Speaking exclusively to Asharq Al-Awsat, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) spokesman Saeed Mamozeini said ISIS’s formerWali in Mosul, Muammar Tawhlah, “was executed by the firing squad on Tuesday morning after he was sacked and imprisoned.” Wali is an Arabic word for governor used during the Ottoman era.
“After the death of ISIS’s [former] Wali in Mosul, Radwan Taleb Al-Hamdouni, in bombing from international coalition jets, the organization appointed Tawhlah as an acting Wali in Mosul before he was arrested on charges of espionage,” Sawraji added.
The Islamist group executed another nine militants belonging to the organization on Tuesday, according to local activists.
“The other nine militants were executed on charges of fleeing the battle and laying down arms,” an activist who spoke on the condition of anonymity told Asharq Al-Awsat. “They are Iraqis from Al-Ba’aj district,” he added.
“According to our information, the group’s Minister of War has requested permission from Baghdadi . . . to withdraw from the outskirts of Mosul after suffering heavy losses in the fighting with the Peshmerga forces,” the source said.
As part of a systematic campaign against symbols of the Iraqi state in the city, ISIS demolished a government headquarters in Mosul on Tuesday.
As well as pulling back from the city’s outskirts, the Islamist group has also launched a major recruitment campaign inside Mosul to make up for the severe shortage in fighters, according to activists.
Although this info comes from the Kurds, it has the ring of truth to it. Now in quick succession ISIS has lost it's first Wali in Mosul, and shot their hand picked successor. They are short of troops, and are taking heavy casualties, so heavy that now they are having to shoot deserters. Collapse in inevitable, but for the Sunni in northern Iraq, the vengeance that will be given to them from the Kurds and Shiites will be both just and brutal.
I expect we will see a sudden and massive effort by the Sunni in Iraq to flee into Syria if ISIS loses control. Fun times.
Wanna bet there's a nitwit in DC that'll want to claim credit?
ReplyDeleteI'll take that bet. Stakes: one internet Guffaw. Said nitwit won't take credit, he'll do everything in his power to prevent it. #ZeroSaveIsis
ReplyDeleteI'd like to think it means inevitable collapse but I don't think so for a minute. If you read up on the revolutions of the 19th century, the party that won almost every time was the one that was utterly ruthless in purging its ranks by shooting 'enemies of the state.' The Red Army got its ass kicked. Mao wasn't a sure thing until after we left but both held on to the fervor and purged the 'non-believers.' The Eastern European communist parties did the same thing and the purges after Stalin took them over were amazing.
ReplyDeleteInteresting point. Also, the terror in France after it's first revolution. Maybe the pounding they are taking on the battlefield and the trouble getting decent soldiers (it's different getting popped by jets you can't shoot down than chasing off cowardly Iraqi army recruits) to fight for them could eventually bring them down. At least run them back into Syria, although if I were the Pesh and/or the Shiites, I'd chase them wherever they went.
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