Syria reported to have use Chemical Warfare

[Cain]

Yes, it does.  ISIS allows tribal leaders a significant amount of leeway in their system, often allowing them to retain their militias, giving them seats among the courts and similar in return for their assistance.  When ISIS overwhelmed the Fallujah garrison, it was with the help of Anbar clans....though it should be noted that the Awakening groups did come out in force against ISIS, and denied entire sections of the city to them for days.  They also headed off an attempted coup in Ramadi by ISIS at the same time.

That said, lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas.  You hang around with ISIS and put up with their sectarian hatred, their barbarity and their liver-eating ways, maybe you deserve to share their fate.  And if America doesn't bomb them, Russia will.  That may be a preferable outcome...but given our ongoing Cold War redux with Moscow, I imagine there are worries that an Iranian-Russian presence in the country will bolster their diplomatic credentials, at the expense of the Americans. that Washington needs to have a higher presence in the fight to show Baghdad that it's the foreign partner whose interests should be heeded.

I mean, I don't care either way.  I got no skin in this game.  But I can see why American strategists would argue for greater involvement, regardless of the future risk of ISIS terrorism against American and British targets.

Kilcullen's book is a good one.  I'd pay attention to his (at the time, ignored) argument about a "Muslim civil war".  It was basically passed over at the time, along with Nir Rosen's reporting...but I would say recent events are bearing them out to an extent, even if the truth is more complicated than their summaries.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'm hearing hysterical shit about ISIS beheading Christian children.

I am at the moment assuming this is RWN propaganda.

Actually, it wouldn't surprise me.

Iraq does have a small but significant Christian population. Christians were ethnically (religiously?) cleansed from Mosul, many were robbed and some were tortured and killed while trying to leave.

There's also a certain mountain in northern Iraq where lots of Christians have been fleeing to, which is currently surrounded by ISIS forces.

Plus there is the overall fundamentalism of ISIS...which sees even other Sunni Muslims as apostates and pagans and treats accordingly.  The stories out of Raqqa are like something out of Taliban Afghanistan, mixed with Nazi Germany.

I would be suspicious of anyone who focuses overly on Christians though.  ISIS hates everyone, and most of their victims are Sunni Muslim, then Shiite.

Which would make sense.  People always are most vicious to people that are CLOSE to their manner of beliefs.

[Cain]

Yeah, exactly.

Plus, you have to remember ISIS was (sorta) founded by Abu Musab al-Zaqawi.  Now there was a man who enjoyed sectarianism.  For him, Shiites were devil-worshippers, and most Sunni Muslims were pagans.  No wonder the Awakening Councils decided the American occupying forces were the lesser of two evils, with a nutcase like him around.

[Cain]

There's an argument being made that Obama has drawn a "red line" around Kurdistan, and is essentially letting ISIS do as they please in the rest of Iraq.

Invading Iraq's Kurdish region, it turned out, was Obama's red line for ISIS. There are a few reasons why. The Kurdish region is far stabler, politically, than the rest of Iraq. (Kurds are ethnically distinct from the rest of Iraq, which is largely ethnic Arab; most Kurds are Sunni Muslims.) The Kurdish region, which has been semi-autonomous since the United States invaded in 2003 and has grown more autonomous from Baghdad ever since, also happens to be a much more reliable US ally than is the central Iraqi government. It has a reasonably competent government and military, unlike the central Iraqi government, which is volatile, unstable, deeply corrupt, and increasingly authoritarian.

Which stands up chronologically with recent events.  Peshmerga take a beating = Obama carries out air strikes.  ISIS are currently threatening to take Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish Autonomous Region.  If they do, the loss could be catastrophic to the Peshmerga...as in, they may never recover.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'm so very glad that we "stabilized the region" back in 2003.

[Cain]

The condition of all unbelievers in the Islamic State is stable as shit.

I'm just glad we got there before Islamic fundamentalism could take root in the region.  Because that would've been bad.

[Cain]

Heh.  I forgot.  Ebril's the location of a US Joint Operations Center.

Why?  Well, Kurdistan oil supplies might have something to do with the picture.

According to ABC News, the reason the Peshmerga lost against ISIS and were forced to retreat was due to a lack of ammunition - a problem caused by Iraqi oil embargos on Kurdistan.

[LMNO]

Oh, come on!   Can't we get a war that isn't about oil revenues for once?

[Junkenstein]

Hmm:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28833519

There are conflicting reports about whether Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Iraqi troops have fully retaken Mosul dam from Islamic State (IS) militants.

Iraqi military spokesman Lt-Gen Qassim Atta told state TV the dam - Iraq's largest - had been "fully cleansed".

Troops had been backed by a joint air patrol, he added, without specifying if there had been any US air strikes.

However, journalists in the area said fighting was continuing and jihadists remained in control of the main gate.

They said IS fighters had put up stiff resistance, and had planted many roadside bombs and other explosive devices.

I'm wondering if ISIS will willingly give up a strategic asset of this nature and what they would likely do if faced with such a situation. There's also plenty of potential for anyone else to "accidentally" fuck the thing up and cause quite a few problems. If the dam still intact and operational at the end of the year I'll be surprised.

The other development of note is with quite a few countries throwing arms and weapons at the Kurds. That's the short way of saying that all this has got a long while to go yet.

[Cain]

They wont give it up willingly.

The dam is a huge asset.  It's a knife at the throat of the Iraqi energy grid, and thus the Iraqi state.  It's also excellent blackmail material - give us money or we turn the lights off.  ISIS did similar in Syria with oil, and it made them wealthy.

[Junkenstein]

Shit's going on faster than I can keep up with it:

Firstly, HA HA :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28927246

yria's foreign minister has offered to help the US fight the Islamic State (IS) militant group, which has seized swathes of land in Iraq and Syria.

Walid Muallem said Syria was "the centre of the international coalition to fight Islamic State".

The US has already bombed IS fighters in Iraq and has hinted it would be willing to take action in Syria.

Western powers generally shun Syria's government, accusing it of carrying out atrocities in its three-year civil war.

But Mr Muallem warned that the US must co-ordinate with the Syrian government before launching any air strikes on its territory.

"Anything outside this is considered aggression," he said.

Secondly, Everyone's stopped looking at Libya recently, but shit is still fucked up there:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-28933070

US officials say Egypt and the UAE were behind air strikes in Libya last week that targeted Islamist militia.

A senior US official told the BBC that Washington was not consulted about the attacks and was "caught off-guard".

The air strikes on militia positions around Tripoli's international airport were reportedly carried out by Emirati fighter jets using bases in Egypt.

The Egyptian authorities have denied involvement, and there has been no direct comment from the UAE.

The strikes failed to stop militias from Misrata and other cities, which operate under the banner Libya Dawn and include some Islamist groups, seizing the airport from a militia from Zintan that had controlled it since 2011.

The airport, Libya's largest, has been closed for more than a month because of the fighting.

Hundreds of people have died since clashes broke out in Tripoli in July.

Thirdly, looks like the reason Syria is reaching out to the US again:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28918792

ighters from Islamic State (IS) have taken control of a key Syrian government airbase, activists say.

The Tabqa airbase was the last remaining stronghold of Bashar al-Assad's government in Raqqa province..

State TV confirmed that government forces had "evacuated" the airbase. Days of fighting there have reportedly killed hundreds on both sides.

And tons more. It's shitty pretty much everywhere in the region.

I believe the term is "Clusterfuck"

[Cain]

Well, not everyone's ignoring Libya:

Only weeks after Sunni jihadists in Iraq declared the establishment of an Islamic caliphate covering parts of Syria and Iraq, Libya's Ansar al-Shari'a movement has declared an Islamic emirate in eastern Libya after driving government forces and their allies from the city of Benghazi. The defeat of the strongest pro-government forces in eastern Libya has provided the Islamists with an impressive victory, but Ansar al-Shari'a and its allies are still struggling to obtain the support of Benghazi's urban population and the powerful tribes dwelling in its hinterland.

Note the date.  Admittedly, pretty much no-one else has bothered to take notice of the situation, I wont deny.

[Junkenstein]

Fair point, will have a read over that now.

[LMNO]

This post is something poetic and poignant about Spring turning to Summer, and Summer to Fall.


Or something.  Sorry, I suck at IR so I'm left to write crappy ignorant marginalia.

[Cain]

Schrodinger's Jihad: the state in which a country is both under threat from a terrorist attack that is "highly likely" to happen, yet there is no "specific threat or information suggesting an attack is imminent."

See also: UK "counterterrorism" "policy".

Serious comment: this is just shameless, even by our current government's standards.  The threat level has been raised, not because of any actionable intelligence (that has been reported in the press) but because the government is going to hold discussions next week on modifying counter-terrorism legislation.

Again.

Because thus far our counter-terrorism legislation has done wonders for reducing the threat of terrorism in the UK.  Only...if the government could somehow bring control orders back in, it'd be even better.