Iraq's top cleric sends subtle message to Maliki: step aside

مؤسسة الفرقان | الإصدار الرائع | على منهاج النبوة‬‎ Islamic State video wages psychological war on Iraqi soldiers Tue, Jul 29 09:22 AM EDT image By Michael Georgy BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Islamic State, the al Qaeda spin-off that seized wide swathes of Iraq almost unopposed last month, has released a video warning Iraqi soldiers who may still have some fight in them that they risk being rounded up en masse and executed. Iraq's army unraveled when the Sunni insurgents staged a lightning advance through northern towns and cities, building on territory their comrades captured earlier in the west of the country, a major OPEC oil producer. Thousands of soldiers fled, prompting Iraq's top cleric to call on compatriots to take up arms against the radical faction that has declared a mediaeval-style caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria and aims to march on the capital Baghdad. The 30-minute video clip, circulated during the holiday that marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, sheds light on what tactics the Islamic State is likely to employ as it presses ahead with its campaign. After sweeping through a town with quick-hit raids, the militants are filmed standing over dozens of terrified, handcuffed Iraqi soldiers. One fighter mocks a soldier for wearing civilian clothes over his uniform out of fear of being identified and killed. He pleads for mercy, to no avail. Then dozens of soldiers are led to a sandy desert pit. They are executed one by one - bullets from AK-47 assault rifles pumped into their heads. Not satisfied that all are dead, an Islamic State fighter makes one last round, opening fire again, one by one. Others are led to the edge of a river. Each one is shot in the head with a pistol and then shoved in, the executioner standing in a large pool of blood. #USA allows #Iraq 5000 more AGM-114 Hellfire. Already 780+ delivered in 2014 including 466+ in July. Iraq remains low on launch platforms PROMISES OF PARADISE The mission begins with an Islamic State commander firing up militants with promises that paradise in heaven awaits them if they take the city of Samarra, which is 100 km (62 miles) north of Baghdad and would be their next target in a southward push. He tells them that God "made us proud when he permitted us to go to jihad". It was not clear where or when the video was filmed. The footage features night-vision sequences, then shows fighters moving into a city in flat-bed trucks, and U.S-made Humvees seized during their surge through the north last month. The Islamic State convoys filmed include small tanks and heavy machine guns transported on trailers. Some fighters are on foot, darting towards government buildings on sandy roads. As the Islamic State gains ground small units in trucks pull up beside vehicles during daytime and open fire on passengers who lose control of their vehicles. Several militants walk up to a van and empty their AK-47s through the windows, to make sure the job is done. Then the camera focuses on Iraqi security forces in watchtowers. One by one they are picked off by Islamic State snipers, who seem to avoid heavy clashes and rely instead on quick, small operations combined with psychological warfare. An insurgent can be heard weeping in joy as he declares that Samarra now belongs to the group. Residents and security sources say Baghdad Shi'ite Muslim-led government remains in control of Samarra so this footage may have come from another city or town seized by the Islamic State. Nevertheless, it illustrates the thinking of the Islamic State, which aims to redraw the Middle East map although it appears to have paused its territorial thrust for now in favour of consolidating recent gains north of Samarra. On Tuesday, Islamic State militants blew up a strategic bridge connecting Samarra to the town of Tikrit to the north, severing the main route and a tunnel beneath it that was used by Iraqi military forces, a senior local police official said. Iraqi government troops have tried but failed to recapture Tikrit from the insurgents. Islamic State's sudden rise has worsened Sunni-Shi'ite sectarian tensions in Iraq, raising fears that the country will relapse into the dark days of civil war that peaked in 2006-2007. Shi'ite militias now rival the government army in their ability to confront the Sunni insurgents. After the soldiers are executed, the Islamic State video shows fighters blowing up Shi'ite shrines or bulldozing mosques, as well as residents of the town welcoming fighters. (Editing by Mark Heinrich) ========== A nation in peril - Iraq's struggle to hold together Sun, Jul 27 08:43 AM EDT image 1 of 5 By Dominic Evans BAGHDAD (Reuters) -

Salman Khaled has already lived through Baghdad's sectarian disintegration; with Iraq now splintering into Shi'ite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish regions, he says this time the survival of the country is at stake. "Things are really tense and it could get worse," said the 23-year-old Sunni Muslim student. "If the politicians continue as they are doing now, we are on the path to separation." When Khaled's father was shot dead by Shi'ite gunmen at the height of Baghdad's religious bloodshed seven years ago, his family took shelter in a Sunni neighborhood of the capital. They made their flight as violence forced apart communities that once mingled in the city. Today the family lives in the Adhamiya district, close to the Abu Hanifa mosque where one of Sunni Islam's most influential theologians is buried. At his home on an unpaved street, Khaled says he still feels secure in Adhamiya but he rarely goes to the rest of Baghdad where blast walls and security checkpoints hint at the fate of a fractured Iraq.

Iraq's latest - and gravest - crisis erupted when mostly Sunni fighters swept through the north last month. Now the jihadist black flag flies over of most of the country's Sunni Arab territory. Kurdish forces, exploiting the chance to take another step towards independence, seized the city of Kirkuk and nearby oilfields, leaving the Shi'ite-led government controlling only the capital region and the mainly Shi'ite south. The government is trying to reverse this de facto, three-way split of the country, but its reliance on Shi'ite militia and volunteers rather than the ineffectual national army has deepened sectarian mistrust without pushing the rebels back.

Across Baghdad a Sunni living in the Shi'ite area of Maalef, cut off from the rest of the city by a checkpoint where non-residents are turned back, said life there had become unbearable for those who do not belong to the majority Shi'ite community. "The Sunnis all want separation now," said the 37-year-old electrician, who asked not to be named for his security. "Facts on the ground tell you this will be the final result. On both sides now you have extremists who don't want to get along".

DIVIDED INTO THREE STATES Kurdish politician Hoshiyar Zebari, who still staunchly advocates Iraqi unity, described the new geography. "The country is divided literally into three states: the Kurdish state; the black state (under Sunni insurgents) and Baghdad," he said. Iraq’s political elite and world powers have concentrated on the formation of a new government as the best way to save the country, but such a push may come too late.

"It's probably the most serious crisis that Iraq has faced since its inception as a country," said Ali Allawi, a minister in two governments after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003. "It's the first time that the territorial integrity of the state as a whole is in question." Sunni and Shi'ite Arabs have little to unite them, Allawi said, while for most Kurds, non-Arabs who were persecuted under Saddam, the idea of an Iraqi nation is even more fanciful.

This could further destabilize an already tumultuous region. Neighboring Syria also faces disintegration, with most of its eastern areas under Islamist rebels for more than a year. Iraq's heritage stretches back to early civilization on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, but the modern state is a colonial fusion of the Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul that followed the empire's disintegration after World War One.

"Iraq is a failed state," said Masrour Barzani head of the Kurdish region's National Security Council. "It is a fabricated state. It has never been a state by choice by the people or the components of this country. They were forced to live together". Barzani blamed Baghdad for failing to keep Iraq united, and defended Kurdish aspirations for independence. "I don't think any rational person in the world would expect the Kurds to live and accept being partners in a country with a terrorist organization," he said, referring to Islamic State militants.

BATTLE LINES ENTRENCHED The long delay in forming a government after parliamentary elections in April and the eclipse of army units last month by better disciplined and motivated Shi'ite militias have revealed the fragility of national institutions. In Samarra, 110 km (70 miles) from Baghdad and one of the most northerly cities under government control, a Reuters photographer saw Shi'ite militiamen on patrol rather than army troops. "We are better than the army because we are fighting for our beliefs," said lawmaker Hakim Zamili, who supervised deployment of the Mahdi Army's "Peace Brigades" militia around Samarra. The government's inability throughout the first half of 2014 to recapture the Sunni city of Falluja, just 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad, from the Islamic State underlines how ill equipped it is to reverse far greater militant gains since then which have displaced more than a million people. If it is to have any chance of turning the tide, the government must lure minority Sunnis away from the radicals now threatening to encircle Baghdad. The Islamic State, a relatively small vanguard, has exploited Sunni disgruntlement with Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to assert itself in the predominantly Sunni regions. Eight years ago when the U.S. army faced a similar challenge from the Islamic State in Iraq - an al Qaeda group from which the Islamic State emerged - it persuaded Sunni tribal leaders to switch sides, offering millions of dollars as incentive. This time, that's not an option. Maliki, who distrusted the Sunni paramilitary forces, halted their payments years ago, leaving them embittered and unlikely to fight a second time for the central government. "Unless Maliki makes some very significant concessions to the Sunni Arabs it will be very difficult to peel them away from the Islamic State," said Robert Ford, a former senior U.S. diplomat and resident scholar at the Washington Institute. Ford, who served in Baghdad between 2004 and 2006, said the Islamic State's absolutist dogma would lead it eventually into confrontation with its Sunni allies. However, for the time being Sunni factions were united in their opposition to Maliki. Critics accuse Maliki of marginalizing Sunni and Kurdish factions during his eight years in power. Even some fellow Shi'ite politicians oppose granting him a third term although his State of Law emerged as the largest parliamentary list in the April election. WARRING STATELETS OR CONFEDERATION? A U.S. military official who served in Iraq predicted four "warring statelets" could emerge, based around Shi'ite power south of Samarra, Kurdish control in the northeast, and separate Sunni power centers on the Tigris and Euphrates. Many parts of central Iraq are mixed Sunni and Shi'ite regions, and any such partition would probably leave a million Sunnis in those areas stranded under Shi'ite control. "Iraq doesn’t fall apart easily. There is no such thing as soft partition, because these borders are not clearly defined," said Emma Sky, a British political adviser to the commander of the U.S.-led international forces in Iraq between 2007 and 2010. Maliki has urged Iraqis to resist moves towards separation, which he said would mark the disintegration of the nation, but many of his critics say he himself is a divisive force.

Partition of any type requires a horrible level of killing and ethnic cleansing. "This crisis is not about ancient hatreds, it is a massive failure of leadership. And it has been obviously a failure of Western, U.S. policies," Sky said by phone from northern Iraq. "With leadership they can pull this situation round."

Sunni politicians have offered few solutions to the crisis, partly because their own influence is so limited in Sunni regions compared with the Islamic State and tribal fighters'.

The mainly Sunni Arab provinces in the west and north may be eyeing the same autonomy enjoyed by the three Kurdish provinces of the northeast, but even to start negotiations towards such a deal, which Baghdad would almost certainly block, requires "a new political mix" in the capital, Haddad said. It would also need the defeat of the Islamic State. "We've been hearing about Iraq breaking up and Iraq unraveling since 2003," he said. "But I never thought that Arab Iraq was breaking up. Today I think the prospects for a united Iraq, even if it's just Arab Iraq, are fading quickly." "One possibility is that these territories remain outside government control for a long period of time. That would lead to a sort of de facto partition," said Fanar Haddad, an academic and author on Iraq.

(Additional reporting by Maggie Fick, Isra' al-Rubei'i and Ned Parker in Baghdad and Isabel Coles in Arbil; Editing by Ned Parker and David Stamp) ======= Iraq's top cleric sends subtle message to Maliki: step aside Fri, Jul 25 16:16 PM EDT image By Raheem Salman and Isra' al-Rubei'i BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's most influential Shi'ite cleric urged political leaders on Friday to refrain from clinging to their posts - an apparent reference to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who has defied demands that he step aside. Speaking through an aide who delivered a sermon after Friday prayers in the holy city of Kerbala, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani said leaders should show flexibility so that political deadlocks could be broken and Iraq could confront an insurgency. Maliki has come under mounting pressure since Sunni militants led by the hardline Islamic State swept across northern Iraq last month and seized vast swathes of territory, posing the biggest challenge to Maliki's Shi'ite-led government since U.S. forces withdrew in 2011. Critics say Maliki is a divisive figure whose alienation of Sunnis has fueled sectarian hatred and played into the hands of the insurgents, who have reached to within 70 km (45 miles) of the capital Baghdad. Sistani said it is time for politicians to think of Iraq's interests, not their own. "The sensitivity of this phase necessitates that all the parties concerned should have a spirit of national responsibility that requires the practice of the principle of sacrifice and self-denial and not to cling to positions and posts." Maliki, a Shi'ite, has ruled since an election in April in a caretaker capacity, dismissing demands from the Sunnis and Kurds that he step aside for a less polarizing figure. Even some Shi'ites oppose his bid for a third term. Despite pressure from the United States, the United Nations, Iran and Iraq's own Shi'ite clergy, politicians have been unable to quickly come up with an inclusive government to hold the fragmenting country together. Iraq's parliament took a step toward forming a new government on Thursday, when lawmakers elected senior Kurdish lawmaker Fouad Masoum as president. The next step, choosing a prime minister, may prove far more difficult as Maliki has shown no sign he will give up his post. Sistani's call for flexibility could hasten his departure. He is seen as a voice of reason in the deeply divided country, and has almost mythological stature to millions of followers, members of Iraq's Shi'ite majority. The 83-year-old cleric who hardly ever appears in public last month seized his most active role in politics in decades by calling on Iraqis to take up arms against the Sunni insurgency. The insurgents, who hold territory in Iraq and Syria and have declared a 'caliphate', aim to redraw the map of the Middle East and have put Iraq's survival as a unified state in jeopardy. The army virtually collapsed in the face of their lightning advance. Shi'ite militias and Kurdish peshmerga fighters have become a critical line of defense against Islamic State as the militants set their sights on the capital. U.S. military and Iraqi security officials estimate the Islamic State has at least 3,000 fighters in Iraq, rising towards 20,000 when new recruits since last month's advance are included. ISLAMIC STATE RULES Aside from military campaigns, Islamic State has also been purging the plains of northern Iraq of religious and ethnic minorities that have co-existed there for hundreds of years. Insurgents have also been stamping out any influences they deem non-Islamic in Mosul, a once diverse city of two million that fell to the militants on June 10. Eyewitnesses said Islamic State gunmen destroyed the tombs of two prophets on Friday. The destruction of the Jirjees and Sheet shrines came a day after militants blew up the Nabi Younes shrine, one of the city's most well-known and thought to be the burial site of a prophet referred to in the Koran as Younes and in the Bible as Jonah. Also on Friday, the group warned women in Mosul to wear full-face veils or risk severe punishment. "The conditions imposed on her clothes and grooming were only to end the pretext of debauchery resulting from grooming and overdressing," Islamic State said in a statement. "This is not a restriction on her freedom but to prevent her from falling into humiliation and vulgarity or to be a theater for the eyes of those who are looking." A cleric in Mosul told Reuters that Islamic State gunmen had shown up at his mosque and ordered him to read their warning on loudspeakers when worshippers gather. "Anyone who is not committed to this duty and is motivated by glamour will be subject to accountability and severe punishment to protect society from harm and to maintain the necessities of religion and protect it from debauchery," Islamic State said. (Additional reporting by Maggie Fick; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Susan Fenton) ========== Ya akhi be realistic , Saddam also had kurds , shias , turkmans in his government , but did they have any real power ? I'm not saying makliki is saddam , but he is certainly following his foot steps . How is abo ghraib any different from saddam's time ? How is the economy any different ? The political structure seems different , but the action of those who hold real power is no different than the one in saddam's time . The constitution is a joke and used only to antagonize the rest of minorities (sunna and kurds ) in iraq , but other than that it does not exist . There is ZERO accountability in Iraq with Hamoodi and his circle practically taking ownership of everything in Iraq while people live you know how . Every mulla and marjaiya Gets their few boxes of dollars every months and they go around telling people that Kurds harboring terrorists and stealing iraq's oil and sunnis are spreading terrorism and they are behind their the shias misery and people actually believe it . يا أخي والله خبصتونة بداعش ، هو جان اكو بداعش خلال 8 سنوات السابقة With peshmergas from the North and the iraqi army from the south along with sunni tribes in the middle , the so called Daash would not last more than few days . You see here , a true leadership quality plays a big rule , so what is our esteemed maliki is doing to make that happen ? 1-He is chasing kurdish tanker oils 2-imprisoning more sunnis 3-Killing prisoners 4-cutting kurdistan's budget 5-cutting salaries of government employees in sunni and kurdish areas 6-Using iranian planes to bomb sunnis cities and with every single bomb Daash and the insurgency gets stronger and they get more volunteers . 7-refusing to allow cargo planes to land in kurdistan ....and the list goes on . 8-In the mean time he has a perfect and valid excuse to keep shia region in the dark ages and point finger at sunna , kurds , KSA , Qatar , Jorden .........and the theft goes on . Ok , lets say we defeated daash tomorrow , then what ? Were we in a good place before daash ? are we going to be in a better place when daash is defeated ? didn't we defeat them in the past and drove them out and look where we are now . ============= UAE and Qatar compete as Saudi Arabia looks on The Gulf states have become the most stable and influential force in the Arab world, with the decline of the Egyptian role, the spread of turmoil and chaos in Syria and Iraq and Algeria's retreat on itself after the "black decade" of the 1990s. Because of political stability and increasing oil revenues, the Gulf states have accumulated financial wealth that has strengthened their political, economic and media influence in the region. Summary⎙ Print The United Arab Emirates and Qatar are pursuing opposing foreign policies in the Middle East that are fueling tension between the two Gulf states, as Saudi Arabia keeps its distance. Author Abdulmajeed al-BuluwiPosted July 28, 2014 Translator(s)Tyler Huffman In light of the protection offered by the United States, the Gulf states have not been overly interested in a unified security policy — with the exception of Saudi Arabia. This contributed to Gulf states rushing to use their financial surpluses to produce foreign policies independent of their "sisters" in the Gulf. Doha has emerged to play regional roles in support of movements for change in the Arab world, particularly concerning political Islamic movements. Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi has emerged as a key player in the Middle East, but in the opposing role of confrontation with movements of political Islam. Financial surpluses and political stability — along with the reassurance of US support — were not only reasons for this variation in foreign policy among Gulf states, but they also sparked competition among them for influence in the Arab world. This is especially true since Washington, the guarantor of security in the Gulf, has many options in dealing with the phenomenon of political Islam. These options range from the war on terror — as is the case in the United States' dealings with al-Qaeda where Abu Dhabi has been a strong partner to building bridges of understanding — to the Turkish Justice and Development Party. In the case of the latter, Doha has been a strategic partner for the United States. Gulf-Gulf competition has become one of the main policy features in the Middle East. This competition is mainly between Abu Dhabi and Doha, which stand at opposite ends of the foreign policy spectrum. While Doha supports the Syrian revolution, Abu Dhabi expresses its reservations regarding support that it thinks strengthens the Islamists. And while Doha supports the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, Abu Dhabi stands in the opposing camp. The announcement of the establishment of the Muslim Council of Elders (MCE) in Abu Dhabi on July 19 is linked to this competition between the two capitals. Doha is home to the headquarters of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, headed by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, while Abu Dhabi is now home to the headquarters of the MCE, headed by Abdullah Bin Bayyah and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayeb. Qaradawi had been a member of the Al-Azhar governing body, but he resigned from this position after the July 3 coup against President Mohammed Morsi, in protest of Al-Azhar's positions cooperating with the coup. Meanwhile, Bin Bayyah had been a member in the International Union of Muslim Scholars, but he resigned in September 2013. In his resignation speech, Bin Bayyah hinted that a reason for his departure involved his disagreement with the union's positions. It is no secret that positions on the Arab uprisings and their fluctuations had an impact on these mutual resignations. Given that religion is a key factor in struggles for influence in the region, religion has become an arena for the "soft conflict" that is going on between the two capitals. While Qatar has stood in support of Salafist and Muslim Brotherhood religious currents, Abu Dhabi choose to support the traditional Sunni Islam current, historically represented by Al-Azhar. This latter current calls for religious scholars to not directly engage in politics. In the context of this Emirati support, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed announced on April 28, 2013, at a meeting with the grand imam of Al-Azhar, his commitment to supporting Al-Azhar, so that it could once again play its role of spreading a rhetoric of moderation and countering extremism and fanaticism. In recent decades, Al-Azhar's role has declined with the rise of Salafist currents. It is likely that the United Arab Emirate's support to the institution of Al-Azhar and the current it represents will place Abu Dhabi in a soft confrontation with the Saudi Salafist religious establishment. The latter has benefited from the absence of Al-Azhar's role and its weakness, and spread its influence even inside Egypt. Early features of this soft confrontation have appeared in the lack of a scholar from the Saudi Salafist religious establishment in the MCE. The announcement of the establishment of the MCE was met with sharp criticism from two sides. First, it was criticized by those affiliated with the Salafist establishment, because the MCE was removed from them and marginalized them. Second, it was criticized by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, who viewed it as the "religious wing" of the military coup plot against Morsi. While the International Union of Muslim Scholars has enthusiastically supported the Arab revolutions and democratic procedures — including elections — the MCE seems more cautious toward them. The MCE warned against an adherence to democratic procedures in an environment that is not yet mature, saying this could lead to civil wars. This soft conflict between Doha and Abu Dhabi over the religious space in the Middle East is fueled by the decline in the central role played by Saudi Arabia in leading this space. This decline was due to several factors, including the communications revolution that redistributed religious power in the Islamic world, allowing for the emergence of multiple centers of influence. Furthermore, the conditions of the war on terror played a role in the decline of influence of the Saudi religious establishment and diminished its impact. The impact of these two factors was reinforced by the declining opportunities to reform this religious establishment to be more competitive. Doha and Abu Dhabi have come to represent two opposing poles in the Middle East, and their struggle for influence has moved from the field of politics to the field of religion, with Riyadh standing between them. Saudi Arabia is at times with Doha, while at other times with Abu Dhabi. Doha shares Saudi Arabia's affiliation with Salafism and the Wahhabi sect as well as its positions on Syria and Iraq, while Abu Dhabi shares Riyadh's position on Egypt and political Islam groups. The competition between Doha and Abu Dhabi continues to underpin the current rift in the Gulf, with Saudi Arabia keeping a distance. Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/07/saudi-caught-between-uae-qatar-feud.html#ixzz3912JWjax =========================