UNESCO Director-General official visit to Iraq
During her official visit in Iraq, Irina Bokova UNESCO Director-General visited the National Museum of Baghdad and met with the President of Iraq, HE MrFuad Masum.
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UNESCO Director-General official visit to Iraq - Video
"Soldiers #39; Stories from Iraq and Afghanistan" - Jennifer Karady at the University of Michigan
A portrait of Jennifer Karady and her photography series "Soldiers #39; Stories from Iraq Afghanistan". Karady presented new photographs and sound at the University of Michigan Institute for...
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"Soldiers' Stories from Iraq and Afghanistan" - Jennifer Karady at the University of Michigan - Video
Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters leave the outskirts of Suruc, Turkey, towards the Turkey-Syria border, on the way to the Syrian city of Kobani, Friday, Oct. 31, 2014. The 10 peshmerga fighters from Iraq who entered the embattled northern Syrian town of Kobani one day earlier returned to Turkey Friday to prepare for their forces' full deployment, and a senior Kurdish official blamed Ankara for the delay. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
WASHINGTON There is finally some good news from Iraq that the Obama administration ought to celebrate. Unfortunately, the O-Team at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. (and their fellow travelers in the so-called mainstream media) appears to be oblivious to whats really happening on the ground in Mesopotamia.
For the potentates of the press, the gruesome struggle for Kobani, just a few hundred yards from the Syria-Turkey border, is all that matters. The visuals of less than 200 Iraqi Kurds transiting Turkish territory to reinforce their kinsmen in a desperate house-to-house battle against 5,000 ISIS fighters and the occasional detonation of air-dropped munitions in the frontier city have become The Story. According to Official Spokesmen and unnamed Senior Officials at the White House and the Pentagon, these events are signs of important progress in the effort to destroy ISIS.
Hogwash. The sanguinary contest in Kobani is a distraction in military parlance, a diversion created by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed Sunni Caliph of the Islamic State and his military planners once officers in Saddam Husseins Republican Guards. The real fight for the future of the entire region is taking place within the ethnically diverse provinces of Nineveh and Anbar in northern and western Iraq.
The population centers in these provinces, Mosul (Iraqs second largest city), Fallujah, Ramadi, Haditha and al-Qaim were all targeted by ISIS. They are not only places where U.S. Marines, Soldiers and SEALs won vicious battles; they are also where we found our best allies during The Awakening in 2006-07 that led to victory in 2008.
Thats not political spin. I know. Our Fox News "War Stories" team was there for all of it. Regrettably, the sacrifice of so much American blood and treasure was squandered during what our troops call, The Obama Bug Out when our commander-in-chief ordered all U.S. forces out of Iraq in December 2011.
Do not despair. Heres the good news all but ignored by the international press corps and those who are comatose in official Washington: The Sunni tribes in northern and western Iraq our friends in the middle of the last decade can once again be the lynchpin for defeating ISIS in this decade.
A new Awakening is now under way that may well be far more effective than pin prick coalition airstrikes. Militarily it will have to be different than the campaign in 2006-2007 when small cells of Al Qaeda in Iraq were defeated by superior firepower and well coordinated operations by U.S. forces and our allies.
Today the situation is reversed. There are no U.S. boots on the ground and ISIS is better organized, supplied and led than the Iraqi Army or the Sunni tribal militias. Last month the Albu Namir tribe tried to fight back against ISIS. When they ran out of ammunition, ISIS slaughtered more than 250 fighters and an untold number of civilians. Simply arming the tribes in Anbar to fight ISIS separately would condemn them to extinction.
At this very moment, however, while news and diplomatic elites are diverted by whats happening in Kobani, a conference of reasonable, moderate, anti-ISIS Sunnis is being organized in Irbil, Iraq. Instigated by Mudhar Shawkat, a successful Sunni businessman and a leader of the anti-Saddam Iraqi National Movement, the conference, to be convened later this year, will aim to create an umbrella organization of Iraqi Sunnis to defeat ISIS.
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OPINION: OLIVER NORTH The good news from Iraq that nobody knows
TIME World Iraq Iraq Confirms ISIS Massacre of Sunni Tribe Tribal fighters look on as they take part in an intensive security deployment against ISIS militants in the town of Amriyat al-Falluja,in Anbar province on October 31, 2014. Reuters Baghdad says extremist militants viciously killed 322 members of the Sunni Albu Nimr tribe
The Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) slaughtered more than 300 members of a Sunni tribe, including women and children, during the groups latest killing spree in Iraqs Anbar province.
Iraqs Ministry of Human Rights confirmed that 322 individuals from the Albu Nimr tribe, who had reportedly risen up against ISISs brutal rule near Heet in the countrys Sunni heartland, were brutally murdered over the weekend.
Although ISIS is itself exclusively Sunni, the Jihadist group is nevertheless quick to dispatch those from its own denomination who refuse to pledge fealty.
The U.S. government was quick to condemn the brutal attacks. This proves once again that [ISIS] does not represent anything but its warped ideology and provides more evidence, if any were needed, why our coalition partners, including Iraqis from every background, must work together to defeat these terrorists, Jen Pskai, a U.S. State Department spokesperson, told journalists in Washington on Monday.
However, elders from the tribe blamed the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad for failing to provide weapons to the embattled community as they ran low on supplies.
The government abandoned us and gave us to ISIS on a platter, Sheikh Naeem Al Gaoud told the BBC. We asked them many times for weapons but they gave us only promises.
The massacre of the Albu Nimr tribe comes as Iraqi forces, in close cooperation with the U.S., are reportedly planning to launch a massive counter-offensive to dislodge ISIS from the territory it controls across northwest Iraq, which includes large tracts of Anbar province.
Iraqs Sunni tribes played a pivotal role in defeating the earlier incarnation of ISIS during the U.S. troop surge in 2007, which succeeded in drastically stymieing sectarian violence.
But following the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq in late 2011, the countrys Sunni minority complained of being increasingly marginalized by the Shiite-led government in Bagdad, which resulted in renewed bloodshed. Analysts have long argued that Baghdad will likely fail to uproot ISIS without first partnering with the nations myriad Sunni tribes.
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Iraq Confirms ISIS Massacre of Sunni Tribe
BAGHDAD: Iraq boosted security on Monday (Nov 3) amid fears of the Islamic State group launching major attacks on Shiite pilgrims flocking to the shrine city of Karbala as further reports emerged of mass killings.
The pilgrims are prime targets for the IS militants, who have carried out a series of mass executions in recent days, killing scores of members of a tribe in Iraq's western Anbar province.
The militants are reported to have slaughtered dozens of members of the Sunni Albu Nimr tribe, which took up arms against them in Anbar. On Monday, tribal leader Naim al-Kuoud al-Nimrawi told AFP that IS "executed 36 people, including four women and three children" on Sunday alone.
Accounts have varied as to the number and timings of the executions, but sources have spoken of more than 200 people murdered in recent days. A police officer and an official gave figures of more than 200 to 258 people killed, while Iraq's human rights ministry put the toll at 322 and a tribal leader said 381 were executed.
The mass killings appear aimed at discouraging resistance from powerful local tribes in Anbar, where IS overran large areas in June as pro-government forces suffered a string of setbacks.
Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims are expected in Karbala for the Tuesday peak of Ashura marking the death of Imam Hussein, one of Shiite Islam's most revered figures. At least 19 people were killed in bomb blasts targeting Shiites in Baghdad on Sunday claimed by IS, and security forces were on alert for further attacks.
Karbala deputy governor Jassem al-Fatlawi told AFP "hundreds of thousands of Iraqi pilgrims" and 65,000 others from 20 different countries have thronged Karbala.
IS CALLS SHIITES 'HERETICS'
Pilgrims have been targeted during Ashura before, but this year they face even greater danger after the IS lightning offensive in June. Like other Sunni extremists, IS considers Shiites heretics.
Authorities have deployed thousands of security personnel and allied militiamen to protect the pilgrims, in a major test for the new government headed by Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi. "The security plan is fully in effect and the security forces are on a state of high alert," an Iraqi police colonel told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
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Iraq on 'high alert' amid Islamic State attacks, mass killings