Crucified by the Caliphate monsters

They arrived bristling with heavy weapons and waving black flags from about a dozen Humvees, seized from the Iraqi army and supplied originally by the United States.

When the terrified residents looked out of their windows, they saw that Kosho, their traditional walled village in the mountains of northern Iraq, had been surrounded by jihadists. More than 200 bearded militants had besieged the village.

Then their leader – a local man from Mosul rather than the foreigners who make up more than a third of the ranks of the group now known as Islamic State – offered them a chance to save their lives.

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Savagery: A man is crucified in northern Syria by Islamic State militants



Fearing for their lives: Iraqis huddle around Ian Birrell as he reports on the advance of the Islamic State

‘He told us that either we become Muslims or they would kill us all,’ said Falah, mayor of the village made up mainly of members of the ancient Yazidi sect. ‘We offered money but they would not accept it.’

The deadline the people of Kosho have to meet is midday today. Since the residents refuse to betray their faith, it is feared an entire village of about 2,500 innocent people might be slaughtered in cold blood.

‘If we did not have families, we would try to escape,’ the stoical Falah told me yesterday. ‘But we have lots of women here and many children, along with all the old men and women of the village. How could we leave them?’


This is thought to be the first time these blood-drenched fanatics – who delight in boasting of their barbarism and posting sickening murder videos on social media – have threatened to wipe out an entire village.



Bloodied and stranded: Yazidi children weep on Mount Sinjar





Under fire: Kurdish aid helicopters ran the risk of being shot out of the sky while delivering vital supplies

Even by their own chilling standards, re-drawing the Middle East map with a rampage of rape, beheadings and revolting crucifixions, this marks a new low.

It comes at the end of a week during which the fanatics of Islamic State –formerly the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) – shocked the world again by advancing further into Iraq, prompting the US to renew military operations there for the first time since 2011.

In other developments yesterday:
As U.S. air strikes continued, President Obama warned he will not allow jihadists to carve out a ‘caliphate’ straddling Syria and Iraq;
Islamic State fanatics kidnapped hundreds of Yazidi women below the age of 35;
Hundreds of desperate refugees trapped on Mount Sinjar scrambled to board a single helicopter laden with food and water – while 5,000 escaped down a new ‘safe’ route;
The UK sent two aircraft to help with the relief operation and promised further air-drops;
IS seized control of the vital Mosul Dam which supplies water and power to millions of Iraqis. There were fears its destruction would unleash a 65ft wave that would overwhelm Mosul and even cause flooding in Baghdad.

The Islamic State militants have already imposed a medieval-style Islamic caliphate on a slice of Iraq and Syria the size of Britain after seizing Mosul, Iraq’s second biggest city, in June.


Rudaw Exclusive: Aid for thousands of stranded Yazidi civilians





Desperate masses: Yazidi people stranded in the Sinjar mountains rush towards a helicopter laden with supplies

Now, having captured first the strategic city of Sinjar, then a string of other towns and the country’s largest hydroelectric dam, they are just 25 miles from Irbil.

This thriving city filled with Western oil firms is the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, the solitary success story following the disastrous US-led invasion of 2003.

As US jets started bombing again to protect Irbil, I found its churches, construction sites and parks packed with thousands of Christians and Yazidis fleeing the feared Islamists. Thousands more are trapped in searing heat on parched mountains to the west. The latest advance began a week ago when shots were heard in Sinjar late at night. Four hours later, the feared Kurdish peshmerga forces retreated, much to everyone’s surprise – followed by 150,000 residents fleeing for their lives.



Horror: A black flag is held aloft as Islamic State jihadists execute a prisoner

Sinjar is an historic centre of the Yazidis, one of the world’s oldest religions. Followers are seen as devil-worshippers by Islamic State because of their unique beliefs.

About five Yazidi and 40 Shia Muslim families were last night stuck in the city after failing to get out in time, hiding in fear from the bloodthirsty militants in their own homes.

I spoke to one Yazidi woman, living largely in one back room with her 60-year-old mother, two sisters and one brother eking out dwindling supplies of bread, rice and water while keeping lights turned off to avoid attention.

Her hushed voice quivering, she told me of hearing frequent gunshots and seeing Islamic State vehicles patrolling the streets outside. ‘We are just sitting and trying not to move too much,’ she said. ‘We feel so scared. We do not know what to do. We cannot fight them and if we leave the house we will be killed or kidnapped. Afterwards, her despairing cousin, an engineer in his mid-twenties, told me in flawless English that their family felt helpless but could not mount an escape bid.


Wide-eyed: A Yazidi child, who has just been fed by a Peshmerga rescuer, stares into a camera lens



Thirst: A young girl waits to receive longed-for water from a jerry can brought by Kurdish fighters



Lifted: This child, too weary to make the journey off of the barren mountainside, must be carried

A respected local leader told me how Islamic State turned up at two Yazidi villages last week, telling residents they would be left alone if they surrendered all their weapons.

At the first village of Qana, the militia then killed 32 men before taking away the women. At Hezan, the second one, all the women were reportedly stripped naked before about 70 men were shot dead.

One terrified woman in her sixties jumped off the third-storey roof of her home, preferring suicide to seizure. Another, a newly-married woman aged 26, is said to have stabbed herself to death. It is impossible to verify such stories. But alarmingly, there are growing claims from a multitude of sources that Islamic State is kidnapping ‘infidel’ women for sexual slavery.

An official for Amnesty International who has spent the past few days with refugees confirmed that both men and women were being kidnapped by the militants: ‘People fear the women are being raped and sold into slavery but we just do not know the truth yet.’



Seeking salvation: Thousands of people stranded for weeks on the mountain range near Sinjar flee towards Syria through a secure corridor opened by Kurdish troops

The rapid advance of the jihadists combined with the sudden fragility of the previously-feared Kurdish peshmerga has led to massive movements of frightened people.

One army officer told of a battle last week in which his two Kurdish battalions lost 100 men compared with just 30 jihadists killed.

‘Everything they have is American – it is all the latest equipment with the big guns, the Humvees,’ said the Kurdish soldier, highlighting the failure of America’s $2 trillion attempt at state-building since its botched intervention with the British.

One activist said 61,000 Yazidis turned up overnight in a northern Iraqi town behind the mountains, then disappeared northwards the following day. A refugee camp holding several thousand people from Mosul since its fall in June emptied in one panic-stricken hour on Friday.





Plight: Left, a Yazidi woman and a young baby shelter in Lalish, the religion's holy valley in northern Iraq. Right: A Yazidi girl who has escaped to the city of Sirnak, Turkey

Many of the worst scenes are on the mountain range near Sinjar. A doctor there with 5,000 other Yazidis told Human Rights Watch that ten to 15 people were dying daily, mainly from dehydration. ‘No water, no food, no rescue, no way out,’ he said.

Resala Shangali, a 26-year-old journalist, spent four days without food and just one slug of water desperately avoiding the advancing Islamic State forces with hundreds of other Yazidis.

She saw one infant die of dehydration and have to be dumped on the ground by his fleeing mother, another two-year-old fall over and die of a head injury, then five old people die one night alone.

On the second day, a woman gave birth, then both she and the baby died within half an hour despite several women trying to save them.

‘That night was the worst because my clothes were covered with blood from trying to help her and I could not sleep,’ she said.



Flight: Peshmerga troops helped escort the Yazidi away from the Sinjar mountains, using unusual vehicles


Trucks rolling: As many Yazidi as possible piled on to the vehicles yesterday - though many were forced to walk

Thousands of Christian, Yazidi and Kurdish refugees have lost everything and suddenly find themselves living in rubble-strewn building sites and crammed churches and feeling bewildered and betrayed.

Again and again yesterday I heard tales of families fleeing for their lives, many forced to pay huge sums for their survival to a group estimated to be the world’s wealthiest jihadist gang thanks to kidnapping, extortion, bank raids and oil sales.

Often they were given a choice to pay money, convert to Islam or die. Among them was Elias Ibrahim, a Christian taxi driver from Mosul who earned $500 a month. He was told he could stay if he handed over $450 a month to the insurgents.


London calling: A British C130 Hercules is pictured flying tonnes of aid to the stranded Yazidi yesterday



Attacks: Above the moment American bombs struck IS positions outside of Irbil can be seen


Smoke rising: President Obama said yesterday that further air strikes will be made

Twafiq Aboosh, 64, a wealthy hotel owner and farmer, was returning home when he was ambushed.

The Islamists forced him and his four children to lie on the ground with guns to their heads while quizzing them about their religion, then ordered them to leave their property without looking back at it.

‘I have lost everything,’ he said.

Nearby, in a half-built car showroom I found a primary school head teacher, his father and several staff living with their large families among the dust and debris.

Although Muslims, they were targeted since they were Kurds – just as their people were previously victims of Saddam Hussein’s appalling atrocities and gas attacks.

They have seen their lives spiral into sudden degredation and despair. ‘These Islamic State people are not Muslims but murderers,’ said Hussein Zeewer, the 37-year-old head.

‘They shame our religion. It is even worse than Saddam.’

Crucified by the Caliphate monsters: The only reporter inside the bloody Islamic State regime reveals their chilling brutality

- From Medyan Dairieh, journalist for Vice News


Given access: Medyan Dairieh,

Like everyone else, I had read about the cruelty and killings that the Islamic State fighters indulged in. I had read of the beheadings, the horrific crucifixions and the mass executions this group practised, which has even repulsed Al Qaeda.

So, I became determined to enter this world and see it for myself. Of all the reporting that I have done in places like Libya and Palestine, this was the most frightening, most dangerous assignment I have had.

After weeks of negotiations, I managed to enter the city of Raqqa, which is the capital of the terrorist group in Syria, from where it launches daily attacks against President Assad’s troops.

It was a surreal and a chilling experience, as I saw a regime of absolute control which imposed its strict sharia laws.

This is not some disorganised bloodthirsty terrorist group or makeshift army. They are very organised. Islamic State fighters ruthlessly beheaded Assad’s soldiers and spies on the front line. Their decapitated bodies were brought back to Raqqa and displayed in the town centre.

The IS men gave me a horrific video of decapitated soldiers’ bodies, which were left lying on the pavement in the centre of Raqqa. Some of the dismembered heads were placed on spikes.

They had prisons where they jailed people who had been caught drinking alcohol, and other small offences. I filmed young children telling me that they want to join the Islamic State and kill infidels, and I filmed IS fighters in gun battles against Assad’s troops on the front line.

The troops were surrounded by IS men, with one telling me they will now receive no supplies unless they are air-dropped to them.

IS men have so many guns that they are now in a position to give them away to new recruits or as gifts to ordinary people.

They had heavy artillery that could target low-flying aircraft, and they even had Scud missiles and tanks, with which some of the IS men even did a bit of joyriding for the cameras.

While I was in Raqqa, the IS leaders told me I had the freedom to go anywhere I like, and film what I like.

‘Leaders’ is not the right word, as IS does not have a hierarchical structure.



Starting young: A teenager who appears in Medyan's film for VICE news

All soldiers have equal status, and they are all paid the same salary of £30 per month.

I saw a society of peculiarities that you find in authoritarian regimes. Smoking was banned in the city, as was music.

So you never heard anyone playing songs in their cars, or shops or cafes. Women were allowed out, but they must cover all their body, including their faces.

Not all men are required to have beards, but all IS members must wear a beard.

The whole city was prepared for war at all times.

There were thousands of IS soldiers in the city, and they all carried guns with them at all times. They were ready to jump into action within minutes. Although the soldiers were very hospitable towards me and cared for me, they did not hide their ruthless ambition.

They want to take over the world.

I filmed one soldier, who said to the camera he wanted to see the flag of IS over the White House. Another told me: ‘See you in Jordan, next time.’

Watch the VICE News documentary 'The Islamic State' on vicenews.com

Credit to Dailymail.co.uk
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2720876/Crucified-Caliphate-monsters-Iraq-descends-apocalypse-Islamic-State-fanatics-seize-towns-tell-terrified-Yazidi-Become-Muslims-noon-today-kill-you.html#ixzz39x3R8pKU

Here Is An Undercover Look Inside ISIS

While the biggest geopolitical news of the past week was Obama's announcement he would become only the fourth president in a row to order military action in Iraq, explicitly targeting the ISIS jihadists, the far bigger question are the developments that spurred the administration to finally act.

The NYT reports that "as the tension mounted in Washington" the catalyst for Obama's decision was sudden developments surrounding the Kurdistan capital, Erbil. "Kurdish forces who had been fighting the militants in three nearby Christian villages abruptly fell back toward the gates of the city, fanning fears that the city might soon fall. By Thursday morning, people were thronging the airport, desperate for flights out of town. "The situation near Erbil was becoming more dire than anyone expected," said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe the White House’s internal deliberations. “We didn’t want another Benghazi."

The reason for this is that the US has an embassy in Erbil: that falling to ISIS would be the supreme punch in the gut for an administration whose foreign policy has become the butt of all global jokes. What's worse, now that ISIS had taken control of a critical dam in Mosul (which as we reported earlier controls water levels on the Tigris levels as far as Baghdad, and whose capture "shook Kurdish officials and fueled the sense of crisis" as it gave ISIS all of the leverage) the US embassy could be flooded should ISIS blow up the dam in question.

In other words, Obama merely took to arms after the threat of another massive foreign humiliation became all too real and when the reality that the Kurdish defense was about to fall. Of course, the actual stated reason for intervention was different, a far more noble one.

At a 90-minute meeting in the Situation Room on Thursday morning, Mr. Obama was briefed again about the plight of the Iraqis stranded on Mount Sinjar. Members of an ancient religious sect known as Yazidi, they were branded as devil worshipers by the militants. The women were to be enslaved; the men were to be slaughtered.

Officials told Mr. Obama there was a real danger of genocide, under the legal definition of the term. “While we have faced difficult humanitarian challenges, this was in a different category,” said an official. “That kind of shakes you up, gets your attention.”

At 11:20 a.m., Mr. Obama left the meeting to travel to Fort Belvoir, Va., where he signed a bill expanding health care for veterans. He had all but made up his mind to authorize airstrikes, officials said, and while he was away, his team drafted specific military options.

When the president returned to the White House barely an hour later, he went back into meetings with his staff. By then, there were news reports of airdrops and possible strikes. But the White House “hunkered down,” an official said, refusing to comment on the reports for fear of endangering a nighttime airdrop over Mount Sinjar.

Mr. Obama did not announce the operations until dawn had broken in Iraq, a delay of several hours that added to the panic in Erbil. Reports of explosions near the city at dusk on Thursday night sowed confusion after Kurdish officials said the United States had begun airstrikes on the militants. The Pentagon flatly denied the reports.

The rest is now well-known (the full breakdown can be found here), and culminated with Obama's Thursday announcement as well as the immediate launch of bombing raids on ISIS militants.

Here is the most recent Iraq situation report courtesy of the Institute for the Study of War.

Within the past 24 hours, ISIS seized Mosul Dam. This capture provides ISIS strategic advantage over the Iraqi state. The dam's collapse would severely damage vast areas of the country where ISIS seeks to achieve military victory but has encountered heavy resistance. Also, ISIS now controls electricity production to Mosul and the group extends its claimed territory farther north. ISIS continues to fight the Peshmerga in Makhmour, south of Mosul and the IA in Dhuluiya, north of Baghdad. Although the United States conducted two rounds of targeted airstrikes against ISIS held territory outside of Arbil and Mosul, it remains too early to determine whether or not the group will adjust its military strategy. ISIS is likely hardening territorial boundaries for the Islamic Caliphate east of Mosul, but ISW assess ISIS will not attempt to seize Erbil. Still, fear of an ISIS attack on Erbil has peaked.

So now that the attention is once again back to ISIS, whose dramatic success in forming the caliphate was lost to the world following the return of hostilities in Ukraine and the escalation of the second Cold War, here are, courtesy of Vice News, the first two parts of a series looking at life in the Islamic State caliphate. Vice News reporter Medyan Dairieh spent three weeks embedded with the Islamic State, gaining access to the group in Iraq and Syria as the first and only journalist to document its inner workings.

In part 1, Dairieh heads to the frontline in Raqqa, where Islamic State fighters are laying siege to the Syrian Army’s division 17 base.

In Part 2 filmmaker Medyan Dairieh meets an Islamic State member from Belgium who works to indoctrinate some of the youngest members of the group. He also gains further insight into the minds of Islamic State fighters as they host celebrations and military parades featuring American tanks and APCs seized from the Iraqi army.

Credit to Zero Hedge

Islamist fundamentalists gain tactical advantage over the US and Israel in Gaza and Irbil, 1,372 km apart

While different in many ways, the two most active Middle East conflicts, waged by the US in northern Iraq against the Islamic State, and by Israel against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, have strong common features:
1. Both stood idly by for years as Islamist fundamentalists, Al Qaeda’s IS in Iraq, and the Palestinian Hamas in the Gaza Strip, systematically built up military force for bringing forward their aggressive designs.

The Obama administration shrugged when al Qaeda started forging ahead, first in Syria and then in Iraq.

But for occasional air strikes against “empty sands” in Gaza, Binyamin Netanyahu’s government neglected to step in when Hamas built up a vast stockpile of rockets and an underground terror empire, as former AMAN director Amos Yadlin admitted publicly last week.
When, in mid-2013, IS commander Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi executed a major tactical move by relocating his entire force from Syria to Iraq, Washington was unmoved - even when in Jan. 2014, the Islamists took over the unresisting western Iraqi province of Anbar and a row of important towns, including Falluja and Tikrit.

The Iraqi army’s armored divisions, rather than resist the ruthless Islamists sweeping across the county, turned tail, bequeathing the conquering force the rich spoils of heavy, up-to-date American weaponry in mountainous quantities.

And still President Barack Obama saw no pressing cause to step in - even though, by then, it was obvious that this booty was destined not only for subjugating Baghdad, but being injected into the Syrian war and the IS arsenal in preparation for leaping on its next prey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and at some point, Israel too.

The US president was finally jerked out of his unconcern when the soldiers of Allah started marching toward the gates of Irbil, capital of the semiautonomous Kurdish Republic of Iraq (KRG).

Friday, on Aug.8, a couple of US warplanes and drones went into belated action to curb their advance. According to the Pentagon statement, two FA-18 jets, launched from the USS George HW Bush aircraft carrier in the Gulf, dropped 500lb laser-guided bombs on a “mobile artillery piece” that was shelling Kurdish forces defending Irbil, “where US forces are based.”

A little more than one hour later, four F/A-18 aircraft hit a stationary convoy of seven vehicles and a mortar position near Irbil, wiping them out with eight bombs.
Gallons of water and tons of packaged meals were also air-dropped for the hundreds of refugees who had fled towns in northern Iraq that were mowed down by the Islamists, with nothing but the clothes they stood up in.
2. The US appears to be falling into the same error of judgment made by Israel’s war planners in the month-long Operation Defense Edge, i.e., that air strikes are capable of wiping out an Islamist terrorist peril. That lesson was there for Washington to learn in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and latterly Gaza.

3. President Obama refuses to put American boots back in Iraq, specifically, special operations forces, because this would reverse what he considers his crowning foreign achievement, the withdrawal of the US army from Iraq.
For very different reasons, Israeli leaders abstained from sending special forces deep inside the Gaza Strip to eliminate the Hamas high command and main rocket stocks.

Because of these common factors, the two campaigns are destined to share a common outcome: IS will forge ahead in Iraq, and Hamas will continue firing rockets at the Israeli population, to force Jerusalem into submission. Neither conflict looks like ending any time soon.

4. Another less obvious common thread is to be found in Irbil. Two powerful patrons, the US and Israel, were responsible for shaping, training and funding the Peshmerga as the national army of the semiautonomous Kurdish Republic.

Both maintain military and intelligence missions in the KRG capital and may be presumed to be advising Kurdish generals on strategy for rebuffing the advancing Islamists.

Yet this menacing advance continues relentlessly, and the Kurdish army is showing the first signs of fallilng apart in the same way as the Iraqi divisions in earlier rounds of the IS onslaught. The sense of doom in Irbil is such that the US and Israel are preparing to evacuate their personnel.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that US warplanes and drones are the wrong weapons for stopping Al Qaeda’s jihadis, just as Israeli air strikes were never much good against Hamas, and will not stop the war of attrition the Palestinian fundamentalists launched Friday, Aug. 8.
5. Islamist fundamentalists, fighting on separate battlefields 1,327 km apart, have gained the tactical advantage in both over the US and Israeli armies. President Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had better take a hard look at their tactics before it is too late.

Credit to DEBKA file

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