Reign of Terror

"It's really serious. We have to consider this unlike any other issue in Iraq. There were always terrorist attacks here and there since the collapse of the regime in 2003. But this is different. It is really threatening all the Iraqi communities, the political process, the democratic process and what we have achieved so far in creating government and democratic elections. It is threatening all Iraqi people."
Ala Talabani, Kurdish Iraqi parliament representative from Kirkuk

"We believe in God now in a real Islamic way, not like them. They are Islamic extremists, so wherever they are, they will hurt that area."
"What they are planning to do is turn back Iraq to a very distant past, to go to the time of the caliphate. They are very bad. They are rejected by everyone."
Aso Mamand, leader, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in Kirkuk

Mosul, militants parading down a main street -- Photo AP via Twitter

"We do not differentiate between Sunnis and Shiites. Many of our people do not even know that there is a difference."
"It is the same with Islam. We do not believe in cutting off heads and hands."
Rizgar Haji Hama, leader, Kurdish non-governmental organizations, Kirkuk

Proving the latter is simple enough. That very same group of NGOs in Kirkuk, representing the Kurdish population of Iraq has been caring for about 300,000 of the fleeing refugees from Mosul. The Kurds, according to Mr. Hama, "take the middle way". Kurds, in fact, have distinguished themselves by their calm practicality, interested in being a threat to no one, determined to live their lives in harmony. When all other regions of Iraq were in turmoil, Iraqi Kurdistan, a semi-autonomous Kurdish enclave, organized its civil infrastructure in a perfect example of civic responsibility to its members.

In Syria, the Kurdish enclaves, similarly given to peace and good order, have come in direct conflict with Sunni Islamists, contesting their territory. Turkey's ongoing conflict with its Kurds insisting on their own homeland is proof sufficient of the Kurdish ability to defend themselves and look to their interests. The Kurds are good citizens, but they are also fierce warriors who will not hesitate to join in the conflict in protection of their existence, threatened by the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham. Whose agenda is that of committing atrocities and using the filming of them as propaganda to spread terror and assure obedience of their Islamist rule.

The video taping of the murder by ISIS terrorists of Iraqi Shiite soldiers captured in and around Tikrit represented such a breathtaking act of primitive violence that their veracity was contested. But the photographs of the gruesome mass killings appear to be real enough. Real enough to prompt the United Nations and Navi Pillay to react in horror and condemnation. They have also created huge revulsion in the Kurds who have also viewed them. Their militias, the Peshmerga, know what they will be up against.



"The filthy Shiite bastards are killed in the hundreds", was one of the captions appearing online accompanying photographs of the massacre of which the Islamic State is so proud. From battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite Shia troops, it seemed an opportune time for a thousand of the ISIS jihadists to flood over the unprotected border into Iraq to confront the Iraqi army. Which responded in a manner wholly puzzling to the people of Mosul, incredulous that the Iraqi army preferred to dissolve its presence, leaving its armouries to the ISIS militias rather than confront them.

Gathering between Tikrit and Baghdad now, the Sunni fanatics are preparing an assault in the Iraqi capital of seven million Sunni and Shiite occupants. Young Shiite men have been responding in their tens of thousands to the directive of their most influentially respected Shiite cleric to offer themselves to the military to form militias and defend their ancient city. Perhaps they haven't seen the videos that show ISIS decapitating Iraqi soldiers and police in Mosul. Or, if they've seen them, they have incited them to revenge.

From a full-blown civil war between the minority Shia regime in Syria and its Syrian Sunni majority population that originally called for equality in their country and to which the regime responded with abductions, torture, killing, and bombing of its own civilians, the hatred and desire for revenge has metastasized throughout the region, flooding now into Iraq, and if the opportunity continues it will further infect Lebanon and perhaps Jordan. These worst-case scenarios with a total upsetting of the order, however poor it was to begin with in the Middle East, appear to loom large on the near horizon.