This is a link diary.
Human Rights Watch has photos of yet another mass murder from the Sunni bandits terrorizing northern Iraq. The story went up June 27th.
These killing follow a pattern of herding up to 100 men at a time to an execution location. The victims' hands are tied behind their backs. Then the victims are made to lie down in a row and they are shot with automatic weapons.
This pattern is repeated again and again. Human rights Watch mirrors photos from two sites. One can expect that there were dozens of such mass murders.
Religious War
Plainly, the ISIS/ISIL leaders approve these murders. They are killing non-combatants in what has become a religious war. Tikrit was the home town of Saddam Hussein, the Sunni dictator of Iraq until 2003. Most residents of Tikrit are Sunni with minority presence of Shi'ia, Ba'hai, Kurds, a few Indians, and other minorities.
The city is about 100 miles north of Baghdad, some 30 miles south of the oil refinery at Baiji. In normal times the population is estimated at 260,000 with more people in suburbs.
At present the Iraqi Army continues to fight against ISIS/ISIL. They do not seem to have the numbers to be effective at eradicating these threats. They do have helicopters and a few drones for surveillance, plus very good night vision gear. They also have thousands of competent snipers.
A Citizen Army
Several hundred thousand volunteers -- counting existing local militias that serve as local police auxiliaries -- have signed on with the Iraqi Army. The army and these volunteers and a suggested expeditionary force from Iran will face quite a task. They need to clear out an area 300 miles to the north from Baghdad by 250 miles in east-west width. That takes a lot of manpower.
Considering that Iraq will have limited logistics capacity, one can expect that the counterattack should cover its objectives within two or three months. 75,000 square miles would require a commitment of some 750,000 men to perform effectively.
It doesn't hurt that the Iraqi counterattack will have the use of hundreds of modern tanks. If their riflemen can eliminate defenders using RPG anti-tank missiles, the firepower from these tanks can overpower any lightly armed ground force.
These Sunni bandits are not an army. Not even close.
When they get hit by a real army, don't expect much. In Syria they have been playing at hit-and-run tactics. They have never faced an army on the scale of what is being put together out of Baghdad.
As these images circulate through Iraq and Iran, expect the number of volunteers to rise substantially. An initial guess put the recruitment goal at 500,000 for the volunteers. Now that number could go to 1,000,000 volunteers through July.
One interesting note from Iraqi blogs is that the Shi'ia veterans from the Iran-Iraq War responded with substantial support to contacts from the new military operation. Now a smaller number of Sunni veterans have also called in support.
These Sunni veterans had not been contacted. Previous reports have these Sunnis and their tribes supporting Ba'athists, who are tied to the ISIS/ISIL invasion. Things may be much more complex than that.
These veterans are all older men. They can help with training. They might also be able to help in leadership roles for a month or two, leading the initial expansion out of Baghdad. At war, experience can be the most important factor. They've got all or part of 8 years of experience at heavy fighting.
Photographing mass murders ??? ISIS/ISIL took these pictures. Put them out. Brag about it.
Come September, they could be looking at double the size army coming out at them because of it.
Ramadan starts today. We'll see whether there a change to these patterns. ISIS/ISIL is more like Satanists than Islam.
"Ain't karma a bitch?" has its cousins in Arabic.