The Future of Rojava: Pentagon vs. CIA

Now and then the most spook-friendly of reporters will produce vital journalism. "Obama’s Stark Options on ISIS: Arm Syrian Kurds or Let Trump Decide," by Michael Gordon and Eric Schmitt, two of the Deep State's loyal scribes, is an example.

Outlining the Raqqa puzzle Obama leaves unfinished as he exits the Oval Office, Gordon and Smith illuminate the contradictions of the administration's war in Syria.

The U.S. can't conquer Raqqa, capital of the Islamic State, without the radical, anarcho-feminist Syrian Kurd fighters of the YPG. The YPG must be armed for urban combat and then backed up by U.S. Apache helicopters equipped with Hellfire missiles. But to arm the Syrian Kurds risks almost certain reprisal from Turkey, including the possibility of a Turkish invasion of Rojava.

The CIA favors sidelining the YPG (see the Barzani quote below) by fabricating a larger force comprised of Turkish troops and Iraqi Pesh Merga. But the Pentagon knows that these CIA-engineered militias are more PR than actual fighting units. So it is insisting on the YPG. Obama will likely dither and punt it to Trump. And Trump, no anarcho-feminist, will probably want to curry favor with Erdogan. Then again Trump's administration is heavy with Pentagon brass, and Trump is none too keen on the CIA these days. So maybe Rojava has a shot.

But arming the Kurds would also aggravate Mr. Obama’s tense relations with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has contended that the Y.P.G. is linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which Turkey and the United States regard as a terrorist group.

The administration has been considering ways to ease Turkey’s anxiety, such as making arrangements to monitor the weapons given to the Syrian Kurds for the Raqqa offensive and thus prevent the weapons from being used elsewhere by the Kurds. In addition, Arab forces would occupy Raqqa after the city is taken, and Kurdish fighters would be withdrawn.

The United States also recently began carrying out airstrikes near Al Bab, a town in northern Syria that Turkey has been struggling to take from the Islamic State.

But American diplomats in Ankara, the Turkish capital, have warned that providing weapons to the Y.P.G. could provoke a Turkish backlash, officials say. Not only might it cause a deep breach in the United States’ relations with Mr. Erdogan, but the Turks might take actions against the Y.P.G. in northern Syria that could ultimately undermine the offensive to retake Raqqa.

Anticipating Mr. Obama’s decision, the Turks have been quietly increasing the pressure by delaying approval for American air missions that are flown from the Turkish air base at Incirlik and supplies going in and out of the base. Incirlik has been a major hub for carrying out airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

Turkey’s sensitivity on the issue was clear last week when the United States Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, posted a statement on Twitter by the Syrian Democratic Forces, the umbrella group that includes Syrian Kurds as well as Syrian Arab fighters, affirming that it is not part of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party as “some regional governments” have claimed.

“Is this a joke or @CENTCOM has lost its senses,” Ibrahim Kalin, Mr. Erdogan’s spokesman, responded on Twitter.

Faced with the dilemma, some administration officials have suggested that American officials go back to the drawing board and try to cobble together a more diverse force to take Raqqa that would include Turkish Special Forces as well as Turkish-supported Syrian opposition groups. American commanders say about 20,000 troops will be needed to seize the city. By contrast, Turkey has been able to muster only about 2,000 Arab fighters in its battle to reclaim Al Bab, and that campaign has been bogged down by fierce resistance.

During a visit to Washington last month, Masrour Barzani, a top security official in the Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq, pressed American officials to work with Syrian Kurds who are separate from the Y.P.G. and are operating in Iraq, a group known as Pesh Merga of Rojava, or Roj Pesh. Aides to Mr. Barzani assert that the Roj Pesh are trained by the pesh merga, would be politically acceptable to the Turks and number about 3,300.

“Roj Pesh are the most efficient and politically diverse force,” Mr. Barzani said. “They can be the bridge to lessen regional tensions and a force multiplier in the campaign.”

But Pentagon officials say that the Y.P.G. has the most effective fighters, is already closing in on Raqqa, and that trying to assemble, train and equip an alternative force could be difficult and at best would take many months.

Cantlie Video Has Fourth Estate on the Defensive

There seems to be a great deal of mystery about the military situation in Kobani, the Syrian Kurdish city on the Turkish border that has been under assault by Islamic State since mid-September.

Last week, following news that the U.S. was supplying antitank weapons and other munitions by airdrop and that Turkey had cleared the way for the pesh merga to join the battle, I thought it was all over but the shouting. ISIS was being cleared from the city, resorting to car bombs in a desperate attempt to maintain a tactical advantage.

Well, today a defeat of Islamic State is far from clear.

Conniptions in the Western media monopoly began in earnest on Monday when Islamic State released a video of Brit hostage John Cantlie reporting in level tones from a serene-seeming Kobani that all stories in the Western press to the contrary "the mujahideen" were in complete control of the city and nary a Western reporter or PKK or YPG Kurdish fighter was anywhere to be seen.

The video production quality is impressive and Cantlie has some gravitas. So all in all one would have to conclude that it is a significant propaganda triumph for the caliphate.

The following is a transcript of Cantlie's comments as provided by the SITE web site:

0:00 

In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful 

Inside 'Ayn al-Islam 

0:20 

[Aerial footage from "drone of the Islamic State Army"] 

0:40 

[John Cantlie] 

Hello, I'm John Cantlie, and today we're in the city of Kobani on the Syrian-Turkish border. That is in fact Turkey right behind me, and we are here in the heart of the so-called PKK safe zone, which is now controlled entirely by the Islamic State. For a month now, the soldiers of the Islamic State have been besieging this key Kurdish city and, despite continual American airstrikes, which have so far cost nearly half a billion dollars in total, the mujahideen have pushed deep in the heart of the city. They now control the eastern and southern sectors. 

Now, the Western media, and I can't see any of their journalists here in the city of Kobani, have been saying recently that the Islamic State are on the retreat. In the last 48 hours, hundreds of Islamic State militants have been reportedly killed in airstrikes, said the IB Times, on the 16th of October. We now we've killed several hundred of them, said John Kirby, the Pentagon official. The Islamic State is retreating from the Syrian city of Kobani, said the BBC on October the 17th, while Patrick Coburn said in The Independent that despite suffering serious losses, the Islamic State was continuing its assault on the city. 

Now this is all quite a turn-around from earlier in the month, when U.S. officials were saying, and I quote: "The strategically unimportant city of Kobani was going to fall into mujahideen hands in just a matter of time. It's going to be difficult with just airpower to prevent the Islamic State from taking the town, said U.S. National Security Advisor Tony Blinken on the 10th of October. 

Now, good ole John Kerry doesn't seem to think the mujahideen are retreating. He called Kobani a "horrible example of the unwillingness of people to help those who are fighting the Islamic State". Now that's a dig at Kurd-hating Turkish President Erdogan. 

But the point is, from where I'm standing right now, I can see large swathes of the city, and I can even see the Turkish flag behind me, and all I've seen here in the city of Kobani is mujahideen. There are no YPG, PKK, or Peshmerga in sight. Just a large number of Islamic State mujahideen, and they are definitely not on the run. Without any safe access, there are no journalists here in the city. So the media are getting their information from Kurdish commanders and White House press secretaries, neither of whom have the slightest intention of telling the truth of what is happening here on the ground. Now, airstrikes did prevent some groups of mujahideen from using their tanks and heavy armor as they would have liked, so they are entering the city and using light weapons instead, going house to house. 

Now America is very keen for Kobani to become a symbol - a symbol of victory of the coalition that is working together to defeat the Islamic State. But they now and the mujahideen also know that even with all their airpower and all their proxy troops on the ground, even this is not enough to defeat the Islamic State here in Kobani and elsewhere. 

Kobani is now being reinforced by Iraqi Kurds who are coming in through Turkey, while the mujahideen are being resupplied by the hopeless United States Air Forces, who parachuted two crates of weapons and ammunition straight into the outstretched arms of the mujahideen. Now the battle for Kobani is coming to an end. The mujahideen are just mopping up now, street to street, and building to building. You can occasionally hear erratic gunfire in the background as a result of those operations. But contrary to what the Western media would have you believe, it is not an all-out battle here now. It is nearly over. As you can hear, it is very quiet, just the occasional gunfire. 

Two-hundred thousand inhabitants of the city have been displaced because of the fighting that came here. You can see the refugee camps over my right shoulder over there in Turkey, where the inhabitants now are. But contrary to media reports, the fighting in Kobani is nearly over. 

Urban warfare is as about as nasty and tough as it gets, and it’s something of a specialty of the mujahideen.

On cue, running to play catch-up in the propaganda game, are stories this morning by both the Gray Lady and the Associated Press announcing the entry of modest numbers of fighters -- 150 pesh merga and 50 Free Syrian Army militia -- into Kobani to provide support for the beleaguered YPG fighters there.

According to the AP story, "Syrian rebels enter Kurdish town from Turkey":

MURSITPINAR, Turkey (AP) — A small group of Syrian rebels entered the embattled border town of Kobani from Turkey on Wednesday on a mission to help Kurdish fighters battling Islamic State extremists in Syria, activists and Kurdish officials said. 

The group of around 50 armed men is from the Free Syrian Army, and it's separate from Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters who were also en route Wednesday to Kobani, along the Syrian-Turkish border. 

Idriss Nassan, a Kurdish official from Kobani, said the FSA group crossed to Kobani through the Mursitpinar border crossing in Turkey. Nassan, who spoke in Mursitpinar, said they travelled in cars but did not have more details. 

The FSA is an umbrella group of mainstream rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad. The political leadership of the Western-backed FSA is based in Turkey, where fighters often seek respite from the fighting. 

The 150 Iraqi peshmerga troops arrived in Turkey from Iraq early on Wednesday and were expected to cross into Syria later in the day. Their deployment came after Ankara agreed to allow the peshmerga troops to cross into Syria via Turkey.

At the end of the New York Times story, "Iraqi Kurds Are Joining Fight to Drive Islamic State From Kobani," by Kamil Kakol and Kareem Fahim is an admission that there is some truth to the Cantlie video:

The United States has conducted more than a hundred airstrikes on the militants around Kobani, and has provided weapons and ammunition to the Kurdish fighters with airdrops. Even so, Kurdish officials in Kobani said Tuesday that the Islamic State had recovered from losses it sustained earlier this month as the airstrikes intensified, and now controlled up to half the city.

The Gray Lady's Robert Mackey posts a story, "Echoes of Patty Hearst in Kobani," that explores the authenticity of the Cantlie video. What is interesting about the Mackey piece is that the version of the Cantlie video he posts is edited down to exclude  much of the content of Cantlie's critique of Western journalists, namely, that because Western reporters are not on the ground in the city they are relying solely on the Pentagon and the YPG for their information. In other words, they are being played.

It is a legitimate point. The reporting on Kobani has been poor.

To be fair to the Gray Lady, her reporters have quoted civilians who have fled the city. But these quotes don't provide much illumination other than to confirm, "Yes, things are bad; so bad we had to leave our home and cross the border."

Mackey, sort of a Williamsburgesque laptop whiz meant no doubt to rope millennials into the newspaper, hews closely to the State Department line.

I don't think Islamic State will capture Kobani. The Kurdish fighters of the YPG have proven too formidable for that. Coupled with U.S. air power and newly arriving pesh merga artillery, Kobani will remain -- to the chagrin of Erdogan -- under the control of the Kurdish People's Protection Forces.

For U.S., Some Massacres are Permissible, For Instance, Kurdish Marxists

After only a matter of weeks the ballyhooed U.S. air campaign against Islamic State is being walked back by administration officials. Yesterday, according to a story by Mark Landler and Eric Schmitt, "As Islamic State Nears Conquest of Syrian Town, U.S. Presses Turks," Pentagon spokesman Kirby basically conceded that the Syrian Turkish enclave of Kobani (a.k.a., Ayn al-Arab) was going to fall to ISIS despite stepped up U.S. airstrikes:

Pentagon officials said that while airstrikes had succeeded in changing the tactics of the militants — dispersing them, forcing them to conceal their weapons and hide among the population and limiting their electronic communications — airstrikes would not be enough to stop them from seizing Kobani and other towns. 

“Airstrikes alone are not going to fix this, not going to save the town of Kobani,” said Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary. “We know that. We know that ISIL is going to continue to grab ground and there are going to be villages and towns and cities that they take.” Admiral Kirby was using an alternative name for the group. 

Admiral Kirby also conceded that unlike in Iraq, where the United States has sent scores of military advisers to assist Iraqi and Kurdish troops, Syria offers no ready ground ally.

But is this true? Are there no ready allies for the U.S. on the ground in Kobani? There are, of course -- there is the YPG, the secular People's Protection Units, the militia of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian affiliate of the Turkish PKK, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (see the banner at the top of the post). The YPG provided critical assistance to the Yazidis fleeing jihadi slaughter on Mount Sinjar in August.

And therein lies the rub for the United States. The Marxist PKK is listed as a terrorist group by the U.S., NATO; its leader, Abdullah Öcalan, abducted by the CIA in Africa 15 years ago, remains in a Turkish prisoner. Prior to Bill Clinton's U.S.-led NATO air war on Yugoslavia, the big Leftist bête noire in the late '90s was the U.S. supplying arms to Turkey to suppress the Kurdish uprising in the country's southeast.

So while no expense was spared by the U.S. to protect Erbil when Islamic State attacked the Iraqi Kurds, only 19 airstrikes have been called in over the last four days to defend the outgunned YPG fighters in Kobani. For some, particularly if you're a Marxist, massacres cannot be avoided. The Iraqi Kurdish pesh merga are drawn from the two main Kurdish parties in Iraq: the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan; both capitalist and both with longstanding ties to the CIA.

The game underway by Erdogan is to force the U.S. to adopt a no-fly/no-go zone in northern Syria. This has been a priority for years of those -- the U.S. neocons, the Turks, the Gulf monarchies -- who have trying to topple the Assad government since the Arab Spring. The Ghouta false flag chemical attack was a strong effort designed to achieve the no-fly/no-go zone.

The Obama administration is reticent because establishing such a zone basically guarantees jihadi control of Syria, accomplishing strategically the exact opposite of Obama's public statement to degrade and destroy ISIS.

 ****

For some warhawk/neocon disinformation and cheerleading of the Erdogan perspective of going after Assad, read "U.S. Focus on ISIS Frees Syria to Battle Rebels," by Anne Barnard and Eric Schmitt.

****

Not much news about yesterday's "March Against Capitalism" in New York City.

"ISIS Consolidates" But an Independent Kurdistan is Here to Stay

It appears that Maliki has a legitimate beef. Iraqi president, Fuad Masum, a Kurd, should have nominated Maliki, as head of the largest parliamentary bloc, prime minister and given him a shot at forming a new government. Instead, with the United States working diligently behind the scene to make sure Maliki was afforded no such opportunity, president Masum designated Haider al-Abadi, a member of Maliki's Dawa Party, prime minister. (There was a good OpEd yesterday by Zaid al-Ali, "Iraq’s Rot Starts at the Top," singling out Abadi as the best of a group of potential Maliki replacements because he is open to outside influence. Coincidence? Probably not.)

Maliki responded to his ouster by mustering troops in the Green Zone in Baghdad and promising legal action in the courts. But as noted in "Iraqis Nominate Maliki Successor, Causing Standoff," by Tim Arango, Alissa Rubin and Michael Gordon,

The question is whether Mr. Abadi, who like many of Iraq’s Shiite leaders led a life of exile until the American invasion in 2003 ousted Saddam Hussein, can forge a grand political bargain with meaningful roles for the two significant minority factions, Sunni Arabs and Kurds. Under the Constitution, he has a 30-day window to conclude the sort of back-room deals — promises of positions and ministries, which sustain Iraq’s system of patronage — that would be the backbone of a new government.

With 30 days to form a government Maliki can make a lot of mischief. He has an extensive security force at his disposal. But the reality is that he has all the big players lined up against him: Iran, the U.S. and the religious authority of Grand Ayatollah Sistani; plus, if things got hot in the Green Zone, it would be forces loyal to Maliki against Muqtada al-Sadr's militias and the Badr Corps of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. Baghdad would be weakened by such fighting and rendered easy prey for Islamic State.

No, Maliki is gone. The writing on the wall is clear. The U.S. is dangling more support upon formation of a new government by Abadi. It seems as if the Obama administration will get its wish, which is for a federalized Iraq, a nation composed of three states: Kurdistan, Sunnistan and Shiastan.

Already the U.S. is greasing the skids on arms shipments -- weapons of all kinds, both light and heavy -- to the Kurds. The CIA has taken the lead, but the Pentagon is not far behind. Kurdistan is here to stay. That appears to be fact now. Allow me to quote at length a good story, "Pentagon Says Airstrikes Have Slowed but Not Stopped Sunni Militants," by Helene Cooper and Alissa Rubin:

The Central Intelligence Agency has begun directly supplying weapons to pesh merga fighters, administration officials said, after weeks of pleas and demands from leaders in the country’s semiautonomous Kurdish region for help in fighting ISIS. But it remains unclear just how much weaponry the United States has funneled through to the Kurds so far; military officials said they would probably begin sending small-arms munitions soon, too.

A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment.

“The pesh merga are composed of capable, disciplined forces who deserve their reputation as fierce mountain-war fighters,” a United States official said. “However, it’s been almost a decade since their mostly light infantry brigades have been tested in battle, so it’s not surprising that they’ve taken some knocks from ISIL.”

The Kurds, who say they need armor-piercing munitions to help penetrate heavily fortified tanks captured by ISIS fighters from both the Syrian and Iraqi militaries, will soon be getting long-range weapons as well. 

“Some of the ISIL forces have a longer-range weapons system, so we need to make sure that the government of Iraq and the Iraqi security forces are providing longer-range weapons themselves to the Kurdish forces,” General Mayville said. 

The Kurds have asked the United States to provide — or in some way help them obtain — sniper rifles, mortars, heavy machine guns, wire-guided antitank weapons and antitank guns, rocket-propelled grenades, Humvees and tanks, among other weapons, Kurdish officials said. They have also asked for body armor and helicopters for evacuations.

A senior military official said Monday that the Pentagon was concentrating on rifles and machine guns. He declined to say what kinds of weapons the C.I.A. had begun supplying the Kurds. 

A second Pentagon official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity as a matter of policy, said that the Defense Department had yet to decide whether it would supply the pesh merga with antitank guns, but that “whatever they are getting will be in line with meeting the proper requirements for the kind of defenses that they’re conducting.” 

In the past, American officials have been hesitant about directly supplying weapons to the Kurds, who differ with Iraq’s current prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, over the division of oil resources and how much territory should fall within the Kurdistan region’s borders. In addition, the Kurds initially took advantage of the conflict with ISIS to expand their own territory in northern Iraq. Many Obama administration officials say privately that they do not expect Kurdistan to remain part of Iraq once the fighting is over.

So even though the pesh merga were routed by Islamic State in Jalawla, a town in Diyala Province that borders Kurdistan, forcing the vaunted Kurdish fighters to stage another "tactical retreat," it is clear that with robust support from the United States the Kurds will hold on. What these means in terms of oil revenue and the status of Kirkuk is unclear; it also unclear at this point the extent to which the Obama administration is willing to roll back IS's gains in northern Iraq. Patrick Cockburn's article, "Isis Consolidates" in the London Review of Books, recommended Sunday by the Moon of Alabama blog, paints a picture of a caliphate that is going to be around for some time.

Cockburn is of the opinion that an attack on Baghdad is inevitable and that Iraq's Shia are in a state of denial, having drunk the Kool-Aid handed out by the U.S. that the problem is Maliki and that once Maliki goes all will right itself.

In the near term, Cockburn thinks that IS will turn its attention again to toppling Assad, starting with Aleppo. And that once the Syrian Arab Army crumbles the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East, the Israelis and the Gulf monarchies, not to mention Iran and Hezbollah, will have a real crisis to contend with.

Cockburn is of the school of thought that IS is a Frankenstein monster, a creation of the Saudis that has proven too powerful to control. Now it is pursuing its own agenda. I am skeptical of this.

Islamic State Riding High

The U.S. behemoth, ever ready to display its full-spectrum dominance on any battlefield no matter how remote, is doing all it can to keep from locking horns with Islamic State. What makes this so bizarre is that a greater villain, a more evil "evil doer," could not be found if you called central casting at a major Hollywood studio. ISIS rapes and murders and crucifies and steals and plunders according to the Wahhabi view of the world, brought to you thanks to the petroleum wealth of Al Saud. One would think that U.S. Special Forces, supposedly the greatest fighters on the planet, would be quickly deployed to prevent the genocide of religious minorities. I mean, really, it is all too perfect. For a nation that lives and dies by the movies -- or at least used to -- this is America's righteous moment.

But all Obama committed to in his announcement last night from the White House was air support for the Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar by marauding jihadis, as well as air power protection of Kurdistan's capital city of Erbil and the Iraqi capital Baghdad. According to Helene Cooper, Mark Landler and Alissa Rubin in "Obama Allows Limited Airstrikes on ISIS":

While Mr. Obama has authorized airstrikes, American officials said there had not yet been any as of late Thursday. In addition to protecting Americans in Erbil and Baghdad, the president said he had authorized airstrikes, if necessary, to break the siege on Mount Sinjar, where tens of thousands of Yazidis, a religious minority group closely allied with the Kurds, have sought refuge.

There is some mystery as to who hit ISIS with airstrikes in two towns near Erbil, whether it was the U.S., as Iraqi and Kurdish officials originally announced, or Iraq flying the few planes at its disposal:

The [senior Obama administration] official said that as conditions in Iraq deteriorated in recent days, the United States had worked with Iraqi security forces and Kurdish fighters to coordinate the response to militant advances. The official said the cooperation had included airstrikes by Iraqi forces against militant targets in the north. 

Kurdish and Iraqi officials said that airstrikes were carried out Thursday night on two towns in northern Iraq seized by ISIS — Gwer and Mahmour, near Erbil. Earlier on Thursday, The New York Times quoted Kurdish and Iraqi officials as saying that the strikes were carried out by American planes.

The conventional wisdom regarding Obama's reticence to beat down ISIS has to do with domestic politics. Obama doesn't want to do an about-face on one of his defining presidential achievements, bringing the troops home from Iraq:

“The White House is going to recognize that the need to commit air power to Iraq, even for a purely humanitarian mission, is going to open them up to greater criticism for their disengagement from Iraq,” said Kenneth M. Pollack, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “So they will do their damnedest not to get further involved in Iraq because that would just further validate those criticisms.”

I think there is some truth to this. But the real reason, what few people seem to be talking about in the comments section appended to this story, is that the U.S. has some sort of secret arrangement with the regional powers -- Saudi Arabia and Israel -- to let Islamic State reorder the Middle East along conservative sectarian lines in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. Both the Saudis and Israelis were incensed with Obama that he cut loose Mubarak in Egypt, paving the way for the Muslim Brothers to come to power. The House of Saud was downright apoplectic that Obama didn't bomb the Assad government to kingdom come last year. Pretty much from that moment on ISIS has grown all out of any organic proportion ever heard of for a grassroots guerrilla movement, which it is obviously not.

Obama was put on notice that his school-boy fantasy of democracy for the Middle East was kaput. The neocons teeming throughout the deep U.S. national security state lined up behind the Saudi solution of a caliphate. The Israelis liked the idea because it spelled doom for their bete noire, Iran.

But ISIS, always on the lookout for low-hanging fruit, decided to go after the Kurds instead of driving immediately to Baghdad. This, I am assuming, was not part of the agreement since there was ample evidence of collusion between the Salafis and the Kurds back in June when Mosul fell to the ISIS blitz and the Kurds promptly took Kirkuk. Rod Nordland, the Gray Lady's reporter on the ground, noted that the pesh merga and the jihadis assiduously avoided one another then.

Tim Arango has an excellent story, "Jihadists Rout Kurds in North and Seize Strategic Iraqi Dam." Arango makes three things clear:

1) Maliki is history. Right now he is holding out for an immunity agreement:

As Iraqi leaders, the country’s top religious authorities and top Iranian officials, who wield considerable power within Iraq, pushed for Mr. Maliki’s removal, he was refusing to step aside Thursday night. Even those within his own State of Law bloc were demanding that he leave. 

“Everyone is saying no to Maliki now,” said a member of Parliament from State of Law, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the discussions. “He’s rejected by all parties.” 

If he were to step down, Mr. Maliki has reportedly demanded immunity from prosecution for himself, his family and his inner circle, and a massive security detail, paid for by the state.

2) The martial prowess of the Kurdish pesh merga is a CIA-promoted fiction:

Kurdish fighters have a long history of resistance to central governments in Iraq and Turkey, and among Kurds, a storied reputation as mountain fighters. But since the end of the first Persian Gulf war in 1991, after which they received years of air cover from the West in their enclave in northern Iraq, they have transitioned from resistance to standing security forces. 

Kurdish forces have proven adept at providing local security in the Kurdish autonomous zones, but less capable at independent military operations. Their successes have often included Western support, including from the C.I.A. and the American Special Forces. But they are not trained, equipped or organized for large-scale independent operations, for integrating fire support into their ground operations, or for countering aggressive insurgent bombing campaigns.

Those deficiencies were apparent in fighting in recent days, as ISIS captured several towns over the weekend and continued its march north.

3) Control of Mosul Dam is a huge victory for ISIS:

The dam, on the Tigris River about 30 miles northwest of Mosul, provides electricity to Mosul and controls the water supply for a large area. A report published in 2007 by the United States government, which had been involved with work on the dam and spent nearly $30 million on repairs, warned that should it fail, a 65-foot wave of water would be unleashed across areas of northern Iraq. 

Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the former special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, who oversaw the 2007 report on the dam, said ISIS could certainly use the dam as a weapon of war, but that it could also use it as a means of finance, by extorting money in exchange for water or electricity. 

ISIS has already used Iraq’s water supply as a weapon. Earlier this year it seized control of the Falluja Dam, in Anbar Province, and flooded a vast area that sent thousands of refugees fleeing, submerged hundreds of homes and several schools and interrupted the water supply to southern Iraq.

Ammar Jassim, a 35-year-old resident of Falluja, fled the city earlier this year not because of the fighting but because of the flooding. “We lost everything,” he said. “It was a water invasion.” 

If the Mosul Dam were to be damaged, “it would be like a tsunami coming down the Tigris,” said Azzam Alwash, a prominent environmentalist and engineer and the founder of Nature Iraq, a nonprofit group. 

ISIS is also battling for control of the Haditha Dam, Iraq’s second largest, which is also in Anbar Province. As of Thursday, the dam was still under the control of the Iraqi security forces and allied tribal fighters.

Given Obama's weakness and reluctance I think it is safe to say that ISIS will keep pressing its advantage.

Gray Lady Reporter Finally Asks the Obvious, "Why No Action Against ISIS?"

As the Islamic State offensive wreaks havoc in Christian communities west of Mosul, sending refugees fleeing to the Kurdistan border and proving once again that the pesh merga have fallen short of their well-crafted reputation for martial prowess, the story to turn to is Somini Sengupta's,
"Islamic Militants in Iraq Are Widely Loathed, Yet Action to Curb Them Is Elusive."

Sengupta is the Gray Lady's United Nations reporter. She is a reliable parrot of whatever the company line is at the moment. But recently she has written some interesting stories, like last week's piece devoted to Israel's war on the UN. Today Sengupta takes on the question, albeit obliquely, that has been demanding an answer since ISIS rose to prominence last year: Why is there no coordinated action, no coalition of the willing, to roll back a terror group more fearsome than Al Qaeda ever was? Good question.

Never mind the decapitations, the crucifixions, the shrine demolitions, the vicious attacks on religious minorities, the oil and gas field seizures, the international recruitment of jihadis from seemingly every nation on the globe. What about the Global War on Terror (GWOT) according to which the West has reconfigured itself in the last 15 years? Aren't the trillions spent on national defense meant to prevent a movement like that represented by Islamic State from doing exactly what it is doing?

The answer that Sengupta comes up with? Basically, it is a version of, "It's complicated":

“With Iran and Saudi Arabia locked in a proxy war in Syria, Saudi Arabia competing with Qatar and Turkey for influence throughout the region, and Kurds — themselves hardly united — leaning ever further toward independence, it is not realistic to expect a coherent strategy for confronting ISIS to emerge from the region,” said Noah Bonsey, the Syria expert at the International Crisis Group. “The U.S. has the clout and capacity to build partnerships capable of reversing ISIS gains, but seems to lack the necessary vision and will.” [Note how the U.S. doesn't lack the "necessary vision and will" to foster a coup in the Ukraine, effectively paving the way for a new Cold War. Yet the U.S. cannot seem to find a way to confront its latest existential enemy, "Islamofascism."]

ISIS threatens not just Iraq and Syria. It has drawn fighters from countries as far-flung as India and China, Belgium and Britain. United Nations experts said fighters from rival jihadist groups, including the Nusra Front, an affiliate of Al Qaeda, have steadily defected to ISIS, because it has more money and guns. Military analysts say that it is exceedingly difficult to neutralize a group that now finances itself — it controls several oil fields in Iraq and Syria— and is heavily armed with weapons seized from both Iraqi and Syrian military bases.

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The United States has plenty of reason to worry, said Julia McQuaid, an analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses in Arlington, Va., and not just because Western recruits to ISIS can come home and wreak havoc. 

ISIS propounds the idea of a Sunni “caliphate,” which by definition threatens the borders of nation-states. “While there should be little concern for any current jihadist movement successfully establishing a global caliphate under its banner,” Ms. McQuaid wrote in a blog post, the Islamic State’s model “may have profound implications on the security environment in other countries.”

No kidding.

The obvious answer as to why there has been no response from the greatest military power on the planet as the ISIS juggernaut gobbles up vital territory is that ISIS is a creation of U.S.-ally Saudi Arabia, and Washington and the House of Saud are using Islamic State to achieve strategic goals that could not otherwise be conventionally achieved, namely, partitioning Iraq, fracturing Syria, and pressuring Iran and Hezbollah. Where it will end we do not know. ISIS's clashing with Kurdistan represents a shift in the script since back in June when Mosul fell to the jihadi blitz, the Kurds, in what had to be a coordinated move, took Kirkuk. The pesh merga and Salafis assiduously avoided one another. Now they are fighting one another. And what provides proof that the U.S., so far at least, is firmly in the Saudi/ISIS camp is that Washington has not done much of anything to aid Erbil.

Yes, where the caliphate will stop nobody knows. We know that Afghanistan will soon return to the Taliban, and that the Taliban have same sponsor, the Saudis, as ISIS. We know that China is dealing with a shadowy Islamic insurrection in its western province of Xinjiang, not to mention pirate hijackings of tankers in the South China Sea that may have an origin in ISIS recruiting efforts in Malaysia. Then there is the case of the middle-class Indian Muslim men who disappeared to go fight with ISIS in Iraq. Islamic State apparently already has a toehold in the second-most-populated Muslim nation on the planet; the potential for mayhem -- think 2008 Mumbai Thanksgiving massacre -- is immense.

No, the main warfare state, the United States, is aligned here with Saudi Arabia, and its proxy, Islamic State, to make sure the planet has a "rosy future of war."