The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant Megathread

[Eddie Teach]

bike courier?

[derspiess]

draftpeaceniks?

[Sheilbh]

I don't even know what a long term solution looks like.

Re-drawing borders.

I suspect so. Which'll be awful and very difficult but to an extent has largely already happened.

But I don't see how simultaneously arming a Shia centralist government in Iraq and Kurdish separatists can be a long-term plan.

[CountDeMoney]

But I don't see how simultaneously arming a Shia centralist government in Iraq and Kurdish separatists can be a long-term plan.

That's because we don't deal in long-term plans for the Middle East.  It's all "least-of-the-worst-for-now" spot-welding bullshit.

[Sheilbh]

France is joining in the air strikes

[CountDeMoney]

They're not only throwing bombs, but insults  Vive the French

France is ditching the 'Islamic State' name — and replacing it with a label the group hates
WashingtonPost

From the start, exactly what to call the extremist Islamist group that has taken over much of Syria and Iraq has been problematic. At first, many called it the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). However, due to differences over how the name should be translated from the Arabic, some (including the U.S. government) referred to them as ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant).

To make matters more complicated, the group later announced that it should simply be called the "Islamic State" – a reference to the idea that the group was breaking down state borders to form a new caliphate. A number of media groups, including The Post, the Associated Press  and, eventually, the New York Times, adopted this name, while others stuck with ISIS and ISIL.

Now the French have added another complication. On Monday, the French government released a statement that included a reference to the group under a different name: "Daesh."

France had hinted that it would begin using this term – how the group is referred to in much of the Arab world – before, but this week appears to be the first time that the country has used it in official communications.

"This is a terrorist group and not a state," Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters last week, according to France 24. "I do not recommend using the term Islamic State because it blurs the lines between Islam, Muslims and Islamists. The Arabs call it 'Daesh' and I will be calling them the 'Daesh cutthroats.' "

That logic is certainly understandable, and the French aren't alone in bristling at the idea that an extremist group gets to take the moniker "Islamic State."

Last month, Egypt's leading Islamic authority, Dar al-Ifta, called on the world's media to stop using the term, instead suggesting a new term: "al-Qaeda Separatists in Iraq and Syria" or QSIS. "The initiative by Dar al-Ifta came to express the institution's rejection of many stereotypes that attach the name of Islam to bloody and violent acts committed by such groups," Ibrahim Negm, an adviser to Egyptian grand mufti Shawqi Allam, told al-Arabiya News.

And a group of British imams recently called on British Prime Minister David Cameron to stop calling the group "Islamic State," making a request for a new moniker, "Un-Islamic State," instead. "We do not believe the terror group responsible should be given the credence and standing they seek by styling themselves Islamic State," a letter sent from the imams to Cameron read, according to the Guardian. "It is neither Islamic, nor is it a state.

Despite the admirable French logic, Daesh comes with its own complications. As historian and blogger Pieter van Ostaeyen noted back in February, that word is a transliteration of an Arabic word (داعش), an acronym for al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham (which is itself a transliteration of the group's Arabic name: الدولة الإسلامية في العراق والشام). There are a variety of different schools of transliteration, and there are a number of different styles for writing the Arabic acronym in Latin characters: The Washington Post uses DAIISH, but DAASH, DAIISH and DAISH are also used.

However it's spelled, there's another big factor: The group is reported to hate the moniker.

The Associated Press recently reported that the group were threatening to cut cut out the tongues of anyone who used the phrase publicly, and AFP have noted that the term "Daeshi" has been used a derogatory term in some parts of the Middle East. Some analysts have suggested that the dislike of the term comes from its similarity to another Arabic word, دعس, or Das. That word means to trample down or crush.

[Tonitrus]

Reports of air strikes inside Syria...including with B-1Bs.   

[Ed Anger]

BONER......ACTIVATED. THIS IS CRYSTAL PALACE. BONER CONFIDENCE IS HIGH.

[Valmy]

It is neither Islamic, nor is it a state

Nor an Empire

[Crazy_Ivan80]

"It is neither Islamic"

lol, head in the sand or what

[Caliga]

It is neither Islamic, nor is it a state

Nor an Empire

[mongers]

Bombing them we're ever there found is a good first step, but ....

their opponents on the ground vary from just competent, through untried, to astonishingly incompetent.

Has anyone else read about the recent ISIL raid on the Iraqi army base between Fallujah and Baghdad?

Taken by surprise, besieged, most of the base captured/ransacks, Iraqi 'authorities' have no contact with the remaining holdout soldiers, apparently most of the 1,000+ soldiers killed or captured. Up to about 200 made it out alive, principally by fleeing into the marsh, fields. 

[jimmy olsen]

Has anyone else read about the recent ISIL raid on the Iraqi army base between Fallujah and Baghdad?

Taken by surprise, besieged, most of the base captured/ransacks, Iraqi 'authorities' have no contact with the remaining holdout soldiers, apparently most of the 1,000+ soldiers killed or captured. Up to about 200 made it out alive, principally by fleeing into the marsh, fields. 

Damn

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0HH2LT20140922?irpc=932

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2014/Sep-23/271642-iraqi-soldiers-describe-heavy-losses-as-isis-overruns-camp.ashx#axzz3E94aZio1

[mongers]

Has anyone else read about the recent ISIL raid on the Iraqi army base between Fallujah and Baghdad?

Taken by surprise, besieged, most of the base captured/ransacks, Iraqi 'authorities' have no contact with the remaining holdout soldiers, apparently most of the 1,000+ soldiers killed or captured. Up to about 200 made it out alive, principally by fleeing into the marsh, fields. 

Damn
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2014/Sep-23/271642-iraqi-soldiers-describe-heavy-losses-as-isis-overruns-camp.ashx#axzz3E94aZio1

Yes, here's the Reuters report I read yesterday:

Iraqi soldiers describe heavy losses as Islamic State overruns camp

By Ahmed Rasheed and Saif Sameer Hameed

BAGHDAD Mon Sep 22, 2014 3:45pm EDT

(Reuters) - Iraqi soldiers described on Monday how Islamic State fighters inflicted heavy losses in a chaotic raid on a military base just an hour's drive from Baghdad, highlighting the jihadists' ability to attack high-profile targets despite U.S. air strikes.

Soldiers, officials and tribal sources gave differing accounts of what happened on Sunday when the militants stormed the camp at Saqlawiya that they had been besieging.

However, casualties among the Iraqi government forces appear to have been very heavy, with many soldiers either dead, forced to flee or missing following the assault near the city of Falluja, which Islamic State has controlled since January.

A statement for Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's office said he had issued orders to detain two commanders for "negligence" in the incidents 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad, while some troops who escaped accused the military leadership of failing to help them during the siege.

Islamic State fighters seized large areas of northern and western Iraq in a summer offensive, drawing accusations of extreme brutality and prompting the U.S. air attacks after they advanced on an autonomous Kurdish region.

Their raid at Saqlawiya is the latest since the northern city of Mosul fell to Islamic State in June to exposes the Iraqi military's shortcomings. It followed a massacre of an army detachment at Camp Speicher in the same month, in which military recruits were led off the base unarmed and murdered in their hundreds.

Like at Camp Speicher, it remains unclear how many men were present at the base in Saqlawiya and how many are now dead and missing. However one officer who survived the raid said that of an estimated 1,000 soldiers in Saqlawiya, only about 200 had managed to flee.

...

Full item here, well worth reading
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/22/us-iraq-crisis-saqlawiya-idUSKCN0HH2LT20140922?utm_source=twitter

[DGuller]

Wow, that was quite a stackwipe.  I guess we know the secret to ISIS success now:  the other sides are desperate to lose.