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Monday, June 9, 2014

Middle East Competitive Terrorists: Leading Bad is now ISIS.

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                      

When Lee Smith wrote his book, "The Strong Horse, power, politics, and the clash of Arab civilizations, I  imagine he realized this phenomena also included the competitiveness of terrorist groups.  Now it's the Sunni against the Shia and everyone else.  

Today we see a group competing with Al Qaeda, the world's worst terrorists made up of Shias.  The new Islamic fundamentalists is Isis, a highly fanatical group of Sunni Muslims,  who have been  killing Shi'a Muslims and Christians whenever they get the opportunity that are seen in Iraq and Syria.  They just led an assault in the past 4 days. Their leader is Abu Bakr al-Baghdada, alias Abu Dua.  He's even worse than Ayman al-Zawahiri from Pakistan of al-Qaida.  

On Friday they attacked Mosul where they have been asking a tax from businesses.  This sounds like the 1920's in New York with "The Mafia."  200 people were killed who probably didn't want to pay up, but the government is covering up the number and said only 59 of which 21 were policemen and the others were the terrorists.                                                              

Isis took over the University of Anbar at Ramadi, a university of 10,000 students  in Iraq on Saturday.  They killed 52 people in Baghdad.  They're trying to create some sort of Caliphate in northern Syria and Iraq.  This is unsettling Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey who fear becoming targets.  Isn't this shades of the Iraq-Iran War of 1980-1988?  

This group is extremely violent.  A video shows them forcing families with sons in the Iraqi army to dig their own graves before they were shot, Nazi style violence.  

In Syria it is in an intra-jihadi civil war with Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-sham and other groups.  Isis controls Raqqa, a capital taken by their opposition and much of eastern Syria outside enclaves held by the Kurds close to the Turkish border.  More violence from Isis went on yesterday where 18 Kurds were killed in explosions in Iraq at the Kurds headquarters which is an ethnically mixed province of Diyala.  

They are known to have participated in the Iraq -Iran War that started September 1980 and ended in August 1988;  the Global War on Terrorism, the Iraqi insurgency, and the Syrian Civil War as one of the rebel groups.  The United States has been aiding some of the rebel groups in Syria.  It would be terrible if their money or arms got into their hands.  

This is all very important to Israel because Syria borders on their state.  Iraq is on Jordan and and Syria's border.  Of course Jordan is on Israel's border.

"Today there are differences in religious practice, traditions and customs, often related to jurisprudence between the Sunni and Shi'a.   Although all Muslim groups consider the Quran to be divine, Sunni and Shia have different opinions on hadith or the traditions and sayings of Mohammad

 Sectarian violence persists to this day from Pakistan to Yemen and is a major element of friction throughout the Middle East.  Tensions between communities have intensified during power struggles, such as the Bahraini uprising, the Iraq War, and most recently the Syrian Civil War."  Now there is this  new terrorist group who flex their muscles showing their power. 

I would bet that al-Qaeda could get the best of them because they are loaded with money.  Though Al-Qaeda operates from Pakistan and Afghanistan, ISIS is closer, in Iraq and Syria.  Al-Qaeda can also count on the Taliban for more manpower.  Syria must be in a mess with all these competing rebel terrorist groups attacking each other  vying for for power besides taking over parts of Syria.  

The nerve of some people to intimidate that Israel is the root of Middle East problems.  It's the Muslim family itself that cause their own headaches.  I lived in Israel from 1980 to the end of 1985, during the Iran-Iraq war.  The Correlates of War Project reported that 500,000 Iraqis died and 750,000 Iranians died in their war between each other, though it may not have been that high a number.  

Syria was a state made up of 22,505,000 population of both Sunni and Shi'a who followed the Hanafi and the Alevi  fiqh. Syria's history is of constant fighting.  In September 2007 Israel did hit their nuclear site without any reprisal from them.  This was going to be used against Israel.  By 2011 the Civil War started which is continuing.  

 Iraq was a state of 31,234,000 with both Shi'a and Sunni who followed Jafari and Hanafi fiqh.  The USA invaded Iraq in March 2003 because of the attack on the USA starting with the airplane that crashed into the Twin Towers in 2001 and were out to get Saddam Hussein.  Over 100,000 Iraqis died and the USA had a death count of 4,700.  Iraq has had a history of wars being it was part of the Ottoman Empire. In 1921 Faysal, son of Husssein Bin ali, the Sharif of Mecca, was crowned Iraq's first king.  

Resource:  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/battle-to-establish-islamic-state-across-iraq-and-syria-9510044.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shia%E2%80%93Sunni_relations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadith
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-14703995
http://www.cfr.org/iraq/timeline-iraq-war/p18876?gclid=CjkKEQjwttWcBRCuhYjhouveusIBEiQAwjy8IDzIODF_fDOlrXs3XEzDrdl_PNcmx90locl-ev2uyRPw_wcB
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-14546763
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/06/10/3446907/isis-iraq-mosul/

5 comments:

  1. See also ISIS Threatens to Capture More Iraqi Cities - Faith Karimi and Hamdi Alkhshali (CNN)

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  2. Abu Bakr al Baghdady, leader of ISIS: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10891700/Iraq-crisis-the-jihadist-behind-the-takeover-of-Mosul-and-how-America-let-him-go.html

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  3. More on ISIS: CTC Perspectives: Al-Baghdadi’s Blitzkrieg, ISIL’s Psychological Warfare, and What It Means for...
    www.ctc.usma.edu
    The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant’s (ISIL) blitzkrieg-like advance across northern and western Iraq in the past 48 hours poses a serious security threat to the Nuri al-Maliki government. The organization now enjoys control over a strategic swath of territory spanning from eastern Syria into w…

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  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  5. Video on ISIS http://conflict-backchannels.com/.../as-pearl-around-a.../ !

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