A Rough Week in Iraq, But It Will Get Rougher
Thursday May 21, 2015

I hear from competent reporters on the ground in Iraq that a great panic has set in within the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. Prime Minister Abadi, like his Shia co-religionist Maliki, has been engaged in a thorough effort to disadvantage all the Sunni populations of Iraq. This would include: the Kurds (90 percent Sunni), the Sunni Arabs, the Sunni Turkomans, etc. To accomplish this, Sunni majority areas have been systematically deprived of weaponry and funding for years. Alternatively, Shia manned army and police units were stationed in Sunni areas like Mosul for the purpose of keeping the Sunnis under control.
Now, to quote that notable American of the '60s and 70s, H. Rap Brown, "the chickens have come home to roost." Shia units have collapsed and fled wherever they have met ISIS on Sunni populated ground, and under-resourced Sunni units have been defeated in Sunni majority areas like Anbar Province. Is Tikrit an exception to that? No. The ISIS withdrawal from the city was, in my opinion, a calculated ISIS ploy successfully executed for the purpose of fixing government forces in place while ISIS mobile forces moved to Anbar.
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