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Page added on April 18, 2015
Iraqi forces retake most of Iraq’s largest refinery
Iraqi forces retook most of the country’s largest refinery from Islamic State on Saturday, officials said, reversing gains by the militants who seized parts of the sprawling complex in northern Iraq this week.
A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State said troops had recaptured all of Baiji refinery at 11:30 GMT (7.30 a.m. EDT), but officials in Salahuddin, the province where it is located, said there was still fighting around some facilities.
The insurgents attacked the refinery a week ago by blasting through the security perimeter around it and taking over several installations, including storage tanks, a technical institute and a distribution point.
The Baiji refinery produced around 175,000 barrels per day before it shut in June when Islamic State fighters seized it at the same time as the city of Mosul. Iraqi forces retook it from militants in November but subsequently lost control again.
A source in the military command for Salahuddin province said clashes continued on Saturday, with insurgents fighting the army’s elite Golden Division and paramilitaries in southern and western parts of the refinery complex.
Raid Jubbouri, the governor of Salahuddin province, said Iraqi forces were in full control of the refinery “from a military perspective”, but some insurgents remained hidden inside the complex.
Islamic State insurgents suffered a major defeat this month when Iraqi troops and Shi’ite paramilitaries routed them from the city of Tikrit, but struck back at Baiji and in the western province of Anbar.
Thousands of families have fled Anbar in recent days as Islamic State militants encroached on Ramadi and local officials warned the city was about to fall.
Two members of the Anbar provincial council and police Major Khalid al-Fahdawi who is stationed inside Ramadi said reinforcements were on the way and the city was no longer in immediate peril.
“The danger is still there, but the situation is better than yesterday,” provincial council member Sabah Karhout told Reuters.
5 Comments on "Iraqi forces retake most of Iraq’s largest refinery"
SugarSeam on Sat, 18th Apr 2015 7:03 pm
that’s the kind of objective that earns immediate counter attack, I guess. Not much of anything else.
rockman on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 10:54 am
“…said Iraqi forces were in full control of the refinery “from a military perspective”. LOL. Nice qualifier. I assume he means the Iraq military has a great front row seat when a couple of ISIS lads lob a few mortar rounds into the plant. Refineries have a nasty habit of blowing up without help from anyone. It’s the folks who can shut down a refinery with a few $hundred worth of ordinance that are in control…not the troops sitting inside the wire.
BobInget on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 1:08 pm
found Huff Post
BERLIN, April 19 (Reuters) – A former intelligence officer for the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was the mastermind behind Islamic State’s takeover of northern Syria, according to a report by Der Spiegel that is based on documents uncovered by the German magazine.
Spiegel, in a lengthy story published at the weekend and entitled “Secret Files Reveal the Structure of Islamic State,” says it gained access to 31 pages of handwritten charts, lists and schedules which amount to a blueprint for the establishment of a caliphate in Syria.
The documents were the work of a man identified by the magazine as Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi, a former colonel in the intelligence service of Saddam Hussein’s air defense force, who went by the pseudonym Haji Bakr.
Spiegel says the files suggest that the takeover of northern Syria was part of a meticulous plan overseen by Haji Bakr using techniques — including surveillance, espionage, murder and kidnapping — honed in the security apparatus of Saddam Hussein.
The Iraqi national was reportedly killed in a firefight with Syrian rebels in January 2014, but not before he had helped secure swathes of Syria, which in turn strengthened Islamic State’s position in neighboring Iraq.
“What Bakr put on paper, page by page, with carefully outlined boxes for individual responsibilities, was nothing less than a blueprint for a takeover,” the story by Spiegel reporter Christoph Reuter says.
“It was not a manifesto of faith, but a technically precise plan for an ‘Islamic Intelligence State’ — a caliphate run by an organization that resembled East Germany’s notorious Stasi domestic intelligence agency.”
The story describes Bakr as being “bitter and unemployed” after U.S. authorities in Iraq disbanded the army by decree in 2003. Between 2006 to 2008 he was reportedly in U.S. detention facilities, including Abu Ghraib prison.
In 2010 however, it was Bakr and a small group of former Iraqi intelligence officers who made Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi the official leader of Islamic State, with the goal of giving the group a “religious face,” the story says.
Two years later, the magazine says, Bakr traveled to northern Syria to oversee his takeover plan, choosing to launch it with a collection of foreign fighters that included novice militants from Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Europe alongside battle-tested Chechens and Uzbeks.
Iraqi journalist Hisham al-Hashimi, whose cousin served with Bakr, describes the former officer as a nationalist rather than an Islamist. The story argues that the secret to Islamic State’s success lies in its combination of opposites – the fanatical beliefs of one group and the strategic calculations of another, led by Bakr.
Spiegel said it had obtained the papers after lengthy negotiations with rebels in the Syrian city of Aleppo, who had seized them when Islamic State was forced to abandon its headquarters there in early 2014. (Writing by Noah Barkin; Editing by Crispian Balmer)
BobInget on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 1:21 pm
While I fought against US intervention in Iraq
tooth and nail, I had no idea how vast repercussions of this worst of any US political decisions ever made.
It’s interesting to a painful degree, how Saudi Arabia is making the same blunders with almost no visible opposition.
While the US political system shakes with
contentious, endless petty infighting, it will
survive even terrible mistakes. When a single family controls a government completely,
well … just watch “Game of Thrones”.
BobInget on Sun, 19th Apr 2015 3:46 pm
Still talking about bombing Iran..
seriously ——– found on Huff Post
Cotton, R-Ark., said earlier this month that the U.S. could significantly damage Iran’s nuclear capabilities in a short bombing campaign lasting only “several days.”
I spoke to many declared and potential Republican presidential candidates this weekend in New Hampshire and found mixed sentiments on Cotton’s assertion that an attack on Iran would be quick and easy.
“Now, I don’t know if Tom is right that a military action to take out the nuclear facilities would be a couple of days or if it would be a week,” said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex. “I think he is correct that it would be a limited military engagement that could be done primarily with overwhelming air power.”
The strongest disagreement came from Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who argued that although the U.S. would prevail in any conflict with Iran, such a course of action would be dangerous. “I think a military attack on Iran opens up pandora’s box,” said Graham. “You’ve got to assume the worst, not the best. They could attack our bases in the region. They could cause disruption in the Gulf of Hormuz [sic — the Strait of Hormuz connects the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman]. It would be a messy affair.”
Former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina said, “I think a bombing campaign would be very difficult … as you may well know it’s not clear we could even reach a lot of the facilities.” Fiorina stressed that she would prefer increased unilateral sanctions over a military strike. Ohio Gov. John Kasich declared that, “I don’t think anything is quick and easy there but to me this deal is unacceptable.”