Obama Switches Up the ISIS Narrative

An interesting item that emerged from the G7 summit in Krün was Obama's statement about the important role of foreign fighters in the offensive capabilities of Islamic State. According to Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael Shear, "Ukraine Crisis and Advance of ISIS Dominate Agenda for Group of 7":

At a news conference Monday after the close of the summit meeting, Mr. Obama acknowledged a need to accelerate the training of Iraqi military forces to counter the advance of Islamic State militants, and he said that he had asked the Pentagon for a plan to do that.

“We don’t have, yet, a complete strategy, because it requires commitments on the part of Iraqis as well,” Mr. Obama said. “The details are not worked out.” 

Mr. Obama said of the militants of the Islamic State, also known as ISIL and ISIS: “They’re nimble and they’re aggressive and they’re opportunistic.” 

He acknowledged that the training of Iraqi forces “has not been happening as fast as it needs to.” And he said the United States has “made some progress, but not enough” in stemming the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq and Syria. 

Mr. Obama said that “thousands” of new fighters were replenishing the ranks of the Islamic State faster than the coalition could remove them from the fight. 

“If we can cut off some of that foreign fighter flow, then we are able to isolate and wear out ISIL forces that are already there,” Mr. Obama said. “Because we are taking a lot of them off the battlefield, but if they’re being replenished, then it doesn’t solve the problem over the long term.”

The president also said that Turkey was not doing what was required to monitor its border with Syria and halt the stream of fighters. 

Earlier on Monday, Mr. Obama met with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi of Iraq, where he reaffirmed the world powers’ commitment to supporting Iraq in the fight against the Islamic State, which has made major gains in recent weeks. 

“Although it is going to take time, and there will be setbacks and lessons learned, we are going to be successful,” Mr. Obama said at the start of his meeting with Mr. Abadi. “ISIL is going to be driven out of Iraq, and ultimately, it is going to be defeated.”

This represents an about-face by the U.S. president. From the outset, ISIS has been defined by USG/Western media as an indigenous, Anbar-based response to the predatory overreach of Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki.

The Cracker Jacks version of the story goes something like this: Because al-Maliki refused to pay the Sunni Sons of Iraq, as was promised, Al Qaeda in Iraq rose from its ashes in Anbar, using the war next door in Syria as a proving ground, and reconstituted itself as Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

The United States spread this story last year as a way to successfully force out al-Maliki as prime minister. Now the story changes. It is really the flow of foreign fighters via the border with Turkey that makes Islamic State so lethal and not because it is an Anbar-based popular guerrilla movement.

This puts Obama more in line with the fact-based reporting of, say, a Patrick Cockburn writing for The Independent whose interviews with Sunnis who have fled Anbar establish convincingly that ISIS is foreign-led, i.e., Chechens, Saudis, Libyans, et al.

I haven't seen anything in the mainstream press drawing attention to this latest Obama somersault, though there has been a reaction to Obama's statement that "We don't have, yet, a complete strategy . . . ." For instance, Shreeya Sinha in "Obama’s Evolution on ISIS" has a helpful compendium of Obama's twists and turns, beginning with "ISIS is a J.V. squad of takfiris," or something along those lines, to the latest on June 8, "We don't have a complete strategy."

All the evasions, false starts and missteps can be attributed to the fact that Obama has to obscure the obvious -- ISIS is a creation of U.S. allies Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, the same allies the U.S. has been working with to funnel fighters into Syria. In the war against ISIS, the United States is battling an enemy that it worked to create. Naturally this kind of disingenuousness -- saying you are fighting the takfiris while aiding the takfiris -- is going to result in policy confusion.

The plan floated this morning (Michael Gordon, "U.S. Embracing a New Approach on Battling ISIS in Iraq") is that the U.S. is going to occupy Al Taqqadum, a base outside the Anbar town of Habbaniya, and use it as a training hub for the recapture of Ramadi:

To assemble a force to retake Ramadi, the number of Iraqi tribal fighters in Anbar who are trained and equipped is expected to increase to as many as 10,000 from about 5,500. 

More than 3,000 new Iraqi soldiers are to be recruited to fill the ranks of the Seventh Iraqi Army division in Anbar and the Eighth Iraqi Army division, which is in Habbaniyah, where the Iraqi military operations center for the province is also based. 

But to the frustration of critics like Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who say that the United States is losing the initiative to the Islamic State, the Obama administration has yet to approve the use of American spotters on the battlefield to call in airstrikes in and around Ramadi. Nor has it approved the use of Apache helicopter gunships to help Iraqi troops retake the city.

It was the U.S.-trained Iraqi Army that disintegrated in Mosul last year at this time. One wonders how this training mission will be any different. And where is any mention of the Shiite militias currently in Anbar, the Popular Mobilization Committees?

My sense is that this is all part of the U.S. shadow dance. The U.S. is putatively at war with ISIS, but it is really at war with its Sunni allies, who are at war with Iran; at the same time, the U.S. is also at war with Iran. Everything is topsy-turvy. To keep Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Kuwait and Qatar from ratcheting up support for the takfiri fighters, the U.S. must re-station troops in the region.

That's what we're looking at here. The GCC wants the U.S. military footprint back on the ground. Absent that, more war.

Yemen Back in the News + Three Million Internally Displaced Iraqis and Rising + French Move to Torpedo P5+1 + Bum Rush on for Renewal of Russian Sanctions

Recent ISIS victories in Ramadi and Palmyra crowded news of the Saudi terror bombing of Yemen not only off the front page of the newspaper but out of the Gray Lady altogether. Today's report from Mohammed Ali Kalfood and Kareem Fahim, "Medical Need Climbs Alongside Death Toll in Yemen," is the first full story to appear in The New York Times in ten days.

And the news is not good. The Saudis and the Houthis are engaged in cross-border clashes in Yemen's north; Saudis continue their aerial bombardment of Sana, regardless of the civilian death toll; and the basic infrastructure of the country is being thoroughly demolished, to the point now that it is estimated that one-third of Yemen's inhabitants are in need of urgent medical care. As Kalfood and Fahim report,

In the absence of negotiations, the military conflict has grown in intensity. Areas in northern Yemen near the Saudi border have become a fiercely contested front in recent weeks, with both the Houthis and the Saudis mounting a series of deadly cross-border attacks. 

The airstrikes in the capital on Wednesday morning followed a familiar pattern, with Saudi-led attacks against military targets in populated areas setting off secondary explosions that sent shrapnel hurtling toward civilian homes nearby. 

Witnesses said the airstrikes hit the headquarters of a counterterrorism unit that had received training and financing from the United States before the conflict. The attack occurred around 10:30 a.m., as Houthi recruits were gathering there to receive weapons. Explosions in the area continued for hours afterward, witnesses said. 

In a statement on Wednesday, the World Health Organization said that nearly 2,000 people had been killed in the fighting since March, including “hundreds of women and children.” Out of a population of 24 million, the organization said, some 8.6 million people “are in urgent need of medical help,” both for war-related injuries and for common medical conditions. 

Hospitals around the country have closed because of shortages of staff members and fuel, and medicines for diabetes, cancer and hypertension are no longer available. The organization added that “outbreaks of polio and measles are also serious risks.”

In Iraq, there are three million internally displaced persons. The UN estimates that number will grow by an additional one million as the Iraqi counteroffensive to retake Anbar builds momentum. Tim Arango, a rare Gray Lady reporter not known to peddle USG infowar talking points, toes the anti-Shiite line this morning with "Sunnis Fleeing ISIS Find Few Doors Open Elsewhere in Iraq." The gist of the story is that the Shiite-controlled Iraqi government is being ruthlessly sectarian by requiring refugees from Anbar to have a sponsor in Baghdad if they want to settle in the city.

Arango does include a modest one paragraph demurrer where he mentions that the Kurds are also loath to wave through refugees from the Sunni heartland:

Even in the northern Kurdish region, long a haven for civilians fleeing Iraq’s turmoil, the authorities are reluctant to accept large numbers of Arabs, worsening the country’s ethnic divisions and adding to the sense that the very cohesion of Iraq is being pulled apart.

The reason the government has some sort of policy in place on the internally displaced is to prevent jihadi suicide bombers from gaining unfettered access to Baghdad. Reasonable. One would expect far worse in the United States if it were facing similar pressures.

In any event, the United Nations has burned through the $500 million the Saudis donated last year to deal with the humanitarian crisis that their jihadis unleashed in Iraq. Now an additional $700 million is needed. I wonder what the total UN humanitarian budget for Yemen, Syria and Iraq is. Who is going to pay it?

The P5+1 negotiations seem to be going off the rails with French foreign minister Laurent Fabius demanding that any final deal must include "anytime, anywhere" inspections, something that Ayatollah Khamenei ruled out in a May 20 statement.

It seemed to me that the Israelis responded with unusual calm when Obama announced at the beginning of April a tentative accord with Iran on its nuclear program. The fact that AIPAC-ally Bob Corker worked so diligently with the administration to pass compromise legislation allowing a congressional role in reviewing the agreement without killing it also seemed odd to me.

All of which makes sense if the Netanyahu government has a fail safe in the form of a French veto. The Hollande government is truly one of the worst; it almost makes Cameron's Tories look bright and shiny.

Then there is the latest outbreak of incitement against Russia. Apparently the Kiev junta is blocking all cargo shipments from Russia to Crimea. This coincides with the latest infowar volley asserting Russian military penetration of Ukraine. Both I'm sure are meant to build support in the EU for a re-authorization of Russian sanctions set to sunset in July.

Victory in Ramadi Bad News for ISIS and U.S. Now Genie of Popular Mobilization Forces Can't be Corked

Sitting in the airport yesterday waiting to catch a flight home, I watched a CNN interview with retired Delta Force Commander James Reese. He seemed to relish the fact that Iraqi prime minister Abadi was calling the Popular Mobilization Forces, the Shiite militias, back to Anbar Province to attempt to reclaim Ramadi. Strange since it was pressure from the U.S. that prevented the Popular Mobilization Forces from deploying in Anbar following their defeat of Islamic State in Tikrit. Abadi pulled back the Shiite militias in favor of the U.S. policy of trying to recreate the Sons of Iraq, the Sunni Awakening in Anbar. All this went unmentioned in the interview with the Delta Force analyst.

Not so in the stories filed by the Gray Lady's Tim Arango. In yesterday's "Key Iraqi City Falls to ISIS as Last of Security Forces Flee" and today's "Fall of Ramadi to ISIS Weakens Rule of Iraqi Premier," Arango clearly outlines the U.S. role in Abadi's decision both to rein in the Popular Mobilization Forces and now to unleash them. From yesterday's report Arango notes:

With defeat looming in Ramadi on Sunday afternoon, the Anbar Provincial Council met in Baghdad and voted to ask Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to send Shiite fighters to rescue Anbar, a largely Sunni province. In response, Mr. Abadi issued a statement calling for the militias, known as the Popular Mobilization Forces and including several powerful Shiite forces supported by Iran, to be ready to fight. Some of the Shiite irregular units, which were formed last summer after Shiite clerics put out a call to arms, are more firmly under the command of the government, while others answer to Iran.

The involvement of the militias in Anbar had been opposed by the United States, which leads an international coalition that has been carrying out airstrikes in support of Iraqi forces. American officials had worried that the militias could inflame sectarian tensions in the province and ultimately make it harder to pacify.

As they considered asking for the militias’ assistance, Anbar officials met over the weekend with the American ambassador to Iraq, Stuart E. Jones, to ascertain the United States’ position on the issue. According to officials, Mr. Jones told the Anbar delegation that the United States would continue its air campaign, provided that the militias were under the command of Mr. Abadi, and not Iranian advisers, and that the militias were properly organized to avoid American bombing runs.

The U.S. position in Iraq is thoroughly schizophrenic. The enemy is the super-sectarian ISIS. Yet the main reason for keeping the Shiite militias on a leash, choosing instead to let the woeful Iraqi Army lead the fight in Anbar, is to prevent sectarianism. In the meantime, Islamic State gains ground, captures new weapons recently supplied by both the U.S. and Russia, and spreads its ruthless sectarianism. Then the U.S. green-lights the Popular Mobilization Forces, cheering on the Shiite militias to take back what U.S. policy lost. It is as if the true American goal is make sure that no clear victory is achieved but that war rages on.

The limit to this U.S. schizophrenia or ruse is that it relies on Abadi to implement it -- to tether the militias at the same time maintaining the fiction that the Awakening can be reanimated. But, as Arango makes clear in his story today, Abadi is losing credibility rapidly. Iraqis overwhelmingly support the Popular Mobilization Forces, and Abadi's efforts to sideline them is increasingly perceived as an abject capitulation to foreign-backed designs to partition the country:

Some of the newer units, formed last year after Shiite clerics called on young men to take up arms and fight the Islamic State, also called ISIS or ISIL, do answer to the prime minister. Some of the most powerful groups, though, such as the Badr Organization, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Kataib Hezbollah, may answer to Mr. Abadi in individual cases — they did not advance on Anbar until the prime minister gave orders, for example. But those militias were trained and supported directly by Iran, and the militias’ leaders have grown immensely in popularity with the Iraqi public as they have won significant battles against the Islamic State.

This has presented serious challenges to Mr. Abadi’s authority. For instance, in March, at the beginning of an operation to retake the city of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, the plans were drawn up by militia leaders, and then Mr. Abadi was told it would happen. Once those fighters failed to retake Tikrit decisively, Mr. Abadi asked them to withdraw and called for help from American airstrikes, reasserting his authority for the moment.

Now that the militias have been called upon to fight in Anbar, Mr. Abadi’s authority seems to be waning again, and the militias’ cachet has only grown. One of the most popular pictures circulating on social media in Iraq on Monday showed Hadi al-Ameri, the powerful head of the Badr militia, examining a map and seemingly plotting out a new campaign in Anbar.

Fanar Haddad, an Iraqi analyst, recently wrote in an online column that the militias have “provided a potent rallying point for a reinvigorated sense of Iraqi nationalism, albeit one with distinctly Shiite overtones.” 

In an interview, Mr. Haddad said Mr. Abadi was limited in his ability to constrain the Popular Mobilization Forces — or Hashid in Arabic, as the militias are known here. “If you want to be part of Iraq’s evolving political game, you can’t go against the Hashid,” he said. “It’s just too popular.” 

The militias’ growing popularity has coincided with an even more powerful approval of Iran’s role in Iraq, at least among Shiite Iraqis. 

Once, even many Iraqi Shiites looked at Iran with some suspicion, partly because of the legacy of the long and bloody war that Iraq fought with Iran in the 1980s. A frequent gripe of the past was about low-quality Iranian goods, such as cheese and yogurt, clogging the shelves of grocery stories. 

Now, though, in the words of Ali Kareem Salman, a 31-year-old government worker in the south, “Shiites think that Iran is the protector of the Shiite sect.”

Hanan Fatlawi, a Shiite lawmaker who is one of Mr. Abadi’s most vocal critics, said: “Previously, you could divide the Shia into two sides: those who hate Iran and those who love them. But after the entrance of ISIS, and with the situation we are in, many people are grateful to Iran. Their opinion changed." 

Of the militias, she said, “Without them, there would be no Baghdad.” 

There is an essential paradox to Mr. Abadi’s leadership thus far. In nearly every way he has proved to be the inclusive leader mandated by the United States, reaching out to Sunnis and Kurds and seeking consensus. But within Iraq, he is increasingly viewed as weak and unable to effectively shift Iraq’s tragic trajectory. 

“This term ‘inclusive personality,’ I only hear from foreigners,” Ms. Fatlawi said. “He was weak from the start.”

All of which powerfully underlines the deep flaw in the U.S. strategy. The U.S. got the man it wanted to replace Maliki. But if Abadi keeps toeing the U.S. line, his days are numbered. Iraqis know that without the militias there would be no Baghdad. And if Abadi goes, Washington will be confronted with having to abandon the battlefield with Islamic State, leaving it to Iran to help defend Iraq, or having to suck it up and attempt to bribe or cajole Abadi's replacement. Either option argues for a greater role for the Popular Mobilization Forces, which means more losses for ISIS and more victories for a renascent, popular Shiite-based Iraqi nationalism -- something that the U.S. and its allies in Israel and the Gulf monarchies cannot countenance.

So the U.S. will stick with Abadi and make sure he grants the concessions necessary to remain in power; and from this perch atop the Iraqi state, the U.S. will try to dampen the flowering of Iraqi nationalism. But the one thing that the U.S. has done reliably since it toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003 -- not intentionally but as a result of the blowback from its bellicosity -- is to amplify Shiite credibility and power in the region. This is not something that is going to change.

Abadi No Quisling: Tough Times Ahead for Uncle Sam's Iraq Project

The idea all along has been to partition Iraq. That was clear as soon as ISIS took Mosul last June and the Kurds, in what could be termed a collaboration, took Kirkuk.

The U.S. response to black-clad jihadis massacring over 1,000 conscripts near Tikrit, you will recall, was laid back. The primary concern of the Obama administration was not to prevent further genocide; rather, it was to make sure that Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, relinquish control of the government, something that was difficult to imagine since al-Maliki's State of Law Coalition was by far the top vote-getter in last April's election.

But with ISIS on a warpath to Baghdad and the United States reticent to provide assistance (the corrupt Bob Menendez from his leadership perch on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee promised to block weapons transfers to Iraq as long as al-Maliki remained prime minister), the State Department's man in Mesopotamia, Brett McGurk, was able to engineer a soft coup. Maliki was replaced by a candidate, Haider al-Abadi,  from Maliki's Islamic Dawa Party. Abadi, educated in England, was deemed suitably pro-Western in outlook, and, more importantly, he appeared to accept U.S. diktats regarding a de facto partition of Iraq -- more autonomy for the regions with a national guard system set up whereby the sects would be formally and institutionally militarized, as well as the ministries of defense and interior being awarded to Sunnis.

Then something happened. ISIS jumped the rails and went after areas under Kurdish control. The Yazidis were massacred on Mount Sinjar and Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, was threatened, not to mention there was the potential for ISIS to blow Mosul Dam and create a humanitarian catastrophe.

All of this got the U.S. off the sidelines, dispatching warplanes for numerous bombing runs. ISIS responded with well-publicized snuff films of American reporters James Foley and Steve Sotloff. This hardened U.S. opposition to Islamic State, which prior to August 2014 was not very pronounced; one might call it a studied ignorance.

But since the end of last summer, a combination of U.S. air power working in concert with Kurdish and Iranian-backed Shiite militias has halted the Islamic State offensive, with the exception of Sunni-dominated Anbar Province.

Now the anti-ISIS alliance appears to be fraying, as longtime Syria hand Anne Barnard reports in "Iraqi Campaign to Drive ISIS From Tikrit Reveals Tensions With U.S.":

Since the Islamic State swept into Iraq in June, Iran and the United States, longtime enemies that both support the Iraqi government, have maintained an uneasy de facto alliance against the group, with the United States-led coalition unleashing airstrikes, and Shiite militias aligned with Iran fighting alongside army and Kurdish forces on the ground. There have also been growing reports of Iranian forces’ directly joining the fight within Iraq. 

The Americans’ discomfort has grown as Mr. Abadi’s government has been unable to mobilize significant Sunni forces to join the fight, something that American officials consider crucial to breaking the Islamic State’s hold on many heavily Sunni areas.

For their part, Iraqi officials increasingly complain that American support has not been as robust as Iran’s. Many Iraqis resent what they see as American squeamishness about the militias, which by all accounts have been crucial to holding back the Islamic State after regular army units fled its assault. 

“Americans consider us a militia that does not represent the government, while we are defending the country and helping the government,” said Mueen al-Kadhimy, a leader in the Badr Organization, a prominent militia. “We are the people of Iraq.”

The Tikrit offensive could prove to be a first step toward driving back the Islamic State, or it could deepen longstanding sectarian and political divides that the militants have exploited to win support from some Iraqi Sunnis and acquiescence from others. The group has also used brutal intimidation tactics against Sunnis who reject it or support the government in Baghdad.

But at the same time, Shiite militias have been accused of reprisals against the Sunni population, many of whom regard them with suspicion and fear.

The Tikrit operation is the Iraqis’ first attempt to seize the area since June, when Islamic State militants massacred more than 1,000 Iraqi Shiite soldiers as they fled a nearby military base, Camp Speicher. There have been fears that Shiite militia members from the same areas many of the soldiers hailed from could take revenge on local Sunnis if they enter Tikrit, and some militia leaders have openly called the assault a revenge operation.

“There’s a risk there,” said one senior American military official, expressing concern that the Iraqi operations might not pay sufficient attention to the risks of civilian casualties from indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire.

But the American official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing battle, acknowledged that if the Iraqis and their Iranian advisers maintained strict controls on their targeting and the operation resulted in “fewer ISIS fighters and chasing them from Tikrit, that’s not unhelpful.”

Clearly the U.S. is sitting out the Tikrit operation not at the behest of its military planners who see the advantage of an offensive tying Islamic State fighters down (as they were tied down and dealt a significant defeat in Kobani). The U.S. military is sitting out the Tikrit offensive because U.S. political leadership, which answers to the Saudis and the Israelis, cannot abide any Shiite victory.

The U.S. goal all along -- to appease Tel Aviv and Riyadh -- has been to keep Iraq fractured. If Iraq can be united under Shiite leadership with Iranian assistance this will be the U.S. plan stood on its head. The quisling Abadi will turn out to be a true Iraqi patriot.

The Plan to Defeat ISIS: Mosul by Christmas . . . of 2015

Well, we now have the plan, what of it there is, to degrade and destroy Islamic State. It is a "To-Mosul-by-Christmas" scheme --  not this Christmas, but next year's. The next year will be spent training three new Iraqi Army divisions.

The story, "Iraqis Prepare ISIS Offensive, With U.S. Help," has the feel of a public relations campaign. Written by Michael Gordon and Eric Schmitt, the two reporters inform us that:

The basic strategy calls for attacking fighters from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, with a goal of isolating them in major strongholds like Mosul. 

That could enable Iraqi troops, Kurdish pesh merga units and fighters that have been recruited from Sunni tribes to take on a weakened foe that has been cut off from its supply lines and reinforcements in Syria, which are subject to American airstrikes. 

To oversee the American military effort, a new task force is being established under Lt. Gen. James L. Terry, who oversees Army forces in the Middle East and who will operate from a base in Kuwait. Maj. Gen. Paul E. Funk II will run a subordinate headquarters in Baghdad that will supervise the hundreds of American advisers and trainers working with Iraqi forces.

As the push to train Iraq’s military gathers momentum, the American footprint is likely to expand from Baghdad and Erbil to additional outposts, including Al Asad Air Base in Iraq’s embattled Anbar Province in the west, and possibly Taji, 20 miles north of Baghdad. 

The effort to rebuild Iraq’s fighting capability faces hurdles, including the risk that the Islamic State will use the intervening months to entrench in western and northern Iraq and carry out more killings. 

The United States currently does not plan to advise Iraqi forces below the level of a brigade, which in the Iraqi Army usually has some 2,000 troops. Nor is it clear under what circumstances the White House might allow American advisers to accompany Iraqi units on the battlefield or to call in airstrikes, as Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has indicated might be necessary.

Gordon and Schmitt don't go into this past summer's spectacular collapse of the U.S.-trained Iraqi Army, or ask why this go-round should yield a different result, though they do mention that

Iraq’s recent history suggests that such a battlefield advisory role is likely to be needed. Iraqi forces faltered during their 2008 offensive against Shiite militias in Basra until American commanders sent their troops to advise Iraqi forces below the brigade level and facilitate airstrikes.

Additionally, Gordon and Schmitt point out numerous high hurdles to the U.S. plan. First off, the Obama administration is committed to disbanding the Shiite militias (which, if you read the dispatches of Patrick Cockburn, you know is not going to happen since Shiite militias are effective fighting forces and a principal line of defense for Baghdad):

Iraq’s Shiite militias, some of which have been supported by Iran, pose another obstacle. Antony J. Blinken, President Obama’s deputy national security adviser, said last week that it was important that the Shiite militias be withdrawn, disband or have their members integrated into Iraq’s security forces.

But Fuad Masum, the Iraqi president, has suggested that the militias could be needed until the Islamic State was thoroughly defeated.

Problem #2: Nothing prevents the ISIS jihadis responding to the U.S.-Iraqi offensive by moving back across the border into Syria:

A major challenge will be synchronizing the Iraqi campaign with the American effort to train the beleaguered moderate Syrian opposition. The Pentagon’s program to train 5,000 Syrian rebel fighters a year in Saudi Arabia and Turkey has yet to get underway, which raises the possibility that Islamic State fighters could be pushed back into Syria well before there is a trained and equipped Syrian rebel force to oppose them.

Problem #3: Mission creep. There is a ceiling of 1,600 military personnel. This will have to be lifted for the "Mosul-by-Xmas" offensive to get off the ground:

Another constraint is self-imposed. Military officials say the White House has limited the number of United States advisers, analysts and security personnel in Iraq to 1,600. There were 1,414 troops in Iraq as of Friday, about 600 of whom were acting in advisory roles from joint operations centers in Baghdad and Erbil, and at division and higher headquarters. 

A White House spokesman, Alistair Baskey, said the figure was not a limit, just the number of troops required for the current missions. One senior United States official, who asked not be identified because he was discussing internal planning, said it was likely that the number would need to be raised. Army planners have drafted options that could deploy up to an additional brigade of troops, or about 3,500 personnel, to expand the advisory effort and speed the push to rebuild the Iraqi military. 

The Iraqi military has been active in recent weeks, but these operations have taken a toll on its forces. United States officials say that the initial force they are planning to advise consists of only nine Iraqi brigades and three similar Kurdish pesh merga units — roughly 24,000 troops. 

The counterattack plan calls for at least doubling that force by adding three divisions, each of which could range from 8,000 to 12,000 troops. 

The United States is relying on allies to augment American trainers. Australia, Canada and Norway have committed several hundred special forces to one or more of the training or advisory missions, a senior United States military official said.

Problem #4 is probably the biggest. There is no sign that the new national guard brigades, the Obama administration's solution to securing Sunni support, are anywhere near coming together:

A parallel effort calls for establishing new national guard brigades in each of Iraq’s 18 provinces — units that would report to the local governors and have the primary responsibility for securing those areas after the Iraqi Army has mounted its counteroffensive. 

The national guard initiative has been promoted by American officials as a way for Sunnis in western and northern Iraq to play a major role in defending their territory, which would ease sectarian frictions. 

But the Iraqi Parliament has yet to enact legislation to establish the brigades, which would still need to be trained and equipped. 

As a result, a “bridge” policy would be needed so that the Iraqi government, with American help, could work directly with Sunni tribes in the meantime, Mr. Blinken said at a conference hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace last week.
General Dempsey said Friday that ISIS’ recent gains in Anbar show “why we need to expand the train, advise and assist mission into” Anbar Province. 

A senior United States official said that much of this bridging initiative has yet to be defined. But an early test is expected to unfold soon in Anbar, where about 5,000 Sunni tribesmen could join the fight against the Islamic State in a replay of the pivotal American effort in 2007 to enlist Sunni tribal leaders to turn against Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq, the forerunner of the Islamic State. 

Overcoming Sunni wariness of the Shiite-led government in Baghdad will be challenging, American officials said.

Challenging, indeed. Islamic State's massacre of the Albu Nimr tribe in Hit, a town in Anbar Province that had been resisting ISIS jihadis, is being laid at the feet Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. According to Ben Hubbard writing last week in "Sunni Tribesmen Say ISIS Exacts Brutal Revenge":

Members of the Albu Nimr tribe fought for months to keep the Islamic State from entering their area, near the Anbar Province town of Hit, about 90 miles west of Baghdad, according to tribal leaders. 

But with no support coming from outside, resupply was difficult, and tribal fighters and police officers were badly outgunned by the Islamic State, which captured many heavy weapons from armories in Syria and Iraq. The jihadists finally conquered Hit this month [October], and have since expanded their control of nearby areas. 

Each time the Islamic State seized an area, residents said, its fighters made a point of hunting down police officers or members of the Iraqi Army who had helped in the fight. 

“Anyone who was in the state, in the government or the security forces, is their enemy,” said Jalal al-Gaood, a tribal leader and businessman based in Jordan. 

If those targeted by the group had already fled, the jihadists would blow up their homes. [A lesson possibly learned from Israel.] 

“That sends a message to everyone else that this is what is coming for you,” Mr. Gaood said. 

One tribe member, Sabah al-Haditheh, said the Albu Nimr had called for military help and arms support from the government in Baghdad but had received nothing. 

“We put the responsibility on the government because they didn’t respond,” he said. “We were fighting ISIS with rifles, and it was fighting us with heavy machine guns.” 

A spokesman for Mr. Abadi’s office, Rafid Jaboori, said he could not comment on whether the tribe had asked for support. 

But he said that Mr. Abadi had met with Sunni tribal leaders several times in the past 10 days to discuss how they could be integrated into the fight against the Islamic State.

 It seems unlikely there will be another Awakening in Anbar anytime soon.

The Far Enemy Attacks ISIS Bases in Northern Syria: Don't Expect Anything to Change Much

With the U.S. bombing Islamic State's stronghold in northern Syria, it is important to read the story by David Kirkpatrick and Omar al-Jawoshy that accompanies it on the front page. 

"Weeks of U.S. Strikes Fail to Dislodge ISIS in Iraq" confirms the pessimistic assessment provided yesterday on Counterpunch by veteran Middle East reporter Patrick Cockburn, "The Absurdity of U.S. Policy in Syria":

Likewise in Iraq, air strikes can only do so much. The government in Baghdad and the Iraqi army are still Shia-dominated and, however much the Sunni in Iraq dislike IS, they are even more frightened of its opponents. The US will try to split Sunni tribes and neighbourhoods away from the fundamentalists as it did in 2007, but there were then 150,000 US troops in the country and al-Qa’ida in Iraq was much weaker than IS. At the same time, it will find it difficult to advance further because, aside from Baghdad, it has already seized the areas where live the 20 per cent of Iraqis who are Sunni Arab. In Syria at least 60 per cent of the population are Sunni Arabs, meaning that IS’s natural constituency is much bigger.

Kirkpatrick and Jawoshy outline the problems the U.S. is having in kick-starting the Sunni Awakening:

The Sunni tribes of Anbar and other areas drove Qaeda-linked militants out of the area seven years ago with American military help, in what became known as the Sunni Awakening. But the tribes’ alienation from the subsequent authoritarian and Shiite-led government in Baghdad opened the door for the extremists of the Islamic State to return this year.

The foundation of the Obama administration’s plan to defeat the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, is the installation of a new prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, who has pledged to build a more responsive government and rebuild Sunni support. But, though at least some Sunni Arabs are fighting alongside the army in places like Haditha, influential Sunni sheikhs who helped lead the Awakening say they remain unconvinced.

Myriad local Sunni sheikhs are reading from the playbook written in Riyadh (or Langley -- who can tell anymore?):

“The Sunnis in Anbar and other provinces are facing oppression and discrimination by the government,” said Mohamed el-Bajjari, a sheikh in Anbar who is a spokesman for a coalition of tribes. “This government must be changed to form a technocratic government of nonsectarian secular people, or the battles and the anger of the Sunni people will continue.” 

Sunni tribal leaders said they were already disappointed by Mr. Abadi, whom Mr. Obama has hailed as the face of a more inclusive government. They said the military had not lived up to a pledge by the prime minister to discontinue shelling civilian areas in the battle against the Islamic State. (An American official involved in the effort, speaking on the condition of anonymity according to diplomatic protocol, said some governors had asked for renewed airstrikes to stop new Islamic State advances.)

Bear in mind this is the same line used by USG to pressure Malaki to step down. The Sunni sheikhs are now using it against Abadi. Kirkpatrick and Jawoshy leave the reader with the impression that ISIS still has a tremendous amount of support among Iraq's Sunni sheikhs:

In Dhuluiya, a town famous here as where the mostly Sunni Jabouri tribe has held out during a three-month siege by the Islamic State’s forces, local fighters said their Sunni neighbors had abandoned them. 

“The Sunni tribes’ role here is almost nonexistent,” said Ali al-Jabouri, a local fighter. “There are many tribes in the villages near here, but they were not serious about joining us to combat the Islamic State, and until now none of them have joined us.” 

In some places, the Iraqi Army has turned over captured territory to the police, who quickly lose control back to the Islamic State. Other Sunni leaders, however, insisted that things would improve. 

Wasfi al-Aasi, a Sunni Arab tribal leader who leads a pro-government council of sheikhs in Baghdad, said the biggest tribes had signaled their support against the Islamic State and were establishing “national guard” units in six provinces. “The next few days will bring good news,” he said. 

He said the tribal leaders who expressed disappointment in the government were “all with the Islamic State.”

The story ends with ISIS tallying a significant victory in Anbar by overrunning Camp Saqlawiya north of Falluja and slaughtering the Iraqi troops inside:

A week ago, for example, a force of about 800 soldiers found themselves stranded at Camp Saqlawiya in Anbar, cut off from the rest of the army behind Islamic State lines without food, water, fuel or, eventually, ammunition, according to soldiers who escaped. Finally, on Sunday, an army tank unit based in Ramadi, outside Anbar, made its way through a road mined with explosives to within 500 yards of the base, said a soldier in the group who gave his name as Abu Moussa. 

Seeing the rescuers, the soldiers inside opened the gates and ran out, he said. But groups of Islamic State fighters suddenly poured out of neighboring buildings and surged forward in armored vehicles with heavy-weapon mounts. At least two armed vehicles rigged with bombs made it into the base and exploded. 

The tanks retreated, Abu Moussa said, crushing bodies of dead soldiers underneath them. “I have not seen such fire and blood for 10 years” in the military, he said. “It is a disaster.”

So yesterday when I said that the caliphate had been successfully stymied by American air power, I was not being accurate. ISIS always reaches for the long-hanging fruit; it is a fighting force that is always on the offensive. In addition to the victory at Camp Saqlawiya, ISIS also sent over one-hundred thousand Syrian Kurds across the border into Turkey when it attacked the Kurdish enclave of Kobani. Ben Hubbard, Alan Cowell and Helene Cooper report in "U.S. and Allies Strike ISIS Targets in Syria" that:

On Syria’s northern border, meanwhile, more than 130,000 Syrian Kurds have fled into Turkey to escape an advance by Islamic State fighters. The humanitarian catastrophe could worsen within days. the United Nations relief agency in Geneva said on Tuesday that it was making contingency plans for all 400,000 inhabitants of a Syrian Kurdish border town to try to flee into Turkey.

The story's celebration of the power of the U.S.-led airstrikes against ISIS camps in northern Syria (". . . a fierce opening blow against the jihadists of the Islamic State, scattering their forces and damaging the network of facilities . . . .") gives way to a more pessimistic evaluation:

Some of Syria’s allies have suggested that the government in Damascus would benefit from strikes, although analysts question whether the Syrian military has the forces it would need to do so. 

Syria also has hundreds of rebels groups, many of which hate the Islamic State, and the United States has been working with allies to build up a small number groups deemed moderate. But these forces remain relatively small and are far from the Islamic State’s locations, so there is little chance that they will soon be able to seize control of any areas vacated by the Islamic State.

Now comes the part where Islamic State will pivot to the "Far Enemy." threatening attacks on the Western coalition of nations that is attacking it:

Reuters quoted an unidentified ISIS fighter as saying “these attacks will be answered.” The militants have already released videos showing the beheadings of two American hostages and of one British captive, and have threatened a fourth hostage, a Briton, with the same fate. 

Additionally, an Algerian group linked to Islamic State has claimed to have kidnapped a French citizen. Prime Minister Manuel Valls told French radio that there would be “no discussion, no negotiation and we will never give in to blackmail” about the hostage’s fate.

We'll see if ISIS sticks to its strategy of plucking the low-hanging fruit. Jordan was part of the coalition of Sunni sheikhs (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain were the others) that participated in the airstrikes on northern Syria. If I were al-Baghdadi I would think Jordan is the juiciest piece of fruit hanging lowest off the branch. But if the caliphate is centrally controlled from the House of Saud, no such attacks will be in the offing. There will be more decapitations of Western aid workers and journalists and maybe some subway bombs in Europe.

The Geneva II Farce

If you were away celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day yesterday, maybe participating in a march, and did not have an opportunity to scan the headlines, you would have missed the embarrassing news of United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon inviting Iran to participate in the Geneva II round of peace talks (to begin tomorrow) and then some hours later rescinding that invitation at the behest of the United States. 

The day quickly descended into "he said"/"she said" imbroglio. Ban said that Iran had agreed to accept Geneva I, meaning that al-Assad would be ushered out and a transitional government with opposition representatives sharing power with certain Western-approved Baathists from the Syrian government would be installed. Iran denied agreeing to any preconditions to attend. The United States expressed shock -- Secretary of State Kerry was said to be apoplectic with rage -- that Ban would step out on his own and invite Iran; Ban said that the U.S. knew what he was up to.

In any event, the Syrian National Coalition, the opposition cobbled together by the West, Turkey and the Gulf monarchies, said it would not attend if Iran participated. The United States instructed Moon to disinvite the Iranians. Moon complied. And there you have it. That is where we are at with one day to go before Geneva II opens in Montreaux.

Meanwhile the Shiite district of Haret Hreik in south Beirut sustained another terror bombing. Sectarian fighting between Sunni and Shiite has started again in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli. The attempt to resolve the ISIS occupation of Falluja in Iraq's Al Anbar Governorate collapsed. Al-Maliki will now have to go in heavy. Death and destruction is sure to follow with a good possibility that Iraq will permanently fracture.

And all the while the region burns the United States fiddles. To get a sense of what the U.S. and its Syrian opposition hope to achieve in Geneva II, here is the takeaway passage from today's story by Michael Gordon, Anne Barnard and Alan Cowell, "U.N.’s Reversal on Iran Prompts Outcry From Syrian Allies":

Despite the enormous obstacles, the State Department asserts that the talks are worth holding because the push to establish a transitional body to govern Syria, a main goal of the conference, might encourage defections among Mr. Assad’s traditional supporters, including the Alawite sect, of which he is a member. 

“There are elements inside the regime itself, among its supporters, that are anxious to find a peaceful solution, and we’ve gotten plenty of messages from people inside; they want a way out,” the State Department official said. 

“That’s the whole point of their going to Geneva,” the official added, referring to officials of the Syrian opposition. “To promote the alternative, the alternative vision.”

Yes, you read it right. The goal of Geneva II isn't to end the fighting, even if to secure a temporary ceasefire; the goal of Geneva II according to the U.S. State Department is to encourage Baathist defections.

It is hard to properly frame just how unhinged this strategy is. The Syrian Arab Army is superior in the field. Without a display of air power, the rebels, now composed entirely of jihadists, have done nothing but cede territory as they fight among themselves. The response to this weakness by the sheikhdoms who manage the jihadi armies is to direct them to soft targets in Iraq and Lebanon. Now those two nations are on the brink of civil war from which they might not ever return. Yet all the U.S. cares about is peeling away a few defectors from al-Assad's government. It is insanity.

The one silver lining is that it is becoming harder for the U.S. to feign concern for the humanity crisis created by the Syrian war and pretend that it is acting in the best interests of the Middle East to end the fighting. It is now abundantly clear that the U.S. is acting to expand the war both in length of time and breadth of geography in the deluded hope that the sovereign government of Syria will surrender.

Strange Fruit

Yesterday the main backers of regime change in Syria held a fundraiser in Kuwait under the auspices of the United Nations to raise money for the refugees they have helped create. Pledges totaled $2.4 billion, an amount that falls far short of the $6.5 billion needed, according to UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon. The current tally is 6.5 million internally displaced Syrians added to the 2.3 million who have fled the country, which is nearly 40% of the population.

What makes these numbers truly alarming is that the adjoining countries Syrians are fleeing to are also experiencing civil wars of their own. Iraq is being cracked. Yesterday 64 were killed. The violence in Anbar where the Iraqi government is locked in a struggle with Al Qaeda is creating a humanitarian crisis with tens of thousands displaced. Car bombs continue to detonate in Shiite neighborhoods in Lebanon as a show trial in The Hague begins on the 2005 Rafik Hariri assassination. Four men with ties to Hezbollah are being tried in absentia.

There is no indication that violence will decrease anytime soon. The main driver of the instability in the Middle East is Salafi jihad funded and, what is more apparent each day, directed by the Gulf Sheikhdoms and the West. The region is being transformed in a doomed attempt by these powers to maintain their control. Already warning signals are being sent up about the possibility of blowback as Muslims from the West travel to Syria for jihad and then return home to Frankfurt, Manchester, Detroit, Neuilly-sur-Seine, etc. with fighting and bomb-making skills.

It is all so obvious. We have seen this before in Afghanistan at the dawn of the neoliberal age. Except what is happening now is far worse because it is taking place in the heart of the Middle East; it affects far more countries with a great many more people.

The United States is not pursuing a legitimate agenda. The U.S. says it wants peace and is worried about the foreign-sponsored terrorism that the war in Syria is creating, yet it maintains a covert program that fuels the conflict. Such contradictions bear strange fruit.

The Neoconservative-Qaeda Connection

Yesterday I was too optimistic in my assessment that the United States would not stand by idly and let Iraq be fractured by a Saudi-backed Al Qaeda uprising; that the recent events in Anbar had sparked a push-back by Realists in the Obama administration, evidence of which could be found on the frontpage of the New York Times in the form of rare overt attacks on the credibility of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Today's frontpage offering, "Grim Sequel to Iraq’s War," by Peter Baker provides proof of Neoconservative support in Congress for Al Qaeda's ascension in Iraq. Senator Bob Menendez (Dem-NJ), an old-fashioned corrupt machine politician from Hudson County, has been blocking the sale of Apache helicopters to the al-Maliki government. And while today there is a story, "Senator Signals Support for Sending Helicopters to Iraq," that says that Menendez has been mollified and now supports shipping the Apaches, it reads more like a "rope-a-dope" to me:

Mr. Menendez received a three-page letter last week from Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq responding to his concerns and received an urgent call from the State Department on Tuesday promising a further response. Although committee officials said the answers so far do not go much further than Mr. Maliki or the administration have in the past, Mr. Menendez was convinced that they are serious about dealing with the concerns given the latest strife in Anbar Province. 

“The administration is now addressing concerns first raised in July that required responses before this sale could proceed,” said Adam Sharon, the senator’s spokesman. “Provided these issues are sufficiently addressed, Chairman Menendez will be ready to move forward.”

The Obama administration has proposed selling 20 to 30 of the helicopters to the Iraqi government, but, because it could take years for them to be built, it has also asked to lease up to 10 aircraft in the interim. Administration officials said the Apaches could be useful in targeting fighters affiliated with Al Qaeda like those who have taken over parts of Fallujah and Ramadi in recent days. But even if Mr. Menendez dropped his objections, it could take until April to deliver them, and officials noted that pilots would still need to be trained.

It is fashionable in Congress to blame al-Maliki for the Qaeda florescence in Anbar. It is a mantra similar to the "blame al-Assad" mantra. One can't help but notice that there is not a "blame el-Sisi" mantra after every bombing in the Sinai.

The al-Maliki blame game goes something like this: al-Maliki was not inclusive enough of Sunnis; this led to an estrangement of the population in Anbar, which gave Al Qaeda its current foothold. So, see, it's al-Maliki's fault.

But that's just a thin cover story. What is really going on is that Congress is pay-to-play territory occupied by Israel and the House of Saud. Senator Menendez, as rotten as they come, is a reliable mouthpiece and water carrier for Israel, and apparently Israel doesn't want Iraq to have Apache attack helicopters and drones with the ability to fire missiles.

The game then is Realists vs. Neocons. The Realists are winning in Syria. Syria's joining the Chemical Weapons Convention was an enormous blow to the Saudi/Israeli/Neocon axis. (ISIS has been expelled from Aleppo in internal fighting between jihadi groups; jihadi groups are attacking Syrian chemical weapons sites.) So the Neocons shifted to Anbar and have planted their black flag there.

It is all amazing. Straight out of the pages of comic books and right off the silver screen. The United States' great allies -- Saudi Arabia and Israel -- with fulsome support from politicians here at home -- are actively supporting our latest existential foe, Al Qaeda.

Keep your eyes focused on Anbar. That's where the Great Game is being played out.

House of Saud in Gray Lady's Crosshairs

The New York Times' new willingness to focus on the Saudi role in war currently convulsing the Middle East is again on display this morning. First, in a frontpage story, "Saudis Back Syrian Rebels Despite Risks," by Robert Worth where he skeptically interviews an erstwhile Saudi jihadist named Abu Khattab supplied by the Saudi Interior Ministry:

But as Abu Khattab talked about Syria, his own convictions seemed scarcely different from the jihadists he had carefully denounced (two officials from the Interior Ministry were present during the interview). He made clear that he considered Shiite Muslims and Mr. Assad’s Alawite sect to be infidels and a terrible danger to his own people. 

“If the Shiites succeed in controlling Syria, it will be a threat to my country,” Abu Khattab said. “I went to Syria to protect my country.” 

At times, his sectarian feelings seemed to outshine his unease about the excesses of some of his more extreme comrades. He did not deny that he had often fought alongside members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, the brutal jihadist group affiliated with Al Qaeda. 

Abu Khattab also mentioned proudly that he is no stranger to jihad. He fought as a teenager in Afghanistan (“With the government’s permission!”) and, a few years later, in Bosnia. He chose not to fight the Americans in Iraq “because there are too many Shiites there,” he said, with a look of distaste on his face.

Yet this is a man who lectures inmates at the rehabilitation center every week about ethics and war. The center, like many Saudi institutions, has been somewhat embarrassed by the contradictions of Saudi policy with regard to Syria. Although the center incarcerates some men who have been arrested for trying to travel to Syria, last summer the nephew of Abdelrahman al-Hadlaq, its director, was killed while fighting there. His mother posted statements on Twitter saying she was proud of him.

Worth makes clear that the Saudi ban on nationals traveling to Syria for jihad is a farce. A story like this could have been written and frontpaged at any time during the last year. Why now? Why the sudden focus on the explicit Saudi connection to the Qaeda florescence?

My sense is that the catalyst is Anbar. Fracturing Iraq with jihad is something that apparently is not going to fly with the United States Government. And the extent to which the Gray Lady is a stand-in -- definitely in terms of foreign policy priorities -- for the USG, the abrupt shift in coverage of the conflict in Iraq-Syria-Lebanon to highlight Saudi weakness and cravenness is noteworthy.

Next, a story by Ben Hubbard and Anne Barnard, also on the frontpage, that briefly quotes Nusra Front head Abu Mohammed al-Jolani calling for the creation of an Islamic court to resolve the conflict between ISIS and other Salafist groups. Then Yasir Ghazi and Tim Arango report in "In Iraqi City Under Siege, More Support for Militants Than Officials" a story which must be the reason the Saudis are suddenly getting frontpage attention. Sunnis in Falluja are lining up with Al Qaeda to fight against the Iraqi Army:

“We are going to fight for our city,” said Saif al-Jumaily, a resident of Falluja who said he did not want to live under Al Qaeda rule but would nevertheless fight against the Iraqi Army should it try to retake Falluja. 

The government’s shelling of Falluja in recent days, and its previous heavy-handed response to Sunni protests in the province, which prompted the recent fighting, has exacerbated the animosity among Sunnis toward the central government. For many residents, the shelling has also evoked painful memories of the early years of the American occupation of Iraq, when United States forces fought two big battles for control of the city, with heavy civilian casualties. 

“We are sick and tired of wars in Falluja,” said Mohamed Hameed, a 35-year-old resident of the city. “Every time, we think this is the end of the battles. We want to live a normal life. We have had enough wars in the previous years, and we saw Al Qaeda, the Americans and the Iraqi Army destroying our city.” 

Mr. Hameed added: “Today when I leave my home I cry. I see the flags of Al Qaeda again; I see damaged buildings. I see masked men with guns. It’s like walking into Falluja of 2005. I remember all those bad days and ask myself, what was the fighting about then? Why did so many Iraqis and Americans die for this city? Now we are in the same situation.” 

In the current fight for Falluja, many ordinary citizens would rather see their city in the hands of plain-clothed and masked militiamen — even if they do not understand their true allegiance — than under the control of soldiers loyal to the Shiite-controlled federal government. 

Scenes of Shiite men, some of them waving the flag of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, as they lined up at army recruiting stations in Baghdad to volunteer to fight in Anbar Province, have only heightened the sense of sectarian grievances among Sunnis here. An offer from Iran to give military aid to Mr. Maliki has also added to the sectarian tensions.

The Awakening fighters in Ramadi have cooperated with the government to oust ISIS from that city. But Falluja appears to be different. As Iraqi Army tanks circle, the city is under siege. An all-out assault with heavy civilian loss of life would likely herald an expansion of civil war that would be the end of Iraq. 

The question then becomes, "How much longer before U.S. military intervention?" The United States spent trillions of dollars invading Iraq. I don't think American elites will stand by and watch a caliphate erected.