Mosul: A Game of Risk

Once upon a time before this age of video games, cell phones and 24 hour continuous cable television, there were four television stations and they all went off around midnight to a hollow vapid medium pitch tone with the picture of an Indian in the background.  This was a period in which if you were not outside playing and being active, if you were inside and not reading you were playing a game with your family of friends. Typically this was either in cards but mainly board games.  One such board game which was one of my favorites was Risk. Made by Parker Brothers, Risk is a strategy board that has three main objectives: to control entire continents to get reinforcement armies, to protect and watch ones borders and to protect and defend against other neighboring armies/nations that could attack you and building up ones military on their own borders for defensive purposes.
It was a heated game and brought the best and worst out in most people whom played it, with each player accumulating and stacking up those little squares in anticipation of a possible impending attack. In risk, a player has the best chance of winning if the hold continents since this is the best way to increase reinforcements. Players often attempt to gain control of Australia early in the game, since Australia is the only continent that can be successfully defended via heavy fortification (continents with fewer borders are easier to defend).

The battle for Mosul is on after Obama announcing out loud it would be eventually taking place before the end of 2016. The way I am seeing this adventure in Mosul is just like a game of Risk.  To take the city you have to first get past all of the villages on the outskirts of the city. Imagine having to go through Newnan or Smyrna, Georgia to get to Atlanta.  But in this city, every road like Peachtree Street has IEDs buried all through them and on every roof there is a sniper. If you manage to get through this, in the back of your mind you know that the cats that have been there have been dug in for two years, that they have the advantage.

The West of Mosul is the old city and from what I have been told, it will be difficult for anyone to go in and fight there – can’t drive Humvees or Tanks because the roads are too tight and thin and ISIS is going to put a stiff front against the U.S.- Iraqi coalition forces as they enter.

This doesn’t even include considering the post conflict environment in Mosul, which will be a very difficult path itself to navigate. I mean, you can’t remove 1.5 million Mosul residents for a few thousand ISIS militants and we can’t make the same mistakes we did by allowing Iraqi security forces to completely demolish everything in sight as we did in Fallujah, Ramadi or Tikrit (or it will set the same conditions that allowed ISIS to grow in the first place), unless it is the Obama Administration goal to push ISIS west into Syria. The danger of this however is that it will take a very long time to get ISIS out of Mosul and the civilians will suffer disproportionately.

How Mosul will be governed after or if ISIS leaves is another query.  Has the Obama team thought about it – a city predominantly Sunni and Iraqi security forces predominately Shia? This will be a very extremely complicated task for we will approach this act as if it is a typical Western intervention and a typical Arab city.  Unfortunately Mosul isn’t your average Arab city. It is a very multi-cultural city centered between Syria and Turkey.  It is a very diverse city filled with Sunni, Shiite, Kurds, Christians. Taking one bank of the Tigris River will be easy, but to take the entire city, will be something that will take a long time.  Which reminds me again, what the after plan is if and/or after Mosul falls?  How will the US coalition deal with a large Iraqi Force, a large Kurdish force and the desire that Shia militia have to get in on the action? All which are paramount issues that worry the Turks (Sunni), who are as we speak training anti-ISIS fighters in the strategic town of Bashiqa and want to enter Mosul and engage in battle. They are vehemently against Shia militias taking part in any fighting in the city; for Erdogan has openly said he thinks Mosul should be a city for Sunni Turkmen, Sunni Kurds and Sunni Arabs.

Turkey already has troops in Iraq and they are not welcomed nor were invited by the Iraqi government. They are not very diplomatic because they claim that Mosul is a Turkish city while at the same time Kurds want autonomy in Iraq, especially Mosul and display even stronger and similar feelings as it pertains to in Norther Iraq.

Turkish military is also training Sunni tribes with the hope of keeping a migration from Mosul to Turkey from occurring. The Peshmerga (Kurds) are coming in from the east heading west to make sure they keep folk from going to Kurdistan and Shia militias are on the West to keep ISIS from going into Syria. Yes, this is a big old game of Risk.

And what of the U.S.? Well after getting rid of Saddam Hussein, they city still lacks consistent running water and consistent electricity due to the U.S. invasion as is the case for most of Iraq and the anti U.S. animosity remains high. For many Iraqis, the U.S. has not only failed to make life better than it was under Saddam Hussein, it has made daily living worse. Strangely, before ISIS took root in Mosul, it was touted as being more secure than Baghdad. Presently, ISIS has every vehicle, building, child, cat and dog rigged with explosives and if success is to be had in Mosul, it will be a street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, house by house dog fight.

If America continues on this path of the feckless Obama-Clinton – Bush-Rumsfeld foreign policy approach, President Obama could be leaving his predecessor another Aleppo. Not only is the Iraqi government corrupt as all get out, none of the cats doing the fighting trust each other (U.S. military, Kurdish Peshmerga, Turks or Shia militias).

In all honesty, if Mosul is liberated, it will be the start of a bigger war and an excuse for the Obama administration to move into Syria which I believe is his true desire albeit we ALL know Washington hasn’t planned properly nor is ready for such an event (See Libya and Yemen). I may be wrong, but you tell me if the present administration, like the prior, has outlined any strategic goals or objectives for achieving such and dealing with the aftermath other than aerial bombardments? And if I am correct, it will be more wasting of the loot of the American people when our problems should be first and foremost on the table for solution finding regarding our struggling economy.

Mosul is problematic. Not only is there no central command, without the U.S., Kurds and Shia militias, the Iraqi Security Forces would never be able to take the city on their own and would probably run as they did when ISIS first entered Iraq. Add this to the tangible hatred between all involved, it would be highly unlikely for everybody, in particular when you throw the Turks in the mix, not to just end up shooting at each other. Even if this doesn’t manifest, what is consistent is that it will represent regardless of the outcome, more failed U.S. foreign policy and more dead bodies and destroyed communities since our only answer is to just give out weapons to whoever we decide to support, not based on logic nor the interest of the people living in the Middle east

And you can best believe if Hillary Clinton becomes the president elect, the D.C. neocon and neoliberal foreign policy establishment will be salivating for more U.S. intervention which would probably be in the form of a no-fly zone, that would not save anyone or help the people on the ground or get rid of ISIS, but rather cause more problems and maybe even a direct confrontation with Syria, Russia and Iran. But if I were optimist I would speculate that, we may get rid of ISIL in Mosul, eventually, but what will come next after them to fill the void is my concern.

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Obama Didn’t Found ISIS, He Just Breast Feed Them

A few weeks ago I read Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump assert that President Barack Obama was the founder, or creator of ISIS. I just wanted to say for the record, I could not let this mistruth, as any mistruth stated by a politician regardless of party, pass without clarifying the record. What Mr. Trump forgets is that ISIS started long before Obama was President and in my view if we really want to know the deal, on its founding, birth or creation, we must go back to the Iraq war more than twelve years ago, under the Presidency of Bush 43.

As history has shown, the current leader of what we call ISIS is Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badry, a man we now refer to as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State. What is known about him before proclaiming himself the leader of DAESH is that in early 2004 he was housed in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. U.S. Defense Department reports note that coalition forces first captured Baghdadi on February 4, 2004, in Fallujah, Iraq. After the fiasco at Abu Ghraib, he was transferred to Camp. Bucca, located some 400 miles south of Baghdad in the southern town of Garma along the Kuwait border. It held some of the most radical extremists of the war. 

One could argue that the procreation of what we now call the Islamic state begin when Camp Bucca was created and birthed during the peak of the Iraq troop surge in 2007 at a time when Bucca contained 24,000 – 28,000 inmates. It held both Sunnis and Shiites, who were separated because moderate Sunnis and extreme Sunnis and Shiites were at odds with one another.  All and anyone who coalition forces figured look like the enemy or in the area of any type of bombing or sniper fire were rounded up in mass, in particular  military-aged males, without due process since few if any U.S, military personnel spoke Arabic and all in general were incapable of distinguishing enemies for friendlies.

Detention facilities like Bucca played a major part in the rise of the Islamic State. After the Bush administration’s policy of de-baathfication, what Bucca did was allow these individuals to link up with members of Saddam Hussein's ousted regime and develop new relationships. First it was unique, for as many have reported, it allowed for former Baathist secularists to get to know Islamist fundamentalists, both of which had nothing but hatred for the West and the U.S. Being once in politics and/or the military, the former Baathists provide jihadists with public relations, organizational and military skills. In the other side the jihadist were able to instill something to fight for in the former government ruling class of Iraq before the U.S. invasion and occupation. Some have estimated that nearly 90 percent of those freed from Bucca and other facilities returned to the battlefield to fight against coalition forces.

Like in America, prison served as a college or university for Islamic fundamentalism and jihadist training.  In the long run, it would be these hardcore jihadists and former Iraqi military officials who would eventually become the leadership of the Islamic State. While Bucca, Sharia Law was instituted by radical extremist and fundamentalist which by some reports, even included  gouging out eyes or cutting out their tongues for anti-Islamic behaviors considered to be Western in origin. A story reported by Al Jazeera based on first had reports suggested that jihadist were able to build relations and network in ways they would have never been able to do outside of Camp Bucca and that hard core extremist were able to radicalize other inmates and even give courses using the resources of the prison to teach inmates how to make explosives, and carry out suicide bombings. This is the start of what we currently refer to as the Islamic State and this was up to the year 2008, all of which was under the tutelage of George W. Bush.

 

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was not the only high profile prisoner detained at Bucca. Another was a former Iraqi military official who became head of the Islamic State’s military council named Hajji Bakr and the future official spokesperson and a senior leader of the Islamic State Taha Subhi Falaha, commonly called Abu Muhammad al-Adnani al-Shami. Others included al-Baghdadi's deputy Abu Muslimal-Turkmani, Abu Abdulrahman al-Bilawi, the military leader responsible for planning the seizure of Mosul and the founder of the Syrian Al Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front, Abu Mohammad al-Julani.

But objectivity cannot leave out the role that President Obama has played in nurturing the Islamic State. Since the CIA inspired uprising against Assad, Obama has been very busy sowing the seeds of war instead of diplomacy.  It is clear that the reason for such are similar to the reasons he in concert with Hillary Clinton, led events that resulted in the murder of Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi (with the use of Al Qaeda embedded in the U.S. backed opposition trained byU.S. special operation forces that had been inside Libya before the start of protests).

This is the plan they (Obama, Clinton, NATO and the West) have on deck for Assad and Syria as evidenced by leaked emails between Sidney Blumenthal and Obama’s Secretary of State. Like Libya, Syria’s Central Bank is state-owned & isn’t controlled IMF (International Monetary Fund), has no IMF debt and more importantly maintains immense oil and gas reserves. Plus, being the only secular Muslim states in the Middle East, this gets in the way of the West divide and Conquer modus operandi. The first and last may be even more important than the two in the middle. 

As of 2003, the only countries left in 2003 without a Central Bank owned by western interest were Sudan, Libya, Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Syria.  After September 11th The U.S. was able to knock out two-for one by invading both Afghanistan and Iraq to then establish a Central Bank in those countries. Now back to Obama.

Obama is protecting Al-Nusura, Al Qaeda and ISIS-ISIL-Daesh by using  the US Airforce to provide cover on behalf of terrorists invading a sovereign nation state for the reasons I stated above:  it has nothing to do with protecting the citizens of Syria because if such was the case, the Obama Administration would bomb Saudi Arabia and protect the citizens of Yemen, whom the Saudi’s are slaughtering with U.S. supplied planes, weapons, cluster bombs and White Phosphorus.

Although it was the Bush administration with the assistance of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz that broaden the idea of birthing terrorist organizations to fight U.S. wars under the name of freedom fighters, Obama took it to another level.  Up until 2014, the Islamic State (ISIS) was called al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). What President Obama breast fed with guns and intelligence, Al Nusra (an al Qaeda affiliate) is overnight called the “Moderate Opposition” and even worse, “The Free Syrian Army.”

Either way it goes and regardless of what we call them, both are supported covertly by US intelligence and are merely malignancies of the same tumor – the Islamic State. Yes, Obama has got both his titties working: one for ISIS and the other for Al Nusra.

It is easy for the Obama Administration to keep on breast feeding these jihadist weapons especially since it is impossible to vet who is friend or foe (or rather foe or foe). Like any good hustler, anyone who is down to be a rebel no matter what we call them, get a gun and a regular salary know how to play the game and tell a random dumb American what they want to hear. And if they are not jihadist, the weakest of those the administration recruit cower under the first sight of ISIS extremist.  Case and point was when U.S. officials reported openly that frequently, “moderate” rebels give up their weapons and vehicles to al-Qaeda. How else did ISIS get freshly FSA supplied US-made anti-tank TOW missiles (“Tube-launched, optically tracked, Wire-guided")? Also, they even openly admit to the media and U.S. representatives that they got no problems with al-Qaeda or ISIL and often work with and conduct military operations together.

The bottom line is that Mr. Trump is incorrect, it was the Bush Administration: specifically Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. Obama did however, take the infant into his bosom and feed them when he took office. Now he and the rest of the West (many reluctantly) wants to place the blame what is happening in Syria at the feet of Russia when in actuality it is a consequence of Obama’s foreign policy (or lack of) of aiding Syrian jihadists which has resulted in the intentional devastation of Syria, the massive migration crisis and the inordinate death toll of the nation’s civilian population. Thus distinguishing between the FSA and al-Nusra is impossible, because they are virtually the same organization. Taking it a step further, it could be argued strongly that the moderate Free Syria Army is just a cover for al-Qaeda (al-Nusra).

The Russians are right: the Obama Administration has never had any desire or intention to defeat al-Nusra (as required by U.N. Security Council Resolution 2268 - 2016). President Obama got ISIS and al-Nusra sucking on his breast good and has them nearly strong enough to do his dirty work in his effort to destroy Iraq and Syria.

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