Iraq’s powerful Hashed al-Shaabi (PMU) paramilitary force said it was ready to stop a “coup d’etat or rebellion” against the Iraqi government as anti-corruption protests continue to rock the country, like reported by middleeasteye.net.

Overnight, at least 15 people were killed in a Baghdad suburb during clashes between security forces and protestors, according to the Reuters news agency.

Demonstrations, which began on Tuesday with initial calls for an end to corruption and youth unemployment, have since turned violent and morphed into demands for the removal of the government.

According the the interior ministry, 104 Iraqis have been killed as security forces have cracked down on the protests.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Faleh al-Fayyadh, who heads the Iranian-backed PMU, said he wished for an “end to corruption, not the fall of the regime”.

“We know who stands behind these protests. The plan to bring down the regime has failed,” Fayyadh told reporters in Baghdad.

The PMU, which played a vital part in the defeat of the Islamic State group in Iraq, is supposedly in the process of regularising its units into the Iraqi army. However, the process is uncertain, with the militias traditionally taking much direction and support from Tehran.

Fayyadh’s statement echoed comments made by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayotallah Ali Khameini on Monday, in which he accused “enemies” of attempting to drive a wedge between Tehran and Baghdad.

The leaderless protests are the biggest security and political challenge for Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi’s government since it took power a year ago.

In a bid to quell protests, Baghdad has announced a series of reforms to create jobs, boost social welfare and oust corrupt officials.

The Iraqi government has also imposed a blackout by blocking internet access across the country. Local media outlets say their offices have been raided.

Live ammunition against protestors
Abdul Mahdi on Saturday denied claims that his forces had shot live ammunition directly at protestors and said its use of force was during “strict” instances of self-defence.

The interior ministry said that 6,107 protestors had been wounded during protests in Baghdad and across the south of the country.

Iraq is ranked as the world’s 12th most corrupt country, according to Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.

According to official figures, since 2004 almost $450bn of public funds have vanished into the pockets of politicians and businessmen.

In addition, youth unemployment in Iraq is running at around 25 percent, according to the World Bank, in a country where the vast majority of the population is under 30.

The White House said on Sunday (US time) that Turkey will soon invade Northern Syria, renewing fears of a slaughter of Kurdish fighters allied with the US in a yearslong campaign against the Islamic State group, like reported by nzherald.co.nz.

For months, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been threatening to launch a military assault on the Kurdish forces in Northern Syria, many of whom his government considers terrorists. The Kurdish forces bore the brunt of the US-led campaign against Islamic State militants, and Republicans and Democrats have warned that allowing the Turkish attack would send a troubling message to American allies across the globe.

US troops “will not support or be involved in the operation” and “will no longer be in the immediate area,” in Northern Syria, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in an unusual late-Sunday statement that was silent on the fate of the Kurds.

It was not clear whether that meant the US would be withdrawing its 1000 or so troops completely from northern Syria.

The announcement came after a call between President Donald Trump and Erdogan, the White House said.

In December, Trump announced he was withdrawing American troops from Syria but was met with widespread condemnation for abandoning Kurdish allies to the Turkish assault.

The announcement prompted the resignation in protest of then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, and a coordinated effort by then-national security adviser John Bolton to try to protect the Kurds.

The White House statement Sunday said Turkey will take custody of foreign fighters captured in the US-led campaign against the Islamic State group who have been held by the Kurdish forces supported by the US.

Ambassador James Jeffrey, the State Department envoy to the international coalition fighting the Islamic State group, and Trump have said there are about 2500 foreign fighters captured in the fight against the Islamic State that the US wants Europe to take.

Iraqi military intelligence announced on Wednesday that a notorious leader of the Islamic State militant group and four of his aides were killed during a military operation in Salahuddin province, north of Iraq, like reported by iraqinews.com.

“Troops of the Iraqi Military Intelligence Directorate, in cooperation with the 88th brigade of the Popular Mobilization Forces and the Iraqi Air Force, carried out a military operation in Hamrin Mountains in Salahuddin, leaving an IS leader and four of his aides dead,” Alghad Press quoted the directorate as saying in a press statement.

The IS leader was identified as Talib Garw al Azzawy, the directorate said.

The troops also destroyed their terrorist hotbeds, added the statement.

Iraq declared the collapse of Islamic State’s territorial influence in November 2017 with the recapture of Rawa, a city on Anbar’s western borders with Syria, which was the group’s last bastion in Iraq.

IS declared a self-styled “caliphate” in a third of Iraq and neighboring Syria in 2014. A government campaign, backed by a U.S.-led international coalition and paramilitary forces, was launched in 2016 to retake IS-held regions, managing to retake all havens, most notably the city of Mosul, the group’s previously proclaimed capital.

ISIS claimed the responsibility for killing and wounding 5 SDF members in an attack on militia positions in Raqqa countryside, like reported by qasioun-news.com.

Amaq agency indicated that IS fighters destroyed an SDF vehicle using an explosive device, near Haws town in the eastern countryside of Raqqa.

IS continues targeting the Kurdish militia in the northeastern of Syria

The Iranian ambassador to Iraq on Friday threatened to attack U.S. forces in case of an American attack on his country, like reported by yenisafak.com.tr.

In an interview with Iraq-based Dihlah T.V. channel, Iraj Mesjedi said: “The Islamic Republic [of Iran] does not want a war neither with the Americans nor any other country.”

Mesjedi accused the U.S. of intervening in Iraq’s internal affairs and the Middle East as well.

“If the U.S. attacked Iran, we will respond strongly and bombard the American presence in Iraq or anywhere else,” Mesjedi said.

Tensions have been escalating between the U.S. and Iran after President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. in May 2018 from a nuclear pact world powers struck with Iran to curb its nuclear program in exchange for billions of dollars in relief from economic sanctions.

Trump has since embarked on a campaign to scuttle the agreement, including the reimposition of sanctions on Iranian crude oil that were lifted as part of the agreement.

The United States will deploy 200 support personnel to Saudi Arabia to accompany a new Patriot air-defense missile battery and four Sentinel radar systems, the Department of Defense said according to thedefensepost.com.

The new deployment comes two weeks after coordinated projectiles struck two major Saudi crude oil processing plants in an economically damaging attack which the U.S. and Saudi officials have blamed on Iran.

“This deployment will augment the kingdom’s air and missile defense of critical military and civilian infrastructure,” Pentagon spokesperson Jonathan Hoffman said in a Thursday, September 26 statement. “This deployment augments an already significant presence of U.S. forces in the region,”

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper also approved putting additional forces on prepare-to-deploy orders, including two further Patriot batteries and one Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, though no final decision to deploy them has yet been made.

The Houthis took credit for the September 14 oil pipeline attack, and Iran has denied involvement.

But Saudi and U.S. officials have pointed to what appears to be drone and cruise missile debris at the oil refineries, expressing disbelief that Yemen’s rebels could launch such a sophisticated attack. The Saudi government said Wednesday the attack was “undoubtedly sponsored by Iran.”

In a joint statement released on Tuesday, the leaders of the United Kingdom, France and Germany said “Iran bears responsibility” for the attack, adding that there is “no other plausible explanation.”

U.S. defense officials said during a Pentagon press briefing last week that U.S. Central Command was in discussions with Saudi Arabia’s government about “potential ways at mitigating future attacks.”

“It is important to note these steps are a demonstration of our commitment to regional partners, and the security and stability in the Middle East,” Hoffman said in Thursday’s statement.

“This follows the Secretary and Chairman’s extensive outreach to partners in the region, and around the globe. Other countries have called out Iranian misadventures in the region, and we look for them to contribute assets in an international effort to reinforce Saudi Arabia’s defense,” Hoffman said.

In May, President Donald Trump approved a plan to deploy around 1,500 U.S. forces and a Patriot battalion to Saudi Arabia and the administration informed Congress that it was invoking a provision of the Arms Export Control Act that would eliminate Congressional review of the sales of precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Raytheon’s Patriot is a mobile air and missile defense system designed to intercept aircraft, low-flying cruise missiles and tactical ballistic missiles, whereas the THAAD system, developed by Lockheed Martin, targets short- and medium-range ballistic missiles with hit-to-kill interceptor missiles. THAAD is interoperable with Patriot.

Raytheon’s Sentinel is a 360-degree short-range air-defense radar system that may complement existing Saudi air defenses, which have been concentrated in southern Saudi Arabia in response to repeated ballistic missile and drone attacks.

The U.S. Department of State has approved the sale of Patriot and THAAD to Saudi Arabia in deals potentially worth over $15 billion.

Mount Qarachogh, Iraq – A long mountain that juts from the flat plains like a knife today separates Kurdish Peshmerga forces and the Iraqi security forces. This is a result of clashes that took place in October 2017, almost two years ago, following the Kurdistan Regional Government’s referendum. Since the clashes there have been on-again-off-again relations between the Iraqi division commanders and their Kurdish counterparts, working together through the US-led Coalition Operation Inherent Resolve, which is supposed to be fighting and defeating ISIS, like reported by jpost.com.

We’d heard rumors that ISIS was still operating below this mountain, called Mount Qarachogh, since last year. The members of ISIS who were not killed during the 2014-2017 war in which the group was slowly defeated in parts of Iraq have gone to ground. These are hard core fighters or hangers-on, men for whom ISIS offers a ready-made escape from the drudgery of life and a place to go to resist what they see as an Iranian-backed Iraqi government. These ISIS networks have existed for more than a decade in one form of another, going back to the insurgency against US forces after 2003. These were a collection of jihadists, Al-Qaeda, local Ba’athists, and everything in between, as well as foreign fighters. When ISIS was powerful, at its peak in the fall of 2014, it attracted some 50,000 foreign volunteers in Iraq and Syria and ran a kind of state built on Sunni Islamist supremacy and the genocide of minorities.

But ISIS today is quite different. To understand how different one has to go to Mount Qarachogh or other areas. The plains below the mountain are only an hour drive from the bustling and modern capital of the Kurdistan Region, Erbil. From the bright lights of the bgi city the road to Makhmour, near the mountain, takes on through streets lined with shops, mechanics and men selling household furniture. Then it goes through industrial sites and finally fields of oil drums and oil products. After all, this is northern Iraq, a large percentage of the world’s oil sits underground here. This is civilization in reverse, from the city to the infrastructure that makes it, to the agriculture fields that feed the people, to the caves where ISIS haunts the landscape.

So we drive along this road, passing the new oil company properties, the high fences and gates and signs with the foreign workers ensconced inside in sea containers or some other barracks-like environment. Finally, the road gives way to a giant traffic circle with a Kurdish flag flying in the wind above it. The names of the Peshmerga fighters who died fighting ISIS from 2014-2017 are engraved here. These are the martyrs the region sent to stop the black flag. In those dark days of 2014 ISIS sought to break through this area with its horse of trucks, mounted with machine guns, and Humvees captured from the Iraqi army. It lugged artillery up to Makhmour, in the distance. Only the sacrifice of Kurdish Peshmerga rushed to stop the tide, and then some support from the US air force, stopped the Blitzkrieg. And then the Kurds settled in the for the long haul, like the first world war, manning 1,000 miles of trenches against ISIS.

Today the area near the Kurdish flag is manned by Sector 6 of the Peshmerga, troops who take pride in their 150km of frontline. To get to their frontline is a bit of an ardous road to a new cement company and then up 18 switchbacks to the top of the mountain. The mountain is desert khaki, and in the sunset it has a bit of haze around it from oil fires in the distance. It’s surreal and beautiful. Good hiking here, if it weren’t for the war and the ISIS living below it in caves. What has happened here is that ISIS retreated from Mosul and Hawija and when it got to the Sunni Arab villages to the east of the mountain it changed into civilian clothes and put its ordnance in caves and hideouts and waited. It waited as the behemoth of the Iraqi army swept over the plains to the east. The Kurdish Peshmerga watched all this. They watched the Iraqi army, trained by the Americans, come and go. And then ISIS emerged. The Iraqi forces set up checkpoints and they brought with them the Shi’ite paramilitaries called Hashd al-Shaabi. The Hashd, or Popular Mobilization Units, are a mix of groups, some of them linked closely with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. And together the Iraqi army and the PMU spread out along the landscape east of here and the Kurds manned the mountain and the areas to the west toward Erbil.

The result of the Kurdistan referendum and the Iraqi army’s advance into Kirkuk south led to bitterness among Kurds who resented losing Kirkuk which they had defended from 2014-2017. There was anger because dozens died in the clashes and because Iraq ordered the region’s airport closed. The Kurdistan region was isolated, punished for daring just to vote for independence. European countries who enjoy independence condemned them. America, which fought its own war of independence in the 1770s, condemned the Kurds for just wanting some of the basic things that people in Boston or Tucson take for granted. And the Iraqi army and Iranian-backed militias seized the opportunity.

But that is in the past today. Lasting anger remains, but ISIS is a common enemy. The larger result of 2017 is that there is a kind of no-man’s land in some areas between the Iraqi forces and Kurdish Peshmerga. On the mountain this is readily clear. No Iraqi flag can be seen but far far in the distance there are supposedly Iraqi forces. ISIS knows this. It knows this land. Like the Vietminh all it has to do is crouch in the jungle of caves here and wait. Its men go out at night to the villages. Over the years it has launched attacks and set up fake checkpoints and harassed the Iraqi forces. It has all sorts of tricks up its sleeve, learned from years of fighting like this. For the locals who joined ISIS this is their landscape and the PMU or Iraqi forces don’t know the area. A man who knows his village, his wadi, the crags and caves nearby, can easily vanish into them. And his cousins will help him.

It appears ISIS feels comfortable here. Their members, at least according to the Kurdish Peshmerga who watch them through binoculars, come and go from the caves and wadis below. They can be seen, three figures sitting near a dry river bed, walking back to their mountain redoubt. They don’t seem like they are doing much besides getting water and sitting around. They are biding their time. They have networks in the plains below stretching south to Hawija and into Hamreen mountains and other areas. The Iraqi army has launched a five phased offensive throughout the country to crush these remnants. But it is like other offensives since 2017.

Each time the offensive comes and goes. The Peshmerga on the mountain above watch these activities. They have not been attacked recently. They do not move away from their Kurdistan Coordination Line, as the Americans call it, the KCL. It’s their line, they man it and defend it. There are no visible special forces here, no complicated operations rooms where interesting raids are planned with helicopters and drones and mortar fire. Maybe that exists, somewhere. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe the reality of the war on the remnants of ISIS is that Iraq is a large country and in many areas the enemy can hide out and wait and finding them is difficult. Maybe the reality is, as rumors and details appear to confirm, that the Iraqi army has logistical problems in maintenance of its equipment and its intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets, including UAVs and planes, are not being used in some areas, or used at all. Maybe the reality is that the Iranian-backed militias spend more time trying to just exert control over civilian areas, with secret prisons and creating a business out of their new occupation, that they don’t go out and root out ISIS. And so the enemy waits and watches.

The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) is likely preparing to free its loyal fighters and followers from prisons and displacement camps across Syria and Iraq, like reported by iswresearch.blogspot.com.

ISIS Emir Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi commanded his supporters and soldiers to take action in a speech released on September 16, 2019, asking his followers how they could “accept to live while Muslim women are suffering in the camps of diaspora and the prisons of humiliation under the power of the Crusaders?” ISIS is already active (and raising funds via encrypted channels) in displacement camps in Northern Syria. It is likely organizing similar activity in Iraq. ISIS likely intends to mount a campaign of prison breaks and raids across Iraq and Syria. ISIS (then al Qaeda in Iraq) used a similar campaign called ‘Breaking the Walls’ to fuel its reconstitution in 2012-2013.

The Al-Hawl Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) Camp in Northern Syria represents a particular risk. The UN established Al-Hawl Camp to hold refugees from Iraq in 1991. The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) reopened the camp in April 2016 to hold civilians displaced during operations against ISIS in Eastern Syria. Al-Hawl Camp has since become severely overpopulated after more than 63,000 ISIS family members and civilians surrendered to the SDF in Eastern Deir ez-Zour Province between December 2018 and April 2019. ISW warned in May 2019 that ISIS would attempt to aid its recovery by exploiting conditions in Al-Hawl Camp and engineering breakouts of detained fighters and displaced persons in Northern Syria. ISIS loyalists are already actively recruiting and fundraising in Al-Hawl Camp.

Pro-ISIS social media channels (likely affiliated with individual supporters) began distributing propaganda materials from Al-Hawl Camp in mid-July 2019. Female ISIS members released a video pledging loyalty to Baghdadi inside Al-Hawl Camp on July 15. Pro-ISIS social media channels later shared a video of female ISIS members and their children raising a homemade ISIS flag over Al-Hawl Camp on July 16. The channels also shared videos of children inside Al-Hawl Camp chanting pro-ISIS slogans on July 22. The exact origin of these channels is unclear. Their posts nonetheless allow ISIS to demonstrate the continued allegiance and unrepentant attitude of its local followers to its global audience.

Supporters of ISIS launched two campaigns on Telegram to raise funds and advertise the group’s presence in Al-Hawl. One of the accounts has also published calls to liberate the camp’s population.

Justice for Sisters. ISIS supporters created a Telegram channel titled ‘Justice for Sisters’ in June 2019 that posted in Arabic, English, and German. The account called for donations to support women in Al-Hawl Camp via PayPal and provided tips to avoid detection. Telegram removed the channel in July 2019. It is unclear if the campaign continues through other channels or social media platforms.

Kafel. ISIS supporters created a series of Telegram channels titled ‘Kafel’ in English, Arabic, and French on July 15 with a stated purpose to “help families of the Mujahidin in the Sham.” The channel claimed on August 10 that it provided new toys for children in Al-Hawl Camp. The account published alleged letters from female ISIS members in Al-Hawl Camp. One such letter called for Muslims around the world to “wake up” and help their “sisters” on August 9. Posts also called for Muslims to break female ISIS members out of Al-Hawl Camp. Kafel English released a propaganda image depicting an imprisoned female on September 18, citing religious text that calls for Muslims to “free the prisoners.”

Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a deadly attack near the Iraqi Shi’ite holy city of Karbala, the group’s Amaq news agency said according to ekurd.net.

A bus bombing killed at least 12 people and wounded five people at a checkpoint north of Karbala, south of Baghdad, a statement from Iraqi security services said.

Two police spokesmen in the area said an explosive device planted on the bus detonated at a northern entrance to the city, setting fire to the vehicle.

Security forces said on Saturday they had arrested a man suspected of placing the explosives on the bus before it disembarked.

“The security forces, in coordination with the citizens, were able to arrest the perpetrator of yesterday’s blast,” Iraqi prime minister Adel Abdul Mahdi said in a press release.

Iraq declared victory against ISIS in late 2017 after three years of a brutal fightback against the extremist Sunni group, which had specifically targeted Shi’ite gatherings.

Such attacks in the mostly Shi’ite Muslim south of Iraq have been rare in recent years, especially after the territorial defeat of Islamic State in Iraq in 2017 and the routing of its al Qaeda predecessors in the mid-2000s.

Militant sleeper cells have continued to carry out hit-and-run attacks against government positions across the country, particularly at checkpoints.

The deadliest incident this year was a stampede earlier this month in Karbala that left more than 30 pilgrims dead and dozens injured.

Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from Iraq, Iran and as far as India had been gathering in the southern city this month to mark the Shi’ite holy day of Ashura.

Iraq is expecting millions more Shi’ite pilgrims to arrive at the end of October for the annual Arbaeen commemoration, which marks the end of the 40-day mourning period for the seventh-century killing of Imam Hussein by the forces of the Caliph Yazid.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei approved last weekend’s attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure, CBS News reported, citing an unnamed US official.

The report came after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, flying to the kingdom, called Saturday’s strikes which knocked out half of Saudi crude output an “act of war.”

CBS, without giving specifics about the US official or how they obtained the information, said Khamenei approved the attack only on condition that it be carried out in a way to deny Iranian involvement.

US officials quoted said the most damning evidence against Iran is unreleased satellite photos showing Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps making preparations for the attack at Iran’s Ahvaz air base.

The significance of those photos only became clear later, the report said.

“We were caught completely off guard,” the network quoted a US official as saying.

Iranian state media said Tehran had written to Washington through the Swiss embassy on Monday, denying any role in the attacks and warning it would respond to any action against it.

Tehran-supported Huthi rebels in the kingdom’s southern neighbour Yemen have claimed responsibility, but both Washington and Riyadh have ruled that out.

A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, earlier told AFP the US administration has concluded the attack involved cruise missiles from Iran, and said evidence would be presented at the UN General Assembly next week.

Vice President Mike Pence reiterated President Donald Trump’s comments that “we don’t want war with anybody, but the United States is prepared.”

Trump last year pulled out of a hard-won deal between Tehran and international powers that froze Iran’s nuclear program in return for the lifting of sanctions.

Washington reimposed crippling economic penalties, including against Iran’s vital oil sector, and Tehran began taking steps back from the deal.