Global SITREP C7-15: The Islamic State - A Legacy of Saddam Hussein's Iraq

'Islamic State' growing with Iraq and Syria

UPDATE 26 May 2015: It is the opinion of the author of this Eschatology Today blog that SITREP C4-15 is directly tied to this C6-15 entry. This linkage comes directly from the manner in which the "Assur" of Psalm 83:8 has been interpreted by yours truly for several years now as the 'Sunni Triangle' of northern Iraq. This region is also the home of the late Ba'athist dictator Saddam Hussein and Sunni Muslim tribal region. This is an interpretation of a single word in the text of Psalm 83:8 that few of my peers have shown any willingness to join me in giving voice to, much less to even discuss in any meaningful way. So be it that I stand alone on this interpretive issue.

Above is a map of the growing Islamic state that I compiled on 22 May from multiple data points found in several recent open source reports. As recent as this image is "Islamic State' mechanized columns have in the past 72 hours pushed 50 to 75 kilometers beyond Palmyra on the main highways leading towards Damascus. Only Hezbollah, Iranian Shi'a proxy forces and the little that is left of Bashar al-Assad's own Syrian army stand between Damascus and the 'Islamic State.' In Iraq a furious effort is underway to defend Baghdad and the Shi'a holy city of Karbala. The coming battles in Syria and Iraq will have an unprecedented impact upon Sunni and Shi'a muslims throughout the Middle East and beyond. For its part the West continues to limit itself to dropping bombs on the IS formations. 'Islamic State' is simply ignoring the fact that Iran is nearing a battlefield nuclear capability.

It also appears to have escaped any mention by government spokespersons and the media that "Islamic State' is waging a successful campaign on two major fronts simultaneously. The success stems from the fact that on neither front does 'Islamic State' face opposing 'boots on the ground" capable of halting their advance. The 'perfect storm' continues to build in the Middle East with ongoing set of "free for all" wars from Libya to Syria to Yemen.

"Islamic State" with Ramadi spoils of war

19 May 2015: Is it making sense now, based upon the information contained below, how a Sunni "jihadist" army can suddenly emerge within a year of American combat troops departure from Iraq as demanded by the American Left and ordered by President Obama within months of his inauguration? The elite of the former army of Saddam Hussein, also known as the Republican Guard, several well-organized divisions of which simply melted away off the battlefield in Iraq twelve years ago, suddenly came roaring back wearing black pajamas and kaffiyeh and driving long convoys of Toyota Hilux pickup trucks out of the Syrian and Iraqi desert to overwhelm the Shi'a dominated New Iraqi Army. This "Islamic State" army knew exactly where to strike early on in order to acquire as war booty vast numbers of American-supplied up-armored humvees, M1A1 main battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, towed artillery and arsenals of weaponry and ordnance of every description.

Make no mistake, this is a victorious Islamic State that Obama built, and he snatched it from the jaws of Saddam's defeat. Everything that U.S. military forces achieved in Operation Iraqi Freedom between 2003 and 2011, especially the ground-pounding U.S. Marines and Army soldiers, was lost in this weekend's fall of Ramadi and thus the whole of Anbar Province to the "Islamic State."  Yet self-important current and former U.S. Government officials are singing a completely different tune from a completely different reality. It's an insane tune that is sung to Jerry Samuels' 1966 psychotic melody of "They're Coming To Take Me Away - Ha-Haa!"  It's a tune that ignores the fact that Saddam's WMD ever existed, or that much of it went to Syria where Islamic State now also controls vast regions of territory and the military installations where it was secreted away twelve years ago. And what do I hear from my fellow Americans? Nothing but the sound of Crickets.

 

 Col. S.A. Muhammed al-Khlifawi's (a/k/a Haji Bakr) Plan for the Islamic State

13 May 2015: Formerly secret files recently accessed and revealed by Germany's Der Spiegel Online International (a must read) media organization detail the plan for, the creation of the internal political structure for the "Islamic State" designed by an intelligence (al-Mukhabarat) colonel of Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime in Iraq. The 31 pages of meticulously drawn up and executed plans created by Colonel Samir al-Khlifawi, also known by his Islamic nom de guerre Haji Bakr, resulted in the emergence of what the world has known for the past two years as the "Islamic State." 

The "Islamic State" is also without question the direct result of the second gravest strategic error committed by the United States twelve years ago this month (May 2003) during Operation Iraqi Freedom. This error occurred when the Coalition's political overseer in Iraq, American State Department diplomat Paul Bremer, unilaterally disbanded the Iraqi Army against the agreed policy of President George W. Bush to leave it intact. The first gravest error was a political commitment to the American political left made by Barack Hussein Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign, and which resulted in the 2010-2011 military abandonment of Iraq. Both of these contributed to the rise of the Islamic State within a year of the final withdrawal of US combat troops from Iraq.

Paul Bremer's initial action of disbanding the Iraqi Army in May 2003 resulted in instantly placing a quarter-million highly trained Iraqi officers and troops out of a job and immediately ripe for vengeance. The alleged plan for Saddam's military forces to simply melt away off the battle field in the face of overwhelming US military supremacy was a neatly contrived media fallacy. These elite Iraqi troops retired into the desert north and west of Baghdad and aligned themselves with the Al-Qaeda aligned Sunni jihadists under the leadership of Jordanian national Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi and his Islamic State of Iraq (ISI).
 

US and Coalition combat pressure between 2004 and 2010 sent the bulk of the ISI retreating into eastern Syria, especially a Syrian town north of Aleppo known as Tal Rifaat. During all this time, according to the intelligence documents "Haji Bakr" was running the show in deep cover in creating this jihadist "caliphate" from his headquarters in Tal Rifaat while Jordanian Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi (hailing from Zarqa, Jordan) was the face of the jihad in Iraq's westernmost Anbar Province and in the Sunni heartland, the so-called "Sunni triangle" north of Baghdad. "Haji Bakr" was killed in a firefight with other jihadists in January 2014.

As discussed multiple times within Eschatology Today posts, the "Sunni Triangle" is the exact same territory as ancient Assur existed upon when the singing prophet Asaph was inspired to compose the Psalm 83 prophecy. This is the the bedrock eschatological reason that I believe it is important to understand the origin, current existence and future fate of the "Islamic State" and its role in the coming final actions of the Psalm 83 War, especially with respect to the passage of Psalm 83:8. And we can see the direct connection, the Sunni Islamic tribal connection, between "Assur" and the "children of Lot" is plainly evident for all to see. It is as prophetically unambiguous as prophetically unambiguous gets in my opinion.

At the present time a rather significant situation has developed. The Iraqi-Ba'athist creation of the "Islamic State" is potentially a leaderless entity with its architect "Haji Bakr" dead, and the reported severely injured Islamic State Caliph Ibrahim (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi) has apparently also been taken him out of the picture. Caliph Ibrahim's second-in-command, Abu Ala al-Afri, was reported by the Iraqi Defense Ministry via Iraqi state TV today (Wed, 13 May 15) to have been killed in a Coalition air strike on the city of Tal Afar. Another former senior Iraqi officer, General Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, was also recently reported to have been killed in combat against IRGC and Shi'a militias in the Sunni Triangle.  General Al-Douri's reported death may be an Iraqi government ruse or just plain Iranian disinformation. The thing is that at this time the real leadership of Islamic State is a virtual unknown, but it would not surprise me in the least if yet another Jordanian Sunni jihadist emerged with the reigns of power over the "Islamic State."