Islamic State orders genital mutilation of Iraqi women – UN

[BarakzaiAbdali]

This story may not be true, however ISIS seems to be a very very cruel group of people. Why is that many are supporting them? also how come this so called caliphate is not helping Palestinians?

I would personally never want to live under them. I am sure most of you enjoying your western freedoms wouldn't either

That bolded part, my friend, is the quintessential question, is it not?

My point in posting the Guardian piece was not to defend their honor but rather to ensure that we get to the root of the question you are asking.

One can never defeat something unless one understands it and understands a phenomena for what it is, not what we want it to be.

So what you want ISIS to be is to be is simply a crazy group of thugs that have taken a population hostage that can somehow be killed off if everyone wakes up to their extremism/Takfirism.

The problem with that simplistic approach is that it ignores how they are rising to power in the first place.

Here is the head of the Dulaim Tribe, one of the largest tribes in the sunni triangle with immense manpower:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10934438/We-will-stand-by-Isis-until-Maliki-steps-down-says-leader-of-Iraqs-biggest-tribe.html

Shiekh Ali Hatem was one of the awakening council people originally and was crucial to that group's successes in tamping down on the Zarqawi predecessors.

He says the following:

In an interview with The Telegraph, Ali Hatem Suleimani distanced himself from Isis’s sectarian massacres but rejected demands that he break with the group and help form a united Sunni-Shia government.


“We can fight Isis and al-Qaeda whenever we want to,” he said. “But now are fighting for our lands and our tribes. We are not responsible for Isis. Look what has Maliki has done – look at the two million refugees. He has destroyed and killed – and where was the world then?”

Notice Sheikh Hatem could care less about shrines, buildings, etc all of those luxuries that we think are important. To him, survival and his tribe and religious group is far more important to him than these sort of artistic/figurative/emotional aspects of what human beings find important. That is how war works, it breeds that thought process.

In a separate occasion, Nuri Al Maliki decided he wanted to solidify Iran and in general Shiite hold on the Iraqi government. One of the people getting in the way of that was the former vice president. He decided to generate bogus terrorist charges and attempt to capture the sunni VP. Here is what that gentleman, Mr. Hashimi says:

“We shouldn’t look at this development of ISIS as apart from the uprising of the Arab Sunni provinces over two years,” Hashimi told The Daily Beast in an interview from Turkey, where he has been living since the government of Nouri al-Maliki purged him in 2012 by indicting him on murder charges, then convicting him in abstentia.

“The provinces have done a peaceful Sunni revolt against the oppression, the injustice, the inhuman conditions the Arab Sunnis have been suffering for years,” he said.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/08/iraq-s-vice-president-this-is-a-full-on-sunni-revolt.html

Finally, how was Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi created?

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/was-camp-bucca-pressure-cooker-extremism

The most evidence based story we have to date ^

So Karachi, putting emotionalism aside what we see, whether we like it or not is that ISIS is an artifact... it is merely a beneficiary of the outcomes of a series of foolish decisions made by multiple players:

1) Sunni Tribal Sheikhs in assuming that the Sawah Councils and the kickbacks would be endless... they thought they would basically get their sunni people to sit back, relax and the US kickbacks would fund them for eternity. They were astounded when Obama pulled out and the payouts stopped. That really pissed them off.

2) Maliki and Iran in thinking that they could subvert a rather large portion of Iraq's population and not at least provide a reasonable amount of revenue and representation

3) The US in unleashing these forces of chaos out which the most zealous and survivalist fighters will rise to the top

4) Ditto for 3 where the US and McChrystal systematically picked off, using Death Squads, moderate insurgent leaders instead of compromising, leaving a vacuum in place for this to happen.

So now what are the options?

Well they are:

A) Maliki gets international support and a combined force goes scorched earth on the sunni people. That means that they will commit atrocities beyond what they are already committing (they are currently taking sunni women in battle areas and arresting them to threaten the Tribes). It would pretty much mean Fallujah style devastation (which didn't work despite all the bragging about Fallujah 1 and Fallujah 2) being inflicted on a whole religious group, secular/moderate/and extremists alike.

And even still this wont work because the insurgency has a fall back area in Syria now that they can recoup in so it will only be temporary

B) The US and Iran work together and decide that Bashr Assad is better for their interests than they abandon their Syrian proxy war. They then equip and help Assad to crush the rebels from the Syrian side while they do A) from the Iraq side... once again we saw what Hafiz Assad and now Bashr have done to so many sunnis so that also is an ethical problem too.

or, if we do what I am advocating and sit down, calm headed, and follow the evidence trail and history trail to really get the diagnosis right. What we see is that interventionalism is the disease and ISIS is a symptom of that disease. Some of the catalysts are forces like Sunni resentment and Saudi money and so on and so forth. This then gives us the better option C

C) Just leave it alone. The powers should acknowledge their role in creating this mess and just sit back and let Maliki and these guys battle it out. Maliki will get his Iranian support and the Saudis will back ISIS in return. Neither side can win quickly and there will be a stalemate. This will result in either federation or Baghdad having to give in to some sunni equality. Then, with no further incentives to let ISIS run their lives and galvanize them, as the Sheikh of the Dulaim tribe describes above, it will be the tribesmen versus the ISIS (many foreign fighters) and ISIS won't have a fertile ground to keep its roots implanted in.

But all of those reasons above, and you should read Sheikh Dulaim's comments, are the answer to your bolded question.

So once again, please do not be emotional in your analysis and simply look at the facts. You can lament the support all you want, but even then it still exists for those same reasons I described. This has nothing to do with Western values and hypocrisy or vaginal mutilation; these are all excuses and war fever propaganda. I repeat, I do not support or like what ISIS is doing, but I choose to understand the conflict instead of making it worse by giving in to the propaganda so that even more lives are lost and even more radicalization occurs.

[Karachi]

Your very pessimistic. Like all Muslims, that is why they're crap.

i am judging them by their actions. No way in hell I would want to live under them, even 99% of muslims probably wont either

[asad71]

The Enemy has psywar units in place churning out such misinfo/disinfo.

[Karachi]

That bolded part, my friend, is the quintessential question, is it not?

My point in posting the Guardian piece was not to defend their honor but rather to ensure that we get to the root of the question you are asking.

One can never defeat something unless one understands it and understands a phenomena for what it is, not what we want it to be.

So what you want ISIS to be is to be is simply a crazy group of thugs that have taken a population hostage that can somehow be killed off if everyone wakes up to their extremism/Takfirism.

The problem with that simplistic approach is that it ignores how they are rising to power in the first place.

Here is the head of the Dulaim Tribe, one of the largest tribes in the sunni triangle with immense manpower:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...est-tribe.html

Shiekh Ali Hatem was one of the awakening council people originally and was crucial to that group's successes in tamping down on the Zarqawi predecessors.

He says the following:



Notice Sheikh Hatem could care less about shrines, buildings, etc all of those luxuries that we think are important. To him, survival and his tribe and religious group is far more important to him than these sort of artistic/figurative/emotional aspects of what human beings find important. That is how war works, it breeds that thought process.

In a separate occasion, Nuri Al Maliki decided he wanted to solidify Iran and in general Shiite hold on the Iraqi government. One of the people getting in the way of that was the former vice president. He decided to generate bogus terrorist charges and attempt to capture the sunni VP. Here is what that gentleman, Mr. Hashimi says:



http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...ni-revolt.html

Finally, how was Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi created?

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...oker-extremism

The most evidence based story we have to date ^

So Karachi, putting emotionalism aside what we see, whether we like it or not is that ISIS is an artifact... it is merely a beneficiary of the outcomes of a series of foolish decisions made by multiple players:

1) Sunni Tribal Sheikhs in assuming that the Sawah Councils and the kickbacks would be endless... they thought they would basically get their sunni people to sit back, relax and the US kickbacks would fund them for eternity. They were astounded when Obama pulled out and the payouts stopped. That really pissed them off.

2) Maliki and Iran in thinking that they could subvert a rather large portion of Iraq's population and not at least provide a reasonable amount of revenue and representation

3) The US in unleashing these forces of chaos out which the most zealous and survivalist fighters will rise to the top

4) Ditto for 3 where the US and McChrystal systematically picked off, using Death Squads, moderate insurgent leaders instead of compromising, leaving a vacuum in place for this to happen.

So now what are the options?

Well they are:

A) Maliki gets international support and a combined force goes scorched earth on the sunni people. That means that they will commit atrocities beyond what they are already committing (they are currently taking sunni women in battle areas and arresting them to threaten the Tribes). It would pretty much mean Fallujah style devastation (which didn't work despite all the bragging about Fallujah 1 and Fallujah 2) being inflicted on a whole religious group, secular/moderate/and extremists alike.

And even still this wont work because the insurgency has a fall back area in Syria now that they can recoup in so it will only be temporary

B) The US and Iran work together and decide that Bashr Assad is better for their interests than they abandon their Syrian proxy war. They then equip and help Assad to crush the rebels from the Syrian side while they do A) from the Iraq side... once again we saw what Hafiz Assad and now Bashr have done to so many sunnis so that also is an ethical problem too.

or, if we do what I am advocating and sit down, calm headed, and follow the evidence trail and history trail to really get the diagnosis right. What we see is that interventionalism is the disease and ISIS is a symptom of that disease. Some of the catalysts are forces like Sunni resentment and Saudi money and so on and so forth. This then gives us the better option C

C) Just leave it alone. The powers should acknowledge their role in creating this mess and just sit back and let Maliki and these guys battle it out. Maliki will get his Iranian support and the Saudis will back ISIS in return. Neither side can win quickly and there will be a stalemate. This will result in either federation or Baghdad having to give in to some sunni equality. Then, with no further incentives to let ISIS run their lives and galvanize them, as the Sheikh of the Dulaim tribe describes above, it will be the tribesmen versus the ISIS (many foreign fighters) and ISIS won't have a fertile ground to keep its roots implanted in.

But all of those reasons above, and you should read Sheikh Dulaim's comments, are the answer to your bolded question.

So once again, please do not be emotional in your analysis and simply look at the facts. You can lament the support all you want, but even then it still exists for those same reasons I described. This has nothing to do with Western values and hypocrisy or vaginal mutilation; these are all excuses and war fever propaganda. I repeat, I do not support or like what ISIS is doing, but I choose to understand the conflict instead of making it worse by giving in to the propaganda so that even more lives are lost and even more radicalization occurs.

I agree as to why these groups exists. However there is a lot of mystery about this particular group, who is arming them, who has trained them? no one really knows. Why would then people support such a extremist group, especially the people living here in the west, who have nothing to do with the conditions in Iraq/Syria??? I find it ironic and hypocritical. At least they should go live there.

[Karachi]

The Enemy has psywar units in place churning out such misinfo/disinfo.

Who is the enemy? Most of the muslim media is saying similar things about this group.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

I agree as to why these groups exists. However there is a lot of mystery about this particular group, who is arming them, who has trained them? no one really knows. Why would then people support such a extremist group, especially the people living here in the west, who have nothing to do with the conditions in Iraq/Syria??? I find it ironic and hypocritical. At least they should go live there.

Well, I think that's a small minority of people in my estimation. And they probably are just reacting and viewing this as a thumb in the eye to the Maliki regime and shiites.

They are not what matters - what matters is why Sheikh Dulaim and the sunni triangle folks are permitting them to piggy back onto their rebellion/or at least provide the more aggressive fighters to permit consecutive wins against the Iraq Army. That is the more pertinent and more important question as it determines how the rest of the world responds to dealing with them (improperly with aggressive bloodshed or vs noninterventionalism)

Their funding probably initially came from Saudi. They were competitors with Nusra. The problem appeared to be that AQ/Nusra and others have anti Saudi philosophies... even though they are strict, if they came to power they would provide a place for anti Saudi regime folks.

However, that stuff probably matters little to the Anbar Sunnis and other folks who were under Maliki's boot.

As an example, see the frustrations of these moderate/rich sunni Baghdadis:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...-for-zero-hour

Such are the deliberations and calculations of the some of the Sunni of Baghdad, marginalised for years under the Shia prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, now suddenly galvanised by the startling advances of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis) to within an hour's drive of the capital. For many ordinary Sunni Baghdadis, the advance of Isis is cause for alarm mixed with a vague hope that somehow Isis and Shia Muslims may severely damage each other, to the general benefit of moderate Sunnis. But for those who have fought for the cause in the past, it appears more like an opportunity.
The Isis advance has been aided by Sunni factions disillusioned with the Shia leadership in Baghdad. Sunni tribal leaders, Ba'ath party members, old army officers and factions of the former insurgency all came together months ago to plan how to take the fight to Maliki.

For dialogue purposes, I think the more important emphasis needs to fall on pointing out to our colleague denizens in the West that "what you sow is what you reap." Unleashing war as they did, lawlessly, and recklessly back in 2003 has created this mess.

I mean doesn't it upset you more that the UN has the gall to moan, complain, and fabricate reasons to coax the world into yet another war despite the fact that the lies and illegal actions by the UN created it in the first place?

In my estimation, that UN spokeswoman should have been asked how much of a burden she feels working for the very world body that guaranteed this would happen after they fought an illegal war there in the first place. Then the next question to her should be why anyone should care or trust what she has to say about anyone or anything?

By using that honest approach I think even those people you fear are supporting them will realize that moderates and secularists understand why they are so upset and are not their adversaries... this will also lead to them rethinking their equally mindless support of the group and trust you as a balanced judge of their gripes.

[asad71]

Who is the enemy? Most of the muslim media is saying similar things about this group.

Nope, only The Enemy.