A Domino Effect Is Operating in the Middle East

Sunni insurgents led by militant jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, ISIL, now have control of Mosul, much of Tikrit and parts of Baiji in northern Iraq. Independent Kurdish military reportedly are prepared to help the al-Maliki government but so far no agreement has been reached. The Kurdish Peshmerga military is in tight control of Kirkuk, the largest of the northern Iraqi oil fields. The Sunni militants also gained entry to the Turkish consulate in Mosul and held captive 48 people, including diplomats, police, consulate employees and three children, according to an official in the office of Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan. Turkish officials trying to free the captives at the consulate in Mosul have been in direct contact with the militants, as well as Iraqi officials and believe that the hostages are safe, said an official in Erdogan's office. Two Iraqi security officials confirmed that Tikrit, the capital of Salahuddin province, was under the control of the ISIL, and said the provincial governor was missing. Tikrit is 80 miles north of Baghdad. There were conflicting reports from Baiji, a town north of Baghdad, between Mosul and Tikrit, that is the site of Iraq’s largest oil refinery, but it seems that Baiji remains in government control, the security officials said. The vice chairman of tbe Nineveh provincial council said the militants entered it, while the town’s mayor, Mohammed Mahmoud, said later that the refinery was working normally and under guard by tribesmen and police. The conflict hasn’t immediately hurt Iraq’s oil exports, though it halted repair work on an export pipeline. The surge in violence across northern and central Iraq, three years after American troops withdrew in 2011, has raised the prospect of a return to sectarian civil war in OPEC’s second-biggest oil producer. Prime Minister al-Maliki’s Shiite-led government is increasingly struggling to retain control of Sunni-majority regions, and his 150,000-strong on-site army in Mosul collapsed in the face of the Islamist advance. An estimated 500,000 Iraqis are fleeing Mosul, which they describe as chaotic. The UN has warned of a humanitarian crisis. Al-Qaida-inspired militants seized Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, expanding their offensive closer to the Iraqi capital as soldiers and security forces abandoned their posts following clashes with the insurgents. The ISIL offensive is part of an attempt to create an Islamic caliphate including Iraq and Syria. The group has now taken control of all of Iraq's Nineveh province as well as parts of Anbar to the west, Kirkuk to the southeast and Salaheddin to the south. ~~~~~ ISIL militants don't pose an imminent threat to the United States but their growing strength is destabilizing the Middle East and will affect US allies in the region, according to a Pentagon spokesman. US officials, in consultation with the Iraqi government, are monitoring the situation in Iraq with concern, according to the Pentagon, which is aware of reports that US military equipment has fallen into the hands of militants but will not confirm that, the spokesman said : "the situation remains fluid and the situation on the ground remains murky." The Pentagon has supplied the Iraqi military with Apache attack helicopters, missiles, rockets, tank rounds, small arms and ammunition. US Special Operations personnel are also training Iraqi security forces in a counter-terrorism exercise in Jordan. ISIL fighters pose "a severe challenge" to Iraqi security forces, the Pentagon spokesman said, "but it is up to them to step up to fight and defeat this enemy." The Iraqi government is scheduled to meet Thursday to decide whether to declare a state of emergency as requested by Prime Minister al-Maliki. That would give the Iraqi government much broader powers in working to halt the ISIL advance, which is now said to be heading south toward Baghdad. Fleeing Mosul residents said the lack of preparedness of the Iraqi military proved the government had abandoned hope of exercising its authority in Mosul even before the insurgents launched their assault. One resident who fled with his family said : "I think Mosul was given up according to a predetermined plan. There was no resistance." Residents say ISIL has had de facto control of Mosul for months and the only difference is that now it is official. Fleeing residents reported that "taxes are imposed on well-known merchants, pharmacists, doctors and contractors. They assassinate people. Their work is mafia-like, well organized." Middle East analyst Guido Steinberg of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin said ISIL had been using Mosul as a base for expansion in the region since it formed as a chapter of al-Qaida a decade ago. The two terrorist organizations split in February over internal differences. Now, ISIL uses money raised in Mosul to fund its campaign against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Steinberg does not believe ISIL has sufficient fighters to occupy the city permanently. But he said the capture of Iraq's strategically important second-largest city is a major symbolic victory that is a direct challenge to the legitimacy of embattled Prime Minister al-Maliki : "It shows how confident they (the fighters) have become in recent weeks," he said. Those who remain in Mosul now express fear of what's coming - and the government's expected push to dislodge them. ~~~~~ Dear readers, there is an old truism that "two wrongs do not make a right." If, as many believe, the President Bush mission to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein's vicious dictatorship was not well-conceived because it failed to take into account the deep tribal and sectarian divides in Iraq, then the decision of President Obama to withdraw all American troops from Iraq in 2011 because of greatly exaggerated differences with the Iraqi government was wrong for the same reason. For the past three years the world has watched as al-Maliki's shiite clan has waged internal war on the Sunni majority, much as Saddam did but perhaps not so brutally. ISIL, seizing the opportunity, has called the Iraqi sunnis to a state of near open revolt and used the unrest to take over large parts of Iraq that border on Syria. Without the restraining presence of US troops and without their support of the Iraqi military, al-Maliki's government has found itself surrounded by a hostile, harassed sunni majority and without the military needed to hold the populace inside lawful bounds. We have also seen President Obama's refusal to act early to aid the Syrian rebels give ISIL the foothold it needed to infiltrate the Syrian rebel ranks and take over much of their territory. We will soon be treated to the painful spectacle of the other homegrown Middle East militant jihadist force, the Taliban, oppressing Afghan civilians as they reconsolidate their position in the country after US troops withdraw at the end of 2014 in another Obama decision point in completely removing US troops from the Middle East, whatever the cost to the region's people and more moderate governments. Two wrongs do not make a right -- and three wrongs piled on top of an initial miscalculation do not rise to foreign policy victory. The Obama wrongs have immeasurably increased the dangerous instability in the Middle East. If the Domino Effect in southeast Asia was exaggerated in the 1970s, it seems to be functioning at an alarming rate in the Middle East today.