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Two battalions of Iran’s (93% Shia) Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are reported to be operating in Iraq (63% Shia) to combat...(ISIS) attacks against the Iraqi government. In late June 2014,...ISIS changed its name to the Islamic State and said it would rule...as a Sunni Muslim caliphate overseen by...Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The Islamic State, an al-Qaeda offshoot, has seized... northern Iraq since June 2014.
...August 3 2014... death of IRGC Colonel Kamal Shirkhani, who was killed in a mortar attack by Islamic State militants... in the city of Samarra, Iraq.
“When the Islamic State reached Shi’ite areas in Iraq, the Revolutionary Guards had forces there who fought them...A number of them were killed,”
...Iraqi security forces have “largely dissolved” as fighters against the Islamic State advance on Baghdad...
...Iran has now mobilized up to 20,000 Iraqi militiamen from groups it funded and trained. Those same militiamen had attacked U.S. troops ...
June 11 2014...during the battle at Mosul...Iraqi security forces outnumbered ISIS fighters by ...15 to one...government troops suffered...“a dramatic collapse of morale.”
...Iraqi Prime Minister...al-Maliki on June 11 2014...said, “The commanders who retreated and wavered must be punished.”
After...ISIS seized...Mosul...150,000...fled...ISIS...issued an edict expelling...Christians who...ISIS...destroyed Christian and Jewish religious artifacts...
David Curry, president/CEO of Open Doors USA:...
According to Open Doors, the Islamic State gave Christians an ultimatum...July 19-20 (2014): 1) Stay....convert to Islam; 2) Pay Islamic tax (...too much for most families...); 3) Leave Mosul taking nothing but their clothes. Christians who stayed would be executed.
...July 14 2014...Iraqi army... desertions in June 2014 during...fall of Mosul ... government has relied heavily on Shiite militias and volunteers ...
Saddam Hussein, King Abdullah II of Jordan, and Egypt’s Anwar El Sadat. All of these rulers were tolerant toward Christians and other religious minorities living in their countries....anti-Western revolutionaries who took...Iran in 1979 established ... Shia ... government intolerant of...religious nonconformity.
...ISIS is allied with rebels fighting Assad in Syria who have received U.S. support...
Senator ...Paul (R-Ky.)...aware of...connection between...anti-Assad rebels and...ISIS...May 21, 2013...“...You will be funding...allies of al-Qaeda.”
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BEIRUT—...U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
...Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, an offshoot of al Qaeda, rapidly gaining territory...
Iran has invested...resources over the past decade to ensure Iraq emerged... a strong Shiite-led state. The so-called Shiite crescent—stretching from Iran (93% SHIA) to Iraq (63% SHIA), Lebanon (41% SHIA) and Syria (15% SHIA) —was forged ...
Two Guards' units...were tasked with protecting Baghdad...
Iraq's military was trained and equipped by the U.S...in several cities...Iraqi soldiers surrendered without a fight....
...U.S. opposes Iran's support for Syrian (15% SHIA) President Bashar al-Assad...
...Assad regime...is an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Shiite militia trained by Iran, weapons and cash ...flow from Iran to Syria via Iraq.
...ISIS,...urged the group's Sunni fighters to march toward..."filth-ridden" Karbala and "... city of polytheism" Najaf,... "settle...differences" with Iraq's Shiite PM al-Maliki.
Iran's view:...sectarian battle between...Islam-Sunni and Shiite...proxy battle between...Saudi Arabia (3% SHIA) and Iran (93% SHIA).
"...Islamic Republic of Iran, won't tolerate...violence and terrorism…. We will fight...violence and extremism and terrorism..."
...short-term,...crisis in Iraq will only strengthen ...Iran ...
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...160 computer flash sticks revealed the inside story of Isis...that came from nowhere with nothing to having Syrian oil fields and control of Iraq's second city...Isis swept through...northern and central Iraq over three stunning days... three divisions of the Iraqi army shed their uniforms and fled.
The capitulation of the military ...allowed Kurdish forces to seize ...Kirkuk...
... "Before Mosul, their total...assets were $875m ...Afterwards, with the money they robbed from banks...military supplies they looted, they...add another $1.5bn..."
ISIS leaders had been meticulously chosen. ...top tier – all battle-hardened veterans of the insurgency against US forces nearly a decade ago ...strategic acumen of Isis was impressive – so too its attention to detail. "They had itemised everything...Down to the smallest detail."
...Isis secured massive cash...from...oilfields of eastern Syria, which it...commandeered in late 2012...some of which it...sold...to the Syrian regime... reaped windfalls from smuggling...raw materials pillaged from the crumbling state...antiquities from archaeological digs.
...in less than three years, Isis had grown from a ragtag band...to...the most...rich and capable terror group in the world.
"...They had done this all themselves. There was no state actor at all behind them, which we had long known. They don't need one."...
Foreign jihadists, many from Europe...stormed into Mosul and have spread through central Iraq...
..."We knew they had infiltrated the ministries..."
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(CNN)...al Baghdadi, who has transformed a few terror cells...into the most dangerous militant group in the world.
The ISIS has thrived...during...civil war in Syria and...security vacuum that followed ... departure of...American forces from Iraq.
...aim of ISIS:...create an Islamic state across Sunni areas of Iraq and in Syria.
...2006, al Qaeda in Iraq -- under...al-Zarqawi -- ...brutal treatment of civilians as it tried to ignite a sectarian war against...Shia....bombing...an important Shia shrine in Samarra, which sparked retaliatory attacks...moderate Sunni tribal leaders nearly destroyed the group.
... Iraqi forces ...lack of professional soldiers...division of military units along sectarian lines...lack of...equipment ...such as attack helicopters and reconnaissance capabilities.
...ISIS exploited...perception among...Sunnis that they were being persecuted by the Shia...government led by ...al-Maliki...arrest of senior Sunni political figures...suppression of Sunni dissent...
...Baghdadi...Ph.D. in Islamic studies from a university in the capital....He formed his...group in...Samarra...Diyala areas, where his family was from, before joining al Qaeda in Iraq....served four years in...U.S. prison camp...developed a network of contacts and honed his ideology .... released ... 2009 ...
ISIS wants...Islamic...state, stretching across the region.
ISIS...Sharia law in the towns... Boys and girls must be separated at school; women must wear...full veil...brutal justice, music is banned...fast is enforced during Ramadan.
...al Baghdadi focused on secrecy ...money....Extortion... robbing banks and gold shops was another.
...suicide attacks...assassinations...recruitment of Sunni tribal fighters... prison raids that liberated hundreds of fighters...attacks on police patrols...large-scale attacks aimed at capturing...territory.
...Al Baghdadi...avoiding the alienation of powerful tribal figures....One of the group ... al-Adnani ... : "...our mistakes, we do not deny...we will continue to make mistakes as long as we are humans. God forbid that we commit mistakes deliberately."...it is trying to win favor through...social welfare programs ...recreational activities for children ... food and fuel to the needy ... clinics.
...Syrian President Bashar al-Assad lost control over large parts of the North and the long border with Iraq...ISIS...could build a rear base where it could recruit foreign fighters, organize and escape from any Iraqi army operations.
Al Baghdadi ... sent operatives across the border as early as ... 2011...group...changed ... name -- adding "al Sham" for Syria.
...For western counterterrorism agencies, the combination of fanaticism and disciplined organization is the nightmare scenario.
...ISIS' success against what are seen by ... Sunnis as loathsome Shia regimes in Syria and Iraq has attracted thousands of foreign fighters to its ranks, enabling it to ... prepare ... offensive in Iraq.
...ability to...suicide bombings and attacks on the security forces ... in several regions at once... resilient force...sophisticated attacks. ... fighters used bulldozers to remove barriers
...ISIS ...little ability to govern... unpopular, and has no sway outside the Sunni community in either Iraq or Syria."
...weakness of the governments ISIS is confronting -- and the hatred for those governments among Sunnis -- means that a few dozen truckloads of fighters can seize...cities, overcoming forces many times larger by their sheer ferocity and battle experience.
..."ISIS has become indisputably the most effective and ruthless terrorist organization in the world."
"It...has attracted...fighters, not just from Iraq and Syria, but also from Saudi Arabia...Jordan."
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1483 million Muslims in world. 113 million (7.6%) of these are Shia.
Shia majority nations: Azerbaijan (75%, 5758K Shia) ; Bahrain (61%, 362K Shia); Iran (93%, 61732K Shia) ; Iraq (63%, 20780K Shia);
Iraq (63% Shia, 13389K Shia, total population 21422K);
Syria (15% Shia, 2388K Shia, total population 15609K);
Iraq & Syria combined: 15777K Shia, total population 37031K; 43% Shia.
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