Tag Archives: Iraq

Syria Air Force drops chlorine gas on ISIS

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During a fierce battle outside the perimeter of the Syrian Armed Forces base at Deir al-Zor, a heavily defended enclave in the heart of ISIS territory in eastern Syria, the Syrian Air Force allegedly dropped unidentified chlorine weapons on the ISIS forces surrounding the base (Associated Press, December 6, 2014):

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said […] The rebels stormed parts of the base before a counterattack and intense air raids by government forces pushed them back, it added. The group said that some Islamic State fighters had breathing problems in the area after government forces used chlorine gas against them.

 
Chlorine, while quite lethal in its own right, is a very different (and somewhat more survivable) agent from the sarin nerve gas weapons used by the pro-Assad forces on civilians in August 2013. While the sarin stockpiles are being declared to global inspectors and relinquished, the regime has allegedly continued to drop improvised chlorine-infused barrel bombs from fighters jets to intimidate northwestern villages several times in early 2014. Chlorine barrel bombs are nowhere near as “effective” (i.e. massively fatal) as conventional weapons or regular chemical warheads like those used in March and August 2013.

Additionally there is probably not a lot of sympathy to be found for ISIS combatants exposed to chlorine attacks, in light of their own likely use of chemical IEDs in Iraq (New York Times, October 23, 2014):

Unconfirmed reports of improvised bombs made with chlorine gas and used by militants have arisen from time to time since the Islamic State began seizing territory in Iraq at the beginning of the year, raising concerns that Iraq’s old chemical weapons stores had fallen into the militants’ hands.

 
The weapons referred to above, as summarized here, are the really old rusty ones from before the first Gulf War. However, while largely unusable as intended, some of the ingredients in them can be re-purposed into IED additives. Additionally, chlorine (which was not discussed in the major Times investigation) is not just used in weapons and is thus far more readily available as an ingredient than other chemical weapons agents.

ISIS allegedly detonated a chlorine-filled IED in September against Iraqi police officers (Washington Post, October 23, 2014):

The police officers, all members of the Sunni Jabbour tribe, which has turned against the Islamic State, were guarding a line in the town’s north. After an exchange of fire, they said, they were surprised to see Islamic State fighters retreating from their position about 150 yards away.

Suddenly there was a boom in the area the extremists had just vacated, said Lt. Khairalla al-Jabbouri, 31, one of the survivors. “It was a strange explosion. We saw a yellow smoke in the sky,” he said. The wind carried the fog toward their lines. The men say it hung close to the ground, consistent with the properties of chlorine gas, which is heavier than air.

“I felt suffocated,” Jabbouri recalled. “I was throwing up and couldn’t breathe.”

Another officer, Ammer Jassim Mohammed, 31, who suffers from asthma, said he passed out within minutes.

 
Other minor ISIS chemical IED attacks in Iraq have also been reported. There are also allegations that ISIS used some other type of chemical agent in Kobani.

Regardless, it sounds very much like both ISIS and the Syrian Armed Forces are using makeshift chlorine weapons for dramatic effect (though not necessarily for battlefield utility) — and now one is simply using it on the other. Not a lot of tears will be shed for ISIS fighters exposed to what is essentially their own directly proportional chemical comeuppance.

Pallets of 155 mm artillery shells containing "HD" (distilled sulfur mustard agent) at Pueblo Depot Activity (PUDA) chemical weapons storage facility. (Credit: US Army via Wikipedia.)

Pallets of 155 mm chemical weapons artillery shells (sulfur mustard in this photo). (Credit: US Army via Wikipedia.)

Worth the Weight? The ISIS currency is nearly here.

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Speaking of ISIS state-building, the pseudo-state is rolling out a new hard currency:

In an announcement on Thursday heralding a liberation from the “satanic usury-based global economic system,” the Islamic State said it would begin minting gold, silver and copper coins, in likenesses similar to the days of the seventh-century caliphs. The coins will have standardized weights and values, the announcement said, and they will be the legal tender of the lands controlled by the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

 
There’s plenty of back and forth debate by economists, in the Times article quoted above, on whether this is purely a propaganda move that can’t really avoid the pressures of the “global economic system” or is actually a savvy investment (which also avoids the “satanic usury” of the non-Islamic banking system that is forbidden under strict Sharia law). My instinct says it won’t matter much either way, since their “state” — as a territorial, governing entity — isn’t going to last very long.

I’m wondering what they’re planning to name it. I bet it will be called a “dīnār” because that was the name of the Umayyad caliphate’s gold coins (and actually remains the currency name for a lot of majority-Arab states, including Iraq), but that name, drawn from the Byzantine “dinarius,” seems awfully western to me for the Mesopotamian enemies of the Global West.

695 CE Umayyad dinar coin at the British Museum. (Wikimedia: "Umayyad Caliph 'Abd al-Malik: 'Caliphal Image solidus' or Standing Caliph solidus struck from 74-77 AH. Based on Byzantine numismatic traditions.")

695 CE Umayyad dinar coin at the British Museum. (Wikimedia: “Umayyad Caliph ‘Abd al-Malik: ‘Caliphal Image solidus’ or Standing Caliph solidus struck from 74-77 AH. Based on Byzantine numismatic traditions.”)

Islamic State Service Provider

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As I’ve said before several times — I really think think the make-or-break factor for would-be or quasi state actor organizations like ISIS is their ability to provide and sustain vital, basic-level government services and employment to their subject populations. Conversely, their opponents would have to find a way to disrupt the supporting physical infrastructure, the bureaucrats administrating the system, and the low-level employees implementing the policies each day.

The New York Times ran an article Thursday on how U.S. airstrikes have affected all three, but my main takeaway was more documentation of the brass-tacks approach of ISIS (once they stop mass-murdering people, of course):

It was not that the militants were popular in Raqqa [the “Islamic State” “capital”], according to nearly a dozen residents, who spoke in interviews in the city or across the border in Turkey. Rather, the Islamic State had become an indispensable service provider.
[…]
Reflecting how civilian life in the area has become intertwined with the militants — who paid salaries, ran schools and directed traffic — 10 civilians were killed in a coalition airstrike on Sunday that hit one of the oil facilities run by the Islamic State, where many people had found work.

Acceptance of the Islamic State in northern Syria contrasts sharply with Iraq, where the group’s ascendance has been more contested and its response more brutal. Many Iraqis clamor for a return of the government, despite its unpopularity, especially in Sunni regions.

 
This extends and expands the point I made in early September (when the US intervention was limited to the occupied Iraqi zones, rather than the economic heart of ISIS), when I cited a Reuters report on ISIS bakeries, hydroelectric power plants, and telecoms in their so-called “Forat Province” administrative area. From Reuters:

According to one fighter, a former Assad employee is now in charge of mills and distributing flour to bakeries in Raqqa. Employees at the Raqqa dam, which provides the city with electricity and water, have remained in their posts.
[…]
They have been helped by experts who have come from countries including in North Africa and Europe. The man Baghdadi appointed to run and develop Raqqa’s telecoms, for instance, is a Tunisian with a PhD in the subject who left Tunisia to join the group and serve “the state”.

 
Sure they can’t keep the lights on for more than six hours a day, and sure they’ve stupidly sent all their beat cops from Raqqa to Kobani in large convoys to be deployed in clusters that are easy targets for the United States Air Force. But they really were building a new state out of the civil war’s rubble before the Syrian and American planes finally showed up to put a stop to it. That’s not particularly laudable in their case per se, but it’s worth observing.

Recognized states across the region should take note: Ensuring day to day services reach the public is a tool of a universal language and creed, which fosters legitimacy and support … and even good will if the providers aren’t too murderous.

For most people, from one day to the next, it’s all about the quality and effectiveness of governance at the smallest and most local level. Everything is else is just world politics.

 

Theoretical maximum sphere of ISIS control as of September 4 2014, via Wikimedia, 3 weeks before US airstrikes began in Syria. Keep in mind that control was and is tenuous in outlying desert village areas and limited to major thoroughfares/cities in many areas. There is debate over how to map this reality more accurately.

Theoretical maximum sphere of ISIS control as of September 4 2014, via Wikimedia 3 weeks before US airstrikes began in Syria. Keep in mind that control was and is tenuous in outlying desert village areas and limited to major thoroughfares/cities in many areas. There has been considerable debate over how to map the situation more accurately.

Boston Globe report: Coalition of the Occasional Airstrike

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Shockingly, the much-trumpeted Third Coalition on Iraq and the Arab Coalition on Syria, aren’t exactly pulling their weights in Operation Inherent Resolve, according to an investigation by the Boston Globe:

The military coalition attacking the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has been heralded by President Obama as “almost unprecedented,” especially for the participation of Arab air forces. Indeed, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Bahrain have helped carry out strikes inside Syria.

But as the air operation enters its fourth month, most of the missions — including the vast majority of bombing runs — are still being conducted by US forces, with the majority of the others performed by Western allies, according to a Globe review of official statistics and interviews with officials from partner countries.
[…]
Eighty-six percent of the 8,007 missions flown between Aug. 8 and Nov. 3 were carried out by the United States, according to US Air Forces Central Command. These include bombing runs, intelligence-gathering flights, and midair re-fuelings.

The coalition expanded after Sept. 23, when the strikes were extended into Syria, to include the participation of the four Arab allies. But the United States is still flying more than 75 percent of the missions, according to the data — or 3,320 out of 4,410 since that date.

That comes even as Western allies such as Denmark, Australia, France, and Belgium have recently stepped up their role.

While the Western partners commonly discuss their role publicly, Arab governments have provided scant information since the widely publicized strikes in September.

One exception is Bahrain, which participated in the initial phase of airstrikes against ISIS in Syria in late September but has not dropped bombs since September, according to Salman Al Jalahma, a spokesman for Bahrain’s embassy in Washington.

(At least Bahrain’s slacking is probably for the best.)

Other Arab participants in the military coalition declined to provide details, including Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan. The government of Saudi Arabia did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Even many of the attack missions attributed to Arab nations are limited in nature, according to US military officials. For example, while the Gulf nations have participated in more than 20 percent of the fighter sorties in Syria, their pilots are often serving as “mission commanders” or “escorts.” Mission commanders don’t always drop bombs and escorts generally never do, according to the command.

 
In defense of the United Arab Emirates Air Force, it’s probably hard to choose between bombing ISIS in Syria and bombing random minor groups in Libya with whom you have political disagreements.

Anyway, the best news of all is that we’re spending $8 million a day on this borderline-solo project on the other side of the world. I will keep that in mind when we’re next told that we can’t possibly afford to shell out a few million here and there over the course of a year to boost social programs.

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Baghdad’s stalling of oil revenue talks is pushing Kurds out

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The New York Times published an article on the latest efforts by the Kurdish Regional Government to go their own way from central Iraqi control on oil production and sales, in light of continued failure to negotiate new terms for revenue sharing.

The current arrangement is an 83/17 revenue split, with the national government in Baghdad on the high side, which hardly seems reasonable. I think it’s somehow derived from 17% of the reserves being in Kurdistan, but even that doesn’t make much sense (especially when so much of the past couple years’ rise in Iraqi production and new development contracts have been on Kurdish land and via the regional government). And the article suggests that the resistance by Baghdad to changing the arrangement is fueling a rapidly accelerating cycle of mutual non-cooperation that will probably end in an independence attempt:

The more Kurdish officials developed their oil industry, the more Baghdad balked. The more the central government restricted the Kurds, the more they felt like they had no choice but to press forward.

“Their policy is actually backfiring,” said Howri Mansurbeg, a professor of petroleum geosciences at Soran University in Kurdistan, said of Iraqi officials. “They want to prevent a Kurdish state, and now the exact opposite is happening.”

 
Maybe there would be a case for such an unbalanced ratio if Baghdad provided tons of services and defense to the Kurdistan Region, but they’ve done jack for them … and then have demanded everything from them, after the national security forces literally threw their weapons on the ground and ran away.

At the point Maliki handed Kirkuk to the Kurdish Regional Government to take care of, and their forces held it successfully, I think they earned the right to a lot more revenue. (And — as the Times points out, matching my analysis at the time in June — at the point he handed them Kirkuk, he also handed them enough oilfields to become independent.)

Iraqi-Kurdistan-in-Iraq-map-de-facto-and-disputed-hatched

ISIS hits Iraq’s KRG from the south at Karatepe township

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After U.S. airstrikes in August thwarted ISIS incursions into Iraqi Kurdistan from the northwest and broke the ISIS siege of the Amirli, a Shia Iraqi Turkmen town, a division of ISIS in the Diyala Governorate appears to have found a weak point in the armor on the southern side of the zone protected by the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG).

As a result of the June pullbacks by Iraqi security forces and the Iraqi Army, the KRG sphere of responsibility for security now extends south into Diyala, but their peshmerga troops are stretched thin against ISIS and are concentrated on retaking territory in northern Iraq.

ISIS forces staged coordinated attacks against Kurdish peshmerga paramilitary forces all around the Kurdish zone’s perimeter on Monday, October 20, according to a report by Rudaw, the Iraqi Kurdish news agency. Most of these were much further north in the country, however, than Diyala Governorate.

Karatepe under fire

But an encircled group of ISIS fighters in Diyala took advantage of the large stretches of uninhabited and indefensible desert that make up the southern edge of Kurdish control to lead the day’s coordinated offensives by ferociously assaulting the predominantly Iraqi Turkmen community of Karetepe township, which they had apparently identified as vulnerable in a skirmish several days earlier and suicide-bombed the town the weekend before. (Karetepe is the local Turkmen spelling. It is generally spelled Qarah Tapah in Kurdish media and on Google Maps or Qara Tapa in English-language Iranian media.)

diyala-governorate-iraq-october-20-2014

The lightly defended town came under heavy ISIS shelling and light arms fire, according to the Karetepe district leader, as reported in Rudaw:

The ISIS attacks began at the outskirts of Qarah Tapah, a town along Kurdistan’s south-western front also targeted by ISIS last week. Three Peshmerga were reported killed and others injured in an intense firefight, according to Mahmoud Sangawi, who is in charge of the district. “We repeatedly have been targeted with ISIS shells,” he said.

“They mean to take on the areas that are populated by Shia in order to carry out another onslaught on them,” Sangawi told Rudaw, referring to Shiite minorities who are living in villages around Qara Tapah.

“Islamic State suddenly began the attack in the early morning while most of people were asleep. They started bombarding the town but Peshmerga responded to their assault immediately,” a Qarah Tapah witness told Rudaw.

Peshmerga forces use intelligence resources to put their fighters on stand-by before an ISIS attack, but “the information this time seemed to be incomplete to guide us how to prepare for their attacks. They changed course and they attacked from different directions,” Sangawi told Rudaw after arriving at the frontline. “We will ultimately destroy them,” he said.

 

Cnes/Spot Image satellite photo of Karatepe (Qarah Tapah) township in Diyala Governorate.

Cnes/Spot Image satellite photo of Karatepe (Qarah Tapah) township in Diyala Governorate. Diyala is an agricultural province with large farms and orchards surrounded by larger deserts.

On October 21, the pressure mounted, according to a report by Kerkuk.net, the official online publication of the Iraqi Turkmen Front, the party which represents the ethnic minority in Iraq’s politics.

Yesterday morning ISIS launched an attack from three directions on Karatepe township of Diyala with mortar and other heavy weaponry. The local people were forced to leave their homes due to the fierce conflict between security forces and ISIS militants. The number of dead and injured have not been determined so far. ISIS militants have seized the western entrance of the town.

Operations Command indicated that until now Karatepe town had been under the control of the Peshmerga and police forces. Operations Command also indicated that fighter aircraft had started targeting the ISIS militants.

Head of Iraqi Turkmen Front and Kirkuk Member of Parliament Erset Salihi called on all Iraqi Turkmen Front offices and organizations in Hanekin and Kifri in the periphery of Karatepe and instructed them to open their doors to refugees and give them necessary assistance.

 
According to Iranian state media, which favors the Shia-led Iraqi central government, “targeting” of ISIS attackers by “fighter aircraft” refers to assistance by the Iraqi Air Force. I don’t have details on that, but it would likely consist of barrel-bombing from the unsophisticated and generally inept Iraqi Air Force. No coalition airstrikes around the town have yet been reported.

On October 22, Iraqi Turkmen political leaders called a press conference to assert their view that this is a targeted offensive intended to destroy an Iraqi Turkmen population center and is part of a wider systematic purge:

The Head of Iraqi Turkmen Front and Kirkuk MP Erset Salihi spoke at the press conference and demanded the liberation of Karatepe township.

In his statement Salihi said that it was clear that today Turkmen areas were being targeted. After Telefer, Besir Tazehurmatu regions came Amirli. ISIS has started to target all Turkmen regions such as Tuz, Kirkuk, Tavuk. This time the target was Karatepe township in Diyala which is a major Turkmen settlement area. Kurds, Turkmen and Arab inhabit the region in harmony.

“As Turkmen MPs, we demand that air and land interventions are [begun] as soon as possible to ensure the security of those people and that they are armed so that they can protect themselves, their families as well as the land they inhabit.”

 
AFP reporting, quoting a source inside the town, implied that the population of the town and surrounding villages was at least 18,000 prior to the start of ISIS bombardment and civilians evacuations. An estimated 9,000 people left in the first day of fighting.

Late in the day on Wednesday, the Kurdish peshmerga forces and the Iraqi Air Force appeared to declare a preliminary victory in the battle, but it remains to be seen whether this is a temporary win or a decisive repulsing of the ISIS offensive.

Why here, why now?

Although the ISIS forces in Diyala Governorate are relatively cut off from the rest of ISIS, they draw on a deep well of local support. During the second crest of the Iraq War, after the U.S. surge began, many disaffected Sunnis, Sunni separatists, and Sunni insurgents made the province a major staging ground for attacks on eastern Baghdad, U.S. forces, and Shia Arab paramilitaries. By the time of the U.S. departure, the province had become a hotbed of Sunni resentment toward then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose autocratic Shia-led government is widely blamed for triggering the rise of ISIS within Iraq over the past twelve or so months.

Overall, the province is home to a more diverse population than those Sunni Arab extremists would like, which may explain the choice of target at Karetepe, as the political leaders suggested in their press conference. Besides its isolation in the desert making it an easier target, the town is home to a contingent of the minority Iraqi Turkmen ethnic group (learn more — jump to bottom), which ISIS has previously attempted to conduct ethnic cleansing on, all over the Iraqi Turkmen homelands. In the north, the minority has been driven out by the tens of thousands along with Yazidis and other minorities. Most prominently, however, Iraqi Turkmen were nearly starved out during the siege at Amirli, near the provincial border of Diyala, until coalition airstrikes and aid drops began. Having failed to take Amirli, 61 kilometers northeast by highway, Karetepe may be a next-best target for sectarian purgers in the Diyala ISIS faction. Indeed, it is actually even more diverse than Amirli, with Arab and Kurdish residents in addition to the Iraqi Turkmen residents.

karatepe-qarah-tapah-diyala-amirli-iraq-map-october-23-2014

If ISIS were to dislodge Kurdish forces and fend off Iraqi government forces and Shia Arab paramilitaries, they would be able to initiate an ethnic cleansing campaign in Diyala province that would make it much more strongly Sunni Arab in its demographics. This would likely boost the separatist aims of the Diyala autonomy movement that attempted in late 2011 to declare the province a “semiautonomous region” on par with the Kurdistan Region. (While that effort was joined by the province’s Kurds, the current war has unofficially absorbed most if not all of the Kurdish areas into the neighboring Kurdish provinces, so they would probably no longer be involved in the movement.) The autonomy backers were met with hostility locally from other minorities in Diyala. The Shia Iraqi Turkmen population at Karatepe and elsewhere in the area is generally somewhat more favorable toward Baghdad and Shia Arab governance than the Sunni Arabs or Kurds.

Another strong possibility is that the ISIS forces in Diyala will put enough pressure on Karatepe to force a significant diversion of troops and resources by the KRG, Baghdad, or Shia Arab paramilitaries that other ISIS positions will be strengthened and could regain ground. At the moment they have been pushed back out of the town and its immediate environs, but that may shift again.
 

Learn More: Who are the Iraqi Turkmen?

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Mexico’s war: Still a bigger threat to the US than Syria’s

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There are heavily armed militant groups with substantial military experience terrorizing, extorting, and beheading people in a major oil-producing desert country to the south of a NATO member, who have had a destabilizing effect across borders in a wide region encompassing many countries. They lack popular support and rule their territory primarily by fear. They are the Mexican cartels, and we haven’t bombed them at all (unlike ISIS), even as they have captured and held territory for years on end.

That parallel occurred to me a number of weeks ago, when I was reading up on the development of Los Zetas, the cartel that emerged from the Mexican military itself, but I didn’t have enough hard numbers to back up the argument. Then I read this article by Musa al-Gharbi.

The overall numbers are astonishing:

A recent United Nations report estimated nearly 9,000 civilians have been killed and 17,386 wounded in Iraq in 2014, more than half since ISIL fighters seized large parts on northern Iraq in June. It is likely that the group is responsible another several thousand deaths in Syria. To be sure, these numbers are staggering. But in 2013 drug cartels murdered more than 16,000 people in Mexico alone, and another 60,000 from 2006 to 2012 — a rate of more than one killing every half hour for the last seven years. What is worse, these are estimates from the Mexican government, which is known to deflate the actual death toll by about 50 percent.

 
ISIS is held up, as well, for its barbarity. But the cartels in Mexico have them beat there too:

Statistics alone does not convey the depravity and threat of the cartels. They carry out hundreds of beheadings every year. Beyond decapitation, the cartels are known to dismember and otherwise mutilate the corpses of their victims — displaying piles of bodies prominently in towns to terrorize the public into compliance. They routinely target women and children to further intimidate communities. Like ISIL, the cartels also use social media to post graphic images of their atrocious crimes.

The narcos also recruit child soldiers, molding boys as young as 11 into assassins or sending them on suicide missions during armed confrontations with Mexico’s army. They kidnap tens of thousands of children every year to use as drug mules or prostitutes or to simply kill and harvest their organs for sale on the black market. Those who dare to call for reforms often end up dead. In September, with the apparent assistance of local police, cartels kidnapped and massacred 43 students at a teaching college near the Mexican town of Iguala in response to student protests, leaving their bodies in a mass grave, mutilated and burned almost beyond recognition.

 
There has been a far more systematic campaign against reporters and citizen journalists in Mexico than anything we’ve seen from ISIS.

While the Islamic militants have killed a handful of journalists, the cartels murdered as many as 57 since 2006 for reporting on cartel crimes or exposing government complicity with the criminals. Much of Mexico’s media has been effectively silenced by intimidation or bribes. These censorship activities extend beyond professional media, with narcos tracking down and murdering ordinary citizens who criticize them on the Internet, leaving their naked and disemboweled corpses hanging in public squares.

 
The treatment of women is at least as bad under the Mexican cartels as under ISIS but on a much vaster scale:

[…] Westerners across various political spectrums were outraged when ISIL seized 1,500 Yazidi women, committing sexual violence against the captives and using them as slaves. Here again, the cartels’ capture and trafficking of women dwarfs that of ISIL’s crimes. Narcos hold tens of thousands of Mexican citizens as slaves for their various enterprises and systematically use rape as a weapon of war.

 
U.S. airstrikes this summer in Iraq began when ISIS forces came within a few dozen miles of the U.S. consulate in Erbil in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, while U.S. airstrikes in Syria came after two beheadings in Raqqa, Syria. How does that stack up with Mexico?

U.S. media have especially hyped ISIL’s violence against Americans. This summer ISIL beheaded two Americans and has warned about executing a third; additionally, one U.S. Marine has died in efforts to combat the group. By contrast, the cartels killed 293 Americans in Mexico from 2007 to 2010 and have repeatedly attacked U.S. consulates in Mexico. While ISIL’s beheadings are no doubt outrageous, the cartels tortured, dismembered and then cooked one of the Americans they captured — possibly eating him or feeding him to dogs.

 
ISIS has not staged any attacks in the United States, or killed large numbers of U.S. citizens anywhere for that matter. In contrast, the Mexican cartels have not only staged attacks and assassinations inside the United States but have killed more U.S. citizens inside the United States itself than were killed by al-Qaeda on 9/11.

The cartels’ atrocities are not restricted to the Mexican side of the border. From 2006 to 2010 as many as 5,700 Americans were killed in the U.S. by cartel-fueled drug violence. By contrast, 2,937 people were killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Over the last decade, some 2,349 Americans were killed in Afghanistan, and 4,487 Americans died in Iraq. In four years the cartels have managed to cause the deaths of more Americans than during 9/11 or either of those wars.

 
Cult-like pseudo-military organizations controlling large swathes of territory and local government administrations in one of the world’s largest oil producers, while threatening and attacking American citizens and interests regularly, but the United States doesn’t intervene militarily? How bizarre.
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