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Thousands of IS fighters have retreated to desert of Anbar, where they are launching deadly attacks against vulnerable non-combat troops Having secured the towns and villages of Anbar province, and with commanders focused on the battle for the city of Mosul, Iraqi forces are now having to contend with a new Islamic State (IS) group tactic – desert ambushes. Military sources say that beneath the sand, thousands of IS militants are hiding in underground tunnels and bunkers, from which they are launching a campaign to unnerve and disorientate the Iraqi army, already weary after years of fighting. On Sunday, at...

Document ISGQ-2003-0044 ISGQ-2003-00044390 390 contains a November/27/2002 Top Secret and Urgent memo from the Baath Party Command in Fallujah and in relation to another letter from the office of the Presidential Secretariat (Saddam Hussein Personal Secretary) and it is addressed to all the People Commands in the Anbar Province (The Western Desert) asking them to watch for Americans or Zionists (Israelis) forces that can potentially bury prohibited materials, WMD, in the Anbar province so it will frame Iraq and find an excuse to punish Iraq according to the memo. The Anbar province which is the hot bed of the terrorists...

Anbar Province and the Iraq Study Group Report Iraqi Politicians and Tribal Sheihks are concerned about the implications of the Iraq Study Group report The release of the Iraq Study Group report, a 79 point plan to address Iraq, created by a blue ribbon panel lead by former Secretary of State James Baker and Representative Lee Hamilton, has implications far beyond domestic U.S. politics. I've been asked numerous times how this report has effected the U.S. troops serving in Iraq. The answer is very little. Most shrug their shoulders at the news reports, and haven't had time to digest the...

Iraqi forces took parts of Heet, one of largest population centres in Anbar province still held by IS, but other areas remain under group's control Iraqi forces freed about 1,500 prisoners from an underground Islamic State group jail during a battle to retake a western town, officials said on Saturday. Security forces recaptured parts of Heet, which was one of the largest population centres in Anbar province still held by IS, but other areas remain under the group’s control. "During their advance to liberate and clear the town of Heet from the [IS] organisation, security forces discovered a large prison,"...

The Islamic State overran an Iraqi military base and killed dozens of soldiers and policemen in an attack near Fallujah in Anbar province, where the government has been trying to dislodge the group for the past year.In a newly released video, the Islamic State showcases its forces overrunning a military outpost near the city. The video shows jihadists attacking the base with armored personnel carriers packed with explosives and a ground assault team. The Islamic State seized tanks, armored personnel carriers, Humvees, and other vehicles. The bodies of dozens of dead Iraqi security personnel are displayed.The exact date the assault...

But the sheik’s fortunes began to decline after the last U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq in 2011. Many of the Anbari fighters, known as the Sons of Iraq, were never paid by the Iraqi government, then led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. What’s more, Sheik Ahmad told me in 2012 that his contacts with the U.S. government stopped after the last troops pulled out. The sheik still publicly aligned himself with Maliki and the central government, even thought that government was failing to provide basic security in western Iraq. These failures by the Baghdad government created the conditions for the...

The White House is reportedly planning a shift in strategy in Iraq that would see hundreds of American military trainers deployed to help retake Ramadi and the delay of long-held plans to drive the Islamic State from Mosul. Six months after US forces began training Iraqi troops to take on the jihadist fighters, a string of defeats on the battlefield has prompted the Obama administration into a recalibration of its plans. The American military hopes to build up enough well-trained and well-equipped Iraqi forces to retake the city of Ramadi, which fell to Isil in mid-May. The plan would see...

Iraqi troops and Shiite militias recaptured key parts of the refinery town of Beiji from ISIS Sunday, a general said. The victory comes a day after Iraqi forces were able to withstand two attacks from ISIS in the hotly contested Anbar province Saturday. The commander of the Interior Ministry's Quick Reaction Forces, Brig. Gen. Nassir al-Fartousi, told state TV that the Iraqi flag was raised on a local government building in Beiji and that troops were advancing to other areas, without elaborating. The spokesman of Joint Operations Command, Brig. Gen. Saad Maan Ibrahim, said the security forces "are now controlling"...

Baghdad, Iraq (CNN)ISIS has closed off a dam to the north of the Iraqi city of Ramadi -- seized by its forces last month -- cutting water supplies to pro-government towns downstream and making it easier for its fighters to attack forces loyal to Baghdad, local officials and residents said. ISIS militants are opening only two or three of the dam's 26 gates on the Euphrates River for brief periods daily, the officials and residents said. The head of the security council in the town of Khalidiyah, Sheikh Ibrahim Khalaf al-Fahdawi, and two residents of the nearby town of Habbaniya...

A look at the Arab press in recent days gives the impression that the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria is on the verge of elimination. But before we pop open the champagne, it’s worth recalling that Assad’s rule has been in the same situation in the past. The old Syria has been slowly falling apart for four years and two months, and as far back as July 2012, following the bombing of the Syrian army’s headquarters in Damascus, commentators (including this writer) predicted it would be a matter of days, weeks, or months at most before Assad’s fall. But...

GAZIANTEP, Turkey — Syrian rebels appealed for U.S. airstrikes to counter a new offensive by the Islamic State in the northern province of Aleppo that could reshape the battlefield in Syria. The surprise assault, launched over the weekend, opened a new front in the multi-pronged war being waged by the extremist group across Iraq and Syria, and it underscored the Islamic State’s capacity to catch its enemies off guard. The push — which came on the heels of the miltants’ capture of the Syrian city of Palmyra and the western Iraqi city of Ramadi late last month — took them...

Syrian insurgents rushed reinforcements into combat on Tuesday against rival Islamic State militants who have seized crucial territory near the northern city of Aleppo in recent days, building on the momentum the group has achieved in other battlefield successes in Syria and Iraq. Amid increased fears that Aleppo could be the next big prize to fall to the Islamic State in the latest twist to the four-year-old Syrian civil war, Syrian opposition leaders accused the government of essentially collaborating with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, by bombing other rival insurgent groups, even though the government and...

"We have very little food and ammunition, and we can't withstand the suicide bombers, snipers and rockets....All of us are thinking of committing suicide - Iraqi Federal Police Officer. Against this cataclysmic backdrop of bombs falling in Sana’a and with ISIS literally at the gates of the major Iraqi city of Ramadi, many US energy and security experts were shocked to hear President Barack Obama ignore the danger in a recent keynote speech in which he pinpointed global warming as an equally big risk for Americans. “Climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our...

Major General Qassem Soleimani, the commanding officer of Qods Force, the special operations branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, has reportedly been photographed in Iraq’s Anbar province alongside Shiite militiamen. Additionlly, Soleimani was photographed with the head of the Popular Mobilization Committee, who is listed by the US as a terrorist, and the leader of the Imam Ali Brigade, an Iranian-backed Shiite terror group. The photographs of Soleimani in Anbar and Baghdad were published by Haidar Sumeri, an Iraqi who is supportive of Soleimani and the Iranian-suported Shiite militias that make up the Popular Mobilization Committee. The Long War...

Baghdad (AFP) - Iraqi forces retook an area west of Ramadi on Saturday as they pressed their operation aimed at sealing off the jihadists who captured the city two weeks ago, commanders said. "The Iraqi army and the Hashed al-Shaabi liberated the Anbar traffic police building in the 5K area west of Ramadi after a fierce fight," an army officer said. Hashed al-Shaabi ("popular mobilisation" in Arabic) is an umbrella for mostly Shiite militia and volunteers that has played a key role in Iraq's fight against the Islamic State (IS) group. "The battle forced IS to withdraw from the building,...

I was at the Phoenix mosque rally briefly last night and caught sight of its organizer, retired Marine Jon Ritzheimer. He was sweating, exhausted and removing his body armor outside of the vehicle he was in a hurry to get into to leave. I introduced myself. As we started talking, we both quickly realied that we had been in Ramadi with the same unit (me as an embedded filmmaker) at about the same time, which is to say, both of us have been in the streets battling Al Qaeda/ISIS jihadis long before doing a civil version of it this night...

Odierno Opens Door To U.S. Troops Embedding With Iraqi Security Forces By Douglas Ernst - The Washington Times - Friday, May 29, 2015 Gen. Raymond Odierno, the U.S. Army chief of staff, introduced the possibility of U.S. military personnel embedding with Iraqi security forces during battle. “Embedded advisers, with increased risk to our soldiers, probably would make this more effective,” the general said Thursday, Defense One reported. “You have to weigh the risk versus the outcome.” Iraqi security forces were dealt an embarrassing defeat May 17 when the Islamic State group took control of Ramadi. A series of coordinated suicide...

Syrian regime strikes against ISIS in and around the ancient city of Palmyra have failed to halt their advance towards Damascus, a monitor said on Sunday.The intense strikes came after the fall of Palmyra, named Tadmor in Arabic, to the militants last week. But so far, the strikes had failed to halt the militants, who advanced towards the capital Damascus and overran major phosphate mines about 70 kilometers south of Palmyra.“ISIS has made further progress on the Tadmor-Damascus highway and grabbed the Khnaifess phosphate mines and nearby houses,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network...

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” – W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming” Things are starting to collapse, abroad and at home. We all sense it, even as we bicker over who caused it and why. ISIS took Ramadi last week. That city once was a Bastogne to the brave Americans who surged to save it in 2007 and 2008. ISIS, once known at the White House as the “Jayvees,” were certainly “on the run” — right into the middle of that strategically important city. On a smaller scale, ISIS is...

We all know Bush’s Iraq War, but we don’t know much about Obama’s Iraq War. Republicans fight wars. Democrats engage in police actions, impose No-Fly Zones and provide security for humanitarian missions. They don’t do anything as vulgar as fight wars. That would be warmongering.