Iraqi Sunni militants set their sights on Baghdad

Iraqi men rally in Baghdad on Thursday against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant as they gather to volunteer for military service. Authorities have urged Iraqis to help battle the insurgents.
Iraqi men rally in Baghdad on Thursday against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant as they gather to volunteer for military service. Authorities have urged Iraqis to help battle the insurgents.

BAGHDAD -- Islamic militants who have seized Iraqi cities and towns vowed Thursday to march on Baghdad to settle old scores, joined by Saddam Hussein-era loyalists and other disaffected Sunnis who hope to capitalize on the Shiite-led government's political paralysis.

The militants also declared they would impose Shariah law in Mosul and other areas they have captured.

In northern Iraq, Kurdish security forces moved to fill the power vacuum, taking over an air base and other posts abandoned by the military in the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk. The move further raised concern the country could end up partitioned into Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish zones.

Three planeloads of Americans were being evacuated from a major Iraqi air base in Sunni territory north of Baghdad, U.S. officials said, and Germany urged its citizens to immediately leave parts of Iraq, including Baghdad.

President Barack Obama said Iraq will need more help from the United States, but he did not specify what it would be willing to provide. Senior U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter by name said Washington is considering whether to conduct drone missions or airstrikes in Iraq.

The United Nations Security Council met on the crisis, underscoring the growing international alarm over the advances by fighters from the militant group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

The council urged a national dialogue including all political and religious groups in Iraq but took no action after discussing the crisis and hearing a closed briefing from the top U.N. envoy in Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had asked the parliament to declare a state of emergency that would give his Shiite-led government increased powers to run the country, but the lawmakers failed to assemble a quorum Thursday.

The Islamic State, whose Sunni fighters have captured large areas in Iraq and Syria, aims to create an Islamic emirate spanning both sides of the border. It has pushed deep into parts of Iraq's Sunni heartland once controlled by U.S. forces, because police and military retreated after relatively brief clashes, including in Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul.

Skirmishes continued in several areas. Two communities near Tikrit -- the key oil refining center of Beiji and the city of Samarra -- remained in government hands, Iraqi intelligence officials said. The price of oil jumped to more than $106 a barrel as the insurgency raised the risk of disruptions to supplies.

Security officials said the Islamic State fighters took control of two weapons depots holding 400,000 items, including AK-47 rifles, rockets and rocket-propelled grenades, artillery shells and mortars. A quarter of the stockpiles were sent to Syria, they said.

In its statement Thursday, the Islamic State declared it would start implementing its strict version of Shariah law in Mosul and other regions it had overrun. It said women should stay in their homes for modesty reasons, warned it would cut off the hands of thieves, and told residents to attend daily prayers. It said Sunnis in the military and police should abandon their posts and "repent" or else "face only death."

The Islamic State's spokesman vowed to take the fight into Baghdad. Abu Mohammed al-Adnani also boasted that the group's fighters would take the southern Shiite cities of Karbala and Najaf, which hold two of the holiest shrines for Shiite Muslims.

"We will march toward Baghdad because we have an account to settle there," he said in an audio recording posted on militant websites commonly used by the group. The statement could not be independently verified.

Kurdish fighters from the ethnic group's autonomous enclave in the north showed signs of taking a greater role in fighting back against the Islamic State. Their role is a potential point of friction, however, because both Sunni and Shiite Arabs are wary of Kurdish claims on territory.

Kurdish security forces known as peshmerga took over an air base and other posts abandoned by Iraqi forces in Kirkuk, said Brig. Halogard Hikmat, a senior peshmerga official. He denied reports the whole city was under peshmerga control.

Some Kurdish politicians quickly sought to take advantage of the situation, arguing that it was a moment to permanently seize control of Kirkuk and surrounding lands they have long regarded as part of a Kurdish national homeland.

"I hope that the Kurdish leadership will not miss this golden opportunity to bring Kurdish lands in the disputed territories back under Kurdish control," Shoresh Haji, a Kurdish member of Iraq's parliament, was quoted as saying by Al-Jazeera. "It is a very sad situation for Mosul, but at the same time, history has presented us with only one or two other moments at which we could regain our territory, and this is an opportunity we cannot ignore."

Several Groups On Move

While Islamic State fighters gained the most attention in this week's swift advances, it was increasingly clear that other Sunnis were joining the uprising.

Several militant groups posted photos on social media purporting to show Iraqi military hardware captured by their own fighters, suggesting a broader-based rebellion like that in neighboring Syria.

In Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, which was overrun by militants Wednesday, witnesses said fighters raised posters of the late dictator and Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, his former deputy who escaped the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and has eluded security forces ever since.

Fighters loyal to his Naqshabandi Army as well as former members of Saddam's Baath Party were the main militant force in Tikrit on Thursday, said a resident who identified himself by his nickname, Abu Mohammed, out of concern for his safety. He said about 300 soldiers surrendered near the governor's office -- an event captured in multiple amateur videos posted online.

Lawmaker Hakim al-Zamili as well as two senior intelligence officials, who were not authorized to talk to the media, confirmed the involvement of al-Douri's group and other former Baathists and Saddam-era military commanders.

Feisal Istrabadi, a former Iraqi ambassador to the U.N., said the rapid fall of Mosul and Tikrit required trust from the local population -- something the Islamic State or al-Douri wouldn't necessarily have on their own.

"Ordinary citizens feel disenfranchised and have no stake in the state anymore," he said. "This is an alliance of convenience where multiple disaffected groups have come to defeat ... a common foe. "

With its large Shiite population, Baghdad would be a far harder target for the militants. So far, they have stuck to the Sunni heartland and former Sunni insurgent strongholds where people already are alienated by al-Maliki's government over allegations of discrimination and mistreatment. The militants also would likely meet far stronger resistance, not only from government forces but also by Shiite militias.

Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the Asaib Ahl al-Haq Shiite militia vowed to defend Shiite holy sites, raising the specter of street clashes and sectarian killings.

Baghdad authorities tightened security, and residents stocked up on essentials.

"Everybody I know is worried for the safety of his family as the militants are advancing to Baghdad," said Hazim Hussein, a Shiite shop owner and father of three.

Another Baghdad merchant, Mohammed Abdul-Rahim, a Sunni, lamented that the "future of this country looks more dim than any time in modern Iraqi history."

Hundreds of young men crowded in front of the main army recruiting center in Baghdad on Thursday after authorities urged Iraqis to help battle the insurgents.

Iraq pleads for help

The advances by the Sunni militants are a blow to al-Maliki, whose Shiite-dominated political bloc failed to gain a majority in April parliamentary elections, forcing him to try to build a governing coalition.

But even before the current political crisis, al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders have pleaded with the Obama administration for more than a year for additional help to fight the growing insurgency in the country.

After the 2003 invasion that led to the downfall of Saddam, nearly all American troops left Iraq in December 2011 after Washington and Baghdad failed to negotiate a security agreement that would have kept a limited number of U.S. forces in the country for a few more years.

Obama, offering his first detailed comments on the Iraq crisis, said Thursday that the Iraqi government would need help from the international community and that his national security advisers were examining "all options," including airstrikes, to stop the militant advances.

"I don't rule out anything," he said during an appearance with visiting Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

"We do have a stake in making sure that these jihadists are not getting a permanent foothold in either Iraq or Syria, for that matter," Obama said.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, accused the president of "taking a nap" while conditions worsened and said the U.S. should be providing more help to Iraq. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a frequent White House critic, called Thursday for Obama's entire national security team to resign.

But Congress appeared divided over how to respond, with some Republicans backing airstrikes and other lawmakers from both parties suggesting that was the wrong approach.

Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said the U.S. is moving ahead with military assistance programs started with Iraq since 2011, to include expediting the lease of AH-64 Apache helicopters for delivery this year as well as delivery of 100 Boeing Co. Scan Eagle surveillance drones.

And State Department spokesman Jen Psaki said the U.S. is sending about $12 million in humanitarian aid to help nearly 1 million Iraqis who have been forced from their homes by recent fighting.

Also Thursday, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius began "a series of consultations on this matter with his main counterparts," ministry spokesman Romain Nadal said, while British Foreign Secretary William Hague ruled out any British military role in Iraq.

Hague said Britain was consulting closely with the United States and will support any U.S. decision on coping with the crisis. He also floated the possibility of sending British humanitarian aid to displaced Iraqis.

In Shiite powerhouse Iran, President Hassan Rouhani blasted the Islamic State as "barbaric." Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif offered support in a phone call with his Iraqi counterpart, Iranian TV reported. Iran has halted flights to Baghdad because of security concerns and has intensified security on its borders.

Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts were underway to free 80 Turkish citizens held by militants in Mosul, an official in the Turkish prime minister's office said. The captives include 49 people seized Wednesday in the Turkish Consulate and 31 Turkish truck drivers who were seized in Mosul, said an official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

In Russia on Thursday, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the rapid advances by the Sunni militants proved the invasion of Iraq 11 years ago had been a fiasco.

"What is happening in Iraq is an illustration of the total failure of the adventure undertaken primarily by the U.S. and Britain and which they have let slip completely out of control," Lavrov was quoted by Russian state news agencies as saying.

He accused the United States of withdrawing its forces from Iraq prematurely for domestic political reasons, without finishing the task of preparing the Iraqi military to protect the whole country.

"Terrorism is rampant there because the occupation forces paid virtually no attention to the internal political processes and didn't facilitate national dialogue, but pursued their own interests exclusively," Lavrov said.

Mark Hertling, a retired general who led American forces in Iraq in 2007-2008, defended the mulitbillion-dollar effort to train Iraqi security forces and blamed neglect by the Shiite-led government for the current situation.

He said al-Maliki's government had failed to solidify gains made by the Americans and focused instead on installing Shiites into leadership positions and replacing good military commanders with those it considered allies.

"There's been a lot of change of leadership," he said. "So I'm not prepared to take all the blame for [Iraqi troops] taking off their uniforms and giving away their arms."

Information for this article was contributed by Sameer N. Yacoub, Adam Schreck, Qassim Abdul-Zahra, Aya Batrawy, Desmond Butler, Nasser Karimi, Bassem Mroue, John-Thor Dahlburg, Frank Jordans, Elaine Ganley, Lynn Berry, Gregory Katz, Barry Hatton, Julie Pace, Lara Jakes, Robert Burns, Bradley Klapper, Kim Gamel and Donna Cassata of The Associated Press; by Neil MacFarquhar Tim Arango, Suadad al-Salhy, Alan Cowell, Rick Gladstone and Ceylan Yeginsu of The New York Times; and by Margaret Talev, David Lerman, Nicole Gaouette, Tony Capaccio, Kathleen Hunter, Mike Anderson and Geln Carey of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 06/13/2014

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