The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant Megathread

[Admiral Yi]

He was never a Marine.

[Eddie Teach]

Nunquam fi?

[jimmy olsen]

He was never a Marine.

Army then.

[jimmy olsen]

IS holds a massive military parade in Western Iraq out in the fucking open celebrating their victory. A parade of vehicles as far as the eye can see. Where the fuck is the air force? This is negligance on a criminal scale.

https://twitter.com/IraqiSecurity/status/600368151801569281/photo/1

Meanwhile the administration is in full Baghdad Bob mode

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/isil-islamic-state-obama-administration-television-networks-footage-117911.html

Stop using ISIL footage, Obama administration asks networks

Frustrated that coverage of the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant isn't reflecting reality on the ground, senior Obama administration officials are urging television networks to update their footage of the radical militant group.

Senior State Department and Pentagon officials have begun contacting television network reporters to ask them to stop using "B-roll" — stock footage that appears on screen while reporters and commentators talk — showing ISIL at the peak of its strength last summer.

"We are urging broadcasters to avoid using the familiar B-roll that we've all seen before, file footage of ISIL convoys operating in broad daylight, moving in large formations with guns out, looking to wreak havoc," said Emily Horne, spokeswoman for retired Gen. John Allen, the State Department's special envoy leading the international coalition against ISIL.

"It's inaccurate — that's no longer how ISIL moves," Horne said. "A lot of that footage is from last summer before we began tactical strikes."

[Eddie Teach]

IS holds a massive military parade in Western Iraq out in the fucking open celebrating their victory. A parade of vehicles as far as the eye can see. Where the fuck is the air force? This is negligance on a criminal scale.

Sounds like a good time to wreak maximum collateral damage. 

[jimmy olsen]

Some crazy, evil shit. Especially that 3rd to last paragraph, what the fuck! 

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=50794#.VVwB0IGmrqA

7 May 2015 – Sexual violence is being committed strategically, in a widespread and systematic manner, and with a high-degree of sophistication by most parties to the conflict in Syria and Iraq, the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Zainab Bangura, said today as she briefed journalists on her "scoping mission" to the region in April.

"Women and girls are at risk and under assault at every point of their lives," Ms. Bangura declared, emphasizing that the threat of brutality followed them "every step of the way...in the midst of active conflict, in areas under control of armed actors, at check-points and border crossings, and in detention facilities."

Ms. Bangura's trip lasted from 16 to 29 April and took her to Syria and Iraq, as well as to neighbouring countries of Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, where she met directly with women who escaped the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) captivity and survived sexual violence.

She pointed to instances of forced, temporary and early marriage and described how such practices were encouraged for fighters as part of Jihad and used as a "protection" mechanism for families with no other means of providing for or ensuring safety of young girls. She also noted the sale of women for sex.

"Girls are literally being stripped naked and examined in slave bazaars," she said, describing how they were "categorized and shipped naked off to Raqqa or Mosul or other locations to be distributed among ISIL leadership and fighters."

She listed examples of the horrors suffered by women, including one who had been temporarily married over 20 times, after each occasion forced to undergo surgery to repair her virginity.

"ISIL have institutionalized sexual violence and the brutalization of women as a central aspect of their ideology and operations, using it as a tactic of terrorism to advance their key strategic objectives," she said, going on to describe how women were promised to fighters and how ISIL raised funds through trafficking, prostitution and ransoms. Sexual violence was used to displace populations, to punish, humiliate and demoralize dissenters, to extract information for intelligence purposes and to dismantle social, familial and community structures in order to construct a new "Caliphate."

The Special Representative said she had requested that the Security Council integrate protection and empowerment of women into its counter-terrorism response and she stated concerns about children born of rape, as they were unable to be registered. That risked creating "a generation of stateless children" who could provide fertile ground for future extremism.

[jimmy olsen]

A fascinating and very in depth article on the rise of ISIS in Syria, and how they managed to infiltrate and capture so many towns and villages in northeastern Syria. All according to the plan of a former colonel in the Iraqi air defense intelligence.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-files-show-structure-of-islamist-terror-group-a-1029274.html

[Valmy]

Remember when the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was the threat to stability in the region?

[Malicious Intent]

Looks like Palmyra has pretty much fallen to IS. Another place rich with ancient sites to be eradicated. 

[Maladict]

Looks like Palmyra has pretty much fallen to IS. Another place rich with ancient sites to be eradicated. 

Just the thought makes me sick.

[jimmy olsen]

Looks like Palmyra has pretty much fallen to IS. Another place rich with ancient sites to be eradicated. 

Assad is reeling. The government might not last until the fall at this rate.

[jimmy olsen]

Yup, they're fucked. I forsee a government collapse within the relative near future and a retreat to the Alawite heartland in order to attempt to hold out as fortified ethnic enclave, ala what the Kurds have done. They may have lost too many men to be successful though.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/20/syrian-city-of-palmyra-falls-under-control-of-isis

The loss of Palmyra and the surrounding gas fields, al-Hail and Arak, is a major strategic defeat for the Assad regime. The fields supply much of the electricity in the regime's western strongholds, allowing the militant group to potentially profit from selling power back to Assad.

It also severs key supply lines to embattled regime forces in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, where they are also fighting a persistent Isis encroachment. In addition, it opens the road to a possible offensive by the militants on Homs and Damascus, key regime strongholds.

The fall of Palmyra also raises questions about the fighting capability and cohesion of Assad's remaining troops and allied militias, whose rapid collapse surprised observers, given their close proximity to supply lines and the strategic importance of the city.

The regime is stretched thin after a string of losses to rebels in Idlib in the north, who are backed by Saudi Arabia and Turkey, but residents had expected Assad's forces to withstand the siege for longer. Instead, they appear to be retrenching in the country's west, cutting their losses in the face of advances by both Isis and the opposition.

"The regime didn't seem to put up a sustained fight against the Isis attack on Palmyra, which is in and of itself concerning," said Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center and author of Profiling the Islamic State. "Increasingly over the last several months, a new regime strategy has been emerging whereby only the most strategically critical locations and regions receive total support and thus put up the most resistance against attack."

[Tonitrus]

With Hezbollah helping prop up Assad as much as they have, I wonder how long Lebanon has after Syria falls.

And Jordan should be looking out too.  It'w kinda crazy to cheer on the death of Assad's regime when ISIS is gunning for everybody in the long run.

[jimmy olsen]

With Hezbollah helping prop up Assad as much as they have, I wonder how long Lebanon has after Syria falls.

And Jordan should be looking out too.  Everyone is kinda crazy to cheer on the death of Assad's regime when ISIS is gunning for everybody in the long run.

Surely Israel would itervene if Lebanon looked like it was going to fall.

[Tonitrus]

By then it'd be too late.  Airstrikes won't do much at that point, and I doubt you'll see Israeli tanks rolling into Beirut and Damascus.