West Asia News and Discussions (YEMEN, gulf)

parikh · Post by **parikh** » 22 Aug 2014 20:38

JE Menon ji , the Peshmerga were on an all out retreat near Erbil , before the American air strikes saved them. Since the no fly zone was established in mid 90's , Saddam left the Kurd's alone ,they have not done much fighting since then.

Btw the Kurds have lot of factional issue and even fought a civil war in 1996.

Came across another group , PJAK (Iranian Kurds).

http://www.vice.com/vice-news/female-fi ... ull-length

Both the PKK and PJAK are designated terrorist groups by Unkil , yet they are supporting them militarily. Our phoren policy suddenly looks a lot saner.

Another Unkil U Turn after the 1st gulf war , asked the Kurds to rebel promising support , Kurds believed Unkil and got started only to be cleaned up by the Iraqi Republic Guard while Unkil washed his hands off and intervened at the end. But then they didnt lay hands on their oil yet.

Dilbu · Post by **Dilbu** » 22 Aug 2014 20:51

That Kurd lady has too much makeup. May be a photo-op.

kittoo · Post by **kittoo** » 22 Aug 2014 21:21

govardhan wrote:I have question.. are Palestinians shia? or sunni? Why is that other arab countries never support them? or is it like whom ever we don't want they are shia and we do not support them...

Hezbollah is Shia but Palestinians are mostly Sunni

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 22 Aug 2014 22:10

This ISIS is turning out to be nightmare of Western countries considering it could attract good amount of Western Educated chaps into to their fold.

Amazing how the bad Al-Quida now has evolved into worst ISIS.

Either way it would keep engaging the West in Iraq for long time time ....something they are responsible for in the first place.

Saddams prophecy of invading Iraq is akin to opening can of worms for West is turning out to be true.

Reap what you Sow !

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 22 Aug 2014 23:18

Harami Link
Gunmen Massacre More Than 50 Sunni Worshipers in Central Iraq

BAGH-DAD-UNCLE — More than 50 Sunni worshipers were killed during a militant raid on a mosque in central Iraq on Friday in an attack that security officials said appeared to be revenge for a number of deadly bombings earlier in the day.The violence in a group of villages in Diyala Province, about 100 miles northeast of Baghdad, was in a mixed Sunni-Shiite area that has become a front line between Iraqi security forces and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the extremist group that has taken over parts of the country.The rise of ISIS, and its acceptance by some Sunni populations angry at the Shiite-led government, has reignited sectarian feuds across Iraq.Security officials said that three roadside bombs exploded early Friday in an apparent effort to assassinate a leader of a local tribe of Shiites, who are a minority in the area. That leader survived, but five others in his motorcade were killed.A few hours later, gunmen stormed a mosque in a Sunni village and killed more than 50 people, security officials said, adding that the attackers were believed to be Shiite militiamen.

Anantha · Post by **Anantha** » 23 Aug 2014 04:05

Not sure if it was posted here, Afiya Siddiqui the MIT Bio-terrorist was asked in exchange for James Foley by ISIS and it was refused.
Finally we have proof (in public domain) that Afiya was indeed terrorist. I will try to get the link later.

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 23 Aug 2014 04:49

http://rt.com/news/182028-gaza-children-death-toll/
469 Gaza children killed, over 370,000 need ‘psychosocial aid’ – UNICEF
Published time: August 22, 2014

At least 469 children have been killed and over 3,000 injured in Gaza since the start of the Israeli offensive, a senior UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) official said, adding that more than 370,000 Palestinian kids require “immediate psychosocial first aid.”

Nine children have died in Gaza violence since Wednesday, the chief of UNICEF’s Gaza field office, Pernilla Ironside, said at a press conference on Thursday in New York.

“There isn’t a single family in Gaza who hasn’t experienced personally death, injury, the loss of their home, extensive damage, displacement,” Ironside said.

A Palestinian woman cares for wounded children at the hospital following an Israeli air strike on a house in Gaza City (AFP Photo / Mohammed Abed)

A Palestinian woman cares for wounded children at the hospital following an Israeli air strike on a house in Gaza City (AFP Photo / Mohammed Abed)

She stressed that while 373,000 Palestinian children are in need of “immediate psychosocial first aid,” UNICEF only has 50 psychologists and counselors on the ground in Gaza. Those specialists were able to reach just 3,000 children.

“The impact has truly been vast, both at a very physical level, in terms of casualties, injuries, the infrastructure that's been damaged, but also importantly, emotionally and psychologically in terms of the destabilizing impact that not knowing, not truly feeling like there is anywhere safe place to go in Gaza,” Ironside said.

“All they want is a sense of safety,” she added. “They basically just want it to stop.”

UNICEF estimated that at least 219 schools have been damaged by Israeli airstrikes, while 22 were completely destroyed.

To demonstrate the extent of the damage in Gaza, Ironside estimated that it could take up to 18 years to rebuild the 17,000 housing units that were damaged in the conflict and in light of the ongoing blockade of the region limiting the movement of goods and people.

Palestinian children make their way through the rubble of a building destroyed following an Israeli military strike in Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip on August 21, 2014. (AFP Photo / Said Khatib)

Palestinian children make their way through the rubble of a building destroyed following an Israeli military strike in Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip on August 21, 2014. (AFP Photo / Said Khatib)

Israeli-Palestinian rocket fire resumed on Tuesday after Gaza truce talks broke down with both Israel and Palestine threatening to quit peace talk negotiations.

On Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned “in the strongest terms” the breach of the Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire, adding that he is “gravely disappointed” by the renewal of hostilities in Gaza.

“The Secretary-General reminds both sides of their responsibility not to let the situation escalate. The hopes of the people in Gaza for a better future and the hopes of the people in Israel for sustainable security rest on the talks in Cairo,” the statement said.

The overall death toll in Gaza has exceeded 2,000 since Israel’s government launched operation Protective Edge on July 8.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 23 Aug 2014 05:49

Sherman's 300,000 and the Caliphate's Three Million

by David P. Goldman
Asia Times
August 12, 2014

http://www.meforum.org/4776/sherman-300 ... ee-million Share:
Be the first of your friends to like this.

When General William Tecumseh Sherman burned the city of Atlanta in 1864, he warned, "I fear the world will jump to the wrong conclusion that because I am in Atlanta the work is done. Far from it. We must kill three hundred thousand I have told you of so often, and the further they run the harder for us to get them." Add a zero to calibrate the problem in the Levant today. War in the Middle East is less a strategic than a demographic phenomenon, the resolution of which will come with the exhaustion of the pool of potential fighters.

The Middle East has plunged into a new Thirty Years War, allows Richard Haass, the president of the Council of Foreign Relations:

It is a region wracked by religious struggle between competing traditions of the faith. But the conflict is also between militants and moderates, fueled by neighboring rulers seeking to defend their interests and increase their influence. Conflicts take place within and between states; civil wars and proxy wars become impossible to distinguish. Governments often forfeit control to smaller groups - militias and the like - operating within and across borders. The loss of life is devastating, and millions are rendered homeless.

Well and good: I predicted in 2006 that the George W. Bush administration's blunder would provoke another Thirty Years War in the region, and repeated the diagnosis many times since. But I doubt that Mr. Haass (or Walter Russell Mead, who cited the Haass article) has given sufficient thought to the implications.

How does one handle wars of this sort? In 2008, I argued for a "Richelovian" foreign policy, that is, emulation of the evil genius who guided France to victory at the conclusion of the Thirty Years War in 1648. Wars of this sort end when two generations of fighters are killed. They last for decades (as did the Peloponnesian War, the Napoleonic Wars and the two World Wars of the 20th century) because one kills off the fathers in the first half of the war, and the sons in the second.

This new Thirty Years War has its origins in a demographic peak and an economic trough. There are nearly 30 million young men aged 15 to 24 in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran, a bulge generation produced by pre-modern fertility rates that prevailed a generation ago. But the region's economies cannot support them. Syria does not have enough water to support an agricultural population, and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of farmers into tent cities preceded its civil war. The West mistook the death spasms of a civilization for an "Arab Spring," and its blunders channeled the youth bulge into a regional war.

The way to win such a war is by attrition, that is, by feeding into the meat-grinder a quarter to a third of the enemy's available manpower. Once a sufficient number of those who wish to fight to the death have had the opportunity to do so, the war stops because there are insufficient recruits to fill the ranks. That is how Generals Grant and Sherman fought the American Civil War, and that is the indicated strategy in the Middle East today.

It is a horrible business. It was not inevitable. It came about because of the ideological rigidity of the Bush Administration, compounded by the strategic withdrawal of the Obama administration. It could have been avoided by the cheap and simple expedient bombing of Iran's nuclear program and Revolutionary Guards bases, followed by an intensive subversion effort aimed at regime change in Teheran. Former Vice President Dick Cheney advocated this course of action, but then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice persuaded Bush that the Muslim world would never forgive America for an attack on another Muslim state.

The Pentagon, meanwhile, warned Bush that America's occupation army in Iraq had become hostage to Iranian retaliation: if America bombed Iran, Iran could exact vengeance in American blood in the cities of Iraq. Then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen told Charlie Rose on March 16, 2009:

What I worry about in terms of an attack on Iran is, in addition to the immediate effect, the effect of the attack, it's the unintended consequences. It's the further destabilization in the region. It's how they would respond. We have lots of Americans who live in that region who are under the threat envelope right now [because of the] capability that Iran has across the Gulf. So, I worry about their responses and I worry about it escalating in ways that we couldn't predict.

The Bush administration was too timid to take on Iran; the Obama administration views Iran as a prospective ally. Even Neville Chamberlain did not regard Hitler as prospective partner in European security. But that is what Barack Obama said in March to journalist Jeffrey Goldberg:

What I'll say is that if you look at Iranian behavior, they are strategic, and they're not impulsive. They have a worldview, and they see their interests, and they respond to costs and benefits. And that isn't to say that they aren't a theocracy that embraces all kinds of ideas that I find abhorrent, but they're not North Korea. They are a large, powerful country that sees itself as an important player on the world stage, and I do not think has a suicide wish, and can respond to incentives.

Bush may have been feckless, but Obama is mad.

With Iran neutralized, Syrian President Basher Assad would have had no choice but to come to terms with Syria's Sunni majority; as it happens, he had the firepower to expel millions of them. Without the protection of Tehran, Iraq's Shia would have had to compromise with Sunnis and Kurds. Iraqi Sunnis would not have allied with ISIS against the Iranian-backed regime in Baghdad. A million or more Iraqis would not have been displaced by the metastasizing Caliphate.

The occupation of Iraq in the pursuit of nation building was colossally stupid. It wasted thousands of lives and disrupted millions, cost the better part of a trillion dollars, and demoralized the American public like no failure since Vietnam – most of all America's young people. Not only did it fail to accomplish its objective, but it kept America stuck in a tar-baby trap, unable to take action against the region's main malefactor. Worst of all: the methods America employed in order to give the Iraq war the temporary appearance of success set in motion the disaster we have today. I warned of this in a May 4, 2010 essay entitled, General Petraeus' Thirty Years War (Asia Times Online, May 4, 2010).

The great field marshal of the Thirty Years War of 1618-1648, Albrecht von Wallenstein, taught armies to live off the land, and succeeded so well that nearly half the people of Central Europe starved to death during the conflict. General David Petraeus, who heads America's Central Command (CENTCOM), taught the land to live off him. Petraeus' putative success in the Iraq "surge" of 2007-2008 is one of the weirder cases of Karl Marx's quip of history repeating itself first as tragedy second as farce. The consequences will be similar, that is, hideous.

Wallenstein put 100,000 men into the field, an army of terrifying size for the times, by turning the imperial army into a parasite that consumed the livelihood of the empire's home provinces. The Austrian Empire fired him in 1629 after five years of depredation, but pressed him back into service in 1631. Those who were left alive joined the army, in a self-feeding spiral of destruction on a scale not seen in Europe since the 8th century. Wallenstein's power grew with the implosion of civil society, and the Austrian emperor had him murdered in 1634.

Petraeus accomplished the same thing with (literally) bags of money. Starting with Iraq, the American military has militarized large parts of the Middle East and Central Asia in the name of pacification. And now America is engaged in a grand strategic withdrawal from responsibility in the region, leaving behind men with weapons and excellent reason to use them.

There is no way to rewind the tape after the fragile ties of traditional society have been ripped to shreds by war. All of this was foreseeable; most of it might have been averted. But the sordid players in this tragicomedy had too much reputation at stake to reverse course when it still was possible. Now they will spend the declining years of their careers blaming each other.

Three million men will have to die before the butchery comes to an end. That is roughly the number of men who have nothing to go back to, and will fight to the death rather than surrender.

ISIS by itself is overrated. It is a horde enhanced by captured heavy weapons, but cannot fly warplanes in a region where close air support is the decisive factor in battle. The fighters of the Caliphate cannot hide under the jungle canopy like the North Vietnamese. They occupy terrain where aerial reconnaissance can identify every stray cat. The Saudi and Jordanian air forces are quite capable of defending their borders. Saudi Arabia has over 300 F-15′s and 72 Typhoons, and more than 80 Apache attack helicopters. Jordan has 60 F16′s as well as 25 Cobra attack helicopters. The putative Caliphate can be contained; it cannot break out into Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and it cannot advance far into the core Shia territory of Iraq. It can operate freely in Syria, in a war of attrition with the Iranian backed government army. The grim task of regional security policy is to channel the butchery into areas that do not threaten oil production or transport.

Ultimately, ISIS is a distraction. The problem is Iran. Without Iran, Hamas would have no capacity to strike Israel beyond a few dozen kilometers past the Gaza border. Iran now has GPS-guided missiles which are much harder to shoot down than ordinary ballistic missiles (an unguided missile has a trajectory that is easy to calculate after launch; guided missiles squirrel about seeking their targets). If Hamas acquires such rockets – and it will eventually if left to its own devices – Israel will have to strike further, harder and deeper to eliminate the threat. That confrontation will not come within a year, and possibly not within five years, but it looms over the present hostilities. The region's security will hinge on the ultimate reckoning with Iran.

member_22733 · Post by **member_22733** » 23 Aug 2014 06:12

Just when I starting thinking that I had read pretty much every reason anyone has given to bomb Iran to smithereens, some clown comes up with a totally new reason on why and how to bomb Iran to a parking lot. Bravo!!

chanakyaa · Post by **chanakyaa** » 23 Aug 2014 06:15

Yes, EyeShish is a distraction and overrated, is it because they simply don't exist, or some local thugs are given international stardom to undo troop pullout. End goal is to finish Shereeya and Eyeran so oil and gas can freely and cheaply flow from ME to Oerope cutting off Russia. Not sure where India is left with that...

Larger Image here

member_22733 · Post by **member_22733** » 23 Aug 2014 06:23

That could be, but do notice the name. The man is a Goldman (Jewish Gentleman). Iran and Israel are sworn enemies. He is angry at Obama for not toeing Israel's line.

Disclaimer: I completely support what Israel is doing in Gaza.

TSJones · Post by **TSJones** » 23 Aug 2014 06:57

^^^^^another Israeli supporter that will fight to the last drop of a US couch potatoes' blood.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 23 Aug 2014 07:09

At one level ISIS is a Salafi reaction to the Bush war in Iraq mainly manned by Southern soldiers.

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 23 Aug 2014 07:49

TSJ...and at Uncle Sam's expense too!

But haven't we been here again,and again,and again? The current chaotic thinking in Foggy Bottom epitomises the crass asinine ,cretinous attitude of US diplomacy -the complete opposite of the American war machine,why it stumbles all over the world in its interventionist wars.American diplomacy as practised by the US State Dept. is akin to a man lost in the jungle,trying to find his way out,but continually walking round in circles,returning again and again to the same place he started out from!

Marx may have said that "history repeats itself,the first time as tragedy,the second time as farce",but Philip says that the "the third time as an a*se"!

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/
Stand by for a U-turn: West poised to join forces with President Assad in face of Isis
Covert co-operation may signal the beginning of a once unthinkable alliance

Patrick Cockburn
Friday 22 August 2014

Islamist forces are fighting their way into western Syria from bases further east, bringing forward the prospect of US military intervention to stop their advance. If Isis, which styles itself Islamic State, threatens to take all or part of Aleppo, establishing complete dominance over the anti-government rebels, the US may be compelled to act publicly or secretly in concert with President Bashar al-Assad, whom it has been trying to displace.

The US has already covertly assisted the Assad government by passing on intelligence about the exact location of jihadi leaders through the BND, the German intelligence service, a source has told The Independent. This may explain why Syrian aircraft and artillery have been able on occasion to target accurately rebel commanders and headquarters.

Syrian army troops are engaged in a fierce battle to hold Tabqa airbase in Raqqa province, the fall of which would open the way to Hama, Syria’s fourth-largest city.

Further north, Isis has captured crucial territory that brings it close to cutting rebel supply lines between Aleppo and the Turkish border. The caliphate declared by Isis on 29 June already covers the eastern third of Syria in addition to a quarter of Iraq. It stretches from Jalawla, a town 20 miles from Iran, which the Iraqi army and Kurdish Peshmerga are trying to recapture, to towns 30 miles north of Aleppo.

An Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighter taking position on the front line in Bashiqa, north-east of Mosul An Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighter taking position on the front line in Bashiqa, north-east of Mosul The question of possible US military action in Syria, such as air strikes, jumped to the top of political agenda on Thursday when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, General Martin Dempsey, said: “Can they [Isis] be defeated without addressing that part of the organisation that resides in Syria? The answer is no.”

He stressed that he was not predicting that the US was intending to take military action in Syria, but the US is very conscious that Isis can survive indefinitely if it has a large safe haven in Syria.

Chas Freeman, the former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told The Independent that General Dempsey was pointing out that Isis straddles the Iraq-Syrian border and there should be a consistent policy towards it on both sides of the divide.

General Dempsey “did not spell out the implications of that but, to me, they point in the direction of calling it off with Assad. It might also imply the sharing of intelligence with the opponents of Isis, even those from whom we ourselves are estranged. Odder things have happened in the Middle East.”

Mr Freeman, who is retired, added he had no knowledge about whether intelligence-sharing with President Assad’s government was being considered.

For the moment, the most pressing issue in Syria is not the elimination of Isis, but preventing its expansion after a series of victories in July and August.

Firstly, it drove out Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian affiliate of al-Qa’ida, from the oil-rich province of Deir Ezzor on the Euphrates. Then it overran two important Syrian army bases, one held by Division 17 in Raqqa province and a second by Regiment 121 in Hasakah province where the Iraqi regimental commander was killed.

Syria holds greater opportunities for Isis in terms of expansion than Iraq because the movement draws its support from the Sunni Arab community: 60 per cent of Syrians are Sunni Arabs, compared to 20 per cent in Iraq.

The policy of the US, Britain and their allies in the region over the last three years has been to support “moderate” Syrian rebels who are supposed to fight Isis and other jihadists as well as the Assad government in Damascus.

But the Western-backed Free Syrian Army is increasingly weak and marginalised while jihadi groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham and the Islamic Front have been unable to halt the Isis assault.

The Islamic Front is desperately trying to hold its stronghold in the city of Marea close to Aleppo against an unexpected Isis offensive that began on 13 August and is making headway. Isis held positions in Aleppo province and further west in Idlib province before its civil war with other rebel groups which began at the start of 2014 when it conducted a withdrawal, interpreted at the time as a retreat, but in reality a concentration of its fighting forces for use in Iraq and Syria.

Though they have suffered a number of serious defeats at the hands of Isis, Syrian government forces were able to regain the al-Shaer gas fields near Palmyra in July and are still holding onto Tabqa airbase, where they claim to have killed many Isis militants, including an activist known as Abu Moussa.

As with other Isis attacks on government strongholds in Syria, this one was heralded by two suicide attacks. Overall, the Syrian army has shown itself much more effective in combat with Isis than the Iraqi army that has yet to score a single success against them. A series of Iraqi army attacks against Tikrit north of Baghdad, the most recent this week, have all failed.

Air strikes are not the only way in which the US, Britain and their allies among neighbouring states could weaken and isolate Isis, but in doing so they would necessarily undermine other rebel groups. Key to the growth of Isis and, in particular, the import of thousands of foreign fighters has been the use of Turkey as a point of entry.

Determined to get rid of President Assad, the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has kept Turkey’s 550-mile border with Syria open, giving the jihadists, including Isis, a safe haven over the last three years. The Turks are now saying Isis is no longer welcome, but Ankara has not moved seriously to close the border by deploying troops in large numbers.

A complete volte face by the US, Britain and their allies in their relations with the Assad government is unlikely because it would mean admitting that past support for the Sunni rebellion had contributed to the growth of the caliphate.

Mr Freeman says that he doubted that “the liberal interventionists and neoconservatives who had pursued regime change in Syria were capable of reversing course. To do so would require them to admit that they bore considerable responsibility for legitimising pointless violence that has resulted in the deaths of 190,000 Syrians.”

He added that he did not think it would be possible to bring down Isis by a direct assault and that it would be better to bottle it up and wait for it to be destroyed by its own self-destructive instincts.

“I cannot see how it can be isolated without the co-operation of Syria as well as Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf Arabs, Iran, Russia and Turkey.”

On the other hand, given the divisions in Washington and hatreds in the Middle East, such a degree of co-operation is unlikely to emerge as a declared policy.

The Jihadis Return: Isis and the New Sunni Uprising' by Patrick Cockburn, published by OR Books, is available at orbooks.com

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 23 Aug 2014 09:52

this is what becoming a gun armed whore for the gulf sunni kingdoms has reduced the west to - support any virulent mutation of sunni islam to keep control of oil and some leverage with the sheikhdoms. no logic, no clear idea of what is good even for themselves...all 'tactical' brilliance PA style.

http://rt.com/uk/182108-uk-assad-alliance-isis/

The US and UK must work with Bashar Assad’s Syrian regime if they are to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the chairman of Britain’s intelligence and security committee warns.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, one of the UK’s most senior MPs, told the Financial Times (FT) in an exclusive interview that the horrific murder of American journalist, James Foley, highlights the urgent need to take action against the extremist group Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), whose swift rise to power in the Middle East has remained largely unchecked by Western intervention.

While the militants have annexed vast swathes of territory in northern Iraq, their central power base remains in Syria.

“ISIS need to be eliminated and we should not be squeamish about how we do it,” Rifkind told the FT on Friday.

Although he made it clear he does not support the Assad regime in principle, Rifkind reluctantly emphasized that “sometimes you have to develop relationships with people who are extremely nasty in order to get rid of people who are even nastier.”

Following a brutal civil war that has devastated and divided Syria while providing a breeding ground for the Islamic State, the Assad regime has faced isolation from myriad world powers.

Prior to Rifkind’s interview, Western states expressed no willingness to work with Damascus. On Wednesday, President Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, said Assad was “part of the problem.”

Following the Ghouta chemical attack, which killed up to 1,729 people in August 2013, Rifkind was one of most vocal members of Britain’s parliament calling for the UK to intervene against the regime. But as the Islamic State continues to wage aggression in the Middle East, the chairman has urged the US and Britain pursue a strategic shift.

“We have to deal with facts on the ground, not as we would want them to be but as they are,” he said, conceding the prospect of working with Assad would be a deeply unsavory choice.

In an effort to justify his tactical proposal, Rifkind referenced the manner in which allied states worked alongside Joseph Stalin during the Second World War in pursuit of a greater good.

It’s unthinkable that a military operation in Iraq, spearheaded by America and its allies, can exist without some sort of “Syrian dimension,” Rifkind said. “For Syria to become an ISIS safe haven – that is ludicrous,” he continued.

Working in tandem with Syria, throughout the duration of this military operation, has almost become inevitable, the chairman concluded.

The Assad government has recently increased its efforts to defeat the Islamic State, following months of relative passivity. But many Western political analysts and critics have viewed this recent resurgence in military activity as a tactical ploy to regain leverage over the region.

As the Islamic State continues to gather momentum in the Middle East, an increasing number of intelligence and military analysts reportedly endorse Rifkind’s perspective.

Commenting on ISIL’s ongoing aggression in Northern Iraq the Foreign Commonwealth Office (FCO) recently said the situation remains “deeply worrying.” “We condemn the barbaric attacks waged by ISIL terrorists across the region. Hundreds of thousands of people are displaced across the region and in need of aid supplies,” it added.

The FCO emphasize the UK government response is focused on “alleviating the humanitarian suffering of those Iraqis targeted by ISIL terrorists”, “promoting an inclusive, sovereign and democratic Iraq that can push back on ISIL advances and restore stability and security across the country”, and “working with the international community to tackle the broader threat that ISIL poses to the region and other countries around the world”.

With pressure mounting for decisive action against the IS militants who brutally beheaded James Foley this week, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond stipulated the only way to address the threat they pose is by working closely with the Iraqi government. Tentative talks with Assad would not be helpful, he added.

"We may very well find that we are aligned against a common enemy. But that does not make us able to trust them, it does not make us able to work with them and it would poison what we are trying to achieve in separating moderate Sunni opinion from the poisonous ideology of Isil [Islamic State] if we were to align ourselves with President Assad", Hammond told the BBC on Friday.

Rifkind’s proposal for a US-UK tactical shift with respect to Assad follows Prime Minister David Cameron’s recent announcement that Britain must form a strategic alliance with Iran.

Emphasizing it was in Britain’s national interest to cast aside long-held antagonism with the Islamic Republic, Cameron urged Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to assist the international community in defeating the Islamic State.

The prime minister justified this move on the grounds of the grave need to thwart the “shared threat” of fundamentalist Sunni militants in Syria and Iraq who are endeavoring to cultivate “a terrorist state,” the boundaries of which could infiltrate “the shores of the Mediterranean.”

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 23 Aug 2014 10:02

From the Ashes of Iraq: Mesopotamia Rises Again

by Alexander H. Joffe
The National Interest
August 20, 2014

http://www.meforum.org/4780/iraq-mesopo ... ises-again

The dissolution of the colonial creation named "Iraq" is now almost complete. Perhaps what comes next is a return to the past; not a brutal Islamic "caliphate," but something more basic.

Today, Mesopotamia is reappearing. The term is a Greek word meaning "the land between the two rivers." The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers are the defining features, each arising in mountains far to the north of Baghdad. The rivers and their annual floods defined the landscape, the cycle of life and the worldview of civilizations. The deserts to the west and the mountains to the east and far north provided rough boundaries and were liminal spaces related to the center, but yet separate and apart, sunbaked and dangerous. Inside Mesopotamia was a cauldron.

From the Sumerians of the third millennium BCE through the Assyrian and Babylonian civilizations of the second and first millennia BCE, to the Abbasids of the eighth century CE and until the arrival of the British in the early twentieth century, the space called Mesopotamia was the container for civilizations that rose and collapsed. Cultures invented writing and built the first cities, growing and shrinking in response to changing river courses and global climate. They conquered and were conquered, traded with surrounding regions, and formed a baggy but recognizable whole—what we call Mesopotamian civilization.

Internal distinctions were paramount. Babylonia in the south was dominated by the rivers and the annual flood, irrigation agriculture and seemingly unrelenting heat and mud. Assyria in the northern, rain-fed zone sat amidst undulating plains and foothills. Culturally, Babylonia was older and more developed, the "heartland of cities" going back to 4000 BCE, a primacy that Assyria acknowledged even in periods when they dominated the south. By and large, both shared the same deities and myths, the same aggressive tendencies, and the same fear and loathing of surrounding regions. But competition, warfare and repression were constant.

For inhabitants, that is to say the kings and priests whose thoughts we read on clay tablets many millennia later, Mesopotamia the whole, a unity of north and south, was an ideal—the supreme prize, something overseen by the gods—to be aspired to and claimed by quotidian rulers. But, much like the idea of "Iraq," it was conceptual, rather than practical. The south often dominated the north and vice versa, but never for very long.

Then, as now, the neighbors were a problem. One historical parallel seems especially apposite today. The Third Dynasty of Ur was short-lived, existing from around 2212 to 2004 BCE. It arose in southern Mesopotamia after the fall of the Semitic Akkadian Empire and revived the culture of the original or dominant southern ethnic group, the Sumerians. This dynasty created a fanatically integrated state, where temples, palaces and estates spun elaborate networks of supply and whose record keeping was unprecedented. As a territorial state, it was not far-flung; its core area extended only from modern Baghdad south to the Arabian Gulf, but it briefly reached into Iran and Assyria.

Toward the end of the dynasty, however, ruler Su-Sin faced a growing threat, the Amorites. These Semitic-speaking peoples arose somewhere on the middle stretches of the Euphrates River and surrounding steppe-lands in what is, for now, called Syria. Amorites were regarded with contempt and fear by the neo-Sumerians. It was said they did not cultivate grain, nor did they cook their meat. They did not even bury their dead.

Whether this terrifying image was correct or was something cultivated by Ur III scribes, Amorites themselves, or both is unknown. But Su-Sin's response was to build a wall—the "wall against the Martu," perhaps 280 kilometers in length—to keep the Amorites out. It didn't work, any better than other walls in antiquity designed to keep barbarians out. The Ur III dynasty collapsed and was followed by centuries of conflict between various dynasties.

Eventually, the Amorites took control, their most famous scion being Hammurabi of Babylon. Like all Mesopotamian dynasties before and since, it was necessary to connect with the greater Mesopotamian tradition; Hammurabi's lineage was crafted to show he descended from ancient kings and was the restorer of justice. Hammurabi's famous "law code" described him as the pious defender of widows and orphans, when in fact he was their maker. No surprise that Saddam Hussein was often depicted with Hammurabi and with Nebuchadnezzar, destroyer of the temple in Jerusalem. Similarly, ISIS' claims to the Islamic "caliphate," to the restoration of glory and piety can be viewed through the same lens. In Mesopotamia, the past is always charter.

As concession to divisive reality, the Ottoman Turks had ruled Mesopotamia with three administrative units, in which a bewildering assortment of ethnic groups coexisted uncomfortably. About the Sunni-dominated state created by Britain, their "Iraq," a revived medieval term, little more need be said. The claptrap monarchy they invented gave way to a repressive and then tyrannical "republic." As it happened, America disposed of Saddam Hussein, although the Arab Spring may have done the same. In a historical irony, an act of imperialist intervention thus undid a previous one.

So it is as well with Syria, now divided into warring territories along lines familiar three thousand years ago. Many, especially ISIS itself, pointed to the vehement erasure of the so-called "Sykes-Picot" line, the 1916 boundary between British and French spheres of influence, from which the borders of Iraq and Syria were drawn. ISIS even bulldozed the berm that marked this mostly arbitrary line.

The symbolism of Sykes-Picot in the minds of Westerners and Islamists alike is telling, if nothing else, of the psychological impact of the last century. Their borders, drawn with thick pencils on imprecise maps, looked to the future, to a Middle East under Western domination. Iraq, and Syria, created holes where none existed.

Iraq has fractured along traditional lines; Kurdistan in the north, the Sunni regions around Baghdad and west toward the Euphrates and the Shiite regions of the south. These correspond roughly to Assyria and Babylonia, and the swing zones in the middle over which they fought endlessly. Hordes more terrifying than the Amorites—judging from their tweets of mass murder and crucifixion—rush in from the west while Persia struggles to defend its Shiite vassal state in Baghdad.

More of what is old is new again. ISIS threatens the Haditha Dam on the Euphrates, which if destroyed, would unleash catastrophic floods, much as the Assyrian king Sargon II did in 710 BCE against rebellious Babylonian ruler Merodach-Baladan. Cutting off the water supply, as ISIS did when it captured the Fallujah Dam earlier this year, is an even more ancient tactic; the cities of Lagash and Umma had fought a water war around 2500 BCE.

Ethnic cleansing and mass slaughter, proud announcement of the mutilation and execution of captives as nearly religious expressions of power, arbitrary decisions to provision or starve captive populations—all these are ancient Mesopotamian patterns of conflict. Only the destruction of Islamic religious buildings and sites by ISIS is truly new; Mesopotamian dynasties were fastidious about maintaining or restoring the cults and temples of conquered city-gods, even though the gods' statues might "choose" to dwell in the conqueror's city.

Geography is the container for cultures and helps create their possibilities and limits. Iraq was always a figment, as well as an ideal held by people who, for a few decades following the European style, thought of themselves as a nation-state. But underlying dynamics have proven stronger, and Iraq is no more. The ancient cauldron returns and decades of warring tribes and dynasties likely await.

Alex Joffe is editor of The Ancient Near East Today, the monthly e-newsletter of the American Schools of Oriental Research. He is also a Shillman-Ginsburg Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 23 Aug 2014 10:04

comments below the RT article.

Remo Gutierrez 23.08.2014 00:46
We should support the Syrian government and their army and the same with the Iraqi government. All the other rebel groups like FSA, ISIL, etc are terrorist mercenaries. How would you even separate a "moderate rebel" on the battlefield from the more "extremist" ? do the moderates simply shoot Syrian soldiers? they don't chops heads off? do they rape and marry 7 year old christian girls? do they cut a persons chest open and take out their liver and eat it?
the moderate rebels are moral? they have high values? gtfooh

Judy 23.08.2014 00:32
@ketchup bottle: Russia supported the no-fly zone under the assurance that Gaddafi would not be targeted. His assassination showed Russia that Obama cannot be trusted. And as for 'moderate' Syrian rebels like FSA, there are hardly any left, as Hillary Clinton noted last week. The US was supporting al Nusra, the 'official' al Qaeda outfit in Syria. There are even some reports that it was secretly supporting IS in Syria, apparently not realizing that the border with Iraq is incredibly porous. Indeed, many Iraqi politicians warned Obama of this. Yet another desperate, demonic and demented US foreign policy.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 23 Aug 2014 10:10

per the UN, the death toll in the syrian civil war is around 191,000.

while the gulf princes continue to cavort around london and dubai in their gold plated mercs and bentleys and high paid gori escorts.

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 23 Aug 2014 10:39

Ramana,Mespot: "Plus ca change,plus c'est la meme chose"!

wig · Post by **wig** » 23 Aug 2014 11:46

well it seems the americans are helping out in Syria
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 86666.html

excerpts

The US has already covertly assisted the Assad government by passing on intelligence about the exact location of jihadi leaders through the BND, the German intelligence service, a source has told The Independent. This may explain why Syrian aircraft and artillery have been able on occasion to target accurately rebel commanders and headquarters.

Syrian army troops are engaged in a fierce battle to hold Tabqa airbase in Raqqa province, the fall of which would open the way to Hama, Syria’s fourth-largest city.

chetak · Post by **chetak** » 23 Aug 2014 12:16

kittoo wrote:
govardhan wrote:I have question.. are Palestinians shia? or sunni? Why is that other arab countries never support them? or is it like whom ever we don't want they are shia and we do not support them...
Hezbollah is Shia but Palestinians are mostly Sunni

They are generally uncontrollable and create a mess where ever they go in the gulf and have always been a law and order problem. They are usually dirt poor, with a huge sense of entitlement and a very big chip on their shoulders. They openly blame the arabs for not helping them in their struggle against the jews.

Now, where have seen such folks in India

vic · Post by **vic** » 23 Aug 2014 16:31

USA is helping both sides in Syria, Iraq and Libya. Obama is a lackey of Oil and Military interests of USA and Saudis.

Arjun · Post by **Arjun** » 24 Aug 2014 07:50

Striking parallel between ISIS and the birth of Islam. Deepak Lal: Born in blood

The stunning march of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or the ISIS, since June through parts of those two countries, and its growing threat to Jordan and Lebanon as it seeks to establish an Islamic caliphate in the old unified Mesopotamia, brings to mind another electrifying campaign in the seventh century AD that destroyed the classical world of antiquity and created a new world order in western Eurasia. This was the Arab conquest under the banner of Islam. It was a totally unexpected development, and the factors behind this reordering of the world are still in dispute. But as this century was in many ways an important hinge of history, in this column I summarise what is now known, and to see if these intimations from the past provide any prognosis for the current battle for West Asia.

The history of this pivotal century has been contested by three sets of historians. The first are those who accept the picture painted by Muslim sources, and largely accepted by Western scholars, such as Ernest Renan in 1883 and more recently by Maxime Rodinson (Mohammed, Pelican Books, London, 1973). These sources (including the Quran and the Hadiths), which can date some two centuries after the events they describe, have been questioned by historians like John Wansbrough (The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History, Oxford, 1978), who using the method of textual analysis developed by biblical scholars to determine the authenticity of these classical sources provide a different timeline and location for the events they describe. A popular and controversial account of this revisionist history is provided in Tom Holland's In the Shadow of the Sword (Little, Brown, London, 2012). The third account is by my old friend (since we were young lecturers together at Christ Church, Oxford) the scholar of Byzantium, James Howard-Johnston. In his important book Witnesses to a World Crisis: Historians and Histories of the Middle East in the Seventh Century (Oxford, 2010), he builds on the pioneering work of the Princeton historians Patricia Crone and Michael Cook (Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World, Cambridge, 1977) and their students by a scholarly and persuasive vetting of the Muslim and non-Muslim historians and histories of the seventh century. Briefly, the story he tells is as follows.

Around 600 AD, two long-established great empires dominated western Eurasia - the truncated and Christian Roman Empire centred on Constantinople, and the neo-Zoroastrian Persian Empire reconstituted by the Sasanian dynasty in the third century. Both could mobilise vast resources for war: the Romans those of North Africa and much of Italy, the Balkans and the near West Asia; the Persians, from the fertile lands of Mesopotamia and highland Iran. Their territories abutted, and they competed for influence over the peoples of the north Caucasus and the Bedouin tribes of Arabia, with whom both had established patron-client relationships to guard their respective desert frontiers. They were commercial rivals, competing for the lucrative overland trade from China and the seaborne trade across the Indian Ocean from India and Southeast Asia.

By the second quarter of the eighth century, the Persian Sasanian Empire had been extinguished. The Roman Empire had shrunk to Byzantium, controlling only Asia Minor, the islands of the Aegean and the southern extremities of the Balkans. It was now in a mortal struggle with the new imperial power of the Bedouin Arabs, who in a short space of time since their eruption from the marginal lands beyond the zone of direct confrontation between the two existing imperial powers had defeated both imperial field armies in open battle, and soon controlled Egypt, Mesopotamia and highland Iran. The binary world order of late antiquity was replaced by the new unitary Arab power in the seventh century.

How had this astonishing new world order been established? There are two contending explanations. The first is one of circumstances, like the Roman-Persian war lasting from 603-628 AD. The second, of ideological changes brought about in Arabia by the Prophet Mohammed. Prof Howard-Johnston argues that of these two, it is the latter that accounts for the extraordinary rise of the Arab Muslim Empire.

"The greatest appeal of Muhammad's monotheist message," writes Prof Howard-Johnston, "lay in its bleakness, in its clear-eyed view of a universe governed by a single divine autocrat ... . The traditional passive fatalism of the Bedouin, conducting life according to a tribal code of man's creation, was transformed by faith, which required complete submission to Allah ... . This engendered an active fatalism in genuine converts, a commitment to serve God with their persons and worldly goods together with indifference to the personal cost. It maybe termed a whole faith, one which permeated the whole being of the believer. This in turn endowed Muslim troops with extraordinary elan. They were committed unto death. The armies which invaded the Roman and Persian empires were in essence ordered arrays of suicide fighters, endowed with extraordinary courage and daring (pages 450-451)." This is a description equally applicable to the warriors of the ISIS, as David Blair, who witnessed their attack on the Iraqi justice ministry in March 2013, noted.1

There were two innovations that transformed Islam's prospects after the Prophet's flight to Medina. The first was to change Muslims' direction of prayer from Jerusalem (the holiest place on earth for both the previous monotheist religions) to the Kaa'ba, the premier pagan sanctuary of Arabia. This incorporation of the Kaa'ba and its associated rites into Islam - forced though it was on the Prophet - was a political act, which once Mecca had formally submitted in 630 AD allowed Islam to draw on the developed institutional endowment, diplomatic expertise and mercantile ingenuity of this well-established trading city. Secondly, it was this Meccan statecraft that allowed the early Muslim caliphs to devise and implement a "grand strategy" of husbanding the military resources of Arabia, directing operations at a distance, establishing priorities and deploying the requisite resources at the right place to achieve their objectives.

And its success was phenomenal. By the 16th century, Christendom had begun its voyages of discovery in large part to bypass the Islamic behemoth that now bestrode the whole West Asia, denying it access to the vital Eastern spice trade. It controlled "all but the western, eastern and southern extremities of the Eurasian continent (page 516)".

Can the ISIS repeat a similar feat? Mr Blair notes that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, its leader, is "not merely a religious fanatic, but a strategic thinker and an accomplished commander". He has captured vital oilfields and the northern city of Mosul containing military depots stuffed with weapons and millions of dollars in the Iraqi central bank's branch. Mr al-Baghdadi has become "the richest and best- equipped terrorist leader in modern history", notes Mr Blair, "and the ruler of enough territory to be able to proclaim the birth of an 'Islamic state'". Having swiftly shown up the weakness of the Iraqi army and the Kurdish peshmerga, and with the leader of the remaining superpower still determined to "lead from behind", it remains unclear whether Mr al-Baghdadi will be able to match the feats of his self-proclaimed nom de guerre, the Caliph Abu Bakr, or whether his Caliphate will end as it was born - in blood.

Arjun · Post by **Arjun** » 24 Aug 2014 07:55

The Arab Empire: There already is one, of course. Arabs are not indigenous to most of the land they control.

A map has circulated showing the Islamic State’s five-year plan: a caliphate that stretches from the Iberian peninsula to western China, including all of India, north Africa, the Middle East, Asia Minor, and southeastern Europe. It’s an ambitious agenda.

According to an Islamic State spokesman, the map doesn’t show lands to be captured but, rather, lands to be liberated: “We will die for [the caliphate] until we open those occupied lands from Jakarta to Andalusia.” Andalusia’s a big deal to Islamists, who see it as their high-water mark. “Spain is the land of our ancestors and we will open it with the power of Allah.”

This is a good time, then, to talk about a touchy subject: empires and occupation. Nothing angers an Islamist like an infidel occupying Muslim land. The political Left has a taboo along the same lines; no memory is reviled like those of the old empires.

In some ways, the anti-imperialists are right — historically, empires have been a hit-or-miss proposition. The British Empire built roads and schools, the Roman Empire built roads and baths and murdered a great many people, the Mongol Empire murdered a great many people and built a pyramid using 90,000 of their heads. But whether or not empires deserve the hatred that has been heaped on them since World War II, they’re mostly a thing of the past. The Mongols rule only Mongolia, the Romans have melted into a nation of well-dressed womanizers, and the sun sets on Britain every day. With the Soviet Union gone for 20 years now, there’s really just one great empire left: the Arab Empire.

The Arab League covers 5 million square miles, stretching from the Persian Gulf to Africa’s west coast. When people think of indigenous peoples of the Middle East, they think of Arabs — but in the grand scheme, the Arabs are new to most of the territory they control. Striking out from the Arabian Peninsula around 600 a.d. with their new Muslim message, they conquered, converted, and murdered their way into ethnic dominance from Iraq to Morocco. Today’s Egyptians are not descendants of the Egyptians who built the pyramids — though the bitterly oppressed Copts might be. Moab and the Moabites have disappeared, the Lebanese of antiquity were Phoenician, the Philistines were not Palestinian. In fact, only one nation west of Persia weathered the storm of Arab expansion and reestablished self-governance: the Judeans.

For 3,000 years, there have always been Jews in Israel. They were conquered by the Assyrians, and the Babylonians, and the Greeks, and the Romans, but through the massacres and mass deportations, a few Jews always remained. In 1948, the United Nations voted to acknowledge a renewed Jewish homeland in Israel, and the surrounding Arabs vowed to drive the Jews into the sea. The Jews survived, and recovered more of their pre-Diaspora territory than the U.N. intended — but the heartland of the ancient Jewish kingdoms, the Judean hills on the River Jordan’s west bank, remained in Arab control till 1967. In ’67, an Arab coalition attacked Israel, and the Jews got some more of their homeland back. Sort of.

Ever since, the territory has had a split personality. Israel has the final governing say, but the local administration is mostly Arab. A majority of the residents are Arab, but there are large, thriving Jewish communities. The “occupied territories” are occupied by someone; the question is, by whom?

And the answer is: By Arabs, obviously. That’s not to say people don’t have a right to land they own and were born on; perhaps there’s nothing wrong with the Arabs having a de facto empire — but it’s silly to pretend they don’t. As silly as if the British pretended they were indigenous to South Africa and refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of black citizens.

Now, per its map, the Islamic State wants to replace the Arab Empire with an even more ambitious Muslim one; in the Hamas spirit, it wants to end the Spanish occupation of Spain and the Indian occupation of India. We know that imperialism is a flashpoint for young radicals — how many times have we seen #freeGaza and #freePalestine over the last two months? So the question arises, will the anti-imperialists take the same view of removing the Hindus from Hindustan that they do of removing the Jews from Judea? Let’s hope not.

There’s another point here, as a postscript: There is some good news for both lefties and righties who genuinely abhor the domination of one nation by another. The Kurds, another ethnic group long subjugated by Arab neighbors, have taken up arms against the Islamic State — and they may come out of the fight in better shape than they went in: with a renewed homeland of their own. Unfortunately, the arms they’ve taken up are mostly Soviet relics; the Islamic State, meanwhile, has top-shelf American stuff. When Israel was fighting for its life in ’48, its friends and sympathizers helped it get the guns and ammo it needed. Israel should extend the same courtesy to its Muslim cousin, Kurdistan.

Jarita · Post by **Jarita** » 24 Aug 2014 08:18

Was James Foley just a journalist or more than that?
His background and experiences might lend themselves more to being a strategic asset for the empire.
While the guy came across as leftist his family was pretty conventional
- Extremely religious christians
- Atleast two of his siblings are with the armed forces
- Trying to find out his parents background

Also, this guy had already been kidnapped once before and spent an awful lot of times in US conflict zones
It seems as though he was a lot more and perhaps his captors knew that.

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 24 Aug 2014 08:45

Usual intel tactic,agents masquerading as journos .

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/a ... ey-killing
Former top general calls on Obama to wipe out Isis in wake of Foley killing

John Allen, who commanded Afghanistan war, writes op-ed amid varying US views on how to respond to journalist’s beheading.

http://www.independent.co.uk/video/?vid ... 3289457001
So too says Lord Danatt,that the West must intervene in Syria.
Lord Dannatt has suggested now is the time for Western intervention in Syria saying: "we should be supporting Kurdish peshmerga to defeat IS fighters.".

Jarita · Post by **Jarita** » 24 Aug 2014 09:50

I had a conversation with a middle eastern muslim guy who is quite moderate but did not display antipathy towards ISIS. He brought up some interesting points that I could not counter
- ISIS is like freedom fighters who are trying to liberate Muslim territories from western control (he drew the analogy of Gandhi who returned from south africa)
- ISIS has to use tactical approaches like shootings and individual murders as unlike the US they have no desire to carpet bomb the civilians they are trying to give freedom too. Conventional war approaches do not apply
- On ISIS beheadings he said this was asymmetrical warfare. They are dealing with an enemy who can kill 100's through cluster bombs, maim many more and leave generations to suffer from radiation. As such they need shock and awe to intimidate enemy on colonised territories

While this was a completely bizarre defense, it revealed what modern muslims think about ISIS

SanjayC · Post by **SanjayC** » 24 Aug 2014 09:59

^^^ That can be valid if their targets are only Westerners or Western sympathisers. It doesn't explain the beheadings of non-Muslim women and children or burying them alive or raping non-Muslim women on an industrial scale. They are surrounding entire villages of non-Muslim Arabs, killing all people except some beautiful women they keep as sex slaves. Almost all their victims are Arab civilians who have been living in the area for thousands of years.

ISIS is actually a Muslim revivalist movement sworn to world conquest for Islam till no non-Muslim is left alive. They are carrying forward the unfinished agenda of the early Caliphs. It has the quiet support of all Muslims in the world.

Arjun · Post by **Arjun** » 24 Aug 2014 10:06

Jarita wrote:I had a conversation with a middle eastern muslim guy who is quite moderate but did not display antipathy towards ISIS.

Contradiction right there. Anybody who justifies ISIS and the beheadings cannot possibly be a moderate.

KLNMurthy · Post by **KLNMurthy** » 24 Aug 2014 10:15

Arjun wrote:
Jarita wrote:I had a conversation with a middle eastern muslim guy who is quite moderate but did not display antipathy towards ISIS.
Contradiction right there. Anybody who justifies ISIS and the beheadings cannot possibly be a moderate.

I think the undue focus on Foley's beheading is a distraction that only serves to confuse and distract the already-confused and distracted white Western world.

Would it have been better, more "moderate" if IS didn't behead any white reporters but simply went about establishing Islamic Caliphate in a "lawful" way by passing laws that non-Muslims should convert or face death, women should henceforth wear burkhas etc.?

Fact is, IS is at war, and horrible things are done in war by definition. They have no reason to accept the biased and self-serving "war crimes" definitions of their enemies. The reason for mankind to destroy IS is not because of brutal tactics they use in war, but because their civilizational aims, which they are actively pursuing, will end human civilization and progress.

Jarita · Post by **Jarita** » 24 Aug 2014 10:16

^^^ You know, this guy really is. He is educating his daughters, wants them to become doctors. No one wears hijab.
The whole thing is weird.
He has also worked for secularism in the middle east. This is not an Islamist

Jarita · Post by **Jarita** » 24 Aug 2014 10:20

Fact is, IS is at war, and horrible things are done in war by definition. They have no reason to accept the biased and self-serving "war crimes" definitions of their enemies. The reason for mankind to destroy IS is not because of brutal tactics they use in war, but because their civilizational aims, which they are actively pursuing, will end human civilization and progress.

It's like the Good Taliban and Bad Taliban. Good Taliban does not attack westerners or western economic interests. Perhaps that was the expectation here since ISIS was incubated by XYZ.

Arjun · Post by **Arjun** » 24 Aug 2014 10:25

KLNMurthy wrote:Fact is, IS is at war, and horrible things are done in war by definition. They have no reason to accept the biased and self-serving "war crimes" definitions of their enemies. The reason for mankind to destroy IS is not because of brutal tactics they use in war, but because their civilizational aims, which they are actively pursuing, will end human civilization and progress.

Agree with you. But the beheadings and war tactics are only a marker of and advance warning of their broader end-of-civilization agenda.

JE Menon · Post by **JE Menon** » 24 Aug 2014 10:31

>>You know, this guy really is. He is educating his daughters, wants them to become doctors. No one wears hijab. The whole thing is weird. He has also worked for secularism in the middle east. This is not an Islamist

This is not weird at all. That is how the so-called "moderate majority" are. Not shouting too loudly for their team in an away game, but you know the flags will come out, and in a one on one will tell you broadly what he thinks. That his daughters are unveiled only indicates he is fairly certain "deep down" as they say as to who will lose. A practical man. But he will cut your throat and cover up his daughters in a jiffy if the possibility of victory becomes emergent.

KLNMurthy · Post by **KLNMurthy** » 24 Aug 2014 10:47

Jarita wrote:^^^ You know, this guy really is. He is educating his daughters, wants them to become doctors. No one wears hijab.
The whole thing is weird.
He has also worked for secularism in the middle east. This is not an Islamist

Nothing personal about your friend whom I don't know, but in any feudal society, including an Islamic society, there is always space to have rules for the elite ashrafs that are different than the rules for common ajlafs, ansaris and so on. Of course, entirely different rules again for idol-worshippers. Aga Khan whose family has, and had a Western lifestyle was one of the prime sponsors of Pakistan.

I would say the real marker of being "different" and "moderate" is becoming involved in some kind of activity or movement to reduce oppression and accept the inherent equality of other religions (not the kind of equality that is granted by the generosity or mercy of the Muslims, which is a standard definition of 'secularism' as interpreted by many Muslims). Most of the RAPEs and their non-Pakistani equivalents may have free and open lifestyles for their own families but are simply not bothered if those rights are denied to non-Muslims or lower-class Muslims.

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 24 Aug 2014 15:42

Talk about telegraphing your intentions! By now the ISIS commanders would be miles away from their previous locations. The House of White has been so loathe to drop even a toilet roll on Syrian territory (remember J0Kerry's infamous "unbelievably small" strike that never happened?),that some sceptics even say that this is really a warning to the ISIS lot to vamoose!

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/a ... considered
US 'set to launch air strikes' on senior Isis leaders in Syria
White House will 'take action' against threats as Turkey comes under pressure to halt flow of jihadists across its border

Toby Helm and Martin Chulov
The Observer, Sunday 24 August 2014

Turkey is under mounting pressure to stem the flow of jihadists across its border into Syria.

The United States was said to be considering air strikes aimed at eliminating individual leaders of Islamic State as Turkey came under mounting pressure to stem the flow of jihadists across its border into Syria.

As Washington on Saturday debated extending air strikes into Syria, senior British politicians urged Ankara to act to block recruits from the UK and other countries from entering Syria via Turkey, en route to joining Islamic State (formerly Isis). This weekend large numbers of Isis jihadists were trying to secure greater control of the border area, pushing northwards in armoured trucks looted from abandoned Iraqi military bases.

Isis wants to establish dominance in the area to make it easier for potential recruits to gain safe passage and to allow the movement of vital supplies, including weapons and oil. The route has been used by most of the foreign fighters who have joined the cause, and is believed to have been taken by several hundred of those who have joined Isis from the UK.

US officials said that there was now a "new context" for confronting Isis – and cutting off its supply routes – following the beheading of US journalist James Foley. In a sign that Washington may widen the field of its air strikes, the White House said it was ready to "take action" against any threat to America in Iraq or Syria. US military officials confirmed on Saturday night it had carried out an air strike against Isis near the Mosul Dam to support Iraqi and Kurdish operations.

Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said before the strike: "If we see plotting against Americans, if we see a threat to the US emanating from anywhere, we stand ready to take action against that threat. We have made it very clear time and again that if you come after Americans, we're going to come after you, wherever you are – and that's what's going to guide our planning in the days to come."

According to US military officials cited in the Wall Street Journal, the time needed to mount strikes at high-value targets, such as individual leaders, could be an hour, or "as much as a week". The official added: "If it's based on training camps, we could do that pretty soon." Similar briefings cited by the New York Times suggested officials were discussing the possibility of mounting unmanned drone strikes on Isis leaders, as has happened in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.

Islamic State declared itself a "caliphate" in late June and has since added large parts of northern Iraq to territory it already held in eastern Syria.

President Barack Obama authorised air raids in Iraq two weeks ago to help regional Kurdish and Iraqi forces fighting Isis in the country's north. If Washington widened its attacks to extremists in Syria, this would mark a turning point, ending its hands-off approach to the country's civil war.

EU countries have for weeks been putting pressure on Turkey to do more to seal its border. Because Ankara has wanted to oust President Bashar al-Assad from control in Syria, Turkey has kept its border open to jihadists who oppose him, including Isis fighters, and this has allowed the area to become a safe haven over the past three years. While the Turks now say that Isis is no longer welcome, Ankara has not sent in troops in large numbers to patrol the border.

Meanwhile, senior UK politicians called for greater pressure to be exerted on Turkey via the European Union and Nato – of which Turkey is a member. Former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell said that Turkey had a "vital role to play in preventing the free passage of jihadists travelling to … join Islamic State".

Campbell, a member of the House of Commons intelligence and security committee, said there should be a "full-scale diplomatic initiative" to draw Turkey closer towards the EU, and moves to offer it a faster route towards membership in return for its full cooperation in the fight against Isis.

Shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander said: "People and arms continue to move across the Turkish border with Syria, and Turkey, a Nato ally, has a key role to play in developing a more effective regional response to Isis. The priority now must be for Turkey to offer guarantees to its partners and allies that it is taking the necessary steps to uphold its responsibilities to secure key border areas that represent a vital front in the struggle to contain, disrupt and defeat Isis."

Foreign secretary Philip Hammond has not explicitly ruled out supporting a policy of US air strikes but sources say there is no prospect of the UK taking part. Campbell said UK participation would need the approval of parliament, as well as UN backing.

On Saturday, the UN called for a concerted effort to end the siege of Amerli, a town 110 miles north of Baghdad which is encircled by Isis jihadists. The town is home to 18,000 Turkmen people who, as Shias, are directly targeted by supporters of Isis, who consider them apostates.

Downing Street said that David Cameron, who warned a week ago that Isis was an "exceptionally dangerous" movement which represented a generational threat, would remain on holiday in Cornwall until the middle of this week. After news of the beheading of James Foley broke, he returned from Cornwall to London to chair emergency meetings, but then returned to his family.

UlanBatori · Post by **UlanBatori** » 24 Aug 2014 17:02

the undue focus on Foley's beheading

I cannot understand why they did it. Apparently there have been ongoing discussions with the GOTUS on exchanging the accused Paki wimmen terrist for this guy. That makes no sense either: Does ISIS convey a lot of vibes about Chivalry, Sacrifice to Save Wimmens etc?

Why do this now? The effect IMO is, suddenly, the ISIS came in from some distant desert where they were mass-murdering/enslaving some sand-******* towel-headed pagans (completing the unfinished work of the Crusaders) and right smack into US living rooms, with an actual WASP person being beheaded. Very difficult for SDOTUS/WHOTUS/COTUS to paint these as Modern Freedom Fighters now, hain? Send in the 7th Fleet, what are those cruise missiles for anyway, etc. There is a globe in my yak-herding center, and I saw a couple of ppl whose coujins are asked to push buttons on some of those things, examining it and saying: All those are the ISIS places.. etc. between themselves.

But then again, what consequence was there after the Daniel Pearl beheading? Nothing AFAIK. May have been encouraged by See Aieh etc because he was getting too close to the Pak Army/ US/ AQ congruence. So why behead this guy? Not even Yehudi, AFAIK.

Surya · Post by **Surya** » 24 Aug 2014 20:27

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zP2SATPIS0#t=55
IDF soldier talks about gaza ops

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 24 Aug 2014 21:31

Looks like Israel is getting Khujli

Israeli spy drone downed near Iran’s Natanz nuclear plant – Revolutionary Guards

Vikas · Post by **Vikas** » 24 Aug 2014 22:12

So now the whole of ME is indulging in a big violent orgy with everyone being a Frenemy as well BFF.
US hates Assad and Iran but may have to work with them now that ISIS has forced Ombaba's hands while
US also would work with ISIS to keep pressure off Israel while they flatten Hamas and PLO and also gets to keep Shia power off their chair and please SA.
Saudi's have created this big bull dog from scratch but they don't know when it will turn back and bite the hand.
Kurds get to sacrifice some but may get a state of their own in the end while Yazdis get to sacrifice all and will get nothing in the end.
Now that the American Gulf adventure was almost coming to an end, this new niggle is created to keep ME in focus and dependent upon western aid and help.

In all this Pakis are hoping that something big will happen causing world to rush and ask for Paki help since as per Paki Father,"Pakistan is in the middle of this universe"