Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq and Iran Brett McGurk on ISIS

Reading a story, "Suicide Bomb Trainer in Iraq Accidentally Blows Up His Class," in today's paper the writers, Duraid Adnan and Tim Arango, note how much territory is currently under ISIS control:

Along with the increase in attacks on Iraqi civilians in Baghdad and elsewhere, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and other Sunni extremist groups have captured territory in western Anbar Province, and for weeks they have controlled the city of Falluja and parts of Ramadi, the provincial capital. Other areas of the country have also become strongholds of the Islamic State and of Al Qaeda. 

Terrorist training camps have been set up in the mountainous areas of Diyala Province. Northern Nineveh Province has become a gateway for jihadis traveling from Iraq to Syria. Mosul, Nineveh’s capital, has become a center of financing for militant groups estimated by one Iraqi official at millions of dollars a month, generated by extortion and other schemes. 

Suicide attacks make up an increasing share of the operations financed by this money stream. At a congressional hearing last week, Brett McGurk, a senior State Department official, said 50 suicide attacks occurred in Iraq in November, compared with three in November 2012. “The suicide bomber phenomenon, it is complete insanity,” Mr. McGurk said.

I'm a little skeptical about the effort that is being made to argue that ISIS has created its own funding stream by means of extortion, kidnapping and other criminal conspiracies; it seems to be a way to obscure the fact that Al Qaeda in particular and Jihad in general is financially maintained by U.S. allies in the Gulf.

McGurk's testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week can be found on C-SPAN. A transcript of his statement can be found here.

Shiites Targeted for Terror as SAA Rolls

As predicted, Saudi Arabia, reported yesterday by Richard Spencer in the Telegraph, is going to supply the Syrian opposition with antiaircraft weapons. The strategy of government forces seems to be first to sever Aleppo from supply routes to Turkey:

Regime tanks pounded Kafra Hamra, on the northern Aleppo outskirts and near an important intersection and regime base overlooking the city, activists and opposition television said.

A regime advance in this area would threaten the supply of weapons to Aleppo along the roads from the Turkish border 25 miles away, just as the rebels' allies promised to increase their provision.

Car bombs targeting Shiites rocked Iraq yesterday, killing more than 30 people, mostly civilians. This from Duraid Adnan's story, "Dozens Killed In Attacks Targeting Iraqi Shiites":

Several bombs exploded in five southern Shiite-dominated provinces, killing civilians. Other attacks, near Tikrit and Mosul, struck security forces, officials said. 

No one claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Sunni extremists have stepped up their efforts to undermine the Shiite-led government and to stoke sectarian divisions since the beginning of the year. Nearly 2,000 Iraqis have been killed since April, according to the Interior Ministry, making it the country’s most violent period since 2008. Sunday’s attacks also came a day after the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, threatened Shiites with more violence.

Something to watch as this Middle East war accelerates is the relationship between the success of government forces within Syria to attacks on Shiites in neighboring nations. As the rebels were defeated in Qusayr, attacks on Shiite communities in Lebanon proliferated. The same is true of Iraq. Though Hezbollah gets all the attention for sending fighters to Syria, there are plenty of Iraqi Shiites there as well. They're fighting to defend the sacred places of their religion.

Israel seems to have, for the time being at least, decided to stand down from further direct military participation in the fast-approaching catastrophe. Putin got the best of Cameron yesterday:

The G-8 meeting in Northern Ireland should be the place where a deal is brokered to prevent the Middle East from falling apart in burning pieces. But there is no indication that this is going to happen. The big players in the West still insist that any agreement include the removal of al-Assad. So there will be more war, more death.

Fighting for Zeinab

At the end of this morning's story by Tim Arango, Anne Barnard and Duraid Adnan, "As Syrians Fight, Sectarian Strife Infects Mideast," one gets a sense of the advantage Shiites have in terms of motivation. They're fighting for Zeinab. Powerful stuff:

Rafiq Lotof, a Syrian-American Shiite who left his pizza business in New Jersey to help Syrian officials organize militias known as the National Defense Forces, said recently in Damascus that Shiite religious passions would help the government survive. 

“If we start to lose control, you will see thousands of Iranians come to Syria, thousands of Lebanese, from Iraq also,” Mr. Lotof said. “They are going to fight, they are not going to watch. That’s part of their religion.” 

In Beirut, Lebanon, Kamel Wazne, the founder of the Center for American Strategic Studies, said that fighters are inspired by religious passions rooted in the seventh-century battle in what is now Iraq over who would succeed the Prophet Muhammad. 

After the bitter defeat of the faction that gave rise to the Shiites, the victors captured the prophet’s granddaughter Zeinab and took her to Damascus, where Shiites believe she is buried beneath the gold-domed shrine of Sayida Zeinab. 

Today, Shiite fighters help the Syrian government to hold the area around Sayida Zeinab — a foothold that helps prevent rebels from fully encircling Mr. Assad’s seat of power in Damascus. 

“Damascus did not fall because Sayida Zeinab is there,” Mr. Wazne said. “They will not allow Zeinab to be captured twice.” 

Many devout Shiites have also come to view the Syrian civil war as the fulfillment of a Shiite prophecy that presages the end of time: a devil-like figure, Sufyani, raises an army in Syria and marches on Iraq to kill Shiites. Abu Ali, a student in Najaf, Iraq, said that his colleagues believe the leader of Qatar, a chief backer of Syria’s Sunni rebels, is Sufyani. They are flocking to Syria “to protect Islam,” he said.

Certainly Obama knows this. He should be jawboning his allies in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, telling them to dial it back. We looked the other way -- worse yet, we sent arms to Bahrain -- in the name of regional stability when Arab Spring protests rocked Manama. It's time for Obama to step up. Shiites are not going to be beaten here. It's plain to see.