Enemy At The Gates: ISIS ONe Mile From Baghdad

[Red Terror Dr.]

HEre is the evidence, comerades:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2773268/ISIS-militants-fighting-Iraqi-government-forces-just-six-miles-Baghdad-despite-Western-airstrikes-against-terror-group.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/islamic-state-crisis-alqaeda-fighters-joining-forces-with-isis-against-air-strikes-in-syria-9761392.html

[mojo.rhythm]

...the international response to Isis’ bloody rampage through Iraq and Syria, and the beheadings of British and American hostages, is pushing [ISIS and Al-Nusra] towards an alliance.

Bloody hell. Already we are starting to see massive blowback from the foreign invasion of Iraq and Syria. Two groups that were historically at odds with one another are now uniting to fight a common enemy. Bad. Very bad.

[Red Commissar]

I'm going to have to wonder whether or not the "Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East" is a reliable source for what's going on in Iraq. It's the first I've heard of them. IS is fighting the army alot in Anbar and has presence in some outlying communities but I think it's hysterical to think Baghdad's in any real danger.

[bricolage]

Bloody hell. Already we are starting to see massive blowback from the foreign invasion of Iraq and Syria. Two groups that were historically at odds with one another are now uniting to fight a common enemy. Bad. Very bad.
I'd imagine that 'alliance' is more in the way of Al-Nusra knowing they'll get eradicated by ISIS unless they tow the line.

[ckaihatsu]

Bloody hell. Already we are starting to see massive blowback from the foreign invasion of Iraq and Syria. Two groups that were historically at odds with one another are now uniting to fight a common enemy. Bad. Very bad.


You're only seeing the problem as 'blowback' -- ? (In relation to Western intervention.)

It isn't bad enough that Islamist fundamentalist forces have more traction and combativeness than any other concerns there -- ?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

What intrigues me is that, by all accounts, Islamic State has a few thousand (maybe 20-30,000) fighters. How is it over-running so much territory? It seems as though it has access to a lot of money and resources. That is the only reason that a small army could control such a swathe of area and win so many battles.

Who is actually funding Islamic State? The Saudis? I imagine that, this being the case, the 'horrors' of Islamic State, whilst real and cruel, are actors in some sort of proxy war in the middle east, whose underlying motives have not revealed themselves to us yet.

[ckaihatsu]

What intrigues me is that, by all accounts, Islamic State has a few thousand (maybe 20-30,000) fighters. How is it over-running so much territory? It seems as though it has access to a lot of money and resources. That is the only reason that a small army could control such a swathe of area and win so many battles.

Who is actually funding Islamic State? The Saudis? I imagine that, this being the case, the 'horrors' of Islamic State, whilst real and cruel, are actors in some sort of proxy war in the middle east, whose underlying motives have not revealed themselves to us yet.


My pet theory right now is that geopolitical conditions are very similar to those of the '70s, with the ongoing economic stagnation, though the *difference* is we're seeing *deflation* instead of the '70s *inflation* of 'the-U.S.-now-has-to-dig-itself-out-of-a-hole-after-war-spending-on-Vietnam-and-seeing-new-competition-from-Japan-and-China.'

So my *point* is that the Middle East, particularly this area of Iraq and Syria where the IS is expanding, is the new 'Vietnam', for continued empire-sustaining economy-boosting war spending, but without really *needing* any kind of clear-cut military / geopolitical goal.

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zugzwang

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

What intrigues me is that, by all accounts, Islamic State has a few thousand (maybe 20-30,000) fighters. How is it over-running so much territory? It seems as though it has access to a lot of money and resources. That is the only reason that a small army could control such a swathe of area and win so many battles.

I wouldn't be so keen on traversing barren desert landscapes to not get laid, in hot black, for no reason, either.

[robbo203]

My pet theory right now is that geopolitical conditions are very similar to those of the '70s, with the ongoing economic stagnation, though the *difference* is we're seeing *deflation* instead of the '70s *inflation* of 'the-U.S.-now-has-to-dig-itself-out-of-a-hole-after-war-spending-on-Vietnam-and-seeing-new-competition-from-Japan-and-China.'

So my *point* is that the Middle East, particularly this area of Iraq and Syria where the IS is expanding, is the new 'Vietnam', for continued empire-sustaining economy-boosting war spending, but without really *needing* any kind of clear-cut military / geopolitical goal.

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zugzwang

Hmm. I would question that. Some writers - Kidron springs to mind - have argued that military spending is analogous to luxury consumption in that it is non productive and is a drain on surplus value reducing what is left for the purpose of capitalisation. Like the luxury consumption of capitalists, it does not enter the "circulation of commodities" in Marxspeak.

While the military industrial complex may well profit and flourish as a result, you overlook what becomes of the rest of economy. The state acquires the wherewithal to purchase such weapons out of revenue from general taxation the burduen of which is squarely born by the capitalist class. That as Marx pointed out helps to reduce their rate of profit to the detriment of investment and growth

You refer to the term "Zugzwang" - something Ive never heard of before (for which thanks!) - but surely this counts against your argument? For example, it is often cited, as one of the factors leading to the collapse of Soviet state capiltalism, that a arms race was deliberately engineered which forced the Soviet capitalist class - the nomenklatura - to divert more and more of its resources from the productive profit-making sector of the economy = Soviet state enterprises were compelled by law to aim to produce a profit - into unproductive military sector. The result was a slow down in growth and increasing stagnation

With the US having a much deeper pocket to draw upon it was bound to emerge the victor of the cold war. But it too did not emerge unscathed from the effects of massive military spending. What it achieved was a pyrric victory given the flagging fortunes of the American capitalism since the 1970s

Ideally - or abstractly - speaking the capitalist class would prefer not to spend its money on weapons and wars which are costly and expensive but the very nature of the system they administer and the inherent rivalries it engenders rule out such a possibilty War is for them a necessary evil and an obligatory cost arising from the pursuit of their own competitive interests

[ckaihatsu]

Hmm. I would question that. Some writers - Kidron springs to mind - have argued that military spending is analogous to luxury consumption in that it is non productive and is a drain on surplus value reducing what is left for the purpose of capitalisation. Like the luxury consumption of capitalists, it does not enter the "circulation of commodities" in Marxspeak.

While the military industrial complex may well profit and flourish as a result, you overlook what becomes of the rest of economy. The state acquires the wherewithal to purchase such weapons out of revenue from general taxation the burduen of which is squarely born by the capitalist class. That as Marx pointed out helps to reduce their rate of profit to the detriment of investment and growth

You refer to the term "Zugzwang" - something Ive never heard of before (for which thanks!) - but surely this counts against your argument? For example, it is often cited, as one of the factors leading to the collapse of Soviet state capiltalism, that a arms race was deliberately engineered which forced the Soviet capitalist class - the nomenklatura - to divert more and more of its resources from the productive profit-making sector of the economy = Soviet state enterprises were compelled by law to aim to produce a profit - into unproductive military sector. The result was a slow down in growth and increasing stagnation

With the US having a much deeper pocket to draw upon it was bound to emerge the victor of the cold war. But it too did not emerge unscathed from the effects of massive military spending. What it achieved was a pyrric victory given the flagging fortunes of the American capitalism since the 1970s

Ideally - or abstractly - speaking the capitalist class would prefer not to spend its money on weapons and wars which are costly and expensive but the very nature of the system they administer and the inherent rivalries it engenders rule out such a possibilty War is for them a necessary evil and an obligatory cost arising from the pursuit of their own competitive interests


I *hear* ya, but, keeping in with the 'Vietnam' parallel, I'd say that the U.S. is running on fumes and looking for *anything* to throw into the furnace at this point. I'll even go so far as to say that it's getting to be circa-2000 -- the initial point of the Bush presidency when the economy was really starting to tank, post-dotcom, and people were *already* ambivalent about him at best.

Thus, economy-wise, this is what the establishment invariably reaches for:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Keynesianism

[Red Commissar]

What intrigues me is that, by all accounts, Islamic State has a few thousand (maybe 20-30,000) fighters. How is it over-running so much territory? It seems as though it has access to a lot of money and resources. That is the only reason that a small army could control such a swathe of area and win so many battles.

Who is actually funding Islamic State? The Saudis? I imagine that, this being the case, the 'horrors' of Islamic State, whilst real and cruel, are actors in some sort of proxy war in the middle east, whose underlying motives have not revealed themselves to us yet.

Well, Anbar province is mostly empty- it is the largest of the provinces in Iraq but by and large barren. All of the major population centers lie along the Euphrates- Fallujah, Ramadi, Haditha, right up to Qaim on the border where the Euphrates enters from Syria.

The army's grasp was always pretty tenuous and they were never viewed as a national army but an occupying force for the Shi'a-led government. When the army was ordered to move in and crush the Arab Spring-style protest camps in Fallujah and Ramadi the shit hit the fan and it is then that what is now the IS began to restart operations in Fallujah along with other groups who'd been underground- that happened at the beginning of this year. Arguably Iraq's government had not had real control in Fallujah and elements in Ramadi basically became besieged.

So when this mess started in June, the Iraq Army basically found itself stuck in islands dotted across Anbar with tenuous supply lines to Baghdad. They are already hurt with incompetent commanders and a serious morale issue- these soldiers literally don't see a point in fighting in these areas deep in the Sunni Arab heartland, much less doing so with broken supply routes- should be recalled that even for the US army this region was not somewhere they had much success- part of the "Sunni Triangle" where many US troops got killed. The Iraq Army regrouped in July and has been holding in August but basically you have three separate groups with a whole stretch of unstable territory in between them- a group in Haditha near the dam, a group in Ramadi, and a group in Fallujah- and cracks are beginning to show again. Morale is everything- what every disadvantage you have with numbers melt away if your enemy breaks quickly.

As for funding/support/who is responsible in the Middle-East it seems to be everyone according to who you ask. I've seen people say that it's a convoluted plot from Iran and/or Syria, others from Israel, others from Gulf Arab states (especially Qatar and Saudi Arabia), or the US directly. I'd say the Gulf states are the main progenitors, be it the government or from private individuals, but it should be pointed out that the IS is largely able to derive a lot of income from black market sales of everything from oil to antiquities to people, in addition to the various taxes they levy in towns they've conquered. So this foreign support now is less of direct payments and more of assistance in laundering to get their income in a useable manner to bring things outside, lining up dealers for weapons, recruitment overseas, etc. Turkey being the main land route all this comes in also became a player in the growth and continued existence of the IS.

The US had a objective in mind over in Syria but delegated this out to its regional allies, including those listed above, to do what ever they needed to do in Syria to overthrow the government since the US also views Iran as the major threat in the area. Whether what is happening now is what the US didn't want or had expected is up to who you ask.

This is a proxy war, and this is ultimately about Iran. Iran we know is the country that ultimately the Gulf Arab states fear the most, and all this involvement in Syria has had the effect of getting Iran, already hit by sanctions, to get itself deeply involved in Syria and with that a good number of its military infrastructure and elements to fend off a civil war which has taken sectarian dimensions. Now the same is happening in Iraq against areas Iran has varying degrees of influence in, be it the central government in Iraq controlled by Shi'as or the Kurdistan region in the north. (the Turkish government has a lot of influence in both as well due to the oil pipeline infrastructure, but it didn't seem to respond with any particular urgency over this situation).

Now we have Iran really overextending itself trying to hold up its influence in both Syria and Iraq. That is damaging its economy even further.

I do not think though that Baghdad itself is in a serious threat though. For all its blustering the daesh is not a real army and it does not have a chance in hell of getting Baghdad. This is a city of millions of people, not a besieged small town of tens of thousands like Kobane or a city like Mosul or Fallujah who'd welcome them in. This is a city which has over the past 10 years been basically ethnically cleansed to the point it's by and large a Shi'a city now with fanatic militias on the streets.

There are people who're living in Anbar cities now because of this ethnic cleansing and have an interest in settling accounts, but at best I can only see them getting serious clout in the few remaining Sunni Arab neighborhoods, where at least they have had some presence judging from the suicide bombs. We'll see a lot of suicide bombs and hit-and-run rather than attempts to take the city ultimately, and I think they are hoping to put pressure on the army to withdraw from areas deeper in Anbar. Getting Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar and also some arable land there, would be a prize for the daesh.

[ckaihatsu]

[LaborTech] #SuphiNejatAğırnaslı fallen in #Kobanê fighting against #ISIS. He was the translator of "We are #Anonymous" book.


#SuphiNejatAğırnaslı fallen in #Kobanê fighting against #ISIS. He was the translator of "We are #Anonymous" book.

https://lh5.ggpht.com/bCSUALnTgEuHdson_Z2h30o0HWc1CWR5XM3Dbe3nkvw8zkGT6y BGp0rUhwcUPMPgkbBrmw=s85
https://lh5.ggpht.com/XSwSjdLNlbMa1gzYQkTFzNfrILMKiMhJ8iEhE0Z9FwRxW8gcgh rWAzVM4EEsZFU67U_qpg=s85

Nejat Ağırnaslı, Sociologist, Dies in Kobane

Suphi Nejat Ağırnaslı, a sociology graduate from Turkey’s prestigious Bosporus University, has lost life in Kobane while fighting against ISIS. He was 30 years old.

According to his friends, Ağırnaslı left for Kobane in August without letting anybody know.

It was said that he was fighting against ISIS with the alias Paramaz Kızılbaş, an Armenian socialist who has been hung along with his 19 friends in Istanbul in 1915.

“Matters of peace and labor”

His close friends define him as follows: “He was the kind of person who would want to take part in resistance movements and get involved. Both in theoretical background and academic interests, there was also the matters of peace and labor. He would always think about how another world was possible.”

Marxist-Lenninst Communist Party (MLKP) also released a statement as follows: “Our comrade’s selection of alias in the battlefield already gives an idea about his worldview and emotions. His decision to be recruit voluntarily and his death practice were also the brightest expression of these ideas.”

Who is Suphi Nejat Ağırnaslı?

Suphi Nejat Ağırnaslı was born on September 22, 1984 and raised by a family that sought asylum to Germany after Turkey’s 1980 Military Coup.

His name came from Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) founder Mustafa Suphi and its general secretary Ethem Nejat - two leaders who have been killed along with 14 of their comrades in 1921.

Completed his undergraduate and graduate degrees in the prestigious Bosporus University in Istanbul, he wrote his master thesis on the workplace murders in Istanbul’s Tuzla harbors.

Niyazi Ağırnaslı, Suphi Nejat Ağırnaslı’s grandfather, was one of the defense lawyers of Deniz Gezmiş, Yusuf Aslan and Hüseyin İnan - 3 student leaders who have been hung after Turkey’s 1960 Coup.

Along with his several article on the Kurdish issue, Ağırnaslı also had several published translations.

Ağırnaslı: Being linked with Kurds faces witch hunt

Suphi Nejat Ağırnaslı had several times been detained with KCK raids. Reacting on the inclusion of his translated works in the case indictment, he released a press statement entitles “Foucault must be tried as well”.

After his released on May 2, 2011, Ağırnaslı was interviewed by Ekin Karaca from bianet.

“The linkage of Turkey’s intellectuals with the Kurdish movement is always, at least on the political level, confronted with a witch hunt,” he told bianet. (ÇT/BM)

* Click
here (http://www.bianet.org/bianet/yasam/159129-sosyolog-nejat-agirnasli-kobane-de-hayatini-kaybetti) to read the article in Turkish.

[Solarstone]

Billions spent recruiting, arming and training the Iraqi army only for huge numbers to run away when confronted by terrorists. I suppose you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.