The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant Megathread

[KRonn]

The Sunnis in Iraq definitely think ISIS is winning and the big shots are starting to publicly declare their allegiance. The situation is getting worse all the time.

http://www.ibtimes.com/iraqi-sunni-sheikhs-anbar-pledge-allegiance-isis-aid-militant-group-1952644

https://twitter.com/sualbaghdadi/status/606395373507198976

That's too bad, yes it'll make things worse and more difficult to push ISIS back without more Sunni support. Especially since they're of the same religious sect and ISIS being opposed by fellow Sunnis doesn't make it such a sectarian war. But if mostly Iran and Shias are in the fight then yeah, the religious fight continues and gives ISIS more reason to fight, gives more reason to potential followers to join.

[jimmy olsen]

Hell of a story on the failed break out attempt of the besieged hospital last month.

What a horror show
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-syria-hospital-siege-thatturned-into-a-massacre-jisr-alshugour-breakout-was-less-of-a-victory-than-damascus-claims-10301084.html

"We had not seen this before – they came room to room with suicide belts. They were blowing the inside walls down – they smashed them from outside with suicide cars and bulldozers and then sent their men into the building. But we killed them all."

[jimmy olsen]

Isis makes the trains run on time.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/iraqi-city-of-mosul-transformed-a-year-after-islamic-state-capture-1433888626

[Camerus]

Isis makes the trains run on time.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/iraqi-city-of-mosul-transformed-a-year-after-islamic-state-capture-1433888626

Post the story here for those of us who don't have subscriptions plz

[jimmy olsen]

Holy crap! This is huge if true, especially coming on the heels of the FSA's capture of Dara.

https://twitter.com/Charles_Lister/status/608247010391490560

BIG news - reports this afternoon that #IS may have captured Hassia on the M5 Highway, cutting off #Homs-#Damascus:

[alfred russel]

I'm not worried. I haven't checked Tim's ebola thread in some time, but based on his last few updates, one can only project that ebola will be arriving in the Middle East very soon, halting any ISIS advance.

[jimmy olsen]

Isis makes the trains run on time.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/iraqi-city-of-mosul-transformed-a-year-after-islamic-state-capture-1433888626

Post the story here for those of us who don't have subscriptions plz

Your wish is my command.

Iraqi City of Mosul Transformed a Year After Islamic State Capture

Beneath a veneer of order, residents live in fear


By
Nour Malas

Updated June 9, 2015 7:49 p.m. ET

42 COMMENTS   
 
BAGHDAD—In Islamic State's stronghold of Mosul, the extremist group is working day and night to repair roads, manicure gardens and refurbish hotels. Iraq's second-largest city has never looked so good thanks to strict laws enforced by the Sunni militants.

But beneath that veneer, the group metes out deadly punishments to those who don't comply with a long list of prohibitions imposed over the year since it took control of Mosul on June 10, 2014, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former city residents, refugees and Iraqi officials.

Gone are the illegal kiosks that crowded sidewalks and the tangled web of electrical wires once connecting rooftops. New lamps light up streets unusually clear of cigarette butts.

"I have not in 30 years seen Mosul this clean, its streets and markets this orderly," said Omar, a resident. He said Islamic State has shown an unusual focus on civil works in recent weeks, which he and others described as part of efforts to win popular support.

Mosul and its population are changed in other ways, too. Gone are the iconic shrines and mosques that towered over the city center. The radical fighters blew many of them up because they believe the veneration of shrines is unholy.

Ancient churches host garage sales where Islamic State members sell war booty or display wares available to members only. The native Christian population, a minority in the Sunni-majority city once peppered with other religious and ethnic groups, was driven out last year under threat of death.

When women step outside, they are fully cloaked with their faces covered. Men have grown mandatory beards.

Islamic State has gone unchallenged because residents from Iraq's aggrieved Sunni minority are too scared of a military campaign that could bring massive destruction and an uncertain future under the Shiite-led government and allied forces who would retake the city, said current and former residents.

Such is the dissonance of life for the more than one million people in the most populous city controlled by Islamic State across the territories it holds in Iraq and Syria.

In the past year, the group has tightened its grip on Mosul mostly uncontested, building out its administrative and security apparatus. It has cut the city off from the rest of Iraq and the world beyond by shutting off cellphone towers and the Internet.

A year after Mosul fell, Islamic State's grip on the city stands as its biggest strategic and symbolic victory.

The campaign to retake Mosul is a linchpin of the U.S.-led coalition's military strategy against Islamic State. But plans for the counteroffensive have been delayed—something the militants appear to be capitalizing on to persuade the population they are better off under the group's control.

"Islamic State is doing everything to keep Mosul. It's the capital of their caliphate here," said  Fuad Hussein, chief of staff to the president of the semiautonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq, which borders Mosul. "It will be a disaster if it stays in their hands."

Airstrikes have hammered areas around the northern city since a U.S.-led air campaign began in August. This year, Kurdish forces backed by the U.S.-led air attacks cut off a key Islamic State supply line from Syria into the city and now surround it from the east, west and north.

The plans for a counteroffensive have been put off because Iraq and the U.S. have shifted their priority to driving Islamic State out of Anbar province and its capital Ramadi, which are closer to the capital Baghdad.

Mosul is still almost fully inhabited—a contrast to cities where Iraqi and coalition forces have pushed Islamic State out. U.S. officials say it has about a million residents. Iraqi officials say the population is closer to 1.5 million, including people displaced from Tikrit and Beiji.

"Every prisoner in this oppressed city wants salvation from Daesh and a return to normal life," said Omar, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State. "But everyone agrees if liberation happens like in Tikrit and Anbar, with destruction and barrel bombs, random shelling and looting, we do not want that kind of liberation."

Another Mosul resident echoed that sentiment, showing how reports of looting and abuses by Shiite militias in Tikrit weigh heavily in the minds of residents, even though many of those accounts were exaggerated.

The second resident said even Iraqi soldiers may be still unwelcome in an offensive.

"The best way to get rid of Daesh is to negotiate with them to leave to Syria," he said. That seemingly unrealistic proposition reflects a desperation to find a local solution amid deep suspicions and fear of the Iraqi army and its Shiite militia allies.

In the early months of Islamic State rule, some Mosul residents said they thought the new regime was one they could live with, current and former residents said.

"Daesh managed in a short time to create a strong security organization similar, if not stronger, in order and harshness to that of the  Saddam Hussein regime," said Omar. "It governs people and runs life well like this."

Food staples became more plentiful and cheaper because Islamic State flooded the market with their own products grown in Syria, though the cost of fuel and diesel—monopolized by the group—shot up.

Many stores shut down and local trade came to a halt. As Islamic State filled the ranks of a new security and police force and nearly all other public jobs with its members, thousands of people were left unemployed and idle. Islamic courts and a system of punishments became increasingly severe.

Doctors, judges, and professors who defied or questioned Islamic State laws have been executed, sometimes by public stoning or crucifixion. Prisons are filled with people awaiting their sentences from the Islamic court.

"Nearly no one gets out alive," one of the residents said.

Then came the attacks on minorities.

"There are many things we do not consider Islamic at all, like the way Christians were treated," said a female doctor from Mosul who is pious and veiled.

"All of Mosul does not accept what has happened to the Christians," said the woman, who now lives in the northern city of Kirkuk. The group's attack on minorities "was a major mistake that cost them our support," she added.

At the markets, lists of prohibited items and imports began to grow.

Within months, restrictions that were a simple annoyance became hallmarks of Islamic State's excessive and extreme rule.

A 52-year old woman displaced from Mosul, now living on the outskirts of Baghdad, recalled getting a puzzled call from her daughter in Mosul late last year. The daughter complained that frozen chicken was banned because of possible additives that are prohibited.

"The cigarette ban was absolutely the biggest problem," a current resident said. The ban has spurred an expensive underground trade in tobacco.

In November, Islamic State instituted an exit law from Mosul barring travel outside the city except in the case of a medical emergency, or to claim retirement benefits in Baghdad. In both cases, the request must be approved by a special court and requires a security deposit—including handing over a car—to ensure the person returns. Last month, fighters dug a deep trench around the city, adding to the feeling of many Mosul residents that they are trapped.

[jimmy olsen]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/09/isis-slave-markets-sell-girls-for-as-little-as-a-pack-of-cigarettes-un-envoy-says

Isis slave markets sell girls for 'as little as a pack of cigarettes', UN envoy says

UN envoy on sexual violence says abducting girls has become a key part of Isis strategy to recruit foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria over the past 18 months

Teenage girls abducted by Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria are being sold in slave markets "for as little as a pack of cigarettes", the UN envoy on sexual violence said on Monday.

Zainab Bangura visited Iraq and Syria in April, and has since been working on an action plan to address the horrific sexual violence being waged by Isis fighters.

"This is a war that is being fought on the bodies of women," Bangura said.

The UN envoy spoke to women and girls who had escaped from captivity in Isis-controlled areas, met with local religious and political leaders and visited refugees in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

Jihadists continued to run slave markets for girls abducted during fresh offensives, but there were no figures on the numbers enslaved by the fighters, she said.

"They kidnap and abduct women when they take areas so they have – I don't want to call it a fresh supply – but they have new girls," she said.

Girls are sold for "as little as a pack of cigarettes" or for several hundred or thousand dollars, she said.

Bangura described the ordeal of several teenage girls, many of whom were part of the Yazidi minority targeted by the jihadists.

"Some were taken, locked up in a room – over 100 of them in a small house – stripped naked and washed."

They were then made to stand in front of a group of men who decided "what you are worth".

Bangura gave the account of a 15-year-old girl who was sold to an Isis leader, a sheikh aged in his 50s, who showed her a gun and a stick and asked her "tell me what you want".

"She said 'the gun' and he replied: 'I didn't buy you so that you could kill yourself'," before raping her, Bangura said.

Abducting girls has become a key part of the Isis strategy to recruit foreign fighters who have been travelling to Iraq and Syria in record numbers over the last 18 months.

"This is how they attract young men: we have women waiting for you, virgins that you can marry," Bangura said. "The foreign fighters are the backbone of the fighting."

A recent UN report said close to 25,000 foreign fighters from more than 100 countries were involved in conflicts worldwide, with the largest influx by far into Syria and Iraq.

The envoy likened the jihadists' abuse of women and girls to "medieval" practices and said Isis wants "to build a society that reflects the 13th century".

Despite the monstrous violence, communities like the Yazidis are welcoming the girls back and offering them support to pick up the pieces of their broken lives, said Bangura.

She praised Yazidi religious leader Baba Sheikh for publicly declaring that the girls need understanding, but noted that no such pronouncements had come from the Turkmen leaders.

Bangura returned from a tour of European capitals to discuss the plight of women and girls under Isis and hopes to address the UN security council soon to discuss what can be done.

A UN technical team is due to travel to the region to work out details of the plan to help victims of Isis sexual violence.

[alfred russel]

Isis slave markets sell girls for 'as little as a pack of cigarettes', UN envoy says

That is a different take from what I read on a very militant anti smoking website. They stated that ISIS was so effective in its anti tobacco campaign that the price of a pack of cigarettes was now equal to an attractive girl.

[Malthus]

The envoy likened the jihadists' abuse of women and girls to "medieval" practices and said Isis wants "to build a society that reflects the 13th century".

The sad part is that this isn't true - 13th century ME leaders would have been disgusted by this (well, with the exception of the Mongols!)

[Valmy]

They had slave markets in the ME in the 13th century

[Malthus]

They had slave markets in the ME in the 13th century

Slavery existed (as it did elsewhere - in the ME until well after WW2, and in the US until the Civil War, as you know), but they did not make the availability of rape of minority girls the centerpiece of their military recruitment in the 13th century, anymore than other societies that had slavery.

[The Brain]

Muslims are weird.

[Valmy]

Slavery existed (as it did elsewhere - in the ME until well after WW2, and in the US until the Civil War, as you know), but they did not make the availability of rape of minority girls the centerpiece of their military recruitment in the 13th century, anymore than other societies that had slavery.

Exactly.

And yes it my knowledge of how that element of slavery worked in the US that informs me here.

[Malthus]

Exactly.

And yes it my knowledge of how that element of slavery worked in the US that informs me here.

'Join the US Army and boff a slave'? 

To my mind, what ISIS is up to sounds like an even-more-vile version of the "Dragonnades" - sick the army on an unpopular minority to get them to convert. One really sick detail is that, allegedly, the ability to participate in the abuse is actually a recruitment incentive for ISIS. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonnades