014 at 8:08 pm

   From the observant eyes of Robert Fisk:
   Iraq Crisis: Created by Bush & Blair and Bankrolled by Saudi Arabia: “Bush and Blair said Iraq was a war on Islamic fascism. They lost”

   So after the grotesquerie of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 suicide killers of 9/11, meet Saudi Arabia’s latest monstrous contribution to world history: the Islamist Sunni caliphate of Iraq and the Levant, conquerors of Mosul and Tikrit – and Raqqa in Syria – and possibly Baghdad, and the ultimate humiliators of Bush and Obama.

   From Aleppo in northern Syria almost to the Iraqi-Iranian border, the jihadists of Isis and sundry other groupuscules paid by the Saudi Wahhabis – and by Kuwaiti oligarchs – now rule thousands of square miles.

   Apart from Saudi Arabia’s role in this catastrophe, what other stories are to be hidden from us in the coming days and weeks?
   …

   Have been asking myself the same question for the past few days.  Have made note of the fact that one accomplishment for the Sunni/SA forces in the Syrian conflict was getting Erdogan to move away from Syria and by extension Iran. [Fisk doesn’t mention this regional player.]  So who will get in bed with whom?  

   If the Kurds have the backs of the Sunni/SA forces and Turkey stays on the sidelines, the US need do nothing unless or until Maliki is gone and it’s a fight between Sunni Iraq and Syria and Iran.    

   • 

     Oui on June 13, 2014 at 11:28 pm

     During the presidency of George Bush and Dick Cheney, crown prince and later King Abdullah of SA became furieus with the Americans for the decision to invade Iraq. Abdullah joined Mubarak in warning of the coming catastrophy and the power vacuum to be filled by the Iran backed Shiites. Saudi Arabia supplied funds and arms to Iraq’s Sunni faction to withstand the militants of Sadr’s forces. This increased the ethnic strife in Anbar province and Baghdad and a continuous flow of Sunni militants placing bombs in Shia neighborhoods and mosques/holy places. The Wahhabist extremism also purged the Christians, forced the nijab on women and closed down theaters and shops selling alcoholic beverages.

     The turmoil of the Sunni-Shia religious war spread across all of the greater Middle-East. The stupidity of the western powers and the Obama administration was to fuel division by the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya and the attempted coup in Assad’s Syria. Where chaos could be created, the US administration got support from allies Turkey and Israel. Both of these two states are able and willing to unleash their great military power when they feel threatened.

     As far as the observant eye of Robert Fisk, he quite often reports events in Lebanon and Syria with a bias. This does not discredit him as most reporting and blogging is done with a personal bias.

     ○ Obama Sidelined on Syria, Hollande and King Abdullah Deliver Arms to Syrian Rebels
     ○ US Will Be Ousted by Saudi King Abdullah in Middle-East  by Oui on Feb. 27, 2013
     ○ The Saudi-Israeli Alliance and Piggy-back Coup of 2005

     • 

       Marie2 on June 14, 2014 at 1:46 am

       Robin Yassin-Kassab’s report could hardly be considered unbiased.  Also wrong in stating as of 2011 that the Assad regime can’t survive.  The final graf is advocacy jounalism:

       With nothing except the very welcome rhetorical support of the Turks and the Arab League to help them, against the opposition of imperialist Russia and sectarian Iran, and in the face of the tanks and gangs of a brutal torture state, Syrian revolutionaries are continuing their fight.

       And erroneous as Syrian rebels received far more then “rhetorical support” from other governments.

       wrt to Robert Fisk, having slogged my way through his 1,100 page The Great War for Civilisation …, I have a good sense of what I can trust from him.  He does tend to be taken in my “the ladies.”  In real time his reporting is accurate enough and very good in describing what he sees.  He’s good at historical analysis but not so good in real time.  For projections, I look to other writers.

       In the run-up to the Iraq War, the Saudis were publicly silent.  As were the oil companies.  I read the latter as either not being on board or not wanting to tip their hand.  Read the Saudis as not on board or opposed, but not fiercely opposed.  The oil-Bush-Saudi connection is too long-standing for a Bush to have ignored strenuous Saudi objections.  Unless, GWB/Cheney had a trump card that neither they nor the Saudis wanted played.

       Team Obama was definitely stupid in fueling the Libyan and Syrian conflicts.  Naive in their attempt to curry favor with SA and Israel.  The Saudis (IMHO) are the most sophisticated, duplicitous, and wealthiest player among all the parties.  Always there and cast as little of a shadow as possible.      

3. 

   Oui on June 14, 2014 at 5:39 am

   Although he missed the early analysis in these developments, Juan Cole has written some excellent articles about the Sunni resurgence in Syria and Iraq. He blames not only George Bush, but indicts Nouri al-Malaki, Saddam Hussein and western leaders after World War I for their colonial greed of the oil riches of Mesopotamia.

   The Fall of Mosul and the False Promises of Modern History

   Mosul’s changed circumstances are also an indictment of the irresponsible use to which Sunni fundamentalists in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Oil Gulf are putting their riches. The high petroleum prices, usually over $100 a barrel, of the past few years in a row, have injected trillions of dollars into the Gulf. Some of that money has sloshed into the hands of people who rather admired Usama Bin Laden and who are perfectly willing to fund his clones to take over major cities like Aleppo and Mosul. The vaunted US Treasury Department ability to stop money transfers by people whom Washington does not like, has faltered in this case. Is it because Washington is de facto allied with the billionaire Salafis of Kuwait City in Syria, where both want to see the Bashar al-Assad government overthrown and Iran weakened? The descent of the US into deep debt, and the emergence of Gulf states and sovereign wealth funds is a tremendous shift of geopolitical power to Riyadh, Kuwait City and Abu Dhabi, who can now simply buy Egyptian domestic and foreign policy away from Washington. They are also trying to buy a Salafi State of Syria and a Salafi state of northern and western Iraq.

   …
   It is also an indictment of the shameful European imperial scramble for the Middle East during and after WW I and the failed barracuda colonialism of the interwar period, as London and Paris sought oil and other resources, and strategic advantage, in areas they had promised the League of Nations they would prepare for independence.

   As the war was winding down it was clear that the Ottoman Empire would collapse. The French saw Mosul, with its oil wealth, as part of Syria. The British in New Delhi and in Cairo, for all their wrangling, agreed that it should be part of Iraq, which British and British Indian troops were conquering.

   When British Prime Minister Lloyd George met with French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau at Versailles, he was eager to push back French claims on Mosul. Since the British and their Arab allies had taken Damascus from the Ottomans, some wanted to renege on the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 altogether.

    « click for more info

   ○ Gulf/2000 Project: Maps and Statistics Collections

   ○ NY Times Op-Ed: Unity Through Autonomy in Iraq (2006)

   Biden-Gelb 5 point plan for Iraq – Senator Joe Biden and Leslie Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations developed a plan for Bosnia-style “federalism”–that is, the soft partition of Iraq into Sunni, Shia and Kurdish areas.

4. 

   Oui on June 14, 2014 at 2:24 pm

   Quite fitting, Obama sends aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush to the Persian Gulf …

   When will they ever Learn? America on Brink of another Military Engagement

   (Informed Comment) – America appears once again to be on the brink of a war. This time the war is likely to be in Syria and/or in Iraq. If we jump into one or both of these wars, they will join, by my count since our independence, about 200 significant military operations (not all of which were legally “wars”) as well as countless “proactive” interventions, regime-change undertakings, covert action schemes and search-and-destroy missions. In addition the United States has provided weapons, training and funding for a variety of non-American military and quasi-military forces throughout the world. Within recent months we have added five new African countries. History and contemporary events show that we Americans are a warring people.

   So we should ask: what have we learned about ourselves, our adversaries and the process in which we have engaged? The short answer appears to be “very little.”

   As both a historian and a former policy planner for the American government, I will very briefly here (as I have mentioned in a previous essay, I am in the final stages of a book to be called A Warring People, on these issues), illustrate what I mean by “very little.”

   I begin with us, the American people. There is overwhelming historical evidence that war is popular with us. Politicians from our earliest days as a republic, indeed even before when we were British colonies, could nearly always count on gaining popularity by demonstrating our valor. Few successful politicians were pacifists.

   Even supposed pacifists found reasons to engage in the use of force. Take the man most often cited as a peacemaker or at least a peaceseeker, Woodrow Wilson. He promised to “keep us out of war,” by which he meant keeping us out of big, expensive European war. Before becoming president, however, he approved the American conquest of Cuba and the Philippines and described himself as an imperialist; then, as president, he occupied Haiti, sent the Marines into the Dominican Republic and ordered the Cavalry into Mexico.

   ○ For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America  bij Peter Maslowski and Allan R. Millett
   ○ IHS Janes’360: Militant group ISIL’s advances threatening Baghdad will accelerate re-emergence of Shia militias
   ○ The Second Iran-Iraq War and the American Switch

5. 

   Oui on June 14, 2014 at 4:34 pm

   [Added to Gaianne’s post @ET – Oui]

   In the eighties, the Reagan administration joined with Pakistan, ISI and Saudi Arabia to support jihadists from Arab nations to fight the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden became involved organizing these foreign fighters in the AfPak region of Waziristan (Northern Territories). OBL founded al-Qaeda and Dr. Zawahiri of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood joined forces forming a formidable terror organization in the nineties.

   Indeed, the CIA and ISI gave support, funds and arms to these foreign fighters opening training camps and creating a legion of 40,000 jihadists. Among these fighters were citizens from Tunesia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. After the Soviets were defeated giving rise to the Taliban in Afghanistan, many fighters returned to their homeland or joined OBL in Sudan. The blow-back has been experienced ever since. OBL lost his Saudi citizenship, was purged from Sudan and moved to Afghanistan with his group.

   The uprising in Libya against Gaddafi was supported by al-Qaeda veterans and CIA linked Libyans living in the US. See info about present developments in my diary – Reagan’s CIA Man In Libya Now Employed by Obama.

   After the overthrow in Libya, thousands of jihadists moved to northern Syria to join the holy war against Assad and took over what started as a protest and uprising in Homs. The US with its GCC allies moved tons of munitions and weapons from Libya to Syria through territory of NATO ally Turkey and Jordan. Indeed the arms send to the Free Syrian Army were transferred to terror group al-Nusra front who fought for some months in a joint effort with forces from ISIS or ISIL.

   Indeed it’s legitimate to see the US allied to Al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan and the AQ affiliates fighting for “democracy” in Libya and now in Syria. Obama abruptly changed policy towards Syria last September – Obama Nixes Close Foreign Policy Advisors.

   ○ Jerusalem Post: Salafist Groups Forging Al-Qaida Base in Syria
   ○ Revisited: Engineering ‘People’s Revolutions’ – A Color?

   Cross-posted from my new diary – Syria War and Shiite Government of Maliki to Blame.

   • 

     Oui on June 15, 2014 at 8:54 am

     Robert Dreyfuss, a Nation contributing editor, is an investigative journalist specializing in politics and national security. He is the author of Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam and is a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone, The American Prospect and Mother Jones.

     Carter, Bzrezinski and the Soviet-Afghan War of the ’80s

     In 1979 the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA was launched in Afghanistan:

     “With the active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI, who wanted to turn the Afghan Jihad into a global war waged by all Muslim states against the Soviet Union, some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 40 Islamic countries joined Afghanistan’s fight between 1982 and 1992. Tens of thousands more came to study in Pakistani madrasahs. Eventually, more than 100,000 foreign Muslim radicals were directly influenced by the Afghan jihad.” (Ahmed Rashid, “The Taliban: Exporting Extremism“, Foreign Affairs, November-December 1999).

     This project of the US intelligence apparatus was conducted with the active support of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), which was entrusted in channelling covert military aid to the Islamic brigades and financing, in liason with the CIA, the madrassahs and Mujahideen training camps.

     U.S. government support to the Mujahideen was presented to world public opinion as a “necessary response” to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in support of the pro-Communist government of Babrak Kamal.

     ○ Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia  by Ahmed Rashid

     Same U.S. policy in Bosnia, Iraq, Libya and Syria: using militants and war lords for regime change, ending in chaos.

6. 

   Marie2 on June 15, 2014 at 12:37 am

   From David Ferguson at Raw Story, The seven people who need to STFU about Iraq right now

   1. Andrew Sullivan (from 2001)

   “The middle part of the country — the great red zone that voted for Bush — is clearly ready for war,” Sullivan wrote in the U.K.’s Sunday Times. “The decadent left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead — and may well mount a fifth column.”

   Shouldn’t he be exiled to “the great red zone” and denied continuation of his lifestyle that I know is far more decadent that mine or those I know?

   The other six are equally precious and Ferguson has some funny bits in the piece.  

   A second title for this piece would be “The seven people you need to spit on or throw your shoes at if you should encounter them on the street.”

7. 

   Oui on June 15, 2014 at 1:36 pm

   From Foreign Affairs issue Nov/Dec 1999: “The Taliban: Exporting Extremism” by Ahmed Rashid

   During the war against the Soviets, the few Deobandi Afghan groups that then existed were ignored. Across the border, however, the JUI used the war to set up hundreds of madrasahs in Pakistan’s Pushtun belt, offering Afghan refugees and young Pakistanis free education, food, shelter, and military training. These Deobandi madrasahs, however, were run by barely literate mullahs untutored in the original reformist Deobandi agenda. Saudi funds and scholarships brought them closer to ultraconservative Wahhabism.

   Still, the JUI remained politically isolated until Pakistan’s 1993 elections, when it allied itself with the victorious Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, becoming a part of her ruling coalition. For the first time the JUI gained access to the corridors of power, establishing close links with the army, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) and the Interior Ministry. In 1996 the Taliban handed control of training camps in Afghanistan over to JUI factions, thus enhancing their image among the new generation of Pakistani and Arab militants who studied there.

   BLOWBACK

   With the active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI, who wanted to turn the Afghan jihad into a global war waged by all Muslim states against the Soviet Union, some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 40 Islamic countries joined Afghanistan’s fight between 1982 and 1992. Tens of thousands more came to study in Pakistani madrasahs. Eventually more than 100,000 foreign Muslim radicals were directly influenced by the Afghan jihad.

   The camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan where they trained became virtual universities for promoting pan-Islamic radicalism in Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, Sudan, Jordan, the Philippines, and Bangladesh. Americans woke up to the danger only in 1993, when Afghan-trained Arab militants blew up the World Trade Center in New York, killing six people and injuring 1,000. The bombers believed that, just as Afghanistan had defeated one superpower — the Soviet Union — they would defeat a second.

   One of the main recruiters of Arab militants for the Afghan jihad was bin Ladin. As the richest and highest-ranking Saudi to participate in the struggle, he was heavily patronized by the ISI and Saudi intelligence. Bin Ladin left Afghanistan in 1990 but returned in May 1996. Soon he turned on his former patrons and issued his first “Declaration of Jihad” against the Saudi royal family and the Americans, whom he accused of occupying his homeland.

   Striking up a friendship with Umar, the Taliban chief, bin Ladin moved to Umar’s base in Kandahar in early 1997. Bin Ladin reunited and rearmed the Arab militants still remaining in Afghanistan after the war against the Soviets, creating the “055” brigade. The Taliban had no contact with Arab Afghans or pan-Islamic ideology until then. But Umar was quickly influenced by his new friend and became increasingly vociferous in his attacks on Americans, the United Nations, and the Saudis and other pro-Western Muslim regimes. Recent Taliban statements reflect a bin Ladin-style outrage, defiance, and pan-Islamism that the Taliban had never used before his arrival.

   After the August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the United States accused bin Ladin of financing terrorist camps in Somalia, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, and Afghanistan. A few days later, America fired cruise missiles at bin Ladin’s camps in eastern Afghanistan, killing nearly 20 militants but leaving his network unharmed. Washington demanded bin Ladin’s extradition; the Taliban refused to comply.

   Bin Ladin’s notoriety has created major problems for Pakistan and Saudi Arabia — two key American allies in the region who have recognized the Taliban government. Pakistan is reluctant to help the United States capture bin Ladin; the Saudi terrorist gives valuable help to the Kashmiris and the Jamiat-ul-Ulama-i-Islam (JUI) would protest if Islamabad was seen to do Washington’s bidding. Already in July the JUI issued death threats to all Americans in Pakistan, to be carried out if bin Ladin is extradited to the United States.

   Released Taliban military commander had operational ties  with OBL’s Arab “055” brigade

   Developments Arab Spring Egypt’s Revolt Explained

   (Booman Tribune) – CIA boosted Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in Egypt during the cold war years to break the influence of the Soviet Union. The MB was suppressed under Nasser (video) and left Egypt for Qatar, UAE and Saudi Arabia. Only in Qatar is the MB still welcome, the MB is outlawed in UAE and similarly in Saudi Arabia. The MB turned out to be a subversive militant organisation. Saudi Arabia, the guardian of the two sanctuaries of Islamic faith, is based on the pure Islamic belief of Wahhabism. Apparently Safalism is tolerated and funded/supported to spread the Islamic faith through mosques across the globe. The foreign preachers in Saudi funded Western mosques are homophobic, anti-Israel and against western culture. It’s the source for Muslim youth traveling to Chechnya, Yemen and Pakistan for jihad.

   ○ Fall and Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood

8. 

   Oui on June 16, 2014 at 10:47 am

   How an arrest in Iraq revealed Isis’s $2bn jihadist network

   (The Guardian) June 15, 2014 – Two days before Mosul fell to the Islamic insurgent group ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant), Iraqi commanders stood eyeballing its most trusted messenger. The man, known within the extremist group as Abu Hajjar, had finally cracked after a fortnight of interrogation and given up the head of ISIS’s military council.

   “He said to us, ‘you don’t realise what you have done’,” an intelligence official recalled. “Then he said: ‘Mosul will be an inferno this week’.’

   Several hours later, the man he had served as a courier and been attempting to protect, Abdul Rahman al-Bilawi, lay dead in his hideout near Mosul. From the home of the dead man and the captive, Iraqi forces hoovered up more than 160 computer flash sticks which contained the most detailed information yet known about the terror group.

   The treasure trove included names and noms de guerre of all foreign fighters, senior leaders and their code words, initials of sources inside ministries and full accounts of the group’s finances.

   “We were all amazed and so were the Americans,” a senior intelligence official told the Guardian. “None of us had known most of this information.”

   Officials, including CIA officers, were still decrypting and analysing the flash sticks when Abu Hajjar’s prophecy was realised. Isis swept through much of northern and central Iraq over three stunning days, seizing control of Mosul and Tikrit and threatening Kirkuk as three divisions of the Iraqi army shed their uniforms and fled.

   The capitulation of the military and the rapid advances of the insurgents have dramatically changed the balance of power in Iraq, crippled prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, allowed Kurdish forces to seize control of the disputed city of Kirkuk and galvanised a Shia fightback along sectarian lines, posing a serious threat to the region’s fragile geopolitics.

   ISIS executes hundreds of Iraq’s security forces

   On Sunday ISIS published photographs that appeared to show it capturing and killing dozens of Iraqi soldiers.

   ○ Al Arabya exclusive: Top ISIS leaders revealed
   ○ ISIS parades on outskirts of Baghdad
   ○ Hidden Hand of Saudi Arabia in the Levant