Iraq crisis: Executions and rape reported as Islamist militants close in on Baghdad

The Independent

Islamist militants are closing in on Baghdad after capturing two towns north of Iraq's capital.

Officials said Iraqi soldiers abandoned their posts with no resistance when fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) pushed into Diyala province.

Militants driving machine gun-mounted pickups entered the towns of Jalula and Sadiyah on Thursday night, police said. Jalula is 80 miles from Baghdad and Sadiyah is 60 miles away.

Sunni fundamentalist fighters have vowed to capture Baghdad and Shia holy cities further south after overrunning Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, and driving the army out of northern provinces.

The UN said hundreds have been killed - with militants carrying out summary executions of civilians in Mosul, including 17 civilians in one street.

A dozen Iraqi security personnel were also killed and four women committed suicide after being raped.

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The battle for Baghdad is nigh: Thousands of men answer Iraqi government's call to arms as ISIS jihadists bear down on capital

Daily Mail

• Iraq's government has indicated a willingness for the US military to conduct airstrikes against radical Islamist militants
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• Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant have taken over Iraq's second biggest city Mosul and town of Tikrit
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• Government forces have stalled the militants' advance near Samarra, a city just 110km (68 miles) north of Baghdad
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• ISIS's goal is to create a Islamic caliphate (state) - it already controls territory in eastern Syria and western/central Iraq
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• Iraq's parliament were to hold an emergency session today but it was postponed due to a opposition boycott
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• Kurdish forces are in full control of Iraq's oil city of Kirkuk after the federal army abandoned their posts
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• Iran has sent special forces and a unit of elite troops to Iraq to assist the Iraqi government halt the advance
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• Turkey is negotiating for the release of 80 nationals held by Islamist militants in Mosul
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• Iraqi air force is bombing insurgent positions in and around Mosul - 1.3 million citizens still remain in the city
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• Oil price hit a three-year high this morning on worries that supply could be disrupted

Thousands of Iraqis young and old have answered the beleaguered Shia-led government’s call to arms and signed up to protect the capital, and country, from ISIS militants.

As jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant march on Baghdad after capturing swathes of northern Iraq male supporters of the government turned out in droves today to enlist and fight back.

The militants have already seized control of Iraq's second largest city Mosul where it is reported that roughly 30,000 soldiers fled, leaving behind tanks and firearms as just 800 fighters approached.

Less than 24 hours later the oil-rich city of Tikrit was captured by the militants, who then turned their attentions to the capital as it pushes ahead with its aim to overthrow the western-backed government as part of its goal to create an Islamic emirate spanning both sides of the Iraq-Syria border.

But so far government forces have stalled the militants' remarkably rapid advance near Samarra, a city just 110km (68 miles) north of Baghdad and they are now bombing insurgent positions in and around Mosul - although 500,000 residents have fled, 1.3 million citizens remain in the city.

Meanwhile Iraqi Kurds seized control of the major northern oil city of Kirkuk today as the central government's army abandoned its posts in a rapid collapse that has lost it control of the north.

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Middle East Experts: ‘We Need to Be Very Concerned’ About Iraq

 Comment: The painful irony of psychopaths in power...The USA and its allies destroy Iraq, steal its resource and place a proxy government in power all under the guise of "humanitarian intervention".  Since the invasion caused Islamic Fundamentalism to spiral out of control we now have suggestions that another "intervention" might be required to stop the spread of Islamists reaching Baghdad.

What you sow, so shall you reap...

Meanwhile ordinary Iraqis suffer all over again.
 
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CNS News 

Several experts on Middle East politics say the terrorist advance in Iraq is extremely troubling -- another major U.S. foreign policy failure. 

“We need to be very concerned about the situation in Iraq,” said former CIA intelligence analyst Kenneth Pollack, who is currently a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy.

“Worst-case scenario is that there'll be a horrific civil war, it will have an effect on the global economy and could cause a very significant recession in the developed world. It will spawn new terrorist groups and it will destabilize the region. This is a very serious situation,” Pollack told Australia's public television network Thursday.

The al-Qaida-linked Sunni Islamists who stormed Iraq’s second-largest city of Mosul on Tuesday have now taken control of Tikrit and they are moving on to Baghdad, the seat of Iraq's Shiite government.

“They pushed with really rapid momentum all the way down to the outskirts of Baghdad and we've seen the Iraqi security forces almost literally melt away in front of them," Pollack said.

“This is a very disconcerting situation.” Pollack described Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, as “a really nasty group.”

“They are as radical, if not more so, than the rest of al-Qaida. It is likely that what we are seeing is the beginning of a new civil war in Iraq, and while that is probably not likely to lead to a rapid takeover by al Qaeda, the fighting there could have a very serious impact not only on Iraq's stability but on the stability of the rest of the region and on the global supply of oil.”

Although he's been warning of such a scenario for years, Pollack said he's surprised by the speed with which ISIL has seized control of two Iraqi cities.

“Clearly they have been secretly husbanding and building up their strength in a way that escaped any of the Western intelligence services or even the Arab intelligence services. I think that both the strength that ISIL has shown and the weakness demonstrated by the Iraqi security forces have both been very surprising.”

Asked how President Obama should respond to this latest foreign policy crisis, Pollack said the U.S. “needs to step up and recognize that Iraq is too important to American interests, to western interests, quite frankly to the entire global economy, to simply allow it to drift the way that the Obama administration has.

"It's very late in the day. Saving Iraq is going to be extremely difficult; and what we need to recognize is that the kind of incremental half-steps that this administration has typically (been) favoring throughout the Middle East just aren't going to cut it. It is going to require some very dramatic steps.”

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The New Slums of Baghdad

Comment: All thanks to Anglo-American-Israeli interests wholly dedicated to bringing democracy to Iraq.... Well, they certainly brought something...

 

 Photos by Dylan Roberts

vice.com/
Christian Stephen

Huddled in the back seat of our convoy, I got a blurred view of Baghdad as we passed through the city centre. It was hard to catch a glimpse of anything when our car was topping 90 miles an hour. The reason our driver was gunning through the area was simple – four bombings in the area that morning, and more happening every day. Our fixer in Baghdad said in broken English, "If the news says a number of dead, double it. Then you maybe have a number near the death." Most of the blasts here are carried out by Sunni militants against the Shiite population huddling in their cars or out shopping for food in the markets.

Gone are the days of suicide bombers with vests. These days, the explosions are timed meticulously and set off in conjunction with peak traffic. The old school move of ripping off your jacket and screaming, "God is great!" just doesn’t fit any more. Try six parked cars packed full of explosives, nails and other nasty shit, all remotely detonated by a man sipping a coffee from his apartment far above the blast radius. Welcome to modern, post-US-withdrawal Baghdad. Boys with toys, breathtaking anger management issues and religious zeal that would make Gary Busey look sane in comparison.

We hurtled through the dirty, charred streets on the outskirts of the city on our way to visit some families struggling with day-to-day life in one of the nine districts in Baghdad known as Al-Jidida, or "New Baghdad". Our guide through the city was Canon Andrew White, an Anglican priest living in the city's red zone. He was making his weekly parish visits, complete with a three-car convoy and Iraqi soldiers with more guns than Texas.

Coincidentally, most of the guns actually come from the United States. Canon White very calmly informed me that the streets we were speeding through were the most dangerous in the city, and not just because of bombings; they also happen to be hotbeds for gang activity. This explained why the soldiers in the pickup truck in front stopped joking around and looked like they were in the first stages of slowly rethinking their career choice.

 

We drove past endless rows of sheep being decapitated in the street and a severed head getting cooked with a blowtorch by a young kid. There’s nothing quite like waking up to the smell of incinerated sheep skulls in the morning.

As we passed into the residential area, there were shacks and tool sheds masquerading as houses, and power lines strung up like a drunk spider decided to get artsy. The wires hanging down practically invited everyone to come and shake hands with 10,000 volts of electricity.

In between the homes were open sewers. Shit overflowed and steamed into the streets.

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Armies and Police Are Being Privatized Around the World and Business Is Booming

 

 An American private security guard pushes back Iraqi demonstrators in Baghdad.

Slate
By Elliot Hannon

In a world where budgets are tight, and bottom lines daunting, it makes sense that governments around the world have to do more with less, or they just have to do less. Surprisingly, one part of the state apparatus that most countries seem happy to outsource is one of its most fundamental—security. At home, cash-strapped American cities, and even communities, are turning to private forces to protect public order. And a report out of the UN on Monday shows that the private security industry is experiencing a global economic boom that many of its customers would love—the shadowy industry is growing at 7.4 percent a year and is on target to balloon to a $244 billion global market by 2016.

Unsurprisingly, the U.S. is the world’s biggest spender on private security, totaling $138 billion a year, thanks in large part to a spike in demand during the concurrent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the report, last year the Pentagon spent $44 billion on mercenaries in the two countries combined and in 2011 the U.S. spent $3 billion alone on a five-year deal for private protection for the U.S. embassy building in Baghdad. But, as the American military presence diminishes, much of the outsourced security work is transitioning to police work, with protection of oil company assets abroad also on the rise.

Outside of war zones, contractors have flocked to the perilous shipping routes off the Somali coast that are particularly high risk because of pirates. More than 140 private companies now patrol those waters. The ongoing shift towards private forces poses huge regulatory issues, particularly the registering and licensing of private contractors and the absence of internationally binging legal codes, according to the report. The UN itself is a major employer of private security firms and the report warned "there is a risk that, without proper standards and oversight, the outsourcing of security functions by the United Nations to private companies could have a negative effect on the image and effectiveness of the United Nations in the field."

Baghdad: 8 years later

raedinthemiddle

I can't recognize this city anymore. What a sad sad reality. I can't recognize streets because of the concrete walls, and I don't know anymore here anymore. All my friends, family, colleagues, neighbors, and coworkers have fled the country.     

The ten words I could think of to describe Baghdad are: Garbage, checkpoints, barb-wires, concrete walls, armored vehicles,  flak jackets, bodyguards, personal security detail (PSD), corruption, and death. 

Let me see if i can use all 10 words in a sentence... 

Here is a picture from my armored vehicle -- while wearing a flak jacket and accompanied by bodyguards and my PSD -- of some concrete walls, barb wires, and garbage right before a checkpoint on my way to meet some corrupt politicians.