Iraq In Crisis

Iraq is in crisis. Again. Its president and its top Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani have urged residents of Baghdad to stand forward to protect their city against an anticipated onslaught from the Sunni terrorist fanatics, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. They have urged the men of Baghdad to present themselves to form into defensive militias, to be 'trained' and armed and somewhat uniformed by the military because the military itself appears to have dissolved its fighting presence.

Volunteers, who have joined the Iraqi Army to fight against the predominantly Sunni militants who have taken over Mosul and other northern provinces, travel in army trucks in Baghdad on June 14. REUTERS/Thaier al-Sudani

There are said to have been about 30,000 Iraqi police and military present in Mosul when the ISIL forces numbering approximately one thousand entered the city with a view to totally occupying it as their new rulers. Mosul is a city of about a million residents, now minus half-a-million who have decided to become voluntary refugees, headed to Kurdistan for Kurdish protection from Sunni fanatics.

A meagre one thousand Islamist fundamentalists and no resistance from the city's inhabitants.

Who are mostly, in that region, Sunni Iraqis. Who feel so oppressed, their needs entirely ignored, their honour as Iraqis so contemptuously set aside by Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that they persuaded themselves they had more to fear and loathe from their fellow countrymen than from the invading foreign Sunni Islamists bent on installing Sharia law and creating an unwary constituency from among Mosul's residents.

So they passively watched as the military and the police, there to 'protect' them, melted into the countryside to protect themselves.

Loyalties appear rather flexible in Iraq. The Butcher of Baghdad would never have permitted such a limp display of nationalism to prevail. Heads would roll. He would see to it personally, for it is such a persuasive display of grim power that such events ensured that push-back to his rule was kept at an absolute minimum. Heads are now rolling in Mosul, in recognition of the effectiveness of such brutalities, grotesque in their evidence of how peaceful Islam can be when it puts its mind to it.

The Kurds, on the other hand, have magnanimously given haven to as many as 300,000 refugees from Mosul. The refugees described how ISIL forces suddenly appeared, while Iraqi police and troops just as suddenly disappeared. The Islamists have been seen to dance on captured tanks, thoughtfully left by the military to advance the interests of ISIL.

Mosul, once moderate in its observance of Islam, is now on notice that women must remain inside their homes and even there remain fully burqa-covered.

Summary executions are being reported by international agencies. It took those one thousand in their assault on the second-largest city of Iraq, an important industrial hub,  a matter of hours to take full control. The American-trained Iraqi military numbering some 30,000, well armed and equipped was speedily in full rout abandoning all gear and weaponry.

Turkey, a member of NATO, is coping with the abduction of 80 of its nationals from Mosul.

ISIL had kidnapped a day before, on June 11, 31 Turkish truck drivers. A day later, the Turkish Consul General in Mosul, Ozturk Yildirim was abducted with another 48 people, children included by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Mosul had been suffering a crisis in scarcity of water, food and electricity since the clashes began earlier on June 6.

Some 7,000 to 10,000 Turkish citizens are thought to be living in Iraq's 15 provinces, while 110,000 Turks live in the northern Kurdistan Regional Government region.

After the ISIL militants had raided and looted the Turkish consulate in Mosul, abducting the 49 Turkish nationals within, the Turkish General Staff described claims that four Turkish officers who were (allegedly) providing training to radical Islamist militants were arrested by Iraqi security forces in the city of Fallujah.

"Groundless", was the word the Turkish General Staff used to describe those unsavoury rumours.

Daily Hürriyet reporter Cansu Çamlıbel and photographer Sebati Karakurt visited Turkey’s Mosul Consulate in 2010, a few months after it was reopened. The building is located within the 'green zone,' considered the most secure area in the city. IHÜRRİYET Photo / Sebati Karakurt