Is it Isis or the economy that will ruin Iraq?

[Jefferson23]

jihad is still a threat to the people of Baghdad, but lack of oil revenue is inducing near-panic

Patrick Cockburn

21 hours ago


Two suicide blasts hit Baghdad's mainly Shi'ite district of Sadr City (Reuters)

Islamic State prepares its murderous bombings with chilling care and attention to detail. Several months ago, the Iraqi security forces discovered a plan to bomb al-Khadamiya, an ancient quarter of Baghdad at the centre of which is one of the holiest Shia shrines. Isis operatives first spent a month watching the checkpoints protecting the district, looking for weaknesses. Then they sent a woman through the checkpoint they had chosen as the most vulnerable, to look at it more closely but without carrying explosives. Soon afterwards she was sent again, but this time carrying a child’s toy under her robes. Nobody stopped or questioned her, so Isis had her do the same journey, but this time with a much bulkier toy which the security men at this checkpoint should have noticed but did not.

The next occasion the would-be suicide bomber entered alKhadamiya it would have been on a one-way mission to blow herself up and kill as many people as possible in the area of the shrine. Fortunately, it never happened because the Iraqi security forces received some quite separate intelligence about what was intended, and arrested the bombing team. The elaborate nature of the preparations for the attack were typical of the mixture of fanaticism and expertise with which Isis carries out its terrorist acts.


Safa Hussein al-Sheikh, the Deputy National Security Adviser in Baghdad and one of the most experienced and cool-headed security experts in Iraq, told me the story in an interview in Baghdad, to illustrate the difficulty of stopping Isis slaughtering civilians. During the 10 days I had been in Iraq, two suicide bombers blew themselves up at a Shia mosque in the Shuala district, killing at least 15 people, and a further 73 people were killed in a market in Sadr City. An Isis force fought a pitched battle in Abu Ghraib in west Baghdad, using suicide bombers and fighters in vehicles equipped with heavy machine guns.

The purpose of these assaults is in keeping with Isis strategy of masking failure on the battlefield by targeting soft civilian targets. It sharpens differences between Shia and Sunni with the intention of forcing the Sunni community to look to IS as its defenders. Mr Sheikh says that the military aim of Isis in carrying out these atrocities “is to spread out the security forces so IS can get superiority in numbers in one particular sector”.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/is-it-isis-or-the-economy-that-will-ruin-iraq-a6914681.html

[polly7]

1. God, how horrible all of this is. nt.

[Mufaddal]

2. It's corruption that is ruining Iraq

It is a built-in part of life there, and it ensures that no real progress can ever occur.