October 19, 2017

As Islamic State terrorist forces lost ground in Iraq in 2017, the terror group was also losing ground in neighboring Syria, a country torn apart by civil war since 2011. At times, the Islamic State has controlled large parts of Syria, but its grip has recently shrunk to areas along the Euphrates River in the nation’s sparsely populated east. In 2014, the terror group took control of the northern Syrian city of Raqqa (also spelled Ar Raqqah), proclaiming it a regional capital within its so-called caliphate. The group’s main capital was Mosul, Iraq, which fell in July. Other names for the Islamic State have included the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Raqqa, Syria, lies in ruins on Aug. 1, 2017. Fighting to oust Islamic State militants destroyed much of the city in 2017. Credit: Mahmoud Bali, Voice of America

The Islamic State staged euphoric parades—as well as numerous atrocities—in Raqqa, a city that once numbered 300,000 people. Most of Raqqa’s residents fled, but those who could not were forced to watch as Islamic State executioners murdered dozens of people daily. Mass executions took place regularly at the city’s main Clock Tower Square, grisly killings of people who stepped out of line with the terror group’s extreme interpretation of Islam.

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Raqqa (here spelled Ar Raqqah) lies on the Euphrates River in northern Syria. Al Mayadin is down river in eastern Syria. Both cities were liberated from Islamic State control in October 2017. Credit: WORLD BOOK map

In 2017, however, the suffering people of Raqqa witnessed a turnaround. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish and Arab militia group,
chased Islamic State fighters away from areas surrounding Raqqa, leaving the city an isolated Islamic State stronghold. On June 6, SDF troops—supplied and supported by the United States-led coalition also fighting the Islamic State—entered Raqqa. Heavy fighting erupted as Islamic State militants battled invading SDF troops. Throughout June, July, and August, the SDF advanced street-by-street against stiff Islamic State resistance.

By September 1, Islamic State control was reduced to several neighborhoods in the city’s north and in the central area around the killing ground of Clock Tower Square. By early October, the battered ruins of Raqqa were firmly in SDF hands, and only scattered pockets of the most fanatic Islamic State fighters remained (thousands of fighters had fled or surrendered). At last, on October 17, the SDF declared Raqqa secured: the last Islamic State fighters in the city had fled or been killed or captured.

Like the fall of Mosul in July, the fall of Raqqa was a significant moment in the fight against the Islamic State, but the fight continues. Also in October, Syrian government forces—who are at war with rebels as well as the Islamic State (but not the SDF)—took control of the eastern town of al Mayadin in Deir al-Zor province, the Islamic State’s last Syrian stronghold.

July 19, 2017

On July 10, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared victory for government forces in their bloody battle with Islamic State militants for possession of the northern city of Mosul. One of Iraq’s largest cities, Mosul had been under Islamic State control since the terrorist group took it by force in June 2014. The government campaign to retake the city began in October 2016.

An Iraqi federal policeman tries to draw fire from an Islamic State sniper in Mosul, Iraq, in April 2017. If the sniper fires, he may reveal his position. Credit: © Carl Court, Getty Images

Islamic State is the name used by a radical militant Sunni Islamist group based in Iraq and Syria. The group is known for its ruthless violence and severe interpretation of the Sharī`ah, the legal and moral code of Islam. In June 2014, Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed the establishment of a caliphate from the steps of the Grand Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul. A caliphate is a government ruled by a caliph, a leader with political and religious authority recognized by Muslims as a successor of the Prophet Muhammad. No one outside the Islamic State—which is merely a well-organized terrorist group—recognized the so-called caliphate, however, and it is often referred to as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), or by the acronym DAESH, based on the group’s full Arabic name (al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham). For the past several years, the group has been fighting for control of parts of Iraq and Syria and has killed thousands of people in high-profile terror attacks in Europe and the Middle East.

Northeastern Iraq is largely Kurdish, and peshmerga (Kurdish for those who confront death) fighters led a first attempt to liberate Mosul in early 2015. Coinciding Islamic State assaults on the city of Ramadi—much closer to Baghdad, the Iraqi capital—prevented the Iraqi Army from supporting the Kurds in Mosul, however. The peshmerga pried several suburban villages from Islamic State control, but they lacked the numbers and firepower to free the city itself.

Iraqi soldiers and heavy vehicles head for the fighting in Mosul, Iraq, in November 2016. Credit: Mstyslav Chernov (licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

Hard fighting around Mosul resumed in the spring of 2016 as the government worked to cut off Islamic State supply routes out of the city. Government-led forces slowly tightened the net around Mosul through the summer and into autumn. Civilians in the city, already suffering under Islamic State rule (there were numerous random killings and mass executions), fled Mosul in increasing numbers—as did many Islamic State fighters. By early October, the estimated number of Islamic State militants in Mosul had shrunk to between 3,000 and 5,000, down from roughly 20,000 earlier in 2016.

On October 16, some 100,000 troops—mostly from the Iraqi army but many from peshmerga, Shī`ite, and other local militias—gathered on the outskirts of Mosul. With close air and artillery support from a United States-led coalition, Iraqi forces entered eastern Mosul the next day. They advanced against fierce pockets of Islamic State resistance, rigged explosives, and other improvised defenses. Civilians were often caught in the crossfire, particularly as Islamic State fighters used them as human shields and deterrents against coalition air and artillery strikes. Still, eastern Mosul steadily fell to government troops through November and December as assaults from the north and west put further pressure on the city’s Islamic State defenders. On Jan. 24, 2017, Prime Minister al-Abadi announced the “full liberation” of eastern Mosul.

Burned out cars and rubble flank a deserted road in Mosul, Iraq, in November 2016. Fighting in Mosul left much of the city in ruins. Credit: Mstyslav Chernov (licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

The offensive to liberate Mosul’s western half (the city is divided by the Tigris River) began on February 19. Government forces advanced from neighborhood to neighborhood, fighting from building to building both on the streets and below them in tunnels. Islamic State forces dwindled but maintained fierce and often suicidal resistance. By April, their remaining numbers had gathered in western Mosul’s old city or retreated in small groups to the city’s outskirts. By June, resistance had shrunk to a few blocks surrounding the old city’s Grand Mosque of al-Nuri. As a last act of defiance before dying in battle, Islamic State fighters destroyed the 844-year-old Grand Mosque. Shocked, saddened, and exhausted government troops at last annihilated Islamic State resistance in early July, ending the battle.

The fight for Mosul destroyed large parts of the ancient and historic city. More than 2,000 Islamic State militants died in the battle. Reports that their leader, al-Baghdadi, was among the dead remain as-yet unproven. Roughly 1,000 soldiers of the Iraqi government coalition were killed. Civilian deaths are estimated at more than 8,000, and more than 1 million people had to flee their homes. The shell-shocked citizens that remain in Mosul are now in need of food and water, medicine, sanitation, and shelter. The families of slain or escaped Islamic State fighters face a similar crisis as they are gathered in temporary camps outside the city.

For the Islamic State, the loss of Mosul—the birthplace of its “caliphate” and its capital in Iraq—is a costly defeat. However, the war against the terrorist group is far from over. Islamic State militants who fled Mosul now hold nearby towns, and many thousands of other Islamic State fighters remain in Syria and other parts of Iraq.

July 5, 2016

Shocked Iraqi citizens gather among the scorched and smoldering debris at the site of a suicide bomb blast in Baghdad’s busy Karrada shopping district on July 3, 2016.
Credit: © Khalid al Mousily, Reuters

Early Sunday morning, July 3, an Islamic State terrorist bomber drove a truck packed with explosives into the crowded Karrada commercial district of Baghdad, Iraq. People filled the streets of the Shī`ite majority neighborhood as they shopped for the upcoming Id al-Fitr holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Just after midnight, the truck exploded in a massive blast that killed more than 200 people and injured hundreds of others. With some people still missing amidst the rubble and destruction, the death toll is certain to rise. A second terrorist bomber also struck that night in the city’s Shī`ite market district of al-Shaab, killing two more people. Sunday’s bombings marked the fourth major terrorist attack in Baghdad since the beginning of May.

The second, smaller bombing is typical of the daily existence for many Iraqis as they deal with the constant threat of terrorist violence. The larger bombing, while atypical because of its size and impact, illustrates the ruthlessness of the Islamic State and the most frequent targets of its attacks—other Muslims. The Islamic State (also called ISIS, ISIL, or DAESH) is a radical Sunni group, and the vast majority of its victims belong to the Shī`ite division of Islam. The Islamic State is slowly losing Iraqi territory it captured in the past two years, but its reach is obviously still deadly and extensive. The Karrada bombing was the worst in Iraq this year.

Naturally, the Islamic State does not speak for most Sunni Muslims. The Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq, the nation’s highest Sunni religious body, called the Karrada bombing a “bloody crime, regardless of who carried it out or what their motivations were.”

The victims of the bombings are more than just numbers. Entire families are among the dead in Karrada—fathers, mothers, and children all destroyed in one moment of tragic terrorist hatred. The dead have names, too, like Adel al-Jaf, a promising young dancer and rapper also known as Adel Euro; Zulfikar Oraibi, the son of former Iraqi soccer star Ghanim Oraibi; and Adnan Abu Altman, who graduated from law school last week and died with his father and brother. Many more of the dead—badly mangled in the violence of the explosion—have yet to be identified, and many bodies have yet to be recovered.

October 23, 2015

Early yesterday, October 22, U.S. Special Forces and allied Kurdish troops rescued 69 captives from an Islamic State (also known as ISIS) compound in the northern Iraqi town of Hawija. The prisoners, like so many others in the hands of the Islamic State terrorist group, were about to be killed in a mass execution. Kurdish security forces—known as peshmerga (Kurdish for those who confront death)—asked for help to rescue the prisoners, and the Special Forces responded.

Five U.S. helicopters—similar to the Marine helicopter pictured here—flew U.S. and Kurdish forces to and from the raid in Hawija. On the return trip, the helicopters also carried 69 freed prisoners and 5 Islamic State captives. © Summer Dowding, Department Of Defense

To aid in the fight against the Islamic State, a small number of U.S. troops deployed (were sent) to Iraq in an advisory role last year. Anticipating the need to expand that role, the number of U.S. troops in Iraq has since steadily increased to some 3,500. Thursday’s raid marked the first official time that American troops had fought alongside local forces against the Islamic State. The rescue mission was an overwhelming success, but it cost the life of one American, a 39-year-old Army master sergeant from Oklahoma. The U.S. soldier’s death in action was the first in Iraq since the Iraq War ended in 2011, and the first U.S. combat fatality in the fight against the Islamic State. More than 20 Islamic State militants died in the raid, and 5 others were captured. American officials were quick to point out that the raid was an isolated rescue mission, a “unique circumstance,” and not a change in tactics.

Hawija lies in Iraq’s northern Kurdish region, some 30 miles south of the city of Kirkuk. Kurdish and Iraqi forces have been battling Islamic State militants in the area since 2014. Many thousands of people have died in the area’s fighting, and many others have become prisoners of the Islamic State. As is well known by now, people captured by the Islamic State are often massacred.

April 1, 2015

The Vatican announced this week that Pope Francis is sending his personal envoy to Iraq for Holy Week. (In 2015, Holy Week for Western Christians began last Sunday, Palm Sunday, on March 29, and will end on Easter Sunday, April 5.)  The pope’s envoy carries with him a gift from the diocese of Rome, Easter cake for refugees. This special cake, known as Colomba cake, is a traditional Italian sweet formed into the shape of a dove that symbolizes peace.

Colomba cake is a traditional Italian sweet served at Easter. (Credit: © Enzo De Bernardo, Shutter-stock)

Cardinal Fernanado Filoni traveled to Iraq last August as the personal envoy of Francis. He is traveling to Iraq again, to Arbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, to convey the pope’s concern for the plight of the region’s Christians and people of other minorities.

Since the summer of 2014, when the militant group Islamic State (ISIS) overran large areas of Iraq, some 125,000 Iraqi Christians have been forced to flee their homes. The city of Arbil forms a safe zone for both Christians and Yazidis, both groups that ISIS would like to remove from the area they consider a part of their caliphate. Christians and Yazidis have inhabited areas of Iraq for thousands of years. However, ISIS’s treatment of religious minorities—including killings by burning and beheading, torture, and enslavement—has instilled fear and may have permanently emptied many areas of such minorities.

Other World Book article:

• Iraq (2014-a Back in time article)

March 11, 2015

The Iraqi army, aided mainly by forces from Shi`ite militias and Iran, have come close to retaking Tikrit, a strategically important Iraqi city. Tikrit has been under the control of the Islamic State (ISIS) since June 2014. Tikrit is one of four cities—the others being Baghdad, Baqubah, and Ramadi—that form the Sunni Triangle, an area populated mostly by Sunni Muslims that was the center of heavy resistance against the U.S.-led coalition during the Iraq War (2003-2011). Anti-ISIS Sunni militias are also aiding the effort to liberate Tikrit.

Islamic State (ISIS) fighters during a military parade shown in propaganda photos released by the militants in 2014. Credit: © Alamy Images

The offensive to retake Tikrit began on March 2. After more than a week’s fierce fighting, Iraqi forces finally penetrated ISIS territory. The fighting involved around 30,000 Iraqi soldiers and allied Shi‘ite militia. Yesterday, Iraq announced that large areas of the city had been recaptured. North of Tikrit, Kurdish forces are also fighting ISIS, so the group is being hemmed in from several directions. The United States sat out this fight, uncomfortable with the use of Shi`ite militia in a heavily Sunni area. Some experts feared that the sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shi`ites, especially after a massacre of Shi`ite soldiers by ISIS last summer, makes revenge killings by Shi`ites against Sunnis a danger in the area. The next step is for Iraq to retake the city of Mosul, where ISIS has killed thousands of people and destroyed numerous ancient artifacts, often with bulldozers and explosives. Since early March, ISIS has also destroyed the  Assyrian sites of Nimrud and Khorsabad and the Parthian site of Hatra.

Other World Book articles:

• Iraq (2014-a Back in Time article)
• Iraq War

November 7, 2014

The United States Department of Defense yesterday confirmed that more than 600 American service members had been exposed to chemical weapon agents while serving in the Iraq War (2003-2011). The New York Times in October had published a detailed report about the exposures in which the writers suggested that the Defense Department had tried to conceal the facts.

In 2003, the administration of President George W. Bush accused Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein of actively developing weapons of mass destruction, including chemical weapons. The presence of such weapon programs was the administration’s primary justification for invading Iraq.

A United Nations inspector in December 2002 examines dismantled equipment used during the 1980′s and 1990′s in Iraq’s chemical weapons program. American soldiers in Iraq were exposed to chemical agents left over from the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980′s. (Reuters/Getty Images)

After the invasion, United Nations weapons inspectors failed to find any evidence of active chemical or nuclear weapon programs. However, American soldiers found many chemical weapons that had been discarded after Iraq’s war against Iran in the 1980′s. Some of these dormant weapons had been manufactured with the help of western  countries, including the United States, which at the time supported Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran.

While disposing of these old munitions in Iraq in the wake of the invasion, a number of U.S. soldiers were exposed to such chemical agents as mustard gas and sarin. Others were exposed during attacks in which the insurgent groups al-Qai`da in Iraq used bombs loaded with Hussein’s discarded chemical agents. In The Times October article, the writers reported that U.S. military officials in Iraq had failed to adequately address these injuries and in some cases ordered victims not to discuss that they had been exposed to deadly agents. Yesterday, the Department of Defense confirmed the validity of The Times investigation and vowed to find and help affected veterans.

Additional World Book articles:

• Chemical Weapons Convention
• Islamic State
• Iraq 2002 (a Back in Time article)
• Chemical and Biological Terror (a special report)
• The War in Iraq: the Military Campaign and Aftermath (a special report)

September 23, 2014

Military forces from the United States and five Arab countries widened the war on the Islamic State (of Iraq and Syria)  (ISIS) by launching overnight the first air attacks on the jihadist group in Syria. American military officials said 14 strikes had destroyed or damaged ISIS training compounds, command and control facilities, vehicles, and storage sites in four Syrian provinces. Aircraft from Bahrain, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia participated in the attacks, while Qatar and the United Arab Emirates assisted in the operation. United States General Martin Dempsey, America’s highest-ranking uniformed military officer, said the strikes were conducted to show ISIS militants they had no safe haven. “We certainly achieved that,” he told reporters. The United States has already launched more than 190 air strikes against IS extremists in Iraq and has armed Iraqi and Kurdish forces fighting IS militants on the ground.

In recent months, the ISIS has taken control over great swaths of northern and western Iraq and eastern Syria. ISIS is a Sunni Muslim group known for its severe interpretation of the Shari`ah, the legal and moral code of Islam. The group specifically targets rival Shi`ite Muslims, Christians, and anyone else it deems an “enemy of Islam.” The group has become notorious for its extreme violence, including the mass executions of civilians and the barbarous beheading of enemy soldiers and Western journalists. Foreign affairs specialists noted the significance of such countries with a Sunni majority, like Jordan and Saudi Arabia, participating in the campaign against the ISIS.

A refugee camp in Jordan is one of many housing the millions of Syrians who have fled civil war and the advance of IS forces in their country. (AP)

The Syrian air strikes are aimed at halting IS advances in the eastern part of that country. On September 19, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said IS extremists had seized 60 Syrian Kurdish villages near the Turkish border in a two-day campaign. The fighting sent some 130,000 Syrian Kurds fleeing into Turkey last weekend. Most of the refugees were from Kobani, a predominantly Kurdish town near the Turkish border. Syrian Kurdish forces reportedly halted the jihadists’ advance amid fierce fighting. In response to the flood of refugees, Turkey closed some border crossings with Syria. Before this latest migration, there were already more than 1 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, people displaced by the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that began in 2011. International affairs experts noted that the Turkish government is apprehensive about allowing large numbers of Kurds to enter the country. For 30 years, Turkish forces fought Kurdish separatists in a rebellion that left 40,000 people dead. Turkey also apparently wished to prevent Kurdish refugees from returning to Syria to fight the ISIS.

Additional World Book articles:

• Kurdistan
• Umayyad caliphate
• Iraq War
• Iraq 2012 (a Back in Time article)
• Iraq 2013 (a Back in Time article)
• Syria 2013 (a Back in Time article)
• Syria: The Roots of a Rebellion (a special report)

August 19, 2014

Yesterday, United States President Barack Obama announced that military operations begun on August 16th in northern Iraq had recaptured a strategically important dam. The dam, located near the city of Mosul, was captured several weeks ago by armed Sunni extremists with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

The extremist group ISIS has seized a large amount of territory in northern Iraq and Syria. (World Book map.)

ISIS has come to the fore in 2014, seizing major swaths of land in Syria and Iraq, in their attempt to create a new Islamic empire. Isis seized Mosul in early June. This major city is strategically placed on routes linking Iraq to Turkey and Syria.

Both the U.S. and Iraqi governments were unwilling to allow the dam to stay in the hands of such extremists. The Mosul dam supplies electric power to northern Iraq and water to cities as far south as Baghdad, Iraq’s capital. The dam is also the water source for much of Iraq’s agricultural land. With ISIS in control of the dam, Iraq’s water and power supplies were suddenly in the hands of hostile extremists. In addition, if ISIS had decided to destroy the dam, it would have sent a 60-foot (18-meter) wave of water down the Tigris River that would have inundated the city of Mosul and flooded Baghdad.

President Obama ordered air strikes, coordinated with strikes by the Iraqi air force, on ISIS forces that began on the 16th. These air strikes were in support of Kurdish military, known as peshmerga, fighting on the ground. By the morning of the 18th, the peshmerga had retaken the Mosul dam from ISIS. On the 19th, Isis posted a video online with the statement to the United States, “We will drown all of you in blood.”

Additional World Book articles:

• Islamic empire
• Kurdistan

August 8, 2014

The United States launched air strikes in Iraq today against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a radical Sunni Muslim jihadist group that now control large swathes of Iraq and Syria. The U.S. Department of Defense has confirmed that U.S. aircraft dropped 500-pound (227-kilogram) laser-guided bombs on artillery that was being used against Kurdish forces defending the northern Iraqi city of Arbil. President Barack Obama authorized the air strikes yesterday, but said he would not send U.S. ground troops back into Iraq. In late June, ISIS declared that it was establishing a caliphate on the territories it controls to be known simply as “the Islamic State” and will extend from Aleppo in northern Syria to Diyala province in eastern Iraq.

Yesterday, ISIS captured the city of Qaraqosh in Iraq’s Ninawa province after Kurdish forces withdraw in retreat. As many as 100,000 residents of Ninawa—many of them Christians—fled their homes for the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. Qaraqosh—which is largely a Christian city—is 19 miles (30 kilometers) southeast of the city of Mosul, which Isis captured in June. Most Christian families fled Mosul after ISIS gave them an ultimatum to convert, pay a special tax, or face death.

The U.S. Air Force today bombed ISIS artillery outside the Iraqi city of Arbil, which is just east of Mosul. Isis, a radical Sunni jihadist group, is now in control of large swaths of Iraq and Syria. (World Book map)

On August 6, a senior Kurdish official warned that tens of thousands of members of the Yezidi religious minority were trapped without water on a mountain to the west of Mosul. They face slaughter at the hands of Isis militants surrounding them below if they flee, or death by dehydration if they stay. The Sunni Jihadists regard the Yezidis as devil worshipers. The Yezidis fled their homes last weekend during an Isis offensive in which it took control of several towns in the northwest as well as an oil field and Iraq’s largest dam. The United Nations has confirmed that it had received credible reports that 40 Yezidi children had died “as a direct consequence of violence, displacement, and dehydration.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said today that the world needed to wake up to the threat posed by ISIS: Its “campaign of terror against the innocent, including the Yezidi and Christian minorities, and its grotesque targeted acts of violence show all the warning signs of genocide.”

Additional World Book articles:

• Umayyad caliphate
• Iraq War
• Iraq 2012 (a Back in Time article)
• Iraq 2013 (a Back in Time article)
• Syria 2013 (a Back in Time article)
• Syria: The Roots of a Rebellion (a special report)