Iraq's Shi'ite militia, Kurds use U.S. air strikes to further own agendasWorld | 206785 hits | Sep 10 10:43 am | Posted by: N_Fiddledog  SULEIMAN BEG Iraq (Reuters) - A small group of people pick through putrefying human remains laid out on plastic sheets by the side of a road in northern Iraq, searching for any trace of missing friendsCommentsview comments in forum Page 1 You need to be a member of CKA and be logged into the site, to comment on news. |
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"The unlikely coalition of Kurdish peshmerga fighters, Shi'ite militias and the U.S. air force won a major victory when it broke a siege of the Shi'ite Turkman town of Amerli last week and drove Islamic State from 25 nearby Sunni towns and villages.
But the aftermath is far from what the Americans envisioned. Smoke now rises from those Sunni villages, where some houses have been torched by Shi'ite militia. Others are abandoned, the walls daubed with sectarian slogans.
There is no way back for them: we will raze their homes to the ground, said Abu Abdullah, a commander of the Shi'ite Kataib Hizbollah militia in Amerli.
The area is now held by Kurdish peshmerga and Shi'ite militia, who have become the most powerful forces on the ground, rather than the Iraqi army, whose northern divisions collapsed this summer when Islamic State attacked.
By the time IS was expelled from around Amerli, many Sunni civilians had fled, fearing for their lives. They have few places to go and are too frightened to return.
"If a regular army were holding the area we could return, but as long as the militias are there we cannot, said a 30-year-old displaced Sunni resident of one village near Amerli, who asked to remain unnamed. "They would slaughter us on the spot."
“The escalation in the fighting between Peshmerga forces and ISIS in the areas around Mosul, and the intense bombardment by American aircraft of the group’s positions in Mosul, have led to suspicions that Kurdish fighters leaked information to Kurdish security forces,” he said.
“According to information we received, the group executed five Kurdish men who joined three months ago, on charges of treason and helping the Peshmerga and the American air force identify specific targets of the group.”
Naqshabandi said ISIS’s mistrust of its Kurdish members led some of them to seek to defect to the KRG.
ISIS prevented Kurdish fighters from meeting each other or speaking Kurdish, as well as confiscating their mobile phones, “causing resentment among the Kurds, some of whom called us in the last few days, saying they wanted to return to the Kurdistan Region,” he said.
“In the last couple of years, more than 400 Kurdish youths joined ISIS and around 50 of them were killed in that time, while more than 65 returned and surrendered to the security forces,” he said, adding that some of them were still being held by the security forces for interrogation, while others had been released on bail.
Meanwhile, Peshmerga forces have continued to advance in the plains of Nineveh and reached the outskirts Bashiqa, east of Mosul, following two days of fighting aided by artillery bombardment and American air strikes against ISIS positions.
Kurdish Democratic Party spokesman Saeed Mamo Zinni told Asharq Al-Awsat on Saturday: “Peshmerga forces are now close to the Bashiqa area, and we are ready to start an extensive attack to retake Bashiqa and other areas, and awaiting the Kurdistan Supreme Command to issue the orders to start the military operation.”
Mamo Zinni said Peshmerga forces succeeded in taking control of the Zardak Mountains east of Mosul on Saturday, and had also taken control of the strategic Bashiqa Mountains and a number of villages.
He added that ISIS tried to retake these strategic areas but was repelled by the Peshmerga forces, who killed 50 insurgents, which in turn led to the escape of members of ISIS into Bashiqa.
Meanwhile, an informed source in Mosul, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Asharq Al-Awsat by telephone that ISIS executed five doctors on Saturday in the center of the city because they refused to treat its injured men.
A statement issued by ISIS said only that it had executed five men in Mosul for “sorcery.
http://www.aawsat.net/2014/09/article55336325
As the old saying goes: "If you don't start nothing, there won't be nothing."
The Sunnis have sown and now they reap. F*ck them.
"The escalation in the fighting between Peshmerga forces and ISIS in the areas around Mosul, and the intense bombardment by American aircraft of the group’s positions in Mosul"
I didn't know the fighting was so hard around Mosul, with air support. When Mosul falls that's going to be news. It's going to let a lot of air out of the ISIS balloon. The next headline you'll read is "ISIS on the Run."
If you're an Iraqi Sunni in Mosul you're going to want to rethink those "Yay! Here comes ISIS" celebrations you enjoyed back when they first arrived.
http://muftah.org/why-iraqis-are-celebr ... heir-city/