Sadr’s ‘Peace Brigades’ prepares for Mosul offensive

[longknife]

What the regular Iraqi military is incapable of doing. And, what weaponry the militia has probably was stolen from government forces – or bought from them. We sure left behind a stable government, didn't we?

The participation of the Shia militias in Iraqi military operations feeds the Islamic State’s propaganda and aids its recruiting. The Islamic State tells Sunnis that the Iraqi government is a pawn of the Iranians. The presence of organized Iranian-backed Shia militias in military operations in Sunni areas supports the Islamic State’s narrative.

Full story @ Sadr’s ‘Peace Brigades’ prepares for Mosul offensive | The Long War Journal

 

[Kristian]

The troops size for Iraq Armed how big until this summer month??

ISIS gonna not win this or.

 

[Kristian]

Iraq Armed in war now.

Iraq must win the fights.

 

[waltky]

Peshmerga begin advance toward Mosul...

Peshmerga launch operation to clear villages east of Mosul
Monday 15th August, 2016 - Iraqi Kurdish forces say they have retaken five villages east of the Islamic State-held city of Mosul

Iraqi Kurdish forces say they have retaken five villages east of the Islamic State-held city of Mosul in an operation launched early Sunday. U.S.-backed Kurdish forces known as peshmerga aim to "clear several more villages" in "one of many shaping operations" that will increase pressure on the extremist group, the Kurdish region's Security Council said in a statement. Peshmerga Brig. Gen. Dedewan Khurshid Tofiq described the operation outside Mosul as "ongoing." Rudaw, a local television network, showed footage of smoke rising from a village in the distance as armored vehicles pushed across a field.

The council's statement said the area cleared is about 50 square kilometers (20 square miles). It said the U.S.-led coalition is supporting the operation with airstrikes, one of which destroyed a car bomb. Iraq's Health Ministry meanwhile said a fire which swept through the maternity ward of a hospital in Baghdad last week was a "crime" and not an accident, without providing further details. The blaze in the capital's Yarmouk hospital killed 13 people, according to the ministry's statement.

Also on Sunday, Iraqi President Fuad Masoum approved the death sentences of 36 men sentenced to hang over the June 2014 massacre of hundreds of military recruits based near the central city of Tikrit. The Islamic State group massacred the soldiers and buried them in mass graves during its lightning advance across Iraq that summer. Iraqi forces have made steady progress against the extremists in recent months, and Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, is the group's last remaining urban stronghold in the country.

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Kurdish forces launch fresh thrust to retake Mosul from Islamic State
14 Aug 2016: Kurdish Peshmerga forces launched a fresh attack on Islamic State (IS) forces early on Sunday as part of a campaign to capture Mosul, the militants' de facto capital in Iraq, Kurdish officials said.

The advance began after heavy shelling and air strikes by a United States-led coalition against IS forces, a Reuters correspondent reported from Wardak, 30 km (19 miles) southeast of Mosul. The militants fought back, firing mortars at the advancing troops and detonating at least two car bombs. A Peshmerga commander said a dozen villages had been taken from the ultra-hardline Sunni militants as Kurdish forces headed towards Gwer, the target of the operation, 40 km (25 miles) southeast of Mosul. Repairing a bridge that the militants destroyed in Gwer would allow the Peshmerga to open a new front around Mosul. The bridge crosses the Grand Zab river that flows into the Tigris. IS said in a statement on its Amaq news service that two car bombs driven by suicide fighters were detonated in one of the villages to block advancing Kurdish forces, causing casualties among the Peshmerga.

Authorities in autonomous Kurdistan gave no toll for the fighting, other than confirming the death of a Kurdish TV cameraman and the injury of another journalist. Clouds of black smoke rose from the scene of fighting and dozens of civilians fled in the direction of Peshmerga lines, brandishing white flags. The Iraqi army and the Peshmerga forces of the Kurdish self-rule region are gradually taking up positions around Mosul, 400 km (250 miles) north of the capital Baghdad. It was from Mosul's Grand Mosque in 2014 that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a "caliphate" spanning regions of Iraq and Syria.

BIGGEST CITY IN ISLAMIC STATE HANDS

Mosul is the largest urban centre under the militants' control, and had a pre-war population of nearly 2 million. Its fall would mark the effective defeat of Islamic State in Iraq, according to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who has said he aims to retake the city this year. The Iraqi army is trying to close in from the south. In July it captured the Qayyara airfield, 60 km (35 miles) south of Mosul, which is to serve as the main staging post for the anticipated offensive. The Peshmerga operation on Sunday was "one of many shaping operations that will also increase pressure on ISIL in and around Mosul," said an official from the Kurdistan Regional Security Council, using another acronym to refer to IS.

"Noose tightening around #ISIL terrorists: #Peshmerga advancing east of #Mosul, #ISF shoring up south near #Qayyara,"tweeted Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the coalition fighting the militant group. Preparations for the offensive on Mosul are "approaching the final phase," McGurk told reporters during a visit to Baghdad on Thursday. He said the planning included considerations for humanitarian aid to uprooted civilians. Once the fighting intensifies around Mosul, up to one million people could be driven from their homes in northern Iraq, posing "a massive humanitarian problem", the International Committee of the Red Cross forecast last month.More than 3.4 million people have already been forced by conflict to leave their homes across Iraq, taking refuge in areas under control of the government or in the Kurdish region.

Kurdish forces launch fresh thrust to retake Mosul from Islamic State

 

[waltky]

Gonna go from bad to worse for Mosul residents...

IS Plans Widespread Destruction in Mosul as Conditions Worsen for Residents
October 04, 2016 - Kurdish officials say Islamic State militants are planning to meet a liberation offensive in Mosul with mass killings and widespread destruction of the historic Iraqi city.

IS fighters have been instructed to wreak as much destruction as they can, if they’re unable to hold the city against Iraqi troops and Kurdish peshmerga militiamen, according to Saeed Mamuzini, an official with the Kurdistan Democratic Party, Iraqi Kurdistan’s ruling party. In an interview in Irbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, with Rudaw television, Mamuzini said the terror group has been preparing for the long-anticipated offensive on Mosul, which could start possibly this month. Mosul is the last major stronghold of the terror group in the country. “IS is prepared to fight and they have new tactics of war. For example, they have built tunnels inside Mosul,” he said.

Smoke rises in the aftermath of clashes with Islamic State militants on the southeast of Mosul, Iraq​

The jihadist defenders are also thought to have “planted improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in most places” and are organizing suicide bombers. “But the new strategy that was sent from [IS leader] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is: If you can defend Mosul, do it, and if you can’t then escape, but leave devastation and mass killings behind,” the Kurdish official added. Top IS leaders are leaving the city, he says, and the group has been transporting out archeological pieces, money and other valuables. European and Middle Eastern fighters have also left, according to Iraqi and Kurdish officials, leaving the defense of the city to a mixture of locals, Turkmen and Chechens.

A Peshmerga fighter on the frontline, east of Mosul, Iraq​

Iraqi officials estimate IS has about 5,000 fighters in the city. And they have been busy preparing defenses, including digging an elaborate network of tunnels and a moat filled with oil ready to be set ablaze. The smoke will make it harder for coalition pilots to mount close-support airstrikes to help advancing Iraqi troops. To the south of Mosul, where Iraqi forces have been making slow progress in retaking villages, the militants have already set fire to oilfields; plumes of dark smoke add to a blighted landscape full of destroyed dwellings, some demolished by airstrikes and artillery shelling, others by mortar and rocket fire.

Worsening conditions for Mosul residents

“Daily, people are detained and killed in Mosul by IS. People are in a very bad situation,” says Mamuzini. Food and medicines are in shorty supply and Kurdish officials claim IS has executed in the past month more than 200 young men for refusing to join IS. The trickle of people, mainly women, escaping the city, confirm IS militants are forcing young men to join their ranks on pain of death. One woman, who fled into Kurdish peshmerga-controlled territory to the east of Mosul, told a VOA translator that her brother had been executed by the terror group but “two cousins had joined” the jihadists. “They didn’t want to but they wanted to live,” she explained tearfully. Iraqi officials have vowed to recapture Mosul by year’s end but there have been delays in a push on the city that IS captured more than two years ago.

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See also:

US Picking Off Key IS Officials, 'Softening' Grip on Mosul
September 29, 2016 — One by one, key Islamic State terror group leaders are getting caught in the crosshairs of U.S. and coalition aircraft, and they are being removed from the battlefield as Iraqi forces prepare for a final assault on the IS-held city of Mosul.

Operation Inherent Resolve said Thursday that its airstrikes had killed 18 IS officials in the past 30 days, 13 of them in and around Mosul, "softening their grip" on Iraq's second-largest city. The targeted killings have been, in part, the result of good intelligence that has allowed the U.S. to steadily target and eliminate "high-value" individuals, like IS spokesman and external operations planner Abu Muhammad al-Adnani and chief information officer Wa'il Adil Hasan Salman al-Fayyad.

Iraqi security forces patrol as smoke rises from burning oil wells in Qayara, south of Mosul, Iraq​

Many of the more recent strikes have taken out lower-level but tactically important IS officials in Mosul, including three Chechen foreign fighter commanders, the deputy military emir, a military commander and a police commander, military officials said. And the pace of such operations is likely to pick up as coalition-backed forces advance on the city. "We're going to try to get after it and get after it quickly," Colonel John Dorrian, spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, told Pentagon reporters via a video link.

Intelligence surge

Dorrian also emphasized that a significant number of the 615 U.S. personnel being sent to Iraq for the battle for Mosul are intelligence experts, saying the deployment announced Wednesday could be seen as an intelligence surge. "This additional capability is going to give us a lot of insight into Daesh networks, not just in Iraq and Syria, but also give insight into how they export terror around the world," he said, using the Arabic acronym for the terror group. "We expect for our intelligence professionals, cooperating with the Iraqis, to get a treasure trove of intelligence information," Dorrian added.

Members of the Shi'ite Badr Organization undergo training before the upcoming battle to recapture Mosul in Diyala province, Iraq​

U.S. military officials expect the amount of intelligence to rival or surpass the amount of information contained in the more than 20 terabytes of data recovered from computers and other devices after operations to expel IS from their hub in Manbij, Syria. Some of that intelligence is thought to have allowed the U.S. to penetrate IS communications, enabling coalition forces to track several "high-value" officials before finally pulling the trigger on the strikes that killed Adnani and Fayad. Additional intelligence recovered from Manbij has also been distributed to security services across Europe, though coalition officials refused to share additional details.

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[JimBowie1958]

I doubt Mosul will fall by the end of the year. In fact, this whole attack could unravel and be repelled simply because it is so complex and involving so many different players; the USA, Iran, the Kurdish Peshmerga, Shiite militias from the South who dont want to be there, and then the Sunni Iraqis themselves.

It is a poisonous brew for us and the secular Iraqi government, and Iran knows that a defeat would greatly destabilize confidence in the Iraqi government and accelerate its demise and break up which I think Iran wants.

So I suspect Iran will pull back from the assault to cut its losses and cause higher casualty rates among its US "allies" and the Iraqi secular government and the Shiite militias gain hugely as well as Iran.

 

[Camp]

I doubt Mosul will fall by the end of the year. In fact, this whole attack could unravel and be repelled simply because it is so complex and involving so many different players; the USA, Iran, the Kurdish Peshmerga, Shiite militias from the South who dont want to be there, and then the Sunni Iraqis themselves.

It is a poisonous brew for us and the secular Iraqi government, and Iran knows that a defeat would greatly destabilize confidence in the Iraqi government and accelerate its demise and break up which I think Iran wants.

So I suspect Iran will pull back from the assault to cut its losses and cause higher casualty rates among its US "allies" and the Iraqi secular government and the Shiite militias gain hugely as well as Iran.

The same coalition and mixture of forces ha been used to defeat ISIL in every city and town in Iraq that had been taken over by ISIL. Why do you think that coalition will not succeed the way it has for the last year.

 

[Tehon]

Robert Fisk: When Mosul falls, Isis will flee to Syria. But what then?

Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader who sent thousands of his men to fight (and die) in the struggle against Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, said in a speech marking the Ashura commemorations last week that the Americans “intend to repeat the Fallujah plot when they opened a way for Isis to escape towards eastern Syria” and warned that “the same deceitful plan may be carried out in Mosul.” In other words, an Isis defeat in Mosul would encourage Isis to head west to try to defeat the Assad regime in Syria.

 

[irosie91]

Robert Fisk: When Mosul falls, Isis will flee to Syria. But what then?

Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader who sent thousands of his men to fight (and die) in the struggle against Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, said in a speech marking the Ashura commemorations last week that the Americans “intend to repeat the Fallujah plot when they opened a way for Isis to escape towards eastern Syria” and warned that “the same deceitful plan may be carried out in Mosul.” In other words, an Isis defeat in Mosul would encourage Isis to head west to try to defeat the Assad regime in Syria.

translation -----Iran failed in its imperialist objectives in
Fallujah and has some disappointments in its imperialist
objectives in Syria

 

[Tehon]

Robert Fisk: When Mosul falls, Isis will flee to Syria. But what then?

Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader who sent thousands of his men to fight (and die) in the struggle against Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, said in a speech marking the Ashura commemorations last week that the Americans “intend to repeat the Fallujah plot when they opened a way for Isis to escape towards eastern Syria” and warned that “the same deceitful plan may be carried out in Mosul.” In other words, an Isis defeat in Mosul would encourage Isis to head west to try to defeat the Assad regime in Syria.

translation -----Iran failed in its imperialist objectives in
Fallujah and has some disappointments in its imperialist
objectives in Syria

Yeah, because Iran is the imperialist in this equation.

 

[irosie91]

Robert Fisk: When Mosul falls, Isis will flee to Syria. But what then?

Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader who sent thousands of his men to fight (and die) in the struggle against Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, said in a speech marking the Ashura commemorations last week that the Americans “intend to repeat the Fallujah plot when they opened a way for Isis to escape towards eastern Syria” and warned that “the same deceitful plan may be carried out in Mosul.” In other words, an Isis defeat in Mosul would encourage Isis to head west to try to defeat the Assad regime in Syria.

translation -----Iran failed in its imperialist objectives in
Fallujah and has some disappointments in its imperialist
objectives in Syria

Yeah, because Iran is the imperialist in this equation.

what equation? there are several equations in the middle east that have nothing to do with the USA

 

[Tehon]

Robert Fisk: When Mosul falls, Isis will flee to Syria. But what then?

Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader who sent thousands of his men to fight (and die) in the struggle against Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, said in a speech marking the Ashura commemorations last week that the Americans “intend to repeat the Fallujah plot when they opened a way for Isis to escape towards eastern Syria” and warned that “the same deceitful plan may be carried out in Mosul.” In other words, an Isis defeat in Mosul would encourage Isis to head west to try to defeat the Assad regime in Syria.

translation -----Iran failed in its imperialist objectives in
Fallujah and has some disappointments in its imperialist
objectives in Syria

Yeah, because Iran is the imperialist in this equation.

what equation? there are several equations in the middle east that have nothing to do with the USA

Afghanistan + Iraq + Libya + Syria = Iran
The US objective is clear.

 

[irosie91]

Robert Fisk: When Mosul falls, Isis will flee to Syria. But what then?

Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader who sent thousands of his men to fight (and die) in the struggle against Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, said in a speech marking the Ashura commemorations last week that the Americans “intend to repeat the Fallujah plot when they opened a way for Isis to escape towards eastern Syria” and warned that “the same deceitful plan may be carried out in Mosul.” In other words, an Isis defeat in Mosul would encourage Isis to head west to try to defeat the Assad regime in Syria.

translation -----Iran failed in its imperialist objectives in
Fallujah and has some disappointments in its imperialist
objectives in Syria

Yeah, because Iran is the imperialist in this equation.

what equation? there are several equations in the middle east that have nothing to do with the USA

Afghanistan + Iraq + Libya + Syria = Iran
The US objective is clear.

c'mon------today is Friday------you should get some KHUTBAH JUMAAT shit ready----I will help. "DA ZIONIST CONTROLLED CIA" <<<<chant that line------facing mecca and with your ass held up in the air

 

[NotfooledbyW]

Has Bagdad fallen yet?