Wave of attacks in Shi'ite parts of Baghdad kill 35

14 dead as holdout Iraq tribe repels jihadists . AFP 31 minutes ago An Iraqi policeman makes his way on the rubble of a building targeted earlier this month by a jihadist attack in the town of Dhuluiyah, north of Baghdad, on September 17, 2014 An Iraqi policeman makes his way on the rubble of a building targeted earlier this month by a jihadist attack in the town of Dhuluiyah, north of Baghdad, on September 17, 2014 (AFP Photo/Ahmad Al-Rubaye) Baghdad (AFP) - A jihadist attack on an Iraqi tribe that has held out for weeks against Islamic State militants has left at least seven dead on either side, police and medics said Wednesday. The IS group has been unable to conquer the neighbourhood of Jubur, named after the tribe that resides there, in the Sunni Arab town of Dhuluiyah 90 kilometres (55 miles) north of Baghdad. "They attacked Jubur from three directions last night and the clashes lasted until morning," said a senior police officer in Dhuluiyah. "Their attack was unsuccessful but there were casualties," he said, seven in each camp, including a jihadist fighter who detonated a suicide vest. The police officer added that 30 people were wounded in the pro-government camp, including some civilians. Residents contacted by AFP gave the same casualty toll. A medic in the nearby town of Balad confirmed that the hospital there had received the bodies of seven fighters killed by the jihadists overnight. Jubur, which played a prominent role in the formation of US-backed Sunni tribal forces to combat IS's previous incarnation in 2005-2007, has received support from the Iraqi army and allied militias. Its leaders say the neighbourhood needs more assistance, including air strikes from the US-led international coalition bombing jihadist targets in other parts of Iraq. ========== Wave of attacks in Shi'ite parts of Baghdad kill 35 Tue, Sep 30 16:30 PM EDT image BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least 35 people were killed in a wave of car bomb and mortar attacks in mainly Shi'ite Muslim districts of Baghdad on Tuesday, Iraqi police and medical sources said. It was one of the most violent days the capital has witnessed since U.S.-led forces began bombing Islamic State insurgents in Iraq last month. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks but Islamic State, ultra-radical Sunni Muslim militants who seized swathes of northern Iraq in June, claimed several suicide bombings in the capital earlier this year. Two car bombs exploded in busy streets in the al-Horreyya district, killing 20 people and wounding 35, according to the police and medical sources. There was also a mortar attack in the Sab al-Bour neighbourhood of northern Baghdad that killed five people and wounded 15. Later on Tuesday, at least seven people were killed and 18 wounded when a car bomb exploded in the mainly Shi'ite Zaa'faraniya district of southeast Baghdad, police said. Three mortars also landed in the Shi'ite al-Shula district in the capital's northwest, killing three people and wounding 12, police said. Baghdad has witnessed relatively few attacks compared to the violence in other areas hit by Islamic State's offensive though bombs still struck the capital on a fairly regular basis. Mortar rounds have a short range compared to rockets, indicating the assailants fired from near the districts. Security sources say Islamic fighters have tried to use farmland northwest of Baghdad to approach Shi'ite districts. There were also several small-scale attacks in predominantly Shi'ite areas across the country. In the southern oil hub of Basra, a parked car bomb exploded in a parking lot, setting ablaze five cars but causing no casualties, police said. In the town of Kifil, near the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf, at least one person was killed and three wounded by a car bomb. And in Kerbala, a car bomb blast on a busy street wounded at least seven people and torched a police car, police said. In the Kurdish-controlled town of Khanaqin, 140 km (100 miles) northeast of Baghdad, at least four Kurdish security members were killed and 12 wounded in a bomb attack on their patrol, police and medics said. U.S.-led forces started bombing Islamic State targets in Iraq in August and Washington expanded the campaign to Syria last week in an effort to defeat the well-armed insurgents who have swept through Sunni areas of both Iraq and Syria. Washington hopes the air strikes, conducted with help from European allies in Iraq and Arab air forces in Syria, will allow government and Kurdish forces in Iraq, and moderate Sunnis in Syria, to recapture territory. (Reporting by Kareem Raheem and Ahmed Rasheed; Writing by Yara Bayoumy; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Dominic Evans) ================================= Special Report: Wheat warfare - Islamic State uses grain to tighten grip in Iraq Tue, Sep 30 07:18 AM EDT image 1 of 4 By Maggie Fick SHEKHAN Iraq (Reuters) - For Salah Paulis, it came down to a choice between his faith and his crop. A wheat farmer from outside Mosul, Paulis and his family fled the militant group Islamic State early last month. The group overran the family farm as part of its offensive that captured vast swathes of territory in northern Iraq. Two weeks later, Paulis, who is a Christian, received a phone call from a man who said he was an Islamic State fighter. “We are in your warehouse. Why are you not here working and taking care of your business?” the man asked in formal Arabic. “Come back and we will guarantee your safety. But you must convert and pay $500.” When Paulis refused, the man spelled out the penalty. “We are taking your wheat,” he said. “Just to let you know we are not stealing it because we gave you a choice.” Other fleeing farmers recount similar stories, and point to a little-discussed element of the threat Islamic State poses to Iraq and the region. The group now controls a large chunk of Iraq’s wheat supplies. The United Nations estimates land under IS control accounts for as much as 40 percent of Iraq’s annual production of wheat, one of the country’s most important food staples alongside barley and rice. The militants seem intent not just on grabbing more land but also on managing resources and governing in their self-proclaimed caliphate. Wheat is one tool at their disposal. The group has begun using the grain to fill its pockets, to deprive opponents – especially members of the Christian and Yazidi minorities – of vital food supplies, and to win over fellow Sunni Muslims as it tightens its grip on captured territory. In Iraq’s northern breadbasket, much as it did in neighboring Syria, IS has kept state employees and wheat silo operators in place to help run its empire. Such tactics are one reason IS poses a more complex threat than al Qaeda, the Islamist group from which it grew. For most of its existence, al Qaeda has focused on hit-and-run attacks and suicide bombings. But Islamic State sees itself as both army and government. “Wheat is a strategic good. They are doing as much as they can with it,” said Ali Bind Dian, head of a farmers’ union in Makhmur, a town near IS-held territory between Arbil and Mosul. “Definitely they want to show off and pretend they are a government.” The Sunni militants and their allies now occupy more than a third of Iraq and a similar chunk of neighboring Syria. The group generates income not just from wheat but also from “taxes” on business owners, looting, ransoming kidnapped Westerners and, most especially, the sale of oil to local traders. Oil brings in millions of dollars every month, according to estimates by Luay Al-Khatteeb, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. That helps finance IS military operations – and is why IS-held oilfields in Syria are targets in U.S.-led airstrikes. “Islamic State presents itself as exactly that, a state, and in order to be able to sustain that image and that presentation, which is critical for continued recruitment and legitimacy, it depends on a sustainable source of income," said Charles Lister, another visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center. SEIZING CROPS AND LIVESTOCK In early August, Kurdish farmer Saeed Mustafa Hussein watched through binoculars as armed IS militants shovelled wheat onto four trucks, then drove off in the direction of Arab villages. Hussein said he does not know what became of his wheat. But he knows that IS runs flour mills in areas it controls and he believes that his wheat was likely milled and sold. He had 54 tonnes of wheat on his farm in the village of Pungina, northeast of Arbil, wheat he had been unable to sell to a government silo or private traders because of fighting in the area. The militants also took 200 chickens and 36 prized pigeons. "What made it worse was that I was helpless to prevent this, I couldn’t do anything. They took two generators from the village that we had recently received from the Kurdish government after a very long process," said Hussein. Residents are too scared to return even though Kurdish fighters are now in control. "We think the Islamic State laid mines to keep us from going back," said neighbor Abdullah Namiq Mahmoud. There are scores of similar stories at displacement camps across Kurdistan. "We escaped with our money and gold but left our wheat and furniture and everything else," said farmer and primary school teacher Younis Saidullah, 62, a member of the tiny Kakaiya minority. "Everything we built for 20 years using my salary and our farming: It's all gone. We are back to zero," he said, sitting on the floor of a tent at a United Nations-run camp on the outskirts of Arbil. MILITARY AND ECONOMIC POWER After Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait triggered Western sanctions, the then-Iraqi dictator built a comprehensive subsidised food distribution system in Iraq. That was expanded under the United Nations’ Oil-for-Food program. Joy Gordon, a political philosophy professor at Fairfield University in Connecticut and author of the 2010 book “Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions,” estimates that two-thirds of Iraqis “were dependent primarily or entirely” on food subsidies between 1990 and 2003. The system survived the U.S. invasion and years of violence. Now fully run by the Iraqi government, it has been plagued in recent years by “irregular (food) distributions” that have cut dependency, according to a June report by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization. A former U.S. Department of Agriculture economist estimates that about quarter of Iraqis living in rural areas were dependent on subsidised food before the latest violence, while another quarter used it to top up food they bought. IS is demonstrating that controlling wheat brings power. As its fighters swept through Iraq’s north in June, they seized control of silos and grain stockpiles. The offensive coincided with the wheat and barley harvests and, crucially, the delivery of crops to government silos and private traders. IS now controls all nine silos in Nineveh Province, which spans the Tigris river, along with seven other silos in other provinces. In the three months since overrunning Nineveh’s provincial capital Mosul, IS fighters have forced out hundreds of thousands of ethnic and religious minorities and seized hundreds of thousands of tonnes of wheat from abandoned fields. A SILO UNDER ATTACK One target was the wheat silo in Makhmur, a town between the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk. The silo has a capacity of 250,000 tonnes, or approximately 8 percent of Iraq’s domestic annual production in 2013. IS attacked Makhmur on August 7. But even in the weeks before that, the group had found a way into the silo and the Iraqi state procurement system. Abdel Rizza Qadr Ahmed, head of the silo, believes that IS forced local farmers to mix wheat produced in other, IS-controlled areas into their own harvest. The farmers then sold it to Makhmur as if it all had been grown locally. In the weeks before the attack, the silo purchased almost 14,000 more tonnes than it had in 2013. That extra wheat is worth approximately $9.5 million at the artificially high price Baghdad pays farmers. Ahmed believes IS was looking to make money from the wheat and ensure there was bread available for Sunnis in the areas it controlled. Ahmed said it was not his job to investigate the source of the grain, just to buy it. “We just take the wheat from the farmers and we don't ask 'Where did you get this from?'" he said. Huner Baba, local director general of agriculture, said he too believed that traders and farmers had sold wheat from outside the region. But Baghdad usually pays its wheat farmers around two months after they deposit their produce and so wheat farmers around Makhmur – and therefore IS – had not yet been paid by the time IS militants entered the town on June 7 and, according to Baba, headed for the silo. The militants were met by Iraqi Kurdish fighters, known as Peshmerga, and fighters from the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). After IS took the silo, Baba said, they installed snipers there. He speculates that the militants believed U.S. warplanes would not strike the facility, which is in the center of town. “They want to get people on their side especially the Arabs. Maybe that’s why they didn’t do anything to the wheat, not to anger people,” he said. IS held Makhmur for three days before the Kurdish fighters and U.S. air strikes on IS positions – though not on the silo – drove them out. U.S.-led air strikes did hit grain silos in the northern Syrian town of Manbij on Sept 28. A group monitoring the war said the aircraft may have mistaken the mills and grain silos for an Islamic State base. There was no immediate comment from Washington. SMOOTH TRANSITION In many ways, IS is replicating in Iraq strategies it developed in Syria. In the year it has controlled the town of Raqqa in northeastern Syria, for instance, IS militants say they have allowed former employees from Assad’s regime to continue to run its mills. The group has set up a wheat "diwan," or bureau, in charge of the supply chain, from harvesting the crop to distributing flour. The same push to keep things running smoothly can be seen in Iraq. IS fighters have regularly avoided destroying government installations they have captured. When IS took over Iraq's largest dam it kept employees in place and even brought in engineers from Mosul to make repairs. Baghdad, too, has tried to minimise upheaval. Hassan Ibrahim, head of Iraq's Grain Board, the Trade Ministry body responsible for procuring Iraq’s wheat internationally and from local farmers, said that government employees in IS-held areas keep in regular touch with head office. Some staff in IS areas even come to Baghdad every couple of weeks, he said. In the past few weeks, he said, IS fighters had disappeared from some areas in Mosul and Kirkuk because of the U.S.-led air strikes. “The situation is stable,” he said, with IS fighters mostly happy to allow state employees to continue to run the silos. “I give instructions to my people to try to be quiet and smooth with those people because they are very violent people. It is not good to be violent with violent people because they will come to kill you. Our aim is to keep the wheat.” After IS’s June offensive, Ibrahim was ordered to suspend salaries for workers in IS areas. “But this troubled me," he said. "I cannot have the mills stopping. I need people to stay there like guards to convince the Islamic State that wheat is important for everybody.” Ibrahim says he convinced his bosses to keep paying salaries. A Trade Ministry spokesman confirmed that all government employees in Mosul had been paid their salaries “through state banks in Kirkuk, as it’s safer and under government control.” Ibrahim is now worried about farmers who have not been paid for the wheat they delivered in the weeks before the grain was seized by IS. He said the Grain Board and the Trade Ministry were trying to pay farmers either living in IS-held areas or recently displaced from them. "We would like to help the farmers, but not IS," he said. WINNING HEARTS AND STOMACHS In some places, the IS stranglehold on wheat appears to be winning support among Sunnis. Ahsan Moheree, chairman of the government-affiliated Arab Farmers Union in Hawija, says IS has gained in popularity since its fighters took over. Baghdad’s dismissive attitude towards the country’s Sunni Arabs had forced people towards IS, he said. But IS’s ability to provide food had also helped. “They distribute flour to the Arabs in the area. They get the wheat from the Hawija silo ... And they run the mill and they distribute to people in a very organised way,” he said. Even those who have fled IS see wheat as one reason for the group’s strength. “Nowadays a kilo of wheat is 4,000 or 5,000 dinars ($3.45 - $4.30). It used to be 10,000 to 11,000 dinars,” said Joumana Zewar, 54, a farmer who now lives in Baharka camp outside Arbil. IS and Sunni Arabs are selling the wheat they stole “for very cheap. It’s cheap because they stole it.” Zewar called a friend in Mosul to check on the latest prices. “The price of foods and bread is very cheap,” the friend said. Islamic State had taken control, and as in Syria, was dictating prices. “They are the government here now. They are going to the bakeries and saying, ‘Sell at this price.’” THE YEAR AHEAD The big worry now is next season’s crop. In Nineveh province, home to the capital of the group’s self-declared caliphate, 750,000 hectares (1.8 million acres) should soon be sown with wheat and 835,000 hectares with barley, an Iraqi agriculture ministry official said. The official said that the province normally has 100,000 farmers. But thousands have fled. Iraqi farmers normally get next season’s seeds from their current harvest, keeping back some of the wheat for that purpose. IS controls enough wheat so finding seeds should not be a problem. It also controls Ministry of Agriculture offices in Mosul and Tikrit which should have fertilizer supplies. But getting the seeds and fertilizer into the right hands will be a problem. Mohamed Diab, director of the World Food Program's Regional Bureau for the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and Eastern Europe, said that it is "highly unlikely" that displaced farmers would return. "The picture is bleak regarding agriculture production next year," he said. "The place where displacement has happened is the main granary of the country." That’s especially true for non-Sunni Arab farmers. Those who have remained on their land just outside IS-held territory fear the militants will soon take their villages, and their harvested but unsold crops. Even if that does not happen, they say, they will not plant after the first rain, which typically comes at the end of September or in early October. Farmers in the town of Shekhan, nestled among sun-bleached wheat fields, say they have no hope of getting the seeds, fertilizer and fuel needed to plant because the provincial government in Mosul is under IS control. "The real problem is how to get seeds to those inside Mosul and surrounding areas,” said Nineveh Governor Atheel Nujaifi, who believes production will drop next season. Bashar Jamo, head of a local farmers' cooperative, is also worried.

“The most important thing to us is agriculture, not security. Maybe (IS) will have a state, maybe an army, but all we need is to be able to farm.”

(Additional reporting by Ned Parker and Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad, Maha El Dahan in Abu Dhabi and Mariam Karouny in Beirut; Editing by Michael Georgy and Simon Robinson) =====================

Sunnis, Kurds shun Iraq parliament: Hizb-ut-Tahrir, the main champions of establishing Khilafa, has rejected the already established 'khilafa'...

Interestingly Maliki also says State of Law is biggest #Iraq parliament bloc as of today. Effectively he's ignoring bigger pan-Shia bloc #PT If you needed confirmation, here it is straight from #Iraq PMO: Maliki says he will not withdraw his PM candidacy ===== 'We’ll take back Spain': Fighters claim ISIS to seize 'occupied lands' Published time: July 04, 2014 13:53 Edited time: July 04, 2014 15:31 Conflict, EU, History, Human rights, Military, Religion, Security, Violence A group of jihadists claiming to be part of ISIS have vowed to invade Spain along with all other “occupied lands” in a video posted on the web. The men say Spain is the land of their forefathers and that they are prepared to die for their nascent Islamic State. The video of two men claiming to be militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) has taken the Spanish media by storm. The minute-long footage shows them speaking in Spanish, and saying that ISIS will take over Spain.

“I tell you, Spain is the land of our forefathers, and, Allah willing, we are going to liberate it, with the might of Allah,” says one of the men. He adds that the group won’t stop at Spain and intends to spread its Islamic Caliphate across the world. “I say to the entire world as a warning: We are living under the Islamic banner, the Islamic Caliphate. We are going to die for it until we liberate all the occupied lands, from Jakarta to Andalusia,” he said.

The footage has not yet been independently verified, but it would not be the first video released by the group. Last month, ISIS released a propaganda video entitled: “There Is No Life Without Jihad” in which Australian and British members of the group appealed in English for Muslims across the world to join their cause. “We have brothers from Bangladesh, from Iraq, from Cambodia, Australia and the UK,” says a militant called Abu Muthanna al-Yemeni, who himself comes from Britain, according to a video caption. Militant Islamist fighters parade on military vehicles along the streets of northern Raqqa province, Syria June 30, 2014. (Reuters) Militant Islamist fighters parade on military vehicles along the streets of northern Raqqa province, Syria June 30, 2014. (Reuters) The extremist Sunni Muslim group began to seize control of towns and cities in Iraq at the beginning of June. Since then it has captured large swathes of the region, straddling the Iraqi-Syrian border and continues to advance on the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. The leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, announced the creation of an Islamic State, or caliphate, encompassing the lands that the group has taken under its control. He also called on Muslims throughout the world to join the cause and fight for ISIS. "Muslims everywhere, whoever is capable of performing hijrah (emigration) to the Islamic State, then let him do so, because hijrah to the land of Islam is obligatory," he added. So far Iraqi security forces have done little to slow the advance of the Islamist group, with the government appealing for aid from abroad to repel the onslaught. The US has sent 300 military advisors to Iraq to combat the threat and is deploying another 300 troops, helicopters and drones in the area. Saudi Arabia has also deployed 30,000 troops along its border with Iraq, while Russia has sent fighter jets and pilots to support the Baghdad government against ISIS. === Iraq army retakes Saddam's birthplace By Isra'a al-Rubei'i and Maggie Fick BAGHDAD Fri Jul 4, 2014 11:04am EDT Iraqi security forces personnel flash the victory sign during clashes with the al Qaeda-linked Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Jurf al-Sakhar, 60 km (40 miles) from the capital February 15, 2014. REUTERS-Alaa Al-Marjani Shi'ite volunteers secure the area from predominantly Sunni militants from the Islamic State, previously called the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), in the desert region between Kerbala and Najaf, south of Baghdad, July 3, 2014. Iraqi insurgents are preparing for an assault on Baghdad, with sleeper cells planted inside the capital to rise up at 'Zero Hour' and aid fighters pushing in from the outskirts, according to senior Iraqi and U.S. security officials. REUTERS-Alaa Al-Marjani Credit: Reuters/Alaa Al-Marjani Related News Israel ready to help Jordan fend off Iraq insurgents if asked UK imams urge British Muslims to shun Syria and Iraq Top Iraq cleric says lack of new government 'regrettable failure' Israel ready to help Jordan fend off Iraq insurgents if asked Indian nurses abducted in Iraq released, to fly home: India official Kurdish diplomat cool to independence advocacy by Israel (Reuters) - The Iraqi army retook Saddam Hussein's home village overnight, a symbolic victory in its struggle to seize back swathes of the country from Sunni insurgents. Backed by helicopter gunships and helped by Shi'ite Muslim volunteers, the army recaptured the village of Awja in an hour-long battle on Thursday night, according to state media, police and local inhabitants. Awja lies 8 km (5 miles) south of Tikrit, a city that remains in rebel hands since Islamic State, formerly the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), launched a lightning assault across northern Iraq last month. The offensive to retake Tikrit began on June 28, but the army has still failed to retake the city which fell after the police and army imploded last month in the face of the militant onslaught that also captured Mosul and other major Sunni areas. The military spokesman of embattled Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said Awja had been "totally cleansed" and 30 militants killed, according to state television. A police source told Reuters three insurgents had been killed. The birthplace of Saddam, Awja benefited hugely from the largesse of the Sunni dictator before his ousting by the U.S. invasion of 2003 and locals remained fiercely loyal to the man who would select his relatives from the area for top posts. Spokesman Qassim Atta said security forces had seized control of several government buildings, including a water treatment plant, but security sources and residents said militants were still holding Iraqi forces from entering Tikrit. The army said it now held the 50-km (30-mile) stretch of highway running north from the city of Samarra - which is 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad - to Awja. But the mainly Sunni communities along this corridor remain hostile towards government forces and army convoys continue to come under guerrilla attack. Military officials in the United States, which has deployed advisers to Iraq, believe the Iraqi army will be able to defend Baghdad but struggle to recapture lost territory, mainly because of logistical weaknesses. Government forces could benefit if cracks in the loose alliance of insurgents in Sunni majority areas widens. In the town of Hawija, site of infighting last month between Islamist fighters and Sunni militia forces, members of local Sunni tribes told Reuters that community members had organised to fight against the militants in control of the town. Members of the Al-Obaidi tribe were angered over the militants' seizure of homes of local sheikhs and officials and had formed an armed group that killed five insurgents on patrol in the town on Friday, residents said. "REGRETTABLE FAILURE" The onslaught by Islamic State, an al Qaeda splinter group that has declared a medieval-style Islamic caliphate erasing the borders of Iraq and Syria, and threatened to march on Baghdad, has left the Shi'ite-led government in disarray. Parliament was unable this week to pick a new government to unite the ethnically divided country, something the most senior Shi'ite cleric on Friday called a "regrettable failure". In a sermon delivered by his aide, Sistani Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called on politicians to avoid "mistakes of the past that have grave consequences for the future of the Iraqis." Sistani reiterated his call for the government to have "broad national acceptance", a formulation many officials interpret as a call for Maliki - blamed by Sunnis for marginalizing them and worsening ethnic tensions - to go. In the governing system set up after Saddam's fall, the prime minister has traditionally been Shi'ite, the speaker of parliament a Sunni and the largely ceremonial president a Kurd. None of the blocs has settled on a nominee. On June 13, Sistani called for Iraqis to take up arms against the insurgency - an unusually assertive declaration for the 83-year-old cleric, who favors a behind-the-scenes role. In the Friday sermon, he reiterated volunteer fighters should be organised through an official framework. The president of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region asked its parliament on Thursday to plan a referendum on independence. Although they share Baghdad’s determination to face down the Islamist insurgency, many Kurds see the crisis as a golden opportunity to create their own state. (Additional reporting by Raheem Salman and Alexander Dziadosz in Baghdad and Isabel Coles in Arbil; Writing by Maggie Fick; Editing by Robin Pomeroy) ========== Iraq's Maliki rejects pressure to give up premiership Fri, Jul 04 15:03 PM EDT image 1 of 3 By Isra'a al-Rubei'i and Maggie Fick BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki refused on Friday to give up his quest for a third term in power, defying a chorus of critics demanding his replacement as the country faces an existential threat from Islamist insurgents. Maliki has come under mounting pressure since militants of the group now calling itself the Islamic State rampaged through swathes of the country last month and declared a mediaeval-style caliphate on land they have captured in Iraq and neighboring Syria.

"I will never give up my candidacy for the post of prime minister," Maliki said in a statement read out on state television by an announcer. "I will remain a soldier, defending the interests of Iraq and its people," he added, in the face of what he called terrorists and their allies.

He was referring to the Islamic State and some of the most prominent armed Sunni groups who have taken control of large parts of majority-Sunni regions of Iraq. Maliki's statement will complicate the struggle to form a new government to unite the ethnically and religiously divided country, something parliament failed to achieve this week. It extends a political deadlock made all the more dangerous by the pressing threat to Iraq's territorial integrity. Accused by his critics of exacerbating the country's sectarian split, Maliki has come under immense pressure to step down from his Sunni and Kurdish political foes, and even from some in his own Shi'ite camp. In pointed comments in a Friday sermon read by an aide, the country's leading Shi'ite cleric said parliament's inability to form a new government at its first session was a "regrettable failure". Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani reiterated his call for the government to have "broad national acceptance", a formulation that many officials interpret as a call for Maliki - accused by Sunnis of marginalizing them and worsening ethnic tensions - to go. Iraq's implosion has been watched with intense concern by the United States, which invaded in 2003 to topple dictator Saddam Hussein and withdraw in 2011 after a war that cost almost 4,500 American and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives. Washington has deployed advisers to Iraq. U.S. military officials believe the Iraqi army will be able to defend Baghdad but struggle to recapture lost territory, mainly because of logistical weaknesses. VILLAGE CAPTURED There was some encouragement for the Iraqi army on the battlefield: late on Thursday it scored a symbolic victory by recapturing Awja - the home village of Saddam Hussein - from Sunni insurgents. Backed by helicopter gunships and helped by Shi'ite Muslim volunteers, the army took the village in an hour-long battle, according to state media, police and local inhabitants. Awja lies 8 km (5 miles) south of Tikrit, a city that was captured by the Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot formerly known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), as part of its lightning assault last month. Iraqi's police and army imploded in the face of the militant onslaught, which also captured Mosul and other major Sunni areas. A government offensive to retake Tikrit began on June 28, but the army has still failed to win back the city Maliki's military spokesman said Awja had been "totally cleansed" and 30 militants killed, according to state television. A police source told Reuters three insurgents had been killed. The army said it now held the 50-km (30-mile) stretch of highway running north from the city of Samarra - which is 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad - to Awja. But the mainly Sunni communities along this corridor remain hostile towards government forces, and army convoys continue to come under guerrilla attack. Government forces could benefit, however, if cracks in the loose alliance of insurgents in Sunni majority areas widen. In the town of Hawija, site of infighting last month between Islamist fighters and Sunni militia forces, members of local Sunni tribes told Reuters that community members had organised to fight against the militants in control of the town. Members of the Al-Obaidi tribe were angered over the militants' seizure of homes of local sheikhs and officials, and had formed an armed group that killed five insurgents on patrol in the town on Friday, residents said. (Additional reporting Raheem Salman, Ned Parker and Alexander Dziadosz in Baghdad and Isabel Coles in Arbil; Writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Andrew Roche) إستفتاءات وبيانات المرجعية الدينية |[ حكم المتطوعين في القوات العسكرية والأمنية في شهر رمضان المبارك من الصوم والصلاة ]| بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم سماحة سيدنا ومولانا آية الله العظمى والحجة الكبرى السيد علي الحسيني السيستاني المحترم مُد ظله الوارف أرفع أسمى آيات السلام والتحية إلى مقام سماحتكم الرفيع سائلاً من الله تعالى لكم دوام التوفيق والعمر المديد والصحة الشاملة والنصر العزيز على جميع الأعداء وخصوصاً في هذه الظروف العسيرة الشديدة راجياً أدعيتكم لهذا العبد الخادم المطيع بدوام التوفيق وحسن العاقبة وزيادة العلم والعمل الصالح. مسألة: ما هو رأي سماحتكم في هؤلاء المتطوعين الذين استجابوا لنداء سماحتكم بالالتحاق بالقوات العسكرية والأمنية، وقد يتم تحويلهم من مكانٍ إلى آخر حسب متطلبات الظروف ، وقد أقبل شهر رمضان المبارك ، فما هو حكم صومهم ، وما هو حكم صلاتهم ؟ أدام الله ظلكم العالي على رؤوس الجميع ، ومتعنا الله تعالى بوجودكم إنه سميع مجيب. الأربعاء ٢٦ شعبان سنة ١٤٣٥هـ الموافق ٢٥ / ٦ / ٢٠١٤م الجواب: بسمه تعالى حكمهم القصر والإفطار كأيّ مسافر آخر إلا فيما استثني كما في الباقي في مكان واحد ثلاثين يوماً متردداً ، والله العالم.. والسلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته. ٢٧ / ٨ / ١٤٣٥ علي الحسيني السيستاني الختم الشريف نددت هيئة علماء المسلمين التي يتزعمها حارث الضاري ,باستهداف القوات العراقية ,مقر من اطلق عليه الضاري لقب “المرجع الديني الشيعي آية الله محمود الحسني الصرخي” في محافظة كربلاء، ووصفته بالاعتداء السافر. ودعى بيان هيئة الضاري ,اهالي جنوب العراق لمؤازرة الصرخي، والمشاركة في التصدي لما وصفه “لظلم حكومة المالكي”، موضحا أن العراق في حاجة لجهود جميع أبنائه “ليتجاوز المحنة التي هو فيها”. وشدد البيان على أن العالم بأجمعه عليه أن يعلم أن “الثورة عراقية بامتياز، وأنها تستهدف الظلم والظالمين”. وقالت الهيئة إن الهجوم -وبحسب المعطيات المتوفرة- جاء بناء على أوامر من نوري المالكي نفسه “في خطوة فُهم منها رغبته في التصعيد ضد هذه المدرسة الفقهية”. وأشاد الضاري بموقف الصرخي، موضحا أنه معروف بمواقفه ضد الاحتلال الأميركي والهيمنة الإيرانية، “وكان وما يزال يندد بسياسات الحكومات المتعاقبة في ظل الاحتلال التي اعتمدت الظلم والتهميش والإقصاء والفساد المالي العام”,بحسب تعبير البيان . وبحسب الهيئة، فقد كان للصرخي كذلك مواقف مؤيدة للحركات السلفية التي انتشرت تحت مسمى “الربيع العربي”، في حين يؤكد بيان الضاري ان الصرخي قد وصف احداث الموصل والانبار بإنها “ثورة شعب مظلوم، وأنها ثورة حق” http://bashaer.iq/permalink/4920.html ملتقى البشائر Iraq chases Baghdad sleeper cells as 'Zero Hour' looms over capital Thu, Jul 03 10:04 AM EDT image By Ned Parker and Oliver Holmes BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi insurgents are preparing for an assault on Baghdad, with sleeper cells planted inside the capital to rise up at "Zero Hour" and aid fighters pushing in from the outskirts, according to senior Iraqi and U.S. security officials. Sunni fighters have seized wide swathes of the north and west of the country in a three week lightning advance and say they are bearing down on the capital, a city of 7 million people still scarred by the intense street fighting between its Sunni and Shi'ite neighborhoods during U.S. occupation. The government says it is rounding up members of sleeper cells to help safeguard the capital, and Shi'ite paramilitary groups say they are helping the authorities. Some Sunni residents say the crackdown is being used to intimidate them. Iraqis speak of a "Zero Hour" as the moment a previously-prepared attack plan would start to unfold. A high-level Iraqi security official estimated there were 1,500 sleeper cell members hibernating in western Baghdad and a further 1,000 in areas on the outskirts of the capital. He said their goal was to penetrate the U.S.-made "Green Zone" - a fortified enclave of government buildings on the west bank of the Tigris - as a propaganda victory and then carve out enclaves in west Baghdad and in outlying areas. “There are so many sleeper cells in Baghdad,” the official said. “They will seize an area and won’t let anyone take it back... In western Baghdad, they are ready and prepared.” A man who describes himself as a member of one such cell, originally from Anbar province, the mainly Sunni Western area that has been a heartland of the insurgency, said he has been working in Baghdad as a laborer while secretly coordinating intelligence for his group of Sunni fighters. The attack on the capital will come soon, said the man, who asked to be called Abu Ahmed. “We are ready. It can come any minute,” he told Reuters during a meeting in a public place, glancing nervously around to see if anyone was watching. “We will have some surprises,” he said. He pulled his baseball cap down tight on his face and stopped speaking anytime a stranger approached. A portly man in his mid-30s wearing a striped sports shirt, the man said he fought as part of an insurgent group called the 1920 Revolution Brigades during the U.S. occupation and was jailed by the Iraqi government from 2007-2009. He gave up fighting in 2010, tired from war and relatively optimistic about the future. But last year, he took up arms again out of anger at a crackdown against Sunni protesters by the Shi'ite-led government, joining the Military Council, a loose federation of Sunni armed groups and tribal fighters that has since emerged as a full-fledged insurgent umbrella group. While it was not possible to verify all details of his story, Reuters reporters are confident of his identity. Like many Sunni fighters, Abu Ahmed is not a member of the al Qaeda offshoot once known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, and is ambivalent about the group which launched the latest uprising by seizing the main northern city Mosul on June 10 and shortened its name this week to the Islamic State. Many Sunni armed groups turned against al Qaeda during the U.S. occupation but are now rallying to ISIL's rebellion against the Shi'ite led government, though some say they deplore ISIL's tactics of killing civilians and branding Shi'ites heretics. Abu Ahmed said his own group, which includes former officers in Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein's disbanded army, supports some aims of ISIL. "There are some good members of ISIL and some bad," he said. Of the good ones: "We have the same cause." SECURITY PLANS The government says it can protect the capital and has spies who are tracking sleeper agents like Abu Ahmed to round them up. "We have ample security plans. The sleeper cells are not only in Baghdad but in all other provinces and they are waiting for any chance to carry out attacks," said Lieutenant-General Qassim Atta, the prime minister's military spokesman. “We keep those cells under careful and daily scrutiny and follow up. We have arrested some of them. We have dispatched intelligence members to follow up those cells closely and we have special plans to counter their activities.” An attempt to take Baghdad, a majority Shi'ite city with heavily fortified areas, would be a huge task for a rebellion that has so far concentrated on controlling Sunni areas. Many Baghdadis, Sunnis as well as Shi'ites, say they would fight an insurgency led by militants who want to establish a caliphate. The Iraqi capital was the principle battlefield in Iraq's worst sectarian bloodletting from 2006-2007, with tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, killed in fighting between Sunni insurgents, Shi'ite militias and U.S. troops. Then, millions of people fled the capital and millions more fled homes within it, turning previously mixed neighborhoods into fortresses dominated by one sect or the other. Although it has been at least six years since warring Sunni insurgents and Shi'ite militia last held open sway over whole sections of Baghdad, the capital has remained vulnerable to infiltration by ISIL suicide bombers, who strike Shi'ite and government targets almost daily. A senior U.S. intelligence official said Washington had evidence that ISIL was in the process of configuring its forces for a Baghdad assault using a plan that would include coordinated ISIL suicide strikes. However, other U.S. officials believe ISIL could overextend itself were it to try to take all of Baghdad. They say the more likely scenario would be for fighters to seize a Sunni district and cause disruption with bomb attacks. ISIL fighters insist that their plan is to take the capital and topple Baghdad’s political elite. “We will receive orders about Zero Hour,” said Abu Sa'da, an ISIL fighter reached by telephone in Mosul. He said the group had cells in Baghdad and communicated with them by e-mail despite the government's sporadic blocking of Internet in an effort to disrupt the militants. CAT AND MOUSE For now, it is a cat and mouse game in the city. Abu Ahmed said the insurgency had agents in the Iraqi security forces, government ministries and inside the Green Zone. Men like him try to dodge an intensified campaign by the security forces and Shi'ite militias to round up conspirators. There are "more detentions right now especially of ex-military officers and those who had been in American jails," he said. “Their houses are raided by special police and militias, then we never hear about them again. We check the jails, they are not there.” So far, they’ve managed to free 12 of them, at least one with the help of a 20,000 U.S. dollar bribe. He blames harsh treatment by the Iraqi government for forcing them to war, opening his shirt to reveal two dark scars on his chest he says came from interrogations in custody. There was no way to verify his allegations of abuse by the security forces. The prospect of an assault on Baghdad has led Shi'ite paramilitaries, mainly underground since 2008, to mobilize this year to help the authorities fight ISIL. Asaib Ahl Al-Haq, a Shi’ite group Washington believes is funded and armed by Iran, says it has helped round up insurgent agents in Baghdad. The movement says it is taking orders from the government and responding to a fatwa by Shi'ite clergy three weeks ago calling on citizens to help the armed forces. The insurgents' "goal is to control Baghdad and also to forestall the political process in Baghdad. They will try to execute this plot with their sleeper cells,” said Asaib Ahl al-Haq spokesman Ahmed al-Kinani. “We arrest them and hand them over to security forces.” Many Sunnis in Baghdad say such activity has brought back memories of the last decade's civil war, when Shi'ite militias and Sunni insurgents prowled the streets, capturing and killing the innocent under the excuse of rooting out terrorist foes. Now people are disappearing again. A Sunni woman who spoke on condition of anonymity because she feared retribution from Asaib Ahl al-Haq, said her brother was first held by police for 13 days in April. Eight hours after he was released, masked Asaib fighters stormed into their house and took him. "Their faces were covered. They had no number plates on their cars," she said. That was the last time she saw him. (Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington; Editing by Peter Graff) ================ Has ISIS Killed Its Golden Goose? Posted on 26 June 2014. Tags: CBI, ISIS, Mosul Has ISIS Killed Its Golden Goose? By Mark DeWeaver. While it has long been assumed that ISIS gets most of its money from donors in the Gulf, recently declassified documents suggest otherwise. Researchers at the RAND Corporation found that donations actually accounted for less than 5% of the group’s funding during the period from 2005 to 2010. (See this article.) The city of Mosul, rather than Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, turns out to have been, as one researcher put it, “the area that was keeping the group afloat”—through extortion rackets, kidnapping, and robbery. Following the fall of the city on June 10, it’s hard to see how this can continue to be the case. Out of a population of 1.8 million, the BBC has reported that 500,000 have fled. Presumably the wealthiest residents will not be returning any time soon. It is also unclear how Mosul’s remaining state employees are going to be paid. Obviously it won’t be possible to extort money from businesses without customers or collect ransoms from people who can’t afford to leave town. You can’t get blood from a stone after all. It’s not even clear that ISIS could have stolen as much US$ 420 million from the Mosul branch of the Central Bank of Iraq (or, in some accounts, from a combination of the CBI and private banks). While this figure has been widely reported in the media, some analysts have dismissed it as wildly exaggerated. In any case, looting can be only a short-term source of funds. Once the city’s homes and businesses have been stripped of cash and salable assets, this bonanza will come to an end as well. ISIS apparently had a pretty good thing going in Mosul, where it could help itself to a share of the economy of one of Iraq’s largest cities with all but complete impunity. Once this golden goose has stopped laying, I wonder if they won’t end up concluding that they should have left well enough alone. === Iraq's Maliki hopes for government deal by next week Wed, Jul 02 16:27 PM EDT By Ahmed Rasheed and Alexander Dziadosz BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who is fighting for his political life as a Sunni insurgency fractures the country, said on Wednesday he hoped parliament could form a new government in its next session after the first collapsed in discord. Baghdad can ill afford a long delay. Large swathes of the north and west have fallen under the control of an al Qaeda splinter group that has declared it is setting up a "caliphate" and has vowed to march on the capital. Yet the mounting concern and pressure from the United States, Iran, the United Nations and Iraq's own Shi'ite clerics have done little to end the paralyzing divisions between Iraq's main ethnic and sectarian blocs. Sunnis and Kurds walked out of parliament's first session on Tuesday, complaining that Shi'ites had failed to nominate a prime minister; they see Maliki as the main obstacle to resolving the crisis and hope he will step aside. Under the system put in place after the United States toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, the premiership is traditionally given to a Shi'ite, while the speaker of the house has been a Sunni and the president, a largely ceremonial role, has been a Kurd. In his weekly televised address, Maliki said he hoped parliament could next Tuesday get past its "state of weakness". "God willing, in the next session we will overcome it with cooperation and agreement and openness," he said. "There is no security without complete political stability." But it is far from clear when leaders in Baghdad might reach a consensus. All the main ethnic blocs are beset by internal divisions, and none has yet decided who to put forward for its designated position. Sunnis and Kurds say they want Shi'ites to choose a premier before they announce their nominees, while the Shi'ites say the Sunnis should first name the speaker. "Each bloc has its own problems now," said Muhannad Hussam, a politician and aide to leading Sunni lawmaker Saleh al-Mutlaq. If the Shi'ite bloc failed to replace Maliki, he said, there was a risk Sunni lawmakers would abandon the political process altogether. "There would be no more Iraq," he said. NEED TO BE PATIENT Longtime Maliki ally Sami Askari said forming a government could take until the end of Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month. But he played down the risk of the state collapsing, saying Maliki's caretaker government would continue to function. "The reality is that we need to be patient," Askari said. "We will have a government in the end -- but not soon." Residents of Baghdad were increasingly frustrated with the familiar sight of officials squabbling while the country burns.

"I'm so angry with all these politicians," said Dhamee Sattar Shafiq, a university statistics professor, shopping in a mixed neighborhood of Sunnis and Shi'ites. "This country is headed for disaster and these men are just working for their own causes."

Down the road, Najaa Hassan, a 54-year-old carpenter, was similarly irritated. "Democracy has brought us many problems that we really don't need," he said. Outside the capital, fighting flared again. Medical sources and witnesses said at least 11 people, including women and children, had been killed when Iraqi helicopters attacked Shirqat, 300 km (190 miles) north of Baghdad. Witnesses said the helicopters were targeting a municipal building where militants were sheltering, and that the air strike also hit three nearby houses. "We have received 11 bodies and 18 wounded from the helicopters' bombardment. Some children are in critical condition," said Hamid al-Jumaili, a doctor in Shirqat's hospital. The prime minister's military spokesman, Lieutenant General Qassim Atta, made no specific mention of the incident but listed Shirqat as one of several locations where the air force had been active during the past 24 hours. The government faces a formidable foe in the Islamic State, which shortened its name from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant this week and named its leader "caliph", the historical title of successors of the Prophet Mohammad who ruled the Muslim world. "RED CIRCLE" In his first comments since that declaration, the group's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Tuesday called on Muslims across the world to take up arms and flock to the "caliphate", which spans territory that has fallen out of governmental control in Syria and Iraq. The Islamic State has been working with an amalgam of other Sunni groups including Islamist militias, tribal fighters and former army officers and loyalists of Saddam Hussein, many of whom do not share its rigid ideology but are united by a sense of persecution under Maliki's Shi'ite-led government. Maliki on Wednesday offered an amnesty to tribes who had taken up arms against the government, but excluded those who had "killed and shed blood". The United Nations said on Tuesday more than 2,400 Iraqis had been killed in June alone, making the month by far the deadliest since the height of sectarian warfare during the U.S. "surge" offensive in 2007. Maliki's government, bolstered by civilian volunteers and Shi'ite militias, has managed to stop the militant advance short of the capital, but has been unable to take back the cities that government forces abandoned. The army failed last week to take back Tikrit, 160 km (100 miles) north of Baghdad.

Even if Maliki steps aside - something that is still far from certain - few in Baghdad expect that will mean a swift resolution to the crisis. “His departure would not solve the problem, because Sunnis and Shi’ites will stay at odds with each other and the animosity will continue," said Haidar Jumaa Zeboun, a 31-year-old construction worker in the district of Arasat.

Beyond that, there is deep strife within both the Sunni and Shi'ite communities. Police and army in the Shi'ite shrine city of Karbala on Wednesday attempted to arrest a controversial cleric, Mahmoud al-Sarkhi, prompting hours of clashes with his followers, said local police spokesman Colonel Ahmed Al-Hasnawi. (Reporting by Isra' al-Rubei'i, Ahmed Rasheed, Maggie Fick and Alexander Dziadosz in Baghdad; Writing by Alexander Dziadosz; Editing by Kevin Liffey) ========== UPDATE: Kurdistan sidesteps Baghdad legal challenge to exports UPDATE: Kurdistan sidesteps Baghdad legal challenge to exports A worker checks the valve gears of pipes linked to oil tanks at Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, which is run by state-owned pipeline company Botas. (UMIT BEKTAS/Reuters) By Patrick Osgood, Ben Van Heuvelen and Ben Lando of Iraq Oil Report Published Saturday, June 28th, 2014 EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been updated from its original version to include the Oil Ministry's official response to the KRG and the full text of both press releases, as well as a translation of the Iraqi Federal Supreme Court's June 24 decision.ERBIL – Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) celebrated a June 24 decision of the Federal Supreme Court of Iraq, which declined to issue a temporary ban on independent Kurdish oil exports.The court did not rule on the questi... Akkas field unguarded in Anbar fight Akkas field unguarded in Anbar fight An Iraqi army vehicle secures the Akkas gas field in the western desert of Iraq October 19, 2010. (ALI AL-MASHHADANI/Reuters) By Jamal Naji and Ben Lando of Iraq Oil Report Published Tuesday, July 1st, 2014 Government security forces have stopped guarding the Akkas gas field, in Anbar province, although militants have not yet shown interest in controlling the fledgling facilities. Over the past year, the Korean gas firm Kogas has begun preliminary work there, building a power plant, roads, housing, and offices. At the same time, however, a Sunni protest movement has metastasized into an insurgency led by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), which on Sunday formally declared Anbar provin... ======================== "BP’s share [in Rumaila] increased to 47.6% & CNPC’s to 46.4%, while Iraq’s was reduced to 6%. Iraq had previously 25% share." Tuesday, 16 September 2014 Iraqi oil from propaganda to reality A series of revisions to production targets will result in lower oil output from Iraq than originally planned. On 4 September, Iraq reached an agreement with BP and the Chinese oil company CNPC to lower the planned production target for Rumaila, the country’s largest oil field. The agreement is not a one-off—it is part of a series of revisions to the targets that had been originally agreed on with international oil companies in 2009. The revisions will lead to a sharp fall in Iraqi oil output relative to the original unrealistic plans. The BP/CNPC deal does not come as a surprise. For months international oil companies have been negotiating lower production targets for the fields they run. ExxonMobil agreed with the Iraqi government on a lower production target for the West Qurna-1 field. Lukoil did the same for West Qurna-2. Likewise for Eni and CNPC, the operators of Zubair and Halfaya, respectively. Only Shell is yet to agree with the Iraqi government on a new output target for the Majnoon field. It is lobbying for a reduction from 1.8 million barrels per day (mb/d) to only 1.o mb/d, but the Iraqi government is holding out for 1.2 mb/d. (The table below provides a summary of the original and revised production targets by field.) Such broad revisions to the original agreements indicate a flaw in the way the contracts had been awarded. The process involved oil companies submitting bids specifying: (1) production target (the peak level of output the company would eventually produce from the field); and (2) remuneration for developing the field and reaching the target. Iraq then chose the bids with the highest production targets (since they result in more revenue) and lowest fees (less cost). But as pointed out by James Hamilton, these auctions encouraged oil companies to exaggerate production targets in order to win the contracts. Once awarded, they began negotiating lower targets to move from “propaganda to the reality”. What does the new reality hold for Iraq? The path of future Iraqi oil production will be significantly lower than originally planned. Instead of producing 11.0 mb/d from the six fields listed in the table above by 2020, Iraq has to settle for only 7.2 mb/d. And even this target looks overly optimistic. To achieve it, Iraq has to be more stable and efficient in the next six years than it has been in the last fi The production loss is even bigger if we include the fields of Qayara and Nejma, which were projected to add 230 kb/d by 2020. Sonangol, the Angolan company which had won the contract to develop them, pulled out of the country in February due to deteriorating security situation. The fields are now under the control of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, and there is little hope for production growth from either of Finally, while BP/CNPC were not alone in negotiating a revised production target, the agreement unusually included raising their shares in Rumaila. BP’s share increased to 47.6% and CNPC’s to 46.4%, while Iraq’s stake was reduced to 6%. Iraq had previously maintained a 25% share in all oil fields, and it is not clear whether this reduction is unique to the BP/CNPC agreement or if it also applies to the other revised deals. Iraq might be moving from propaganda closer to reality, but transparency is still in short supply. ====== Iraq makes landmark payment to IOC Iraq makes landmark payment to IOC Michael Townshend (L), president of BP Iraq, walks with an official of Iraq's South Oil Company at the Rumaila oil field in Basra province on May 24, 2010. (ATEF HASSAN/Reuters) By Ben Lando of Iraq Oil Report Published Wednesday, May 18th, 2011 BP has lifted a 2-million-barrel tanker of oil as payment for its work in the massive Rumaila oil field, the first payout to any of the international oil companies (IOCs) contracted to make Iraq the biggest producer ever. IOCs and investors have paid close attention to the Rumaila project, the most advanced of Iraq’s new oil deals, as a leading indicator of how foreign companies might fare in the country’s oil sector. The payment is a promising achievement for a project that has faced man... ==== Q&A: Falah Mustafa Bakir Q&A: Falah Mustafa Bakir Falah Bakir Mustafa, Head of the Kurdistan region's Department of Foreign Relations. (Photo credit: UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office) As Iraq's central government falters under an onslaught of insurgents, the Kurdistan region appears to be moving swiftly toward independence.Kurdish Peshmerga forces have pushed to the edges of nearly all of the territory that has been disputed between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Baghdad over the past 11 years. Kurdish leaders say they are not going to be drawn back.The KRG now has a tighter grip on territory it had already contracted for oil development – such as with ... = Department of State ‏@StateDept · 45m This morning, @JohnKerry met with Dr. Fuad Hussein, Chief of Staff to Presidency of Kurdistan Regional Government. ==== Sunnis, Kurds shun Iraq parliament Tue, Jul 01 17:09 PM EDT image 1 of 5 By Raheem Salman and Oliver Holmes BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Sunnis and Kurds walked out of the first session of Iraq's new parliament on Tuesday after Shi'ites failed to name a prime minister to replace Nuri al-Maliki, dimming any prospect of an early national unity government to save Iraq from collapse. The United States, United Nations, Iran and Iraq's own Shi'ite clergy have pushed hard for politicians to come up with an inclusive government to hold the fragmenting country together as Sunni insurgents bear down on Baghdad. The leader of the al Qaeda offshoot spearheading the insurgency, the Islamic State, has declared a "caliphate" in the lands it has seized in Iraq and Syria. Its leader vowed on Tuesday to avenge what he said were wrongs committed against Muslims worldwide. Despite the urgency, the Iraqi parliament's first session since its election in April collapsed when Sunnis and Kurds refused to return from a recess to the parliamentary chamber after Shi'ites failed to name a prime minister. Parliament is not likely to meet again for at least a week, leaving Iraq in political limbo and Maliki clinging to power as a caretaker, rejected by Sunnis and Kurds. Under a governing system put in place after the removal of Saddam Hussein, the prime minister has always been a member of the Shi'ite majority, the speaker of parliament a Sunni and the largely ceremonial president a Kurd. The Shi'ite bloc known as the National Alliance, in which Maliki's State of Law coalition is the biggest group, has met repeatedly in recent days to bargain over the premiership but has so far been unable either to endorse Maliki for a third term or to name an alternative. Fewer than a third of lawmakers returned from the recess. Sunni parties said they would not put forward their candidate for speaker until the Shi'ites pick a premier. The Kurds have also yet to nominate a president. Osama al-Nujaifi, a leading Sunni politician, former speaker and strong foe of Maliki, warned that "without a political solution, the sound of weapons will be loud, and the country will enter a black tunnel". He said his bloc did not have a candidate for a speaker so far and was waiting to see who the National Alliance would nominate for prime minister. "If there is a new policy with a new prime minister, we will deal with them positively. Otherwise the country will go from bad to worse," Nujaifi said. Shi'ite lawmakers sought to shift blame to the Sunni and Kurdish blocs, saying the premiership was the last position to be named in the constitutionally-defined process. Mehdi al-Hafidh, parliament's oldest member who is tasked by the constitution with chairing the legislature's meetings until a speaker is named, said the next session would be held in a week, if agreement was possible after discussions. FIGHTING RAGES Baghdad can ill-afford further delays. Government troops have been battling for three weeks against fighters led by the group formerly known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). This week it shortened its name to the Islamic State and declared its leader "caliph" - historic title of successors of the Prophet Mohammad who ruled the whole Muslim world. Speaking for the first time since then, the group's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi vowed revenge for what he said were wrongs committed against Muslims, calling on fighters to avenge them "Your brothers, on every piece of this earth, are waiting for your rescue," Baghdadi purportedly said in an audio message that was posted online, naming a string of countries from Central African Republic to Burma where he said violations were being committed against Muslims. "By Allah, we will take revenge, by Allah we will take revenge, even if after a while," he said in the Ramadan message. Baghdadi also called on Muslims to immigrate to the "Islamic State", saying it was a duty. Fighting has raged in recent days near former dictator Saddam Hussein's home city, Tikrit, north of Baghdad. ISIL also controls suburbs just west of the capital and clashes have erupted to the south, leaving the city of 7 million confronting threats from three sides. The United Nations said on Tuesday more than 2,400 Iraqis had been killed in June alone, making the month by far the deadliest since the height of sectarian warfare during the U.S. "surge" offensive in 2007. In a reminder of that conflict, mortars fell near a Shi'ite holy shrine in Samarra which was bombed in 2006, unleashing the sectarian bloodshed that killed tens of thousands over the next two years. Samarra, north of Baghdad, is now held by Baghdad's troops with ISIL in the surrounding countryside. Violence also struck the capital, where police found two bodies with their hands tied behind their back and bullet wounds in the head and chest in the mainly Shi'ite neighborhood of Shula, police and medical sources said. A bomb went off in Baghdad's western Jihad district, killing two passersby and wounding six more, police and medics said. The insurgents' advance has triggered pledges of support for Baghdad from both Washington and Tehran. On Tuesday, Iran's deputy foreign minister said his country had not received any request for weapons from Baghdad but was ready to supply them if asked. Iraq also flew Russian-made Sukhoi Su-25 jets delivered on Saturday for the first time, state television reported, although there was no independent confirmation. Saudi Arabia pledge $500 million in humanitarian aid for Iraqis to be disbursed through U.N. agencies, a Saudi Press Agency statement said. SHOUTING MATCH Parliament opened its first session with an orchestra playing the national anthem and the recitation of a Quranic verse emphasizing unity. Hafidh called on lawmakers to confront the crisis. "The security setback that has beset Iraq must be brought to a stop, and security and stability have to be regained all over Iraq, so that it can head down the path in the right way toward the future," he said. Lawmakers stood at the arrival of Maliki, who waved to his long-time foe Nujaifi and shook hands with Saleh al-Mutlaq, another leading Sunni politician. But anger among the three main ethnic and sectarian groups soon flared when a Kurdish lawmaker accused the government of withholding salaries for the Kurds' autonomous region. Kadhim al-Sayadi, a lawmaker in Maliki's list, shouted back that Kurds were taking down Iraqi flags.

"The Iraqi flag is an honor above your head. Why do you take it down?" he shouted. "The day will come when we will crush your heads."

The dramatic advance by ISIL, which has dominated swathes of territory in an arc from Aleppo in Syria to near the western edge of Baghdad in Iraq, has stunned Iraq and the West. The group and allied militants seized border posts, oilfields and northern Iraq's main northern city Mosul in a lightning offensive in June. Other Iraqi Sunni armed groups which resent what they see as persecution under Maliki are backing the insurgency. Kurds have taken advantage of the advance to seize territory, including the city of Kirkuk, which they see as their historic capital and which sits above huge oil deposits. Results of April's elections initially suggested parliament would easily confirm Maliki in power for a third term. But with lawmakers taking their seats after the collapse of the army in the north, politicians face a more fundamental task of staving off a breakup of the state. Maliki's foes blame him for the rapid advance of the Sunni insurgents. Although Maliki's State of Law coalition won the most seats, it still needs allies to govern. Sunnis and Kurds demand that he go, arguing he favors his own sect, inflaming the resentment that fuels the insurgency. The United States has not publicly called for Maliki to leave power but has demanded a more inclusive government in Baghdad as the price for more aggressive help. DEADLINE PASSES Washington has so far pledged 300 mainly special forces advisers and said on Monday it was sending a further 300 troops to help secure the embassy and Baghdad airport. Maliki's government, with the help of Shi'ite sectarian militias, has managed to stop the militants short of the capital but has been unable to take back cities its forces abandoned. The army attempted last week to take back Tikrit but could not recapture the city, 160 km (100 miles) north of Baghdad, where ISIL fighters had machine-gunned scores of soldiers in shallow graves after capturing it on June 12. Residents said fighting raged on the city's southern outskirts on Monday. On Friday, in an unusual political intervention, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most senior Shi'ite cleric, called on political blocs to name the prime minister, president and speaker before parliament met on Tuesday. Now that deadline has passed, a prominent Shi'ite lawmaker told Reuters he expected Sistani to keep up the pressure. Maliki's close friends say he does not want to relinquish power, although senior members of his State of Law coalition have told Reuters an alternative premier from within his party was being discussed. Rival Shi'ite groups also have candidates. Many worry that a drawn-out process will waste precious time in confronting the militants, who have vowed to advance on Baghdad. A Shi'ite lawmaker, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "Things are bad. The political process is not commensurate with the speed of military developments." (Additional reporting by Isra' al-Rubei'i, Ahmed Rasheed, Ned Parker and Alexander Dziadosz in Baghdad and Gabriela Baczynska in Moscow and Yara Bayoumy in Dubai; Writing by Alexander Dziadosz; Editing by Peter Graff, Paul Taylor and Anna Willard) ‫#‏هام‬:نص فتوى السيد السيستاني(دام ظله) بخصوص الصيام لمن هم في ساحات الجهاد (الرجاء نشرها لتصل الى أخوانكم المقصودين منها). صوم المجاهدين في فتوى السيد السيستاني دام ظله إلى أبنائنا المجاهدين في ساحات الجهاد، تحية إكبار طيّبة وبعد: مراعاة لوضعكم ومعاناتكم في مواجهة صعوبة الصوم مع شدّة الحرارة وثقل السلاح، تم إرسال الإستفتاء التالي لمكتب المرجعية الدينية العليا في النجف الأشرف المتمثلة بسماحة المرجع الديني الأعلى السيد السيستاني دام ظله: نص الإستفتاء: سماحة المرجع الديني الأعلى الإمام السيد السيستاني دامت بركاتكم السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته بالنسبة لإخواننا المجاهدين في الجيش العراقي الباسل تمرّ عليهم في أيام رمضان المبارك مع الصوم الواجب شدّة من الحرِّ والتعب الذي يبلغ إلى الحرج أو الضعف الشديد ـ على الأقل ـ في مواجهة العدو فبعضهم على سفر ولم تتحقق عندهم نيّة الإقامة في مكان ما وهم من سقط عنهم وجوب الصوم لقوله تعالى: فمن كان منكم مريضا أو على سفر فعدة من أيام أُخر... وبعضهم في الحضر يقاتلون في مُدنهم ومناطقهم وهم ممن يُصلّون صلاة كاملة تامّة. والسؤال هو: ما هو حكم صوم المجاهدين في الجيش العراقي مع فرض الإحتياج لوجودهم في صفوف جيشنا الباسل إذا ما كانوا في الحضر ويُصيبهم الحرج أو الضعف الشديد بسبب العطش الشديد وثقل السلاح والحديد، فهل يسقط عنهم الصوم مع وجود الحاجة لهم في ساحات الجهاد؟ هذا ونسأل الله سبحانه أن يمنّ على عراقنا العزيز بالسلامة والأمن وأن يُفرّج عن إخوتنا المجاهدين وينصرهم بنصره الذي وعد المؤمنين به، وأن يُطيل في عُمر مرجعنا الأعلى الإمام السيد السيستاني دام ظله إنه نعم المجيب. والسلام عليكم وعلى عباد الله الصالحين ورحمة الله وبركاته جمع من طلبة الحوزة العلمية ـ مشهد المقدّسة نــــص الجـــواب: باسمه تعالى لا يختلفون عن غيرهم فإن كانوا على سفر فلا يصح منهم الصوم. وإذا اشتد عليهم العطش والضعف بحيث لم يتمكنوا من الإستمرار في أداء الواجب جــــــاز لـهــم الإفطــار بمقــدار الضــرورة ويقضــونه بعــد ذلــك. ودمتم موفقين www.sistani.org مكتب السيد السيستاني (دام ظله) - قسم الاستفتاءات الرجاء نشر الإستفتاء ليصل إلى إخواننا المؤمنين في ساحات القتال ليعلموا حكمهم في جواز تناول المفطر ـ طعام أو شراب ـ بما تقتضيه الحاجة والضرورة. والله المسدد للصواب. ملتقى البشائر ..http://bashaer.iq/permalink/4770.html # Important: Sistani fatwa (bloody shadow) regarding fasting in arenas of Jihad (please post them to your intended them). Fasting in Sistani's opinion as the canopy to our Mujahideen in the arenas of Jihad, a tribute and after: taking into account your situation and your suffering in the face of difficult fasting with the heat and the weight of the weapon, the referendum has been sent to the Office of Supreme religious reference in Najaf of the Supreme religious authority by allowing Mr. Sistani as the marquee: the text of the referendum: the Supreme religious authority Imam eminence Sistani as your blessings peace, mercy and blessings of God for our brothers in the Iraqi army with their valiant in the days of Ramadan with Fasting must be free of fatigue which amounts to embarrassed or at least very weak in the face of the enemy, some travel and not have the intention to stay somewhere they fell their obligation of fasting for meaning: whoever of you is sick or on a journey, several of the latest ... And some in urban fighting in their cities and regions, who will complete the full prayer. The question is: what is the ruling on the fasting of the Mujahideen in Iraq with army imposing a requirement for being in the ranks of the valiant army if they were urban and be embarrassed or very weak because of the extreme thirst and heavy arms, iron, do their fasting falls with a need for them in the arenas of Jihad? This we ask God Almighty to bless the iraqna Aziz of safety and security and to release our brothers and help them by the believers, and to prolong the lifetime of our reference top Imam Sistani long canopy that yes the respondent. Peace be upon you and Allah's righteous and God's mercy and blessings collection of Hawza scene holy text of the answer: his name exalted are no different from others that were on travel is not valid them fast. If they increased thirst and so weak that they could not continue on duty c BL for the breakfast or by necessary and otherwise discolors subsequently. And may you always be conciliators www.sistani.org Sistani's Office (as shadow)-referendum referendums section please post to our faithful in the battlefields to teach in that consumes something to eat or drink as needed and necessary. God paid for the right. Bashayer. Forum.http://bashaer.iq/permalink/4770.html =============================================== The New Iraqi Parliament Opens Posted by Reidar Visser on Tuesday, 1 July 2014 20:39 So the new Iraqi parliament met today after having promised Iraqi voters, the Shiite religious authorities, and the international community that they would do so. Unsurprisingly, they did little else than meet. Following the inaugural formalities, Mahdi al-Hafez, the “speaker of age”(the oldest MP who chairs the first session), introduced the only point of substance on the agenda: The election of a parliament speaker and his two deputies. At that point, a Kurdish MP found the time had come to complain about the refusal of Baghdad to compromise on the KRG share of the budget. This rather blunt violation of the official agenda prompted heckling and even blunter derogatory verbal counter attacks. Speaker Hafez, who represents the small and secular Iraqi coalition with both Sunni and Shiite members, proposed a half-hour break to calm tensions and explore the opportunities for electing a speaker. When the session resumed, many of the 255 deputies that had been present at the outset failed to show up. It was suggested that there was no longer a quorum (165 MPs); indeed some reports suggested the number of deputies present had fallen as low as 70-100. What apparently had happened was that Kurds and Sunni Arabs deliberately boycotted – the Kurds probably to some extent offended by the verbal altercation about its attempt to put budget issues on the agenda, but also with suggestions that both protested what they saw as a failure by the Shia alliance to come up with a replacement candidate for Nuri al-Maliki as premier. What was clear, at any rate, was that there was no speaker candidate. Accordingly, there wasn’t much to do except agree the next session, and it fell to the mainly Shiite Islamist MPs that remained in the session to work this out together with Hafez, the temporary speaker. To Hafez’s credit, he did not go along with suggestions by Ibrahim al-Jaafari that this could wait until after Ramadan. Instead, another meeting next Tuesday, 8 July, was fixed. A couple of comments on the constitutional and legal aspects of this. Firstly, there has been much talk about the ability of the Iraqi supreme court to speed up the government formation process, based on its intervention back in 2010. Sadly, though, the ability of the court to do much in practice is probably limited. In 2010, its ruling against parliament was focused on its open-ended and everlasting (jalsa maftuha) session. Iraqi politicians have found an easy solution to this by simply ending today’s session without results and then calling a new one. The truth is, the supreme court cannot force Iraqi parliamentarians to remain within the parliament building until they find a solution, papal conclave-style. What actually happened in 2010 was not that the court suddenly became extremely powerful, but that its ruling coincided with the first real signs of progress on the political front after the Sadrists agreed to a second Maliki term. Second, it should be stressed that constitutionally speaking, the only thing the Iraqi parliament needs to agree on at its first meeting is the speaker. The practice of agreeing on all three top positions – i.e. speaker, president and premier – is not rooted in the constitution. Rather, it is a tradition that has come into use on two previous occasions in 2010 and 2006. Sunnis and Kurds who are using this precedent to force the Shiite alliance to come up with a replacement of Maliki should be aware of this aspect, since for the first time the Shiites in the new parliament hold the numbers (170 plus) to proceed with elections of a speaker to suit their own interests even if the main Sunni and Kurdish parties continue to boycott. (It should be noted, though, that the debate about quorum or no quorum is immaterial to the speakership vote, which explicitly demands an absolute majority to be valid in any case per the Iraqi constitution.) This point is also important because there seems to be a gross disconnect between the actual Iraqi political process and the media description of it. Consider, once more, the move to squeeze out Maliki, which is seen as a foregone conclusion in all Western and most Arab media. Compare it with the composition of the last key Shia alliance meeting on the subject on Monday, where those present consisted of 6 potential Maliki loyalists (Maliki himself plus Khudayr al-Khuzaie, Hadi al-Ameri, Hashem al-Hashemi, Faleh al-Fayyad and Ibrahim al-Jaafari) whereas only 2 (Ammar al-Hakim and Karar al-Khafaji) are known to be wholeheartedly against a third term. With a situation like that, a more realistic interpretation is that the tug-of-war inside the Shiite alliance may take rather longer than some on the outside seem ready to admit. ===========================================================

50 killed in bomb attack on rally, police and troops voting in Iraq

Mon, Apr 28 19:04 PM EDT By Ahmed Rasheed and Kareem Raheem BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Fifty people were killed on Monday as suicide bombers attacked a political rally and Iraqi police and soldiers cast their votes early for a national election in two days' time, authorities and witnesses said. A suicide attacker killed at least 30 people and wounded 50 others at a Kurdish political gathering in the town of Khanaqin, 140 km (100 miles) northeast of Baghdad, security sources said. The Kurds were celebrating the television appearance of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd incapacitated since late 2012, who cast his vote in Germany where he was undergoing medical treatment. "The attacker snuck among the crowds near the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan's headquarters and blew himself up, causing a tragic massacre," one police officer said, sobbing after he discovered his brother was among those killed. Meanwhile, Sunni Muslim militants, mostly disguised in army and police uniforms, struck at polling centers around Baghdad and northern Iraq as militants tried to disrupt Iraq's fourth national election since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. A curfew begins on Tuesday night as ordinary Iraqis prepare to vote on Wednesday. Security forces are at war with an al-Qaeda offshoot, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, in western Anbar province and other areas encircling the capital. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is battling for a third term in office but faces fierce opposition from political opponents, with sectarian violence in the Shi'ite Muslim-majority country at its most intense since 2008. In the western Mansour district of Baghdad, six police died and 16 others were wounded when a suicide bomber dressed as a policeman detonated his explosives at the entrance of a school being used for voting, police and medical sources said. BOMBERS IN UNIFORM In the Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya, a bomber blew himself up in front of another polling center, killing four soldiers and wounding seven. Ahmed Sultan was waiting to vote. "We saw a person in army uniform coming out from a side street. He started to run in our direction. We all started to flee after realizing he was a bomber," the soldier said. "While I was running a powerful blast threw me ... everybody was shouting run, run, a second bomber could hit us." ISIL, which wants a Sunni Muslim caliphate, has threatened Sunni Iraqis with death if they vote. The attacks on Monday seemed designed to intimidate people debating whether it was safe to vote in two days. In northern Iraq, where ISIL has been hitting the security forces with ambushes, assassinations and explosions in their homes, at least 10 police were killed. In Tuz Khurmatu, a suicide bomber wearing a police uniform blew himself up near a polling station, killing three policemen and wounding nine, police said. Sunni militants have repeatedly attacked the area, which is home to the Shi'ite Turkmen minority. A bomber in a police uniform blew up himself and six policemen by a voting center in Kirkuk. One soldier was killed and four wounded when a suicide attacker in an army uniform blew himself up near a polling station in the town of Hawija, 70 km (40 miles) southwest of the northern city of Kirkuk, police said. (Additional reporting by Ghazwan Hassan, Mustafa Mahmoud, Ziad al-Sanjary and Diyala stringer; editing by Tom Heneghan) == Maliki faces struggle to secure third term as Iraqi PM By Ned Parker and Raheem Salman BAGHDAD Tue Apr 29, 2014 1:49am EDT 0 Comments inShare.0Share thisEmailPrint An election poster of Mahmoud Al-Hassan of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition is displayed along a street at the start of the election campaign in Baghdad April 18, 2014. Iraq is holding its national election at the end of this month. Credit: Reuters/Ahmed Saad Related NewsKurds fight out internal rivalries in Iraq vote 1:46am EDTRelated TopicsWorld » Iraq » BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A casual wave to fellow diners in a Baghdad restaurant in 2008 sealed Nouri al-Maliki's reputation as the man who restored a degree of normality to a city that civil war had nearly destroyed. Now he has gone out again among the people, strolling around the city to prove he is still attuned to their problems as he lobbied voters to give him a third term as prime minister when they cast their ballots in elections on Wednesday. "These people standing outside waiting in the sun are suffering," he thundered at a vehicle registration office during the televised walkabout last month. "People in their offices with air conditioners over their heads don't feel their discomfort." The highest levels of violence since Maliki took on the militias in 2008 are undermining his message. He still leads the election field, but his opponents are circling and could unseat him, if they can overcome considerable differences. A year-long offensive by al-Qaeda inspired Sunni militants is moving ever closer to the capital and Shi'ite militia, often teamed with security forces, are taking revenge on Sunni communities, diminishing the stature of Maliki's Shi'ite-led government. In March alone 180 civilians were killed and 477 were wounded in Baghdad among more than 2,000 killed across Iraq so far this year. Normally seen behind closed doors and a wall of security, Maliki's usual message is vengeance for the bombings that have again become a regular feature of Iraqi life and criticism of political opponents, who he says are set on undermining him. His concentration of power over the past eight years - he holds the defense, interior and security portfolios as well as the premiership - gives him a clear electoral advantage, as does the offensive against the Sunni militants he launched last year. But it has also made him enemies among Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders alike and his rivals say they are prepared to put sectarian differences behind them to unseat him. "BEST OF THE WORST" Maliki portrays himself as preventing Sunni extremists in Iraq's Anbar province and neighboring Syria from hurting the Shi'ites, a sharp contrast with his non-sectarian message at the last election in March 2010, a year and a half before U.S. troops withdrew. His old language promising national unity has long since disappeared. In a speech this month, Maliki accused his political foes of undermining the fight in Anbar that been at a stalemate for months. Some in Iraqi security estimate more than a thousand Shi'ite troops have been killed and thousands have deserted from the army, as regular Shi'ite soldiers complain their leadership has not provided them with the equipment and training to win. "It is so saddening that, at the time our army faces these killers and criminals, it is being stabbed in the back by some politicians who accuse the army of lacking principles," Maliki said. Iraqis, including from the Shi'ite majority, might wish for another leader, but many cannot imagine a replacement. Maliki is, in their words "the best of the worst". His aides say the war against al Qaeda offshoot, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Anbar province to the west of Baghdad is working to Maliki's advantage. "Before Anbar, the Shi'ites weren't happy with public services and Maliki was portrayed as weak. After Anbar, people see him as a strongman. They think he is right to use force against these people. There is a sectarian flavor to it," said one of his senior advisers. A Shi'ite tribal leader from northern Baghdad warned last week that any successor would have to rebuild a military leadership dependent on Maliki, with ISIL just 16 miles from Baghdad, almost within reach of Shiite neighborhoods. Al-Muwatin, or the Citizen, which groups two of his longtime rivals, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and the movement of Shi'ite cleric Muqtada Sadr, say if Maliki stays, Iraq could fall apart. They are hoping a fragmented vote will give them the upper hand. One of their frontrunners is Bayan Jabor, a former interior minister who Sunnis say allowed militias to run death squads under police cover in 2005 - a charge he refutes. Jabor says Maliki has mismanaged the war, arguing that the prime minister's moment of greatness after he ended the civil war in 2008 has long passed. "We are now in 2014 and we can't go back eight years," Jabr told Reuters. "I believe that the future of Iraq, under the current government's policies, will be fragmentation." "LUCKIEST MAN?" Maliki' Kurdish and Sunni opponents also nurse eight years of grievances against him. They fault him for not sharing power with them in his second term after it had been agreed they were supposed to apportion the defense, interior and intelligence apparatus. They are angry at his chasing his Sunni vice president and a finance minister out of Iraq with arrest warrants since U.S. troops left Iraq at the end of 2011. Most of his rivals joined a vote of no confidence against him in 2012. It failed, but now they have regrouped, resentful of the power acquired by a man chosen in 2006 as a weak compromise candidate who everyone thought would be pliable. There are indications Maliki's popularity as the Shi'ites' protector is starting to fray in the south, where they are the largest population. A crowd chanted "liar, liar" to Maliki in Nasiriya over a promise to build more housing. Most worrying for the prime minister is that, after years of strain, Iraq's most senior Shiite clerics are starting to speak out against him. Grand Ayatollah Basheer Najafi, one of the four most senior clerics, said at the weekend his followers should not vote for Maliki, due to the failed war effort in Anbar and corruption allegations swirling around his administration. Millions look to guidance from the clergy but Najafi's influence is the least of the grand ayatollahs. Up to now, Maliki has always beaten the odds - so much so, in fact, that some Iraqi politicians have dubbed him "the luckiest man". He has relied on the fact he is the known quantity in a chaotic nation to hold on to power. This time, neither the United States nor Iran have signaled their approval or rejection of Maliki. Each puts a premium on stability and is likely to support whoever it feels can ensure the situation rapidly calms. The senior Maliki adviser predicted the premier's share of parliament seats would likely jump to 90 from the 70 that his advisers were predicting before the Anbar offensive. Late last year, Maliki's circle expected the Shi'ite public to voice dissatisfaction with the prime minister over his inability to stop Sunni militants or drastically improve the economy. As the election approaches, observers say ordinary Iraqis are becoming aware of the failures of the Anbar campaign. But with no reliable opinion polls, it remains a mystery how they will vote. A Western diplomat said an apparent large boost in Shi'ite support Maliki seems to have won over his confrontation in Anbar might not last. "As time goes on, if that conflict is not resolved or if visible progress is not made, there is a risk that the Shi'ite public will lose patience … and start looking for other Shi'ite leaders." If and when a leader emerges with serious support, Maliki is ready. He has tested opponents in extreme situations and been known to quote an old Iraqi saying: ‘if someone has a fever, make it hotter'. His adviser described striking Anbar's insurgent-held city of Fallujah as one more card he could play in his quest to stay on. Even his opponents concede that their own rivalries could undermine them: that the various Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni parties will bicker among themselves over lucrative posts. The government is assembled as a package deal with a president, approved by a two-third majority, who then appoints the prime minister to form a government. Held by the Kurds since 2005, the presidency has long been eyed by the Sunnis, contributing to a convoluted and potentially drawn out negotiation process which would benefit Maliki. "Either it will be very quickly resolved or maybe take more than a year. It is dangerous ," said lawmaker Amir al-Kinani, from the Sadr movement. "If this government continues as an emergency government (due to the war), people will pressure their blocs to accept Maliki." Allies within his own State of Law slate could abandon him if they felt Maliki could not assemble a majority. They might nominate his national security adviser Falah Fayadh, former chief of staff Tareq Najem, or MP Haidar Abadi. Candidates from Mutawin include Jabor, former vice president Adel Abdel Mehdi; and the secular Shi'ite Ahmed Chalabi. But they may hesitate if it means breaking Shiite solidarity to strike a government agreement with Sunnis and Kurds. For Maliki, to leave office would mark the end of a long road in politics since his years in exile in Iran and Syria. Having lost 67 relatives to Saddam, after 2003, Maliki dreamed of working on his orchards. Instead, he found himself in Baghdad. Now he faces what could prove his final chapter. But he is not ready to go. (Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; editing by Philippa Fletcher)