Released
U.S. forces release Al-Baghdadi from Camp Bucca, the biggest U.S. detention camp in Iraq. Kenneth King, commander at the time:
We spent how many missions and how many soldiers were put at risk when we caught this guy and we just released him.
Al-Baghdadi is not viewed as a threat upon release:
He said, ‘I’ll see you guys in New York,’ like, ‘This is no big thing, I’ll see you on the block’
Kurdish boys kidnapped
Over 140 Kurdish junior high school boys, on their way home from taking final exams, are kidnapped by armed fighters. The boys are forcibly removed from buses driving children back to their homes in Ayn al-Arab, and are transported by truck to the ISIS controlled city Manbij in northern Syria. The boys are being taught about jihad and Sharia doctrines, are forced to watch videos depicting torture and execution, and are receiving military training. Human Rights Watch states in a report on the abduction:
Former recruits described how leaders gave children particularly difficult or dangerous tasks and encouraged them to volunteer for suicide attacks.
Magazine 3rd edition
Al-Hayat Media Center publishes the third edition of Islamic State News. The issue leads with the group’s advance into Iraq. Feature header:
The Islamic State humiliates Maliki’s army with brazen attack on Mosul
It states that Iraqi President Maliki’s ‘tyrannical strength is no match for pious believers,’ and urges readers to join the cause:
Join the ranks, oh brothers!
It celebrates the group’s seizure of the Koniko gas field in Deir Ezzor with a photo feature showing closeups of a black-clad fighter firing an assault rifle. Also shown are executions in the province of three men – one is said to be an Assad sympathizer, and a second is said to have enlisted in the Nusayri (Alawite) army, an apparent reference to the regime’s armed forces, after ISIS declared its jihad in the area. Details are not given of the third man the group says it executed. Two men said to have broken the hadd – Islamic prohibition – against stealing receive an unspecified punishment that it says is ‘carried out under the supervision of trained doctors.’ The final section of the magazine focuses on humanitarian and religious activities in Homs and Diyala, including handing out fliers and improving security for shepherds and farmers.
Pamphlet on statehood
Islamic State in Iraq, the group that will later become ISIS, publishes a pamphlet challenging the concept of statehood having absolute control over territory. It lists freeing Sunnis from prison as among its most important goals. On administering services to citizens under its control:
Improving their conditions is less important than the condition of their religion.
Military regroups
The Iraqi military achieves a stalemate with ISIS and makes some minor advances in areas north of Baghdad as the government attempts to rebuild the capacity of the armed forces. Fighting outside Tikrit, 87 miles (140km) north of Baghdad, comes as Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issue recruiting calls for Shiite civilians. Al-Maliki assesses the security forces:
The Iraqi fighter is well known for his courage and valor, he has never been known to be defeated or deserted […] What happened in Mosul was a conspiracy and a connivance.
$2 billion in funds
ISIS has over $2 billion in the bank, more than some small countries such as Tonga and the Marshall Islands, according to information captured on a batch of 160 flash disks. The majority of the wealth comes from seizure of assets by the group in its takeover of Mosul. A senior intelligence official:
By the end of the week, we soon realised that we had to do some accounting for them. Before Mosul, their total cash and assets were $875 million. Afterwards, with the money they robbed from banks and the value of the military supplies they looted, they could add another $1.5 billion to that
It also has income from oilfields in northeastern Syria captured in 2012, smuggling of raw materials, and looting of the Assad administration’s crumbling government assets, but the extra cash allows the group to operate as a de facto caliphate in its own right:
They had taken $36m from al-Nabuk alone [an area in the Qalamoun mountains west of Damascus]. The antiquities there are up to 8,000 years old. Before this, the western officials had been asking us where they had gotten some of their money from, $50,000 here, or $20,000 there. It was peanuts. Now they know and we know. They had done this all themselves. There was no state actor at all behind them, which we had long known. They don’t need one.
U.S. troops deployed
0 CommentsBarack Obama announces that 275 U.S. troops will be sent to Iraq to protect U.S. personnel and the American embassy in Baghdad. He says the troops are ‘equipped for combat’ but will remain on security detail in Baghdad and will not join in fighting outside the capital. The White House says the Iraqi government consents to the troop deployment. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney:
The personnel will provide assistance to the Department of State in connection with the temporary relocation of some staff from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to the U.S. Consulates General in Basra and Erbil and to the Iraq Support Unit in Amman [Jordan]. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad remains open and a substantial majority of the U.S. Embassy presence in Iraq will remain in place and the embassy will be fully equipped to carry out its national security mission.
‘Dawn’ app
ISIS publishes an Arabic-language Android app titled ‘Dawn of Glad Tidings’ or ‘Dawn.’ After users provide personal information, the app tweets content created by ISIS including hashtags, images and links over the user’s account. With hundreds of users, the app reaches an all-time high of 40,000 tweets in a day during ISIS’s invasion of Mosul. This places an image of an armed fighter gazing at the ISIS flag flying over Mosul with the caption ‘We are coming, Baghdad,’ near the top of image searches for the Iraqi capital city.
Takes four strategic towns
ISIS takes four strategic towns located along a highway from Syria to Baghdad and could help the militants gain control of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. Iraqi forces withdrew from Haditha, about 270 kilometers (about 168 miles) northwest of Baghdad, during the overnight hours. Sunni tribes considered friendly to the Iraqi army took over security for the town, but officials believe it will fall to ISIS. Iraq’s military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta, told reporters there was a “strategic withdrawal” in some areas but did not detail the specific locations.
Expels Shiite Turkmen from villages
ISIS expels Shiite Turkmen from villages in an operation that leaves between 15 and 25 people dead including an old man and a woman, children and youths. The attacks take place in neighbouring Chardaghli, Brawchi and Karanaz 50 miles south of Kirkuk in Salahduin province, which links west to Baghdad, as well as Beshir, 30 miles north of the other three villages. Residents from each village say that after they left, their Sunni neighbors burned down their homes, set fire to their wheat, and stole their sheep, while insurgents blew up some Shiite mosques. Hassan Ali, a 52-year-old farmer who has fled to Kirkuk:
You cannot imagine what happened, only if you saw it could you believe it
Around 7,000 Shiites fleeing Beshir come under sniper fire as they pass neighboring Sunni villages. Residents of three Sunni northern villages also abandon their homes to flee into Sunni-majority areas through fear of reprisals.
US Secretary of State arrives
John Kerry arrives in Iraq today to meet with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Kerry will also meet with Iraq’s foreign minister and Shiite and Sunni leaders. Kerry will speak with key leaders about forming a new government that is “in line with the constitutional timeline that they’re on.” A State Department official says:
The trip will emphasize our highest-level commitment to Iraq during this time of crisis
4,000 Shiite Turkmen families flee
Around 4,000 Shiite Turkmen families have fled from the northern villages of Chardaghli, Brawchi, Karanaz and Bashir to Shiite areas after residents report expulsions and massacres by ISIS. An organizer says about 400 families — at least a few thousand people — have registered in the Kirkuk neighborhood of Wasiti while many more are thought to be in other parts of the city and the town of Tuz Khurmatu:
But there are around 4,000 families in all
1075 killed this month
According to a U.N human rights team in Iraq, at total 1075 have died this month, including at least 757 civilians and 599 injured in Nineveh, Diyala and Salah al-Din provinces between June 5th and June 22nd as troops led by Shiite-led government in Baghdad failed to stop the advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, also known as ISIS.
This figure — which should be viewed very much as a minimum — includes a number of verified summary executions and extra-judicial killings of civilians, police, and soldiers who were hors (de) combat
Meets Kurdish leaders
Kerry returns to Iraq for the second day in a row in an effort to convince political leaders there to overhaul the government. He is insisting that a change in the Shiite-led government is the best way to prevent a civil war in that country. Kerry believes that support from Kurdish regional president, Massoud Barzani, will force Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki al-Maliki to cede more power to Iraq’s Sunni and Kurdish minorities and soothe anger directed at Baghdad that has fueled the insurgent Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Officials: Iraq warned of ISIS theat
Iraq received warnings about the “growing threat” from Sunni militants in Iraq as early as the beginning of 2014. US intelligence agencies say:
During the past year, the intelligence community has provided strategic warning of Iraq’s deteriorating security situation. We routinely highlighted (ISIS’) growing threat in Iraq, the increasing difficulties Iraq’s security forced faced in combating (ISIS), and the political strains that were contributing to Iraq’s declining stability…We knew exactly what strategy they were going to use, we knew the military planners.
Aside from the warnings from US intelligence agencies, both The Telegraph and Daily Beast are claiming Kurdish sources did warn American and British officials that ISIS was gaining strength and was ready to advance, but it “fell on deaf ears.”
Takes control of oil fields
Sunni militants in Iraq take control of several oil fields. The militants launched a dawn raid on the Beiji refinery, which along with a nearby power plant supplies Iraq with approximately one-third of its fuel and one-tenth of its electricity. A Western diplomat tells Britain’s Daily Telegraph:
We have used the word crisis about Iraq before, but this is the real thing. Iraq’s political leaders now mostly realize the problems. But has it translated into action yet? It has not.
Magazine 4th edition
ISIS propaganda wing Al-Hayat Media Center publishes the fourth edition of the Islamic State magazine (pdf here). Expanded to eight pages from six and retitled IS Report, the publication leads with a feature titled ‘Smashing The Borders of the Rebels’ and a cover photo showing militants freely crossing the Syria-Iraq border. The subtitle – ‘The Battle of Asadullah Al-Bilawi’ – is an apparent reference to the group’s operation to take control of Mosul, named after a now-deceased ISIS commander. The cover story focuses on in-depth analysis of the historical background of regional geopolitics, including the Sykes-Picot agreement which determined the borders of modern-day Iraq and Syria. It says the group took control of the border region between Nineveh province in Iraq and al-Barakah province in Syria, demolishing ‘artificial barriers’ set up as ‘crusader partitions’ by the Western powers in an effort to restore the Islamic caliphate:
Last week, the mujahidin of the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham reached yet another signicant milestone on the path to restoring the prophetic khilafah.
It says it executed 1,700 Iraqi soldiers in the battle for Mosul, and includes a photo feature apparently showing the men being marched to their deaths.
Annexes Kirkuk
Kurdistan region President Masoud Barzani vows during a visit to Kurdish leaders in Kirkuk that the ethnic minority will not return the city to the federal government’s control:
We are not ready to relinquish even a hand’s width of Kurdish land. If Kirkuk at any time becomes part of the Kurdistan region again, it will be clear how well we will serve it.
US drones over Baghdad
A US official confirms to CNN that US drones began flying over the city over the past 24 hours to provide extra protection for the 180 US military advisers that are currently located there. The use of the drones for offensive strikes against the insurgent Islamic State in Iraq and Syria fighters would require approval from President Obama.
Sunni detainees executed
In a recent report, Amnesty International states there is evidence showing a pattern of “extra judicial executions” of Sunni detainees by government forces and Shiite militias in the northern Iraqi cities of Tal Afar, Mosul and Baquba. Senior crisis response adviser, Donatella Rovera says:
Reports of multiple incidents where Sunni detainees have been killed in cold blood while in the custody of Iraqi forces are deeply alarming. The killings suggest a worrying pattern of reprisal attacks against Sunnis in retaliation for ISIS gains.