Mosul's Vigilante Brigades Risk It All To Take On IS

[Sally]

Let's see what they can accomplish.


Mosul's Vigilante Brigades Risk It All To Take On IS

Civilians in Mosul say they support the armed groups that kill Islamic State (IS) militants. "The city is suffering because of IS."

• 
  
• 

By Joanna Paraszczuk and RFE/RL's Radio Free Iraq

September 22, 2015

Their identities are secret. They work after sundown, preferring deserted areas of the city. No one knows where they will strike next. They target different neighborhoods each time.

Their mission is simple: to kill Islamic State (IS) militants.

Their targets never vary, but their methods do. Sometimes they use snipers to take out a militant. Sometimes they plant roadside bombs and blow up cars. Sometimes they stab their victims, sometimes strangle them.

They are Mosul's vigilante brigades, shadowy groups of civilians-turned-armed-assassins who risk their own lives to kill IS gunmen -- as well as those who support them.

IS has done its best to eliminate these assassins, tracking down and killing as many of them as it can. But local people in Mosul say these anonymous resistance fighters have had an impact, that IS has covered up the killings and changed how its gunmen operate in Mosul.

Continue reading at:

Mosul's Vigilante Brigades Risk It All To Take On IS?

 

[waltky]

Iraqi army sneakin' up on ISIS in Mosul...

Iraq military closest to Mosul since Islamic State seized city in 2014
May 12, 2016 -- Iraqi security forces are now closer to Mosul than at any time since 2014, when the Islamic State seized control of Iraq's second-largest city.

Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky credited the advance to the Iraqi security force's continued pressure on the Islamic State in the Euphrates River Valley and operations that allowed them to operate in the town of Makhmur.

"That's the farthest north that Iraqi security forces have been since the fall of Mosul," Volesky, the U.S. ground forces commander for Operation Inherent Resolve, said Wednesday, according to a press briefing. "And so what we've seen from the enemy is the enemy was originally able to ... use the Tigris River Valley and the Euphrates River Valley, tied them as really one operation. So they could move men, weapons and equipment really without much problems from the Tigris to the Euphrates River Valley. But based on these operations that we've seen, they -- they're no longer able to do that. So they have to fight the Euphrates River Valley and the Tigris River Valley really as two separate operations."

Volesky said the pressure by security forces, aided by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, has diminished the Islamic State's ability to launch large attacks. "Their ability to conduct large-scale offensive operations has primarily stopped," Volesky added. "They're more -- more every day on the defensive, delaying -- trying to delay Iraqi security forces just to buy time."

Iraqi security forces launched an offensive to retake the city of Mosul from Islamic State control in March. The effort began by isolating the city from surrounding areas and slowly chipping away at IS territory and supply routes. The Peshmerga later joined the offensive. Mosul is considered one of the most important battles in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq. U.S. President Barack Obama said he expects the city of Mosul to be retaken by the Iraqi government by the end of the year.

Iraq military closest to Mosul since Islamic State seized city in 2014

 

[waltky]

Iraqi civilians fleeing Mosul battle theater...

Iraqis Flee Mosul Campaign for Packed and Underequipped Camp
Aug 08, 2016 — Camps for displaced civilians in Iraq's north are overflowing as Iraqi forces push toward the Islamic State group-held city of Mosul, forcing thousands to flee.

Just southeast of Mosul, the Dibaga camp for Iraqis displaced from Nineveh province is steadily expanding. In the camp's center, crowds of angry young men swarm administrative offices demanding proper shelter or permission to leave the camp entirely. In one section separated from the rest of the camp, families call through chain link fences in search of loved ones partitioned by a lengthy interrogation process. As many as 3,000 people have arrived here in just the last week, according to the camp's administration. The more than 28,000 people living here are sheltering in a patchwork of tents, prefab containers, makeshift shelters and municipal buildings, or just sleeping out in the open. As the first stages of the operation to retake Mosul from IS progresses, up to a million more people are expected to be forced from their homes by violence, according to the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross. But local officials and aid groups are already struggling to cope with the current, much smaller-scale influx.

Poor planning and limited resources during the operation to push IS out of Fallujah this summer left tens of thousands of civilians stuck in the Anbar Province desert with no shelter and little food and water. As Iraq's military slowly pushes up toward Mosul from the recently secured Qayyarah airbase west of the Tigris River, Iraqi commanders say they are trying to mitigate the humanitarian fallout by encouraging some families not to flee. "The situation for the displaced inside the camps is terrible," said Iraqi army Col. Faris Bashir al-Dulaimy of the Nineveh operations command in Makhmour. "Our forces are having more people staying inside their houses as we advance," he said explaining that there isn't sufficient infrastructure to accommodate repeated large influxes of people in need of aid. Previous operations against the Islamic State group entirely emptied cities and villages of civilians in an effort to remove them from harm's way. But encouraging people to stay could expose civilians to IS counter attacks that commonly follow the "liberation" of territory from the militant group.

Men speak through a fence surrounding an area where newcomers are interrogated at Dibaga camp for internally displaced civilians in Iraq​

Abdullah Ahmed and his young family walked through the desert for two days to reach safety after fleeing the village of Qayyarah that was previously under IS control. Their youngest son almost died during the journey. Ibrahim, seven months old, fainted from dehydration and had to be revived by an Iraqi military medic. Once at Dibaga camp, the family was only able to find flattened cardboard boxes to sleep on in an open courtyard beside the camp's administrative offices. "No matter the conditions we are happy to be here," Ahmed said. He described his family's last days in their hometown as terrifying. As Iraqi forces closed in on Qayyarah, he said, IS fighters began carrying out mass executions in public view. "If you went there right now you would still see the bodies filling all the main traffic circles," Ahmed said.

But others at the camp balked at the harsh conditions and strict screening process imposed by Iraq's Kurdistan region that requires most men to be interrogated for a week or more and their identity cards to be seized in an effort to control individual movement. A group of young men yelled at armed guards and aid workers through a gate to one of the camp's administrative buildings. "This is like a slow death!" one man yelled. Behind him the crowd kicked up clouds of fine dust into the oppressive midday heat. "When we were liberated from Daesh we thought we would get our freedom, but now we're just in prison," said Haytham Fatwi, 20 years old, referring to IS by its Arabic acronym. Dressed in sweat pants, plastic sandals and a neon-bright t-shirt, Fatwi, like hundreds of other men and boys, says he's been forced to sleep on the floor of a modest mosque in the center of the camp. "If we knew it would be like this, we would have never fled," Fatwi said.

Iraqis Flee Mosul Campaign for Packed and Underequipped Camp | Military.com

See also:

101st Soldiers Deploying to Bolster Fight Against ISIS in Iraq
Aug 08, 2016 | About 400 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) soldiers will deploy from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to Iraq this summer to bolster Iraqi Security Forces at a northern base called a "springboard” for the planned offensive to retake Mosul from ISIS.

The soldiers from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team will join another 1,300 soldiers from the same unit who deployed to Iraq in the spring, the Army said in a statement last Friday. "We call these soldiers the Strike Ready Force. They have remained prepared to deploy and join the team in Iraq at a moment's notice," said Lt. Col. Eric Lopez, 2nd Brigade Combat Team provisional brigade commander. "These soldiers are trained and ready to join the fight."‎ The Fort Campbell soldiers are deploying as part of an additional 560 troops for Iraq approved by President Obama to bring the authorized number, or Force Management Level, to 4,657. The exact number of U.S. troops in Iraq at any given time varies due to rotations and troops sent there on special assignments. In a briefing to the Pentagon last week, Army Col. Chris Garver, a spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, said that none of the 560 additional troops authorized by the president has arrived in Iraq yet.

Soldiers with 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), move toward an objective while searching for detonation cord after an IED detonated in Iskandariyah, Iraq​

Once the 560 arrive, the plan is to send them to an airfield about 40 miles southeast of Mosul called Qayyarah West, or Q-West by the military, which ISF recently retook from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, supported by numerous coalition airstrikes, Garver said. At Q-West, ISF forces "are now preparing for the next big fight, which as we know is … going to be on the way to Mosul,” Garver said. As for the 560 U.S. troops slated for Q-West, "we're going to bring them in in stages and not take them directly to Q-West from somewhere in the United States." "What they're going to do is, when they get in there, they're going to start -- first, you've got to fix up the base so that the Iraqis can live there," Garver said, likening the support role to what U.S. troops did in helping the Iraqis set up a base at Makhmur, south of Q-West. "We built basically … [a] llife support area for the Iraqi forces that were going to live there. You gravel, you put in tents, you put in places for them to eat, use the facilities, those sorts of things. ... You're going to build in where you're going to store your ammunition. You've got to build in your force protection piece of that," Garver said.

Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, the commander of CJTF-OIR who will soon be replaced by Army Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander of the XVIII Corps at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, told reporters last month that the forces deploying to Q-West would include an airfield operations team, logistics and communications specialists, command and control elements, and a security detachment, Stars & Stripes reported.

The 400 2nd BCT soldiers deploying to Iraq will come under the command of Army Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky, commander of the 101st Airborne and of CJTF's Land Component Command. In a virtual town hall to Fort Campbell last month, Volesky gave an upbeat assessment of the progress in the campaign against ISIS. He said that ISIS "has lost anywhere from 45 to 50 percent of the terrain they claimed in 2014. They lose more terrain every single day.” "That is why they are going to these attacks in Brussels, Paris, California," Volesky said. "They are trying to export it to keep people's attention off of what they are losing here in Iraq."

101st Soldiers Deploying to Bolster Fight Against ISIS in Iraq | Military.com

 

[waltky]

ISIS using welding tools to torture and kill...

Mosul’s ISIS horror: Six boys murdered in public using welding tools, man's hand chopped off, other boys beaten for playing football
Thursday 22nd September, 2016 - Unleashing yet another round of shocking brutality, the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) is said to have handcuffed six boys and then used welding tools on them to kill them in broad daylight, to instigate fear in the hearts of hundreds of onlookers.

The militants are said to have caught the six boys belonging to the Nineveh region of Iraq and used their execution to fill the hearts of Mosul residents with fear as ISIS reportedly claimed “the youths belonged to a resistance faction,” local media reports said, citing sources. Sources also revealed to the local media, “The execution took place in Mosul in front of a large gathering. This came in order to create a state of fear and panic among the people.” The day of brutality did not stop there however - three other men were flogged by the militants for playing football, Iraqi News said.

Sources told the media, “ISIS men arrested three young men for playing football, one player wearing a Messi shirt in Martyrs’ Park in downtown Mosul. ISIS militants lashed every young man with 30 lashes in a public square in front of a crowd of people in central Mosul, as they are playing a game, which is prohibited in Islam. ISIS tore the T-shirt which carried Messi’s name.” ISIS men then caught hold of a man and reportedly chopped off his arm.

Shirqat, lying on the Tigris river 60 miles south of Mosul was recently surrounded by troops from Iraq. The surrounding of troops has led to tens of thousands of individuals being trapped. For months people in the region, living under the barbaric rule of ISIS have been warned of a crisis and residents now complain that there’s a humongous price hike imposed on food supplies.

On Tuesday, Iraqi troops with the support of local police and sunni muslim tribal fighters, took to the streets along with five axes and moved forward, crossing five villages but the effort seemed to be a failure because by midday, they still had 13 km to go to reach the center, according to the mayor and a source in the Salahuddin Operations Command, which oversees military operations in the area. Little resistance, except for bombs planted along the road, has been reported so far. Numerous car bombs and snipers have been busted by the security forces, according to state media.

Mosuls ISIS horror Six boys murdered in public using welding tools mans hand chopped off other boys beaten for playing football