Iraqi forces retake Fallujah from ISIS
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Good news: Iraq has retaken Fallujah from ISIS control.
This is their victory, not ours, and stands a very good chance of sticking because of that.
Please consider donating to Behind the Black, by giving either a one-time contribution or a regular subscription, as outlined in the tip jar to the right or below. Your support will allow me to continue covering science and culture as I have for the past twenty years, independent and free from any outside influence.
Good news: Iraq has retaken Fallujah from ISIS control.
This is their victory, not ours, and stands a very good chance of sticking because of that.
I’m afraid the Iraqis will only temporarily be better than ISIS. Iraq has started wars and used chemical weapons and will do so again as soon as they get an opportunity, if Iran doesn’t take over completely and do it in teir place. There exists no good muslim-arabic group to support.
If Tikrit was anything to go by, the Shiite military has opted to make Sunni cities mostly uninhabitable by siege, and starvation, then create large dead zones around them. The population is driven into refugee/concentration/filtration camps and kept utterly dependent. If the men escape getting summarily executed, they will likely be treated as enemy for life.
So, I hope we have an endgame, because unless the Kurds take Mosul (very slight chance), we’re going to deal with the kind of score-settling last seen in the Anfal..
I think the shiite, Iran, will continue into Saudi which will collaps politically because of corruption and its supporters getting nervous by the Iranian threat and the quick depletion of Saudis assets, by 20% last year I read. Saudi spends more on the military than Russia does! But the war in Yemen is a pathetic failure given Saudi’s enormous superiority in equipment. Iran already has Russian air support in Syria and could easily wipe out Saudi’s airforce, which anyway manages to bomb their allies as much as civilians in Yemen, being ineffective against the enemy. The Saudi airforce commander was even killed by a Yemen scud missle! He must be the first airforce commender ever to die in combat. So Iran and Russia will soon control all the gulf states, where there is a large arab shiite population which will rise up against their sunnite oppressors. And Russia will set oil prices well above $100 again.
It sounds like the previous commenters like the Saudi/Wahabbi view of the Shia faction of Islam. The Saudis, and the other Sunni tyrants of the Middle East, never saw a Shia politician promoting democratic ideals who wasn’t a Persian agent, who just spoke Arabic with a good accent. Of course, that may have a lot to do with the fact that the population of Al Hasa, where 90% of SA oil comes from, is mostly Shia, and those are deeply oppressed by SA’s Wahabbi rulers. It may also have a lot to do with the point that the Gulf States are majority Shia, and ruled by Sunni, and in one case Wahabbi, rulers. Those rulers share the fears of SA.
The House of Saud, and the US diplomatic corps who have learned so much of their views on the ME from them, have never willingly helped a democratically oriented Shia politician into office. Why??? IMHO, because the House of Saud may dislike Iran, but is terrified of any exemplum in the ME for a Shia democratic government. They’d far rather have the Tehran tyranny as a bogeyman than deal with a competent Shia Democrat in Baghdad. Of course, their maneuverings have kept that possibility at bay for 13 years by now, starting with keeping the Iraqi National Congress from being installed in May of 2003 to head an interim government.
That was done by the US State Department, and a saudi-approved colonial regime was installed instead. This, alongside other grievous strategic errors inside Iraq, gave Al Zarqawii his opportunity to drown the country in blood, as he stated in his letter to Bin Laden in January of 2004. It was also done in defiance of the direct verbal orders given by President Bush in March of 2002, to build a government-in-exile around the INC, to take over after breaking Saddam Hussein.
No, today’s Iraqi government has no high interest in representative government, mostly because we massively discouraged that, and then deserted the Iraqi people. The policy of serving current rulers, instead of a long-term building of representative government over the next 50 years is only going to spill more blood, and encourage the Caliphate Revivalists’ potential recruits to believe we don’t want representative government there, so why shouldn’t they join the people they hope will build a new Imperial Caliphate?