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Stop ISIS. Act decisively. By Heine Strømdahl, 05-05-15, edited 06-05-15.

The current plan to defeat ISIS is a diseaster for the region and the world. It is a plan/strategy that depends much on the "Iraqi Army". US Marines liberated Falleluja in 2004 and could do the same in Mosul in a week or two. But the current White House administration doesn't want to fight open battles and liberate - say Mosul - with its own US troops, instead President Obama is sitting in his comfortable stuffed chair in the White House and waiting and hoping (and perhaps even praying) that someday the Iraqi Army finally will rise to its feet and start liberating Iraq from the claws of ISIS. In the meantime this miserable loser's strategy to defeat ISIS - ”Let's wait and hope and pray that one day somehow ”The Iraqi Army” will move into action ” - carries a high human cost and allows ISIS to 1: Carefully select and train hundreds or thousands of children to be suicide-bombers. 2: Carefully select and train many women to be the same – remember ISIS has female brigades too. 3: Kill lots of people in the areas subjected to their evil domination. And by the way: Decapitation and torture still seems to be very popular among ISIS henchmen. And there is no reason to believe that ISIS suddenly will bring a halt to these devilish practices. 4: Oppres, murder and manipulate/brainwash people in the areas they control. Not to mention all the other kind of miseries that follows with an occupation by such an entity. The most recent example is the reported, yet still uncomfirmed killing of 300 Yazidis i At the same time this passive stance allows for the stockpiles of ”The Iraqi Army” to be slowly filled. But these weapons will never be used against ISIS. (They may however one day end up being used against the kurds – in a scenario similar to that which took place in august 2014: ISIS ”stood at the gates of Erbil” with advanced US weaponry in its hands. Only after a phone call between US Vice President Joe Biden and Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barzani on the night of august 6 did President Obama finally authorize airstrickes. ii ) Why do you say that these weapons will never be used against ISIS? Are you out of your mind? .. Well, to make a point you may exaggerate... But here is the problem – from my perspective : ”The Iraqi Army” isn't much of an army. It is a sham, a circus, a tragic and miserable spectacle. They will not fight against ISIS. They WILL not fight against ISIS. They shy away//run away from fighting if they can see any possibity to do so – and the few battles they actually have fought against ISIS have been with mixed results – or even worse perhaps: they have performed poorly on the battlefield. It seems to me that the current US policy of propping up the failed Baghdad government – which insists on Iraqi unity - and at the same time filling up the iraqi Army's weapons stockpiles, not only is naive, it is a sad example of misplaced trust and a disturbing and dangerous development. The nation of Iraq was - to a large extent - created by European powers after World War I and is in reality ”an artificial nation” - Scott Anderson.

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”For nearly 400 years prior to World War I, the lands of Iraq existed as three distinct semi-autonomous provinces, or vilayets, within the Ottoman Empire. In each of these vilayets, one of the three religious or ethnic groups that predominated in the region – Shiite, Sunni and Kurd – held sway, with the veneer of Ottoman rule resting atop a complex network of local clan and tribal alliances. This delicate system was undone by the West, and for an all-too-predictable reason: oil.” Quote: Scott Anderson in Smithsonian.com. iii Iraqi unity is a grotesque illusion, it has never really existed - or if it has existed, it has only been secured through ruthless oppression and killings of kurds and shias and sunnis. As happened under Saddam Hussein. The harsh reality is that ” The borders of tomorrow's Middle East will be settled by force, as they always have been.” Quote: Sean McMeekin, professor of history at Bard College, in an Op-Ed in LATimes. iv Yet US vice President Joe Biden recently said that ” We want what Iraqis want: a united, federal, and democratic Iraq that is defined by its own constitution where power is shared among all Iraqi communities, where a sovereign government exercises command and control over the forces in the field. And that’s overwhelmingly what the Iraqis want.” v Is this really what the Iraqis want? But even if this is what most Iraqis want, it is about as realistic as world unity in one unified world country. Questions to be answered honestly: Do they have any real leadership in ”The Iraqi Army”? A leadership the soldiers trust? Do they have any fighting spirit at all? When will ”The Iraqi Army” finally be ready for real battle? In the year 2035? In 2045? In 6800? Nobody seems to know. And we haven't even begun to talk about Syria. But one thing we do know: Nobody in the Obama administration is talking candidly and honestly about it - they are still dreaming and hoping and waiting and praying for a resurrection of the dead Iraqi Army. What happens in the meantime? ISIS continues it's reign of terror in the areas under their control, jihadists and extremists from all over the world are emboldened by the relative succes of ISIS: they flock to Syria, they lay plans for terrorattacks in Western cities, they seek to carve out new territory in countries in Africa, they kill over 150.000 christians a year according to OSCE - The European Parliament recently passed a resolution which among others stated that ”Christians are.. the most persecuted religious minority in the world” vi – and we continue to have millions of people living as refugees or IDPs in Iraq and Syria and the surrounding countries, while hundreds or thousands of other refugees continue to seek towards the borders of Europe on a daily basis. --------------

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On the Syria/Iraq battlemap I can only see two bright spots. The first are the kurds in Rojava in North Syria: Their forces are equipped with very simple means and assisted only with the limited effects of airstrickes. Yet the men and women of the YPG/YPJ are still fighting ferociously and they are actually defeating ISIS and pushing them further away from their region. They are trustworthy partners – but largely ignored by the West (to our great shame) - and they need our help. The second bright spot are the kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan, they are also fighting and winning, and they need our help too.

Picture: Kurdish YPG fighter in Rojava in Syria.

Picture: Kurdistan Region Prime Minister, Nechirvan Barzani received the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, in Erbil, Iraq. Januare 2015.

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”Europe has to stop hiding beneath the bedcovers” Philip Stephens, in Financiel Times, February 20, 2014.

”In the last few months we have watched in horror as ISIS sympathizers have attacked innocent people, businesses and governments in at least the United States, Canada, France, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Belgium. Even as we’ve watched wanna-be jihadists travel to and from America and Europe on western passports to fight in the ISIS jihad themselves. Their propaganda machine is causing mega-corporations like Google and Twitter to struggle to keep up with the amount of jihadist propaganda showing up online every single day, and, shockingly, one study recently noted that one-in-five Arabic language tweets in the United States and the United Kingdom referencing ISIS were in “support” of the organization. The fact is, we will deal with this crisis there or we will deal with it here. Not dealing with it seriously is simply not an option. We expected Syria would fix itself as well. And what did it get us? ISIS.”

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Stop ISIS. Act decisively

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Sign today here: https://www.change.org/p/number-10-downing-street-barackobama-jean-claude-juncker-stop-isis-act-decisively?just_created=true

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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32565809

ii Senior Kurdistan Official: IS Was at Erbil’s Gates; Turkey Did Not Help. http://rudaw.net/english/interview/16092014 iii http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/disintegration-iraqi-state-has-its-roots-world-war-i-180951793/?no-ist iv http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0322-mcmeekin-middle-east-sykes-picot-boundaries-20150322story.html

v Read more: http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/texttrans/2015/04/20150409314606.html#ixzz3ZGiKl5V6

vi whereas according to OSCE data the number of Christians killed every year is over 150 000; http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=MOTION&reference=B8-2015-0369&language=EN https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/08/07/statement-president vii http://cabinet.gov.krd/a/d.aspx?s=040000&l=12&a=52855 viii http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/03/16/has-christian-holocaust-begun-

when-will-west-wake-up-to-isis-threat/

, by Johnnie

Moore, 1603-2015.

ix Vasiliki Scurfield: See https://www.change.org/p/number-10-downing-street-barack-obama-jean-claude-junckerstop-isis-act-decisively? recruiter=288981129&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=share_facebook_respo nsive&utm_term=des-lg-share_petition-custom_msg&fb_ref=Default