Iraq

Tightening the noose

HARASSED by sniper fire and slowed down by the suicide bombers of Islamic State (IS), Kurdish and Iraqi forces have taken heavy casualties as they fight their way towards Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city and the place where the jihadists first announced the creation of their “caliphate” two years ago.

Villages freshly captured by the Iraqi army and Shia militias on the roads leading to Mosul show signs of the jihadists’ hasty retreat. Weapon caches are abandoned, pots of uneaten food still sit on stoves and medical clinics have been pilfered for supplies. But there are signs, too, of the defences dug by IS to evade air strikes: deep, wide subterranean tunnels with room enough to sleep and eat, their entrances concealed inside one-storey buildings.

The operation to retake Mosul began on October 17th. Since then an awkward coalition of Iraqi and Kurdish forces has swept across the vast, sun-baked plains of Nineveh to seize a string of villages to the east, north and south. As The Economist went to press, some units were within 6km (4 miles) of the city.

Kurdish and Iraqi troops, supported by American-led air strikes, Western special forces and American artillery guns, have inflicted heavy casualties on IS. Residents in Mosul say the city’s hospitals are full of wounded IS fighters returning from the front. “It’s pretty significant (resistance),” said Lieutenant-General Stephen Townsend, the commander of American-led forces in Iraq. “The Iraqis expected this and they’re fighting through it.”

Less expected has been IS’s ability to attack its enemies on other fronts. On October 21st about 100 well-organised IS fighters infiltrated the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and engaged security forces in running street battles that lasted three days. Experts say the attack is a portent of what lies ahead. They suspect IS will return to the shadows to wage a bloody guerrilla war against the Iraqi state once the city falls.

If the battle in the countryside around Mosul has been fierce, then commanders expect an even bloodier fight once their troops enter the city. Intelligence reports indicate that hundreds of IS fighters have moved to Mosul in recent weeks to reinforce the 4,000 to 8,000 fighters estimated to be inside already.

IS has had two years to prepare its defences. Its fighters have rigged the city with explosives, mined and booby-trapped roads, filled trenches with oil they can set alight as the Iraqis advance and dug a network of tunnels deep underground. There are also fears that the jihadists will use the 1m-1.5m civilians trapped in the city as human shields to slow the offensive. Officials say there is every indication IS will fight rather than flee. If so, some think the battle could last until February.

Solid intelligence about the location of IS positions inside the city will be key to limiting the damage. To encourage informants, troops have erected a number of mobile-phone masts near the front line and phone operators have given residents 60 minutes of free credit. “It’s still dangerous to make calls,” said Mahmoud, a Mosul resident who was too scared to give his real name. “They’re searching people for SIM cards because they’re worried about spies.” The UN fears IS may have executed dozens of people as the militants retreat from surrounding villages.

While militarily the battle has largely progressed according to plan, fissures have begun to emerge among the region’s powers. The main source of friction stems from Turkey’s role in the fight (see article). Limited for the time being to occasional artillery fire from a ridge to the east of the city, Turkey’s involvement has infuriated the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad.

Another emerging problem is the absence of order in newly liberated areas. Many blame a dysfunctional government for the ease with which IS captured Mosul and the surrounding countryside two years ago. At a checkpoint on the outskirts of Qayyarah, 60km (40 miles) south of Mosul, a frustrated colonel in the Iraqi air force pointed to thick columns of smoke still billowing from an oil refinery that IS fighters had set on fire as they retreated from the town in August. Mixed with noxious fumes from a burning sulphur plant, the smog has put hundreds in hospital.

“This is a disgrace,” said Colonel Khalid Jasim al-Jabardi, who had been sent from Baghdad to report back on progress at the front. “The mayor is still in Erbil, millions of dollars have been sent but there’s still no electricity, no food, no water. People are starting to say that life under Daesh [IS] was better. If the same happens when Mosul falls then we will have big problems. Perhaps not Daesh, but another terrorist group will emerge.”

From the print edition: Middle East and Africa


(economist.com)

ISIS DEFEATS CAUSE COLLAPSE OF ONLINE PROPAGANDA

At its height, ISIS issued 700 releases a month. That has dropped to fewer than 200.

Military advances against territory held by the Islamic State group (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria have produced a welcome byproduct: a marked decline by 70 to 80 percent in the output of social media propaganda by the group.

ISIS fighters were recently chased out of the Syrian village of Dabiq by Syrian rebel forces without offering much resistance (despite Dabiq’s apocalyptic symbolic significance in ISIS lore), and the battle of Mosul has begun as Kurdish, Iraqi and U.S. forces tighten the noose around ISIS’s largest stronghold.

A new report by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, “Communication Breakdown: Unraveling the Islamic State’s Media Efforts,” describes in detail the impact of military action on ISIS’s capacity to wage ideological warfare. Promising the coming of the caliphate and portraying the Islamic State as utopian reality about to happen has become all but impossible.

Not only that, but continued bombardment has destroyed much physical infrastructure, film studios, computers and buildings housing the ISIS internet operation. The death of chief propagandists has equally affected ISIS efforts to draw recruits.

Over the past year, as the military strategy of combating ISIS has intensified, the number of foreign fighters flowing into Syria and Iraq from abroad has dropped from some 1,500 a month to 200. At its most prolific, August 2015, ISIS released more than 700 items in one month from official outlets. This August, after a year of airstrikes and other attacks, that number had dropped to fewer than 200 items.

The decline in ISIS social media activity has also been noticed at the U.S. Department of State, which takes the U.S. government’s lead in counter messaging.

This week, Rick Stengel, the undersecretary for public diplomacy, told The Chicago Maroon—the student newspaper of the University of Chicago—that he ascribed the drop in ISIS propaganda and recruitment to the success of a new public diplomacy strategy at the State Department, though without any actual evidence to support it.

The State Department’s new strategy consists of subcontracting counter-messaging to U.S. allies in the Muslim Middle East through its Global Engagement Center (formerly known as the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communication). The approach of working with Muslim countries and offering training and support to Muslims opposing ISIS online is not without merit but hardly the primary cause of the decline in ISIS propaganda we are seeing.

A recent study by Rand Corp., “Examining ISIS Support and Opposition Networks on Twitter,” analyzed 10 months of Twitter data between July 2014 and May 2015. It showed that even then, ISIS did not actually dominate the Twitter universe. For every ISIS supporter, there were six ISIS opponents active on Twitter.

However, due to the relentless productivity of the ISIS supporters, their output was much greater. Another factor was the coherence of the ISIS narrative, compared with the fractured messaging of the different Muslim communities opposing them in the Middle East (and sometimes opposing one another as well).

The West Point analysis remains the most compelling. Fighting ISIS propaganda on social media has been difficult and reactive. Inflicting military defeat after military defeat on the group has returned the initiative to the United States, the Kurds and the Iraqi government. And it is having an impact.

Helle C. Dale is the Heritage Foundation's senior fellow in public diplomacy.

(Newsweek)

Isaac Davis, Staff Writer
Waking Times

The months long Dakota Access Keystone XL pipleine protest at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation by Native Americans and those sympathetic to protection of our water supply has been met with heavy-handed and brutal clamp down by police and national guard. Militarized goons in battle dress have stormed protector camps with LRAD sonic weapons, attack dogs, tear gas, tazers, and even live ammunition (killing horses), while politicians and mainstream media do their best to ignore this growing atrocity, hoping to wait it out until the protestors give up.

But, as the saying goes, Water Is Life, and the issue of life and death is at the root of this protection movement, therefore, for people concerned with life, giving up on this is simply unthinkable. The root issue justifying state oppression of the protest is capitalism, and the perception that money is more important than life itself. When the police and national guard attack U.S. citizens on private property to protect corporate interests, who are they really working for?

The corporate dream of the Keystone XL pipeline is to create a profit stream for a small number of people at the expense of the natural world and anyone in the way. At the top of this pyramid of profit is Texas billionaire Kelcy Warren, CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, the company responsible for the project.

So who is Kelcy Warren?

A native of East Texas and graduate of the University of Texas at Arlington with a degree in civil engineering, Warren worked in the natural gas industry and became co-chair of Energy Transfer Equity in 2007. With business partner Ray Davis, co-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, Warren built Energy Transfer Equity into one of the nation’s largest pipeline companies, which now owns about 71,000 miles of pipelines carrying natural gas, natural gas liquids, refined products and crude oil. The company’s holdings include Sunoco, Southern Union and Regency Energy Partners.

Forbes estimates the 60-year-old Warren’s personal wealth at $4 billion. Bloomberg described himas “among America’s new shale tycoons” — but rather than building a fortune by drilling he “takes the stuff others pull from underground and moves it from one place to another, chilling, boiling, pressurizing, and processing it until it’s worth more than when it burst from the wellhead.” [Source]

Shockingly, in 2015 the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, appointed Warren to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission which is an insult to environmentalists working to protect Big Bend National Park and surrounding sacred tribal lands from another $770 million pipeline project.

“According to the governor’s office, the state parks and wildlife commission “manages and conserves the natural and cultural resources of Texas,” along with ensuring the future of hunting, fishing and outdoor recreation opportunities for Texans.” [Source]

This glaring conflict of interest has inspired Environmental Science major at UTSA and former Texas State Park Ambassador Andrew Lucas to begin a drive to have Warren removed from this environmental post. His petition is described here:

Most people may know Kelcy Warren as the man behind the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline. The Dallas-based billionaire and CEO of Energy Transfer Partners has been making headlines for fast-tracking a 1100 mile crude oil pipeline across the Midwest and under the Missouri River, just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. No environmental impact assessment, no respect for cultural sites, and no regard for the local and widespread communities living along the river. A similar story is unfolding out in West Texas, where Warren’s company has split through the pristine Big Bend region with the 200 mile Comanche Trail Pipeline and nearly-complete 143 mile Trans Pecos Pipeline. These Pipelines mark the way for massive natural gas and oil developments in the Trans Pecos region.

With untold damages unfolding for cultural and environmental resources at the hands of Energy Transfer Partners, it would surprise most to know that nearly a year ago, Texas Governor Greg Abbott appointed Kelcy Warren for a 6 year term as 1 of the 10 commissioners who preside over Texas Parks And Wildlife… Why? Probably the $550,000 in campaign contributions Abbott received from Warren.

Read More…

Footage of militarized police using the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) crowd control weapon against protectors at standing rock on October 27th, 2016:

Final Thoughts

Warren is listed as number 150 on Forbes list of wealthiest Americans with an estimated net worth of $4.2 billion in September of 2016. He is the head of the Dakota Access Pipeline snake.

If you are scratching your head wondering why militarized police and private security contractors are beating, gassing and attacking peaceful resistors, including women, children and the elderly, the answer is, they are doing it to protect the interests of Kelcy Warren and others invested in this pipeline project.

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