To beat ISIS, kick out US-led coalition: No will to fight

Islamic State claims responsibility for Baghdad hotel bombs Fri, May 29 09:49 AM EDT image BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Islamic State claimed responsibility on Friday for bombings outside two heavily fortified five-star hotels in the Iraqi capital that killed 10 people. In a statement, Islamic State said a suicide bomber called Abu Qutaiba had parked a car outside the Ishtar hotel in central Baghdad late on Thursday before driving another vehicle laden with 230 kg of explosives to the nearby Babylon hotel. The bomber detonated himself and the vehicle he was driving there around the same time the first car bomb exploded, "killing and wounding dozens of infidels", according to the statement. Iraqi authorities lifted a decade-old night-time curfew on Baghdad early this year, seeking to restore a sense of normality to the capital as security forces battle Islamic State insurgents who have overrun large parts of the country. But the rate of bombings in Baghdad has increased since then. Militants seized Ramadi, the Anbar provincial capital west of Baghdad, on May 17 in the most significant military setback to the government since a U.S.-led coalition launched a campaign of air strikes against Islamic State last August. (Reporting by Omar Fahmy and Saif Hameed; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Mark Heinrich) Sharmine Narwani is a commentator and analyst of Middle East geopolitics. She tweets @snarwani Get short URL Published time: May 27, 2015 13:06 A car is engulfed by flames during clashes in the city of Ramadi (Reuters / Stringer) A car is engulfed by flames during clashes in the city of Ramadi (Reuters / Stringer) Trends Islamic State Tags Air Force, Arms, Army, Conflict, Drones, History, Human rights, Iran, Iraq, Israel, John Kerry, Lebanon, Mass media, Military, Opposition, Politics, Religion, Russia, Security, Syria, Terrorism, USA, Violence, War It’s been a bad time for foes of ISIS. Islamic State scored a neat hat-trick by invading strategic Ramadi in Iraq’s mainly Sunni Anbar province, occupying Syria’s historic gem Palmyra, and taking over Al-Tanf, the last remaining border crossing with Iraq. The multinational, American-led ‘Coalition’ launched last August to thwart Islamic State’s (IS, formerly ISIS) march across Syria and Iraq…did nothing. And so Baghdad and Washington are pointing fingers, each accusing the other of being asleep on the job. US Defense Secretary Ash Carter struck a low blow on Sunday in a CNN interview: “What apparently happened was that the Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight. They vastly outnumbered the opposing force. That says to me… that we have an issue with the will of the Iraqis to fight and defend themselves.” Carter must have forgotten that Iraqis staved off an ISIS occupation of Ramadi for almost 18 months. He also forgot that it was Iraqis who defended and/or recovered Amerli, Suleiman Beg, Tuz Khurmatu, Jurf al-Sakhar, Jalula, Saadiyah, Khanaqin, Muqdadiyah, Baquba, Udhaim Dam, Tharthar Dam, Habbaniyah, Haditha, Al-Baghdadi, Mosul Dam, Mount Sinjar, Zumar, Erbil, Gwer, Makhmur, dozens of Christian villages in the Nineveh Plains, Tikrit, Samarra, Balad, Dhuluiya, Dujail, Ishaqi, Al-Alam, Al-Dour, Albu Ajil, Awja, Al-Mutassim, Mukayshifa, Ajil and Alas oilfields, Hamrin mountains, Baiji oil refinery, scores of villages in the provinces of Salaheddine, Diyala, Kirkuk, Anbar, and Babil – and the capital city, Baghdad. The Iraqis have shot back. Key MP Hakim al-Zamili blames Ramadi’s collapse on the US’s failure to provide “good equipment, weapons and aerial support” to troops. Deputy Prime Minister Saleh Mutlaq, himself a Sunni from Anbar Province, concluded that the Americans were coming up short in all areas. "The Coalition airstrikes are not enough to eliminate IS." Furthermore, the US policy of recruiting Sunni tribes for the fight, he added, was “too late” – it is "important but not enough." If ever there was an understatement, this is it. Washington’s long-stated objective of rallying together a vetted Sunni fighting force - or its equivalent in the form of a National Guard – has always served as a placeholder to avoid facing realities. One thing we have learned from IS gains in small and large Sunni towns alike, is that the extremist group prides itself on sleeper cells and alliances inside of these areas. Sunni tribes and families, both, are divided on their support of IS. And the militants ensure that everyone else falls in line through a brutal campaign of inflicting fear and pain indiscriminately. So the likelihood of a significant, anti-IS, well-trained and equipped Sunni fighting force emerging anytime soon is just about nil. So too is the idea of a US-led Coalition air force that can cripple Islamic State. Washington has run fewer sorties over Syria and Iraq in the nine months since inception of its air campaign, than Israel ran in its entire three-week Gaza blitz in 2008-09. Where were the American bombers when Ramadi and Palmyra were being taken? And why does the US Air Force only seem to engage in earnest when their Kurdish allies are being threatened – as in Kobani (Ain al-Arab), Syria, and Erbil in Iraq? Reuters Reuters US calculations for Syria & Iraq If actions speak louder than words, then Washington’s moves in the Mideast have been deafening. Forget talk of a ‘unified Iraq’ with a ‘strong central government’. And definitely forget loudly-proclaimed objectives of ‘training moderate forces’ to ‘fight off IS’ across the Jordanian and Turkish borders in Syria. That’s just talk. An objective look at US interests in the region paint an entirely different picture. The Americans seek to maintain absolute hegemony in the Mideast, even as they exit costly military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Their primary interests are 1) access to low cost oil and gas, 2) propping up Israel, and more recently, 3) undermining Russian (and Chinese) influence in the region. Clinging on to hegemony would be a whole lot easier without the presence of a powerful, independent Islamic Republic of Iran, which continues to throw a wrench in many of Washington’s regional projects. So hegemony is somewhat dependent on weakening Iran – and its supportive alliances. With the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the US inadvertently extended Iran’s arc of influence in a direct geographic line to Palestine, leaving the Israeli colonial project vulnerable. Former President George W. Bush immediately took on the task of destroying this Resistance Axis by attempting to neuter Iranian allies Hezbollah, Syria and Hamas – and failed. The Arab Spring presented a fresh opportunity to regroup: the US and its Turkish and Persian Gulf allies swung into action to create conditions for regime-change in Syria. The goal? To break this geographic line from Iran - through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon - to Palestine. When regime-change failed, the goalpost moved to the next best plan: dividing Syria into several competing chunks, which would weaken the central state and create a pro-US ‘buffer’ along the border with Israel. Weakening the central government in Iraq by dividing the state along Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite lines has also been a priority for the Americans. You only have to look at recent US actions in Iraq to see this unspoken plan in action. Washington’s most intensive airstrikes to date were when Kurdish Erbil and its environs came under threat by ISIS. Congress has breached all international norms by ushering through legislation to directly arm Sunni and Kurdish militias and bypass the central government in Baghdad. And despite endless promises and commitments, the Americans have failed at every hurdle to train and equip the Iraqi Army and security forces to do anything useful. A weak, divided Iraq can never become a regional powerhouse allied with Iran and the Resistance Axis. Likewise a weak, divided Syria. But without US control over these central governments, the only way to achieve this is 1) through the creation of sectarian and ethnic strife that could carve out pro-US buffers inside the ‘Resistance states’ and/or 2) through the creation of a hostile ‘Sunni buffer’ to break this line from Iran to Palestine. A member of the Iraqi security forces stands guard during a patrol in the city of Ramadi (Reuters / Stringer) Today, America’s ‘Sunni buffer’ is Islamic State General Walid Sukariyya, a Sunni, pro-resistance member of Lebanon’s parliament, agrees. “ISIS will be better for the US and Israel than having a strong Iran, Iraq and Syria…If they succeed at this, the Sunni state in Iraq will split the resistance from Palestine.” While Washington has long sought to create a buffer in Iraq on the Syrian border, it has literally spent years trying – and failing – to find, then mold, representative Sunni Iraqi leaders who will comfortably toe a pro-American line. An example of this is the Anbar delegation US General John Allen handpicked last December for a DC tour, which excluded representatives of the two most prominent Sunni tribes fighting IS in Iraq – the Albu Alwan and Albu Nimr. A spokesman for the tribes, speaking to Al-Jarida newspaper, objected at the time: "We are fighting ISIL and getting slaughtered, while suffering from a shortage of weapons. In the meantime, others are going to Washington to get funds and will later be assigned as our leaders." But why ignore Sunni groups who are unreservedly opposed to IS? Aren’t they America’s natural constituents inside Iraq? The Takfiri extremist groups serve a purpose for Washington. IS has had the ability - where competing Sunni factions, with their ever-growing lists of demands from Baghdad, have not – to transform the US’ ‘buffer’ project into a physical reality. And Washington has not needed to expend blood, treasure or manpower to get the job done. Last week, the government watchdog group Judicial Watch published a secret (now declassified) 2012 US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document that sheds light on American calculations in Syria. Written just 16 months into the 50-month-long Syrian conflict, the highly-redacted DIA document discloses the following key revelations: "The Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood and AQI (Al-Qaeda in Iraq) are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria." "The West, Gulf countries and Turkey support the opposition." The Syrian government has focused its priorities on securing pro-government areas and major transportation routes, which means "the regime decreased its concentration in areas adjacent to the Iraqi borders (al Hasaka and Der Zor).” "Opposition forces are trying to control the eastern areas (Hasaka and Der Zor) adjacent to the western Iraqi borders (Mosul and Anbar)…Western countries, the Gulf and Turkey are supporting these efforts." "The deterioration of the situation…creates the ideal atmosphere for AQI to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi…" "If the situation unravels there is the opportunity of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria, and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)." The DIA brief makes clear that the escalation of conflict in Syria will create further sectarianism and radicalization, which will increase the likelihood of an ‘Islamic State’ on the Syrian-Iraqi border, one that would likely be manned by the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). So what did Washington do when it received this information? It lied. Less than one month after the DIA report was published, US Secretary of State John Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this about the Syrian opposition: "I just don't agree that a majority are Al-Qaeda and the bad guys. That's not true. There are about 70,000 to 100,000 oppositionists ... Maybe 15 percent to 25 percent might be in one group or another who are what we would deem to be bad guys…There is a real moderate opposition that exists.” Using the fabricated storyline of ‘moderate rebels’ who need assistance to fight a ‘criminal Syrian regime’, the US government kept the Syrian conflict buzzing, knowing full well the outcome would mean the establishment of a Sunni extremist entity spanning the Syrian-Iraqi border…which could cripple, what the Americans call, “the strategic depth of the Shia expansion.” As US Council on Foreign Relations member and terrorism analyst Max Abrahms conceded on Twitter: "The August 5, 2012 DIA report confirms much of what Assad has been saying all along about his opponents both inside & outside Syria." Fakhreddin's Castle (top), is pictured in the historical city of Palmyra, Syria (Reuters / Nour Fourat) How to fight this American “Frankenstein” Since last year, numerous Iraqi officials have complained about the US airdropping weapons to IS - whether deliberately or inadvertently remains disputed. Military sources, on the other hand, have made clear that the US-led Coalition ignores many of the Iraqi requests for air cover during ground operations. If the US isn't willing to play ball in Iraq's existential fight against IS, then why bother with the Americans at all? Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is viewed as a ‘weak’ head of state - a relatively pro-American official who will work diligently to keep a balance between US interests and those of Iraq's powerful neighbor, Iran. But after the disastrous fall of Ramadi, and more bad news from inside Syria, Abadi has little choice but to mitigate these losses, and rapidly. The prime minister has now ordered the engagement of thousands of Hashd al-Shaabi (Shiite paramilitary groups, commonly known as the Popular Mobilization Forces) troops in the Anbar to wrest back control of Ramadi. And this - unusually - comes with the blessings of Anbar's Sunni tribes who voted overwhelmingly to appeal to the Hashd for military assistance. Joining the Hashd are a few thousand Sunni fighters, making this a politically palatable response. If the Ramadi operation goes well, this joint Sunni-Shiite effort (which also proved successful in Tikrit) could provide Iraq with a model to emulate far and wide. The recent losses in Syria and Iraq have galvanized IS' opponents from Lebanon to Iran to Russia, with commitments pouring in for weapons, manpower and funds. If Ramadi is recovered, this grouping is unlikely to halt its march, and will make a push to the Syrian border through IS-heavy territory. There is good reason for this: the militants who took Ramadi came across the Syrian border - in full sight of US reconnaissance capabilities. A senior resistance state official told me earlier this year: “We will not allow the establishment of a big (extremist) demographic and geographic area between Syria and Iraq. We will work to push Syrian ISIS inside Syria and Iraqi ISIS inside Iraq.” Right now, the key to pushing back Takfiri gains inside Syria's eastern and northwestern theaters lies in the strengthening of the Iraqi military landscape. And an absolute priority will be in clearing the IS ‘buffer’ between the two states. Eighteen months ago, in an analysis about how to fight jihadist militants from the Levant to the Persian Gulf, I wrote that the solution for this battle will be found only within the region, specifically from within those states whose security is most compromised or under threat: Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran. I argued that these four states would be forced to increase their military cooperation as the battles intensified, and that they would provide the only 'boots on the ground' in this fight. And they will. But air cover is a necessary component of successful offensive operations, even in situations of unconventional warfare. If the US and its flimsy Coalition are unable or unwilling to provide the required reconnaissance assistance and the desired aerial coverage, as guided by a central Iraqi military command, then Iraq should look elsewhere for help. Iran and Russia come to mind - and we may yet get there. Iraq and Syria need to merge their military strategies more effectively - again, an area where the Iranians and Russians can provide valuable expertise. Both states have hit a dangerous wall in the past few weeks, and the motivation for immediate and decisive action is high today. Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah is coming into play increasingly as well - its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has recently promised that Hezbollah will no longer limit itself geographically, and will go where necessary to thwart this Takfiri enemy. The non-state actors that make up the jihadist and Takfiri core cannot be beaten by conventional armies, which is why local militias accustomed to asymmetric warfare are best suited for these battles. Criticizing the US's utterly nonexistent response to the Ramadi debacle yesterday, Iran's elite Quds Force Commander Qassem Suleimani points out: "Today, there is nobody in confrontation with [IS] except the Islamic Republic of Iran, as well as nations who are next to Iran or supported by Iran.” The Iranians have become central figures in the fight against terror, and are right next door to it - as opposed to Washington, over 6,000 miles away. If the US has any real commitment to the War on Terror, it should focus on non-combat priorities that are also essential to undermine extremism: 1) securing the Turkish and Jordanian borders to prevent any further infiltration of jihadists into Syria and Iraq, 2) sanctioning countries and individuals who fund and weaponize the Takfiris, most of whom are staunch US allies, now ironically part of the ‘Coalition’ to fight IS, and 3) sharing critical intelligence about jihadist movements with those countries engaged in the battle. It is time to cut these losses and bring some heavyweights into this battle against extremism. If the US-directed Coalition will not deliver airstrikes under the explicit command of sovereign states engaged at great risk in this fight, it may be time to clear Iraqi and Syrian airspace of coalition jets, and fill those skies with committed partners instead. MORE: The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT. Agencies BAGHDAD: A senior ISIS figure known as “the blind judge” has made an appearance in the Iraqi city of Ramadi, asserting the militant group’s dominion over it as security forces and Shiite militias prepare a counterattack. Residents of Ramadi said that a blind man with one hand and his head shrouded had delivered a speech in the Anbar provincial capital’s main mosque after evening prayers Wednesday. They did not know who he was but recognized him to be a senior figure because he was flanked by a large number of guards and said his accent indicated he was Iraqi. Iraqi security expert Hisham al-Hashimi identified the man as Ali Attiya al-Jubouri, who is also known as Abu Asim, or “the blind judge” of ISIS. “This cleric who appeared in Ramadi yesterday is very famous,” Hashimi said. “He is the second highest religious authority after Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and the fifth man in the organization of ISIS.” Hashimi said the appearance of the blind judge was designed to win over residents of Ramadi, many of whom sided with the government and fended off the militants until they were finally overcome on May 17. Iraqi forces thwarted an attack by ISIS militants on their front line position east of Ramadi Thursday. Police and pro-government tribal fighters on the frontline in Husaiba al-Sharqiya, around 7 km east of Ramadi, said the militants had tried to cut them off from behind by crossing the Euphrates River at dawn. “They started the attack under cover of mortars and sniper shots, but we managed to abort it,” Sunni tribal leader Amir al-Fahdawi said. “We have enough troops deployed and a couple of tanks positioned near the bridge.” South of Ramadi, Shiite militia fighters along with police pressed an advance in al-Tash area late Wednesday but came under attack from an ISIS suicide bomber driving an armored vehicle packed with explosives. Police sources said seven militiamen had been killed and the forces, mainly Shiite fighters from the Popular Mobilization militia force, were forced to retreat. Iraq announced an operation this week aimed at driving the militants out of their remaining strongholds in Salahuddin province as well as Anbar, most of which is under ISIS control. Separately, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Pentagon officials have begun to examine how the U.S. military could better equip and train Iraqi troops after the fall of Ramadi. Carter told reporters on his plane to Asia that he had convened a group of defense policy officials and military officers from U.S. Central Command and the Pentagon’s Joint Staff to look at how “we can enhance, hasten” the mission to train and equip Iraqi forces. The initial meeting took place Tuesday before Carter departed on a trip to Asia. “The events of recent weeks there [in Iraq] have highlighted the central importance of having a capable ground partner and that’s what the purpose of our train-and-equip program is. So we are looking,” Carter said. Also, the government has exhumed the remains of 470 people believed to have been executed by ISIS near Tikrit last year in what is known as the Speicher massacre, the health minister said. “We have exhumed the bodies of 470 Speicher martyrs from burial sites in Tikrit,” Adila Hammoud told a news conference in Baghdad, adding that the number was not final. In June 2014, armed men belonging or allied to ISIS abducted hundreds of young, mostly Shiite recruits from Speicher military base, just outside the city of Tikrit. They were then lined up in several locations and executed one by one, as shown in pictures and footage later released by ISIS. The highest estimate for the number of people killed stands at 1,700. A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on May 29, 2015, on page 10.

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) =====================

ANALYSIS-Iraqi military breakdown fueled by corruption, politics (Fight for Baghdad, Day No. 1)

Advancing Iraq rebels seize northwest town in heavy battle Sun, Jun 15 18:10 PM EDT image 1 of 6 By Ziad al-Sanjary and Ahmed Rasheed MOSUL/BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Sunni insurgents seized a mainly ethnic Turkmen city in northwestern Iraq on Sunday after heavy fighting, solidifying their grip on the north after a lightning offensive that threatens to dismember Iraq. Residents reached by telephone in the city of Tal Afar said it had fallen to the rebels from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant after a battle which saw heavy casualties on both sides. "The city was overrun by militants. Severe fighting took place, and many people were killed. Shi'ite families have fled to the west and Sunni families have fled to the east," said a city official who asked not to be identified. Tal Afar is a short drive west from Mosul, the north's main city, which the ISIL fighters seized last week at the start of a drive that has plunged the country into the worst crisis since U.S. troops withdrew. Most of the inhabitants of Tal Afar are members of the Turkmen ethnic group, who speak a Turkic language. Turkey has expressed concern about their security. The city had been defended by an unit of Iraq's security forces commanded by a Shi'ite major general, Abu Walid, whose men were among the few holdouts from the government's forces in the province around Mosul not to flee the rapid ISIL advance. After sweeping through towns in the Tigris valley north of Baghdad, ISIL fighters appear to have halted their advance outside the capital, instead moving to tighten their grip on the north. The Turkmen and other residents of Tal Afar are divided among Sunnis and Shi'ites in a part of Iraq with a complex ethnic and sectarian mixture. The city is just outside Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, whose own security forces have taken advantage of the collapse of government control to advance into the city of Kirkuk and rural areas with oil deposits. ISIL fighters aim to establish a Caliphate on both sides of the Syria-Iraqi frontier based on strict medieval Sunni Muslim precepts. Their advance has been assisted by other Sunni Muslim armed groups. The advance has alarmed Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite supporters in Iran as well as the United States, which helped bring Maliki to power after its 2003 invasion that toppled Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein. U.S. President Barack Obama has said he is reviewing military options, short of sending troops, to combat the insurgency, and Iran has held out the prospect of working with its longtime U.S. arch-enemy to help restore security in Iraq. Washington said on Sunday it was beefing up security at its embassy in Baghdad and moving some staff out. (Full Story) The vast mission is the largest and most expensive embassy ever built anywhere in the world, a vestige of the days when the United States had 170,000 troops in Iraq battling to put down a sectarian civil war that followed its invasion. Iraq now faces the prospect of similarly vicious warfare, but this time with no U.S. forces on the ground to intervene. Its million-strong army, trained and armed by Washington at a cost of around $25 billion, has been plagued by corruption, poor morale and a perception it pursues Shi'ite sectarian interests. "CRAZY FIGHTING" Residents in Tal Afar said Shi'ite police and troops rocketed Sunni neighborhoods before the ISIL forces moved in and finally captured the city. A member of Maliki's security committee told Reuters government forces had attacked ISIL positions on the outskirts of the city with helicopters. "The situation is disastrous in Tal Afar. There is crazy fighting and most families are trapped inside houses, they can’t leave town," a local official said on Sunday before the city was overrun. "If the fighting continues, a mass killing among civilians could result." Shi'ites, who form the majority in Iraq and are based mainly in the south, have rallied to defend the country, with thousands of volunteers turning out to join the security forces after a mobilization call by the top Shi'ite cleric. Maliki's security forces and allied militias regained some territory on Saturday. In Baghdad on Sunday, a suicide attacker detonated explosives in a vest he was wearing, killing at least nine people and wounding 20 in a crowded street in the center of the capital, police and medical sources said. At least six people were killed, including three soldiers and three volunteers, when four mortars landed at a recruiting center in Khalis, one of the last big towns in government hands north of the capital, 50 km (30 miles) north of Baghdad. Volunteers were being gathered by the army to join fighting to regain control of the nearby town of Udhaim. ISIL fought as Al Qaeda's Iraq branch against U.S. forces during the years of American occupation in Iraq, but broke away from Al Qaeda after joining the civil war in Syria. It now says the group founded by Osama bin Laden is not extreme enough. In years of fighting on both sides of the frontier, ISIL has gained a reputation for shocking brutality. It considers Shi'ites to be heretics deserving of death and sends bombers daily to kill hundreds of Iraqi civilians each month. A series of pictures distributed on a purported ISIL Twitter account appeared to show gunmen from the Islamist group shooting dozens of men, unarmed and lying prone on the ground. Captions accompanying the pictures said they showed hundreds of army deserters who were captured as they tried to flee the fighting. They were shown being transported in the back of truck and led to an open field where they were laid down in rows and shot by several masked gunmen. In several pictures, the black Islamist ISIL flag can be seen. Most of the captured men were wearing civilian clothes, although one picture showed two men in military camouflage trousers, one of them half covered by a pair of ordinary trousers. "This is the fate of the Shi'ites which Nuri brought to fight the Sunnis," a caption to one of the pictures reads. Others showed ISIL fighters apparently seizing facilities in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown, which they captured on Wednesday. It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the pictures. Across the border, a Syrian government air raid hit near ISIL's headquarters in the eastern city of Raqqa, Syrian activists said. The only Syrian provincial capital in insurgent hands, Raqqa has been a major base for ISIL since the group evicted rival rebels, including al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, during infighting this year. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said warplanes targeted the governorate building, a large structure in the center of town, as well as two other buildings, including a sharia, or Islamic law, court. The fighting in Iraq is by far the worst since U.S. troops pulled out in 2011. U.S. President Barack Obama has come under fire at home for failing to do more to bolster Baghdad. While expressing support for Maliki's government, the United States has stressed the need for a political solution to the crisis. Maliki's opponents accuse him of sidelining Sunnis, which fueled resentment that fed the insurgency. Secretary of State John Kerry told Iraq's foreign minister in a call on Saturday that U.S. assistance would only succeed if Iraqi leaders set aside their differences and forged the national unity needed to confront the insurgent threat. The United States ordered an aircraft carrier moved into the Gulf on Saturday, readying it in case Washington decides to pursue a military option. (Full Story) Oil prices have risen to the highest level this year over fears of the violence disrupting exports from the OPEC member. (Additional reporting by Isabel Coles and David Sheppard in Arbil, Raheem Salman in Baghdad and Alexander Dziadosz in Beirut; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Giles Elgood and Sonya Hepinstall) ============== Hayder al-Khoei ‏@Hayder_alKhoei · 16m Wth? RT @wgdunlop: Iraq air strike hits Kurdish convoy in Diyala, killing six peshmerga fighters http://bit.ly/1kVD3JZ @AFP Kurdish officials say they won't give back territory to Maliki army "no matter how secure the rest of Iraq becomes" http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/kurdistan-remains-oasis-calm-amid-iraq-tumult/ … Horrific pictures from pro-ISIS account of summary execution of Iraqi soldiers pic.twitter.com/lsgq3kckjH Muqtada al Sadr reappears in public in #Iraq, and reactives his militia calling for military parades across the country #ISIS #Iran I've seen this in #Baghdad today after an attack: 5 medics waiting behind 5 stretchers for casualties on a sidewalk in front of a hospital #BREAKING Iraqi forces kill 279 militants in past 24 hours, spokesman says - @AFP: http://bit.ly/1qPZ4KJ The pictures of the mass execution of the Iraqi soldiers in Tikrit which was claimed by ISIL, http://alplatformmedia.com/vb/showthread.php?t=50823 … http://t.co/QRkte6DDoC http://t.co/xDRTWeWmGw Adviser to PM Nouri al-Maliki claims that there is a "relationship between Kurdistan's oil export and #ISIS – part of regional plot". #Kurdistan ministry of communication says the region won't ban internet access to any social media or messaging app. pic.twitter.com/7HPP8dKGiZ ============================ Is IRAQ for just IRAQIS? Are Iraqi rulers capable of seating Baghdad which can't even provide any justification of how their 20 Billion Dollars funded Army fled from North! How long you can fool us and loot our resources. Do you think you owe and in charge of billons+trillions of dollars of Oil & Degass? Did Ayatollah's Allah checked that these will be situated in today's IRAQi border before injecting it deep inside Triassic rocks? If not then its not just your resources. the World sleeps in hunger, thirst and darkness and your ministers even failed to attend parliament as they busy in buying Dubai Skylines. I am really jealous of this Short Sighted Slogan. Sistani's Fatwa to eradicate Fetna is not a call for just Iraqis. So the only option to rescue Baghdad is to Syrialyze it, then Victory is with us. Before being emotional, let me tell you when Corrupt Installed Dictated Democracy Collapses, even 20 billion dollars worth of Army melt in few hours and at this time, only general public can safe this country, whether its IRAQ or PAKAFGH or Vietnam. I am adding last option to rescue Baghdad as Public Uprise as they are ultimate power , whether these poor are from Basra or Mosul or Ramadai, their oppressors are same rich rulers who are looting and exporting money to Dubai Amman and other foreign banks while these poor under whose feet trillions dollars worth of resources are flowing , are being kept in darkness , hunger and thirst, I can call them Imam's Army not IRAQI Army and please if I take a gun and want to enter from Kuwait or Turkey, don't deport me calling I am not Iraqi, not having visa, or not having E-or Zee Passport, Keep my eye retina in your recors, do my DNA , so that you know who are those , who come at end to rescue from total collapse. ====================== In defense of Baghdad, Iraq turns to Shi'ite militias Reuters By By Ned Parker and Raheem Salman 2 hours ago By Ned Parker and Raheem Salman Related Stories [$$] Thousands Heed Call to Arms in Iraq The Wall Street Journal Iraq crisis could make US, Iran allies Christian Science Monitor Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric issues call to fight jihadist rebels Reuters Iraqis flock to volunteer to fight insurgents Associated Press Loss of Mosul threatens Iraqi PM's hold on power Associated Press BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The Special Forces soldier watched as militia fighters from the group Asaib Ahl Haq reinforced his elite Iraqi military battalion north of Baghdad earlier this week. Beyond their ranks, deployed between the Shiite cities of Dujail and Balad, was the army of Sunni militants. He marveled at the group that had been trained by the Iranians. They were in the thousands and drove in a mix of military and civilian vehicles, organized by skill set: there was a sniper platoon and a special platoon for raiding houses. “There were too many. I couldn’t count,” he said on Friday. “The weapons they have are better than the military’s.” For several months, Asaib Ahl Haq and another Iranian-trained militia, Kata'ib Hezbollah, have been Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's secret weapon in his fight against Sunni militants who seized western Iraq’s largest cities Fallujah and Ramadi in January. Maliki will be counting on them as never before in the coming days to lead an informal army of Shi'ite citizen volunteers in the defense of Baghdad. Sunni militants have made a rapid advance through northern Iraq this week, taking control of Iraq's second city Mosul and several others. In March and April, Sunni fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and other groups, had pushed on to the rural edges of Baghdad. Watching his military struggle, Maliki called upon militia volunteers because of their experience in guerrilla war, according to two advisers to the prime minister. The groups were put under a formal military command structure beneath commander in chief Maliki and called Sons of Iraq, the name given to Sunni tribal fighters who battled Al Qaeda-inspired groups with U.S. support in 2007 and 2008. Asaib and Kata'ib Hezbollah, who have sent fighters to Syria to defend Shiite shrines and recognize Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei as their spiritual leader, memorialized their dead in the fighting around Baghdad at public funerals in Shiite neighborhoods like Hurriya and on Facebook pages. There they also advertised phone numbers for recruiting new fighters to join the battle around the capital’s perimeter. SECTARIAN CONFLICT However, in their zeal to defeat al Qaeda, the groups also carried out raids in Sunni areas north, south and east of Baghdad that have left civilians dead – their bodies turned up days later in the morgue – in a repeat of the dark days of Iraq’s 2005-2008 sectarian war. The worst of the excesses so far was in late March when security forces and militia members from Asaib Ahl Haq entered the town of Bohruz and killed at least 23 people following a takeover of the town by Sunni militants. In April, medical sources said at least 50 unidentified bodies showed up at the morgue, many of them handcuffed and with bullet wounds to the head, trademarks of militia style killings. The corpses were found on the edges of the Shiite neighborhoods of Sadr City in eastern Baghdad and Shaola to the West. Before the fall of Mosul this week, the activities of both Asaib and Kata'ib Hezbollah had been kept out of the open. Politicians and group members acknowledged the militias’ activities in private, but government spokesmen and Asaib and Kata'ib Hezbollah publicly denied their involvement in fighting. Now, with Sunni armed groups pushing to break through Baghdad’s western, northern, southern and eastern edges, Asaib and Kata'ib Hezbollah are at the tip of the vanguard of informal volunteers. No one bothers to pretend any more that the fighters are not patrolling and battling in Baghdad’s hinterlands. Amid rumors and allegations of Iranian advisers or units working in Iraq to defend Shi'ite territories, the likelihood is that any Iranian presence is tied to these groups, who have been nurtured and trained by Iraq's neighbor for years. CALL TO ARMS On Tuesday, Maliki vowed to arm volunteers to take back territory in Mosul. Iraq’s moderate Shiite religious and political leaders have joined the call. A representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country’s most influential Shiite cleric, who refrained from telling citizens to bear weapons during the previous civil war, issued a call to arms on Friday. Now even Maliki’s Shiite rivals, who have positioned themselves as moderates in comparison to the prime minister, are sending volunteers to the front lines around Baghdad. Convoys of volunteers were racing through Baghdad on Saturday. A senior member of Maliki’s Dawa party explained they had no other choice than to activate Shiite volunteer fighters, whether tribal or associated with the militias. He acknowledged the use of militias weakened the state’s authority, but he said he saw no other way to ensure Iraq’s survival. On the streets of Sadr City, the Shiite slum in Baghdad, ordinary men, unattached to any militia, were stocking up weapons and asking those with military experience to train them. “For the second day running I have been receiving people and neighbors asking me to help them maintain and clean their weapons for them,” said a former officer, named Mohammed Darraji. “The situation is similar to that during the fall of the regime (of Saddam). The young are so enthusiastic, and just waiting for orders to go and fight.” One elite security officer with the interior ministry who had been stationed in Samarra, home to a Shiite shrine, praised the militia fighters who stood by him as he fought to drive back Sunni militants. "I am very much for the partnership with Islamic resistance groups like Asaib Ahl Haq… Those groups are important and trained in the street fighting,” the officer said. “They did well in the fighting in Samarra. They are trained to fight alongside and back up the security forces.” Countering such praise, Sunnis accuse the groups of having carried out executions of any Sunni they suspect of terrorism and warn the militias have gone on a rampage in the rural districts around Baghdad. Shiite tribal figures, Maliki supporters, and Sunni politicians all confirm Asaib and Kata'ib Hezbollah have been active fighting around the so-called Baghdad Belt since the beginning of the year. In southern Baghdad’s farm district of Madain, Reuters interviewed several families who counted 16 relatives assassinated in April either in drive by shootings or taken by men with security badges, only to have their bodies turn up days later at the morgue. Terrified, the families fled their homes. They believed at least 50 Sunnis had been killed in assassinations south of Baghdad since January. Two of the men, whose sons were killed, met on a May afternoon with Reuters having returned to Madain to discuss how their eight relatives were taken by men with security badges on April 26 at 5:30 am, only to be found dead, dumped hours later on the outskirts of Sadr City in Baghdad. “It was a black day, a dark day for us and just imagine if you have a son and you lose your son, what will stick in your head?” one of them said trembling. “ We raised them for years and then we lost them just like that.” ========================== يقال ان بعض المسؤولين في العراق اخرجوا عوائلهم منها..صحيح هذا الخير! !؟ =================== 113 Turkish workers return home from Iraq ANKARA Tens of thousands of local Turkmens left the northern Iraqi city of Tuzkhormatu, Doğan News Agency reported Tens of thousands of local Turkmens left the northern Iraqi city of Tuzkhormatu, Doğan News Agency reported Some 113 Turkish workers who were in the Iraqi city of Najaf returned Turkey on June 14, the Turkish foreign ministry said, informing that the Turkish Airlines continued its operations in the country’s main airports, Baghdad, Basra, Irbil, Najaf and Suleimaniye. In its second statement late afternoon, the Foreign Ministry’s Iraq Crisis Desk stressed that the workers could return via a private aircraft rented by the company they were working for. The Ministry provided flight permissions for the company, it added. There is no improvement in the security conditions and the clashes are rapidly spreading, the statement read, reiterated that earlier security and travel warnings were still valid. Estimated number of Turks in Iraq except for Kurdistan Regional Government region is between 7,000 to 10,000. =================== Iraqi Troops Dig in, Bolstering Baghdad's Defences World | Agence France-Presse | Updated: June 14, 2014 21:16 IST Properties in Pune & Goa – Best Opportunity for NRI to Invest in India, Enquire to Avail Offer! gera.in/dubai-exhibition Iraqi Troops Dig in, Bolstering Baghdad's Defences Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters stand to attention in the grounds of their camp in Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq on June 14, 2014 Baghdad: Soldiers armed with shovels are digging in just 25 kilometres (15 miles) north of Baghdad as others man new checkpoints, bolstering the Iraqi capital's defences against a militant assault. A major militant offensive launched on Monday, spearheaded by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group but also involving supporters of executed dictator Saddam Hussein, has overrun a large chunk of northern and north-central Iraq. The advance swept to within less than 100 kilometres (60 miles) of the capital, raising fears among residents that the city itself would be next, though militants have since been pushed back by security forces in areas farther north, making an assault on Baghdad appear less likely. ISIL spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani has vowed its fighters would press on to Baghdad and Karbala, a city southwest of the capital that is considered one of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam. Top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani on Friday urged Iraqis to take up arms against the Sunni militants. Trucks carrying hundreds of volunteers were among a large number of vehicles passing through the key main checkpoint north of Baghdad, as security forces carried out spot checks. The volunteers sang patriotic songs as they were driven to a nearby training centre. Security forces performed poorly when the militant onslaught was unleashed, but they now appear to be recovering from the initial shock and have begun to regain ground. They are regrouping despite scenes of disarray in the early days of the offensive, when soldiers shed their uniforms for civilian clothes and abandoned weapons and other equipment. And they have retaken areas north of the capital that were among the closest militants got to Baghdad, officers said. Bolstered by militiamen Regular security forces are bolstered by militiamen in preparing to defend the capital.

"Our forces stand as one rank beside the army and the police," said Hussein al-Tamimi, a local leader of the Sahwa militia forces, which fought alongside American troops against militants in previous years. "Where are they?" he asked of the militants. "We are waiting for them and looking for them. We want them to come so we can finish them." Dhia Ali al-Tamimi, a local tribal leader, also spoke out in support of the security forces, telling AFP that "everyone must protect the land and the state". "Life is completely normal in our areas and attacks by these terrorists don't scare us," he said.

Inside Baghdad itself, security forces have also set up new checkpoints, joining a slew of others. Brigadier General Saad Maan has told AFP that "we put in place a new plan to protect Baghdad". It "consists of intensifying the deployment of forces, and increasing intelligence efforts and the use of technology such as (observation) balloons and cameras and other equipment," Maan said. He also said coordination between the various security forces had been increased.

Ihsan al-Shammari, a politics professor at Baghdad University, said he does not expect the militants to reach Baghdad, and that "their end will be far from the capital". But if they did reach Baghdad, it would devolve into street-to-street fighting, Shammari added.

Inside the capital, life is still relatively normal in the Kadhimiyah area, the city's northernmost area and home to a revered Shiite shrine visited by hundreds of thousands of people every year.

Kadhimiyah shop-owner Abu Khodr was defiant, saying that "standing up to terrorism is a national duty for everyone in the world, not just in Iraq". "We don't fear them at all," he said of the militants. "Do we fear the enemies of God?" A confident army Colonel Abduljabbar al-Assadi, inspecting the new defensive positions north of Baghdad, said: "Our forces are ready for any emergency." Assadi said the checkpoint had already been attacked twice. In one attack, his arm was broken. "Despite that, I refused to leave the checkpoint, and I will not abandon it," he said.

For NDTV Updates, ======================= انزالات متتالیه لقوات النخبه العراقیه(قوات علي الاکبر) خلف خطوط الغزاه جحافل الفتح الشعبي تدخل تكريت بدون قتال والدواعش في مزابل التاريخ " ‫#‏داعش‬" يرسم خريطة لدولته الإسلامية تشمل ‫#‏الكويت‬ نشر تنظيم دولة العراق والشام الإسلامية "داعش"، خريطة لتصور الدولة الإسلامية التي يسعى لإقامتها، وبدا لافتا أن التنظيم وضع الكويت ضمن دولته المرتقبة. وفي هذا الإطار، أجرى رئيس الوزراء الكويتي اتصالا هاتفيا برئيس الوزراء العراقي، نوري ‫#‏المالكي‬، استعرض معه تطورات الأوضاع الأمنية. التفاصيل في الرابط التالي http://ara.tv/n75mn ============================================= Iraqiya TV reporting that leader of 1920s Revolution Brigades Saad al-Samarrai killed by ISF in Tikrit

yes Maliki has to go. But analysts do no good by analysing Iraq just through him. There's a bottom to top culture of corruption mistrust 1/2 For example, when fallujah was being attacked barely any attention was made to sunnis fleeing to Shiite kerbala for shelter Also frustrating is the amount of journos who have become sudden experts on #Iraq that are framing all kinds of bs In the end, innocent civilians will pay for this mess as no one is considering the national interest. Foreign interference, stepping up weapons in Syria, Iran involvement will only provide more ignition to the fire. #Iraq

View translation Iranian forces enter Kurdistan Region - BasNews #Iraq Sunni cleric Sheikh Muhammad al-Mansouri, Imam of Grand #Mosul Mosque, killed by #ISIS for refusing to hand over control of mosque." Wahabis can kill you at your homes, streets, roads, worship places. No one speaks. When you defend, it becomes sectarian all of a sudden. #Iraq Crisis: Angry Locals Defy Social Media Ban With Whisper App http://bit.ly/1pXA3NY =============== Iranian forces have entered the Kurdistan Region and are based in Naft Khana, a border town near the city of Khanaqin in Diyala Province, which is under control of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). A reliable source in Khanaqin that asked to remain anonymous has told BasNews that the Iranians were deployed a few days ago after the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS) took control of most areas of mid and northern Iraq. “The Iranian forces came from Naft Khana border point and are ready to fight,” said the source. The soldiers are currently based in the former Iraqi army base Kubra Army Base. The Iranian army has small and medium weapons and their number is about 500 soldiers. A Kurdish Iranian opposition official in Kurdistan confirmed the Iranian army deployment.

“The Iranian army will help those Iraqi political functions that protect Iranian interest in the country, they are not coming for the sake of Iraqi’s interests,” said Muhammad Nazifi Qadiri senior member of Iranian-Kurdistan Democratic Party to BasNews.

According to him the forces come from Kermanshah, a Kurdish city in western Iran. Kurdish media reporting that Iraqi fighter jets hit peshmerga positions in jalawla in northern diyala ================== Source: Reuters - Fri, 13 Jun 2014 20:52 GMT Author: Reuters cor-gov hum-war Enlarge image Members of Iraqi security forces stand guard during an intensive security deployment in Kerbala, southwest of Baghdad June 13, 2014 REUTERS/Mushtaq Muhammed TweetRecommendGoogle +LinkedInBookmarkEmailPrint Leave us a comment By Ned Parker and Missy Ryan WASHINGTON, June 12 (Reuters) - The Iraqi army that disintegrated under an onslaught by Islamist fighters this week was a hollow force, riven by corruption, poor leadership and sectarian splits - a shadow of the military Washington had hoped to leave in the war-ravaged country. The United States dismantled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's military after invading in 2003 and spent $20 billion to build up a new 800,000-strong force, banking on its ability to keep the peace when the U.S. military withdrew in 2011. While the 2003 decision to disband Iraq's army led to a bloody civil war, Iraqi forces were seen as generally competent by 2011 and sectarian fighting had eased, giving U.S. President Barack Obama some confidence as he pulled out all American forces. But corruption sapped funds meant for soldiers' rations, for maintaining vehicles and for fuel, said an Iraqi officer in Sunni-dominated Anbar Province, parts of which have been out of government control for more than six months. Senior military posts are frequently for sale, and soldiers go to local markets to buy spare parts because government stores are empty, he said. The Iraqi force has also been heavily politicized under Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, said Retired Lieutenant General Jim Dubik, who led the U.S. and NATO effort to train Iraqi forces from 2007 to 2008. "Their leadership has eroded," said Dubik, who is now a senior fellow at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington. "If you're a fighter and you think your side's going to lose, you don't fight until the last man. You save yourself." A former U.S. official in Iraq said poor treatment of rank-and-file soldiers by their superiors contributed to mass desertions. "These guys, these units are demoralized. They are underpaid and ripped off constantly by their commanding officers, who steal their allowances and use their commands as a way to build a personal nest egg," the former official said. A HOLLOW ARMY Apart from a few standout units, such as special forces who have borne the brunt of the fighting, "it's a hollow army," the former official said. The performance of the Iraqi forces was far from perfect even before the U.S. pullout. Endemic problems of fraud in military contracting, extortion at checkpoints, and the padding of rosters with non-existent soldiers were things the U.S. military was never able to solve and sometimes ignored. The collapse this week started at the top with the senior-most commanders abandoning their positions early on Tuesday morning as black-clad fighters of the radical Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) swept into the country's second city of Mosul. Mosul's defenders held up well for three days until late Monday evening, but over the next few hours the force imploded, with the senior commander for all of Nineveh province, Mahdi Garawi, fleeing. The commander of Iraq's ground forces, General Ali Ghaidan, and the vice chief of army staff, Lieutenant General Abboud Qanbar, also abandoned their posts, according to an Iraqi official and a Western security expert. The entire military structure deployed by the Shi'ite government in Baghdad to protect the north and west melted away before the well-armed Sunni rebels, who had been advancing for weeks across the rocky, dusty flatlands of western Iraq. "There's no question there was a breakdown, a structural breakdown, in Mosul," Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said in Washington. CAPTURED U.S. EQUIPMENT The Sunni rebel advance engulfed towns and cities, allowing them to seize weapons and other equipment, much of it supplied by the United States. Two days after the fall of Mosul, ISIL militants staged a parade of American Humvee patrol cars. Eyewitnesses said they saw two helicopters captured by the militants flying over the city. President Obama expressed frustration on Friday.

"The fact that they are not willing to stand and fight and defend their posts against admittedly hardened terrorists, but not terrorists who are overwhelming in numbers, indicates that there's a problem" with morale and commitment that is rooted in politics, he said.

Since the withdrawal of U.S. troops, American support for Iraqi forces has been modest, consisting mostly of a small number of advisers attached to the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, some cooperation on intelligence and limited arms deliveries. This changed after the war in neighboring Syria flared in 2013 and fueled resurgent violence. U.S. special forces began training small numbers of elite Iraqi soldiers in Jordan and Washington accelerated arms sales. This included deals for Apache attack helicopters, Hellfire missiles and surveillance drones, much of which has yet to arrive. Warren, the Pentagon spokesman, declined to discuss what, if any, U.S. weapons sold to Iraq might have been seized by ISIL, but said the militants had exaggerated gains. ACHILLES' HEEL The military collapse this week can be traced back to Maliki's earlier failure to rebuff ISIL in western Anbar province, which has become a militant stronghold as the conflict in Syria intensified. After ISIL fighters seized Falluja and other areas of Anbar late last year, Iraqi medical sources say some 6,000 soldiers died there. Iraq-based foreign diplomats say 12,000 deserted their posts. Iraqi forces have not been able to retake Falluja or regain all of the largely Sunni province's capital, Ramadi. In the battle for Mosul, U.S. government experts estimate that Iraqi army forces outnumbered ISIL fighters by a factor of "double digits." Still, the militants easily took the city. Senior Iraqi military officials "are picked because Maliki values their loyalty to him over any kind of war-fighting skills. They don't understand what it takes to fight a counterinsurgency like this," one former senior U.S. military officer said. "They failed to put in rigorous training (for their soldiers). They failed to invest in maintenance and logistics as we told them to," the former official said. "We warned them this would be their Achilles' heel." (Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed, Mark Hosenball and David Alexander; Writing by Missy Ryan; Editing by David Storey, Jason Szep and Jonathan Oatis) ====================================================== MUSINGS ON IRAQ Iraq News, Politics, Economics, Society Friday, June 13, 2014 Continued Collapse Of Iraqi Security Forces And Fighting In Baghdad Leads to Militia Mobilization And Arrival Of Iran The continued collapse of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) along with the advance of the insurgency towards Baghdad has brought out both the militias and Iran. June 12, 2014 there was more news that police and army units were disintegrating in the face of militants. In Diyala police and army units started pulling out of the Sadiya area throughout the day. A Baathist Military Council later posted several videos of it burning parts of an abandoned ISF base in that part of the province. In Anbar, soldiers withdrew from Kubaisa near Hit in the west after fighting with insurgents. To the west of Ramadi officers in the local police, and customs and border guards fled as well after being attacked. More importantly the security forces left their positions along the Anbar-Syria border, army and tribal forces pulled out of their assignments around parts of Fallujah allowing militants to gain control of three entrances to the city, and insurgents overran the Mazraa army base west of Fallujah after it was abandoned. The day was topped off with reports of fighting in Dora in southern Baghdad and Abu Ghraib to the west. The ISF were actually able to hold the Baiji refinery and Samarra in Salahaddin. The latter includes the Shiite Askari shrine so there was far more motivation for fighting there than say Mosul or Tikrit. There was probably foreign assistance there as well which will be discussed next. Otherwise it seemed like the police and army were withering away anytime the insurgents showed up. That has forced Baghdad to look for outside support from its neighboring Iran. With these continued reversals and the insurgency’s march towards Baghdad there are more stories of militia and Iranian mobilization. The Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) said that its men would be working with the Defense Minister to fight terrorists. They will be backed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, which recently sent 2 battalions to Iraq. Quds Force leader General Qasim Suleimani who is in Baghdad will command them. Militia units have already been fighting in places like Anbar in recent months. With the threat to Baghdad and its majority Shiite population growing Tehran is getting ready to defend the capital. The security is so dire with the ISF giving up across the country the Iraqi government needs more boots on the ground to stabilize the situation. New Iraqi volunteers are not going to reverse the situation because they need weeks of basic training and if that was shortened they would be even more ineffective than the current security members have proven. The only country that is willing to commit its money, support and personnel is neighboring Iran. It does not want to see the expansion of ISIS, which it has fought in Syria, and will not stand for a friendly government that is right next door to it to fall to Sunni insurgents. This is just like Tehran did during the previous Iraqi civil war. That means when the serious fighting starts in Baghdad the militants will be in a real fight against not only the ISF, but also militias backed by Iranian advisers and leadership. That will get real ugly really fast. ================================================

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)