Formidable Army Of 12,000 Black-Clad Fanatics Who Rule By Beheading, Amputation And Crucifixion

The Iraqi government policemen and soldiers in Mosul abandoned their weapons and uniforms with barely a fight against the army of black-clad killers from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terror group.

The gunmen quickly laid their hands on a mass of abandoned U.S. military equipment to add to their massive arsenal, ranging from Humvee vehicles to night-sights and body armour.

Among the first acts of this ruthless force of Islamic militants was to liberate 2,500 prisoners from two jails - many of them terrorists who immediately joined their ranks. 

 

Meanwhile, ISIL terrorists are also on the verge of taking Iraq’s largest oil refinery in the town of Baiji, 130 miles north of Baghdad and have taken Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit, too.

The evening before, ISIL chiefs phoned Baiji’s sheiks, and told them to warn policemen and soldiers to lay down their arms or be killed. They meekly complied.

Who are ISIL and why do they inspire such fear? Could they really, as serious commentators and political leaders suggest, threaten not only the entire stability of the Middle East but also bring a new reign of jihadist terror to the West?

One thing is certain: this formidable army is a very different beast to the Iraqi branch of Al Qaeda from which it originated and which fought the U.S. and the Iraqi government from the 2003 invasion until American troops left in 2011.

ISIL fanatics are hardline followers of the Sunni Muslim creed. They despise Iraq’s leadership - as well as the majority of the country’s population - who follow the Shia version of the faith.

This Sunni/Shia divide has been a source of violence across the Middle East since the 7th century. It was kept in check by brutal dictators such as Saddam Hussein, Colonel Gaddafi and President Assad.  

Extreme: The fighters were once part of al-Qaeda, which has cut ties with the group. They have now taken control of Saddam Hussein's home town

Tensions: The Isis fighters are from the Sunni branch of Islam - as was Saddam Hussein - in contrast to the current Shia government

But their removal - attempted in the case of Syria’s Assad - by gung-ho Western leaders such as Tony Blair and George W. Bush has re-ignited the bitter hatred with terrifying fervour. And ISIL is the living embodiment of that hatred.

The sectarian civil war in Syria has been the terror group’s biggest asset. In the past they would have been crushed ruthlessly by Assad’s forces, but during the past two years, the war has enabled them to train and shelter militants in the increasingly ungoverned areas between Syria and Iraq.

The group originated in Iraq and incorporated the Levant (Syria) into its name two years ago to reflect its spearheading of the fight against Assad.

Later, it fell out with the Al Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan - and redefined itself to become a far more lethal and powerful army than ever operated against Western troops in Iraq, eclipsing Al Qaeda.

Today, it effectively governs a nation-sized area stretching over north and west Iraq and Syria.

‘This is a force that is ideologically motivated, battle-hardened and incredibly well-equipped,’ explains Douglas Ollivant, of the New America Foundation, who advised the Obama and Bush administrations on Iraq and served two tours of duty there.

‘It also runs the equivalent of a state. It has all the trappings of a state, just not an internationally recognised one.’

Territory: The above map shows the areas of Iraq and Syria currently controlled by Isis forces

Whereas Al Qaeda concentrated on counter-insurgency, ISIL transformed itself into a full-blooded army with thousands of fighting men to call on.

‘Al Qaeda in Iraq didn’t really fight the Americans,’ explains Ollivant. ‘They were great bomb-makers and kidnappers, but if caught in a firefight, they would probably get killed because they weren’t good line-infantry,’ he said. ‘Now that has been fixed.’

The U.S. congratulated itself on beating Al Qaeda in Iraq before it withdrew its troops in 2011 and handed power to the Baghdad government, dispersing $14billion of military aid to the Iraqi army.

But since then, Iraqi jihadists under the control of ISIL have won control of key towns, such as Fallujah, Ramadi, Samara - and now Mosul - while carrying out suicide bomb attacks in Baghdad that are causing 1,000 fatalities a month.

Within those areas it has conquered, it is imposing a vicious form of hardline Islamic sharia law, which has involved crucifixion of ‘spies’, as well as beheadings  and amputations.

Violent and mysterious: This undated photograph is one of only a few in existence showing Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of Isis

The transformation of ISIL came about under the command of a shadowy 42-year-old ex-preacher called Abu Bakr al Baghdadi - who was captured in southern Iraq in 2005 after being identified as  Al Qaeda’s point man in a flyblown town in Iraq’s western desert.

According to a Pentagon document, he was ‘connected to the intimidation, torture and murder of civilians,’ as well as publicly executing ‘entire families’.

Astonishingly, he was released in 2009, possibly because of some amnesty agreement or through confusion - his name is a nom de guerre used by several people.

‘We either arrested or killed a man of that name about half a dozen times,’ explained Lieutenant-General Sir Graeme Lamb, a former British special forces commander who fought Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Today, with a $10million bounty on his head, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi wears masks and avoids being photographed - the only image of him is a U.S. prison mugshot of a thickset man with cropped hair.

ISIL became the richest terror group ever yesterday after stealing £256 million from Mosul’s central bank.

Funding also comes from shadowy opponents of President Assad’s regime, and it extorts more than £600,000 each month from the prosperous citizens of cities such as Mosul, where it has long been a covert presence.

In the meantime, it has been recruiting foreign fighters for the war in Syria. Some 12,000 have flocked to fight in Syria from as far away as Chechnya, China and Pakistan - 3,000 of these foreign volunteers are Westerners, including an estimated 400 Britons.

ISIL’s aim is to create a Taliban-style caliphate, where political and religious leadership are fused, in Iraq and Syria, countries which it considers meaningless colonial constructs.

In order to achieve its vision, the terror group is not only simultaneously fighting Assad and the Iraqi regime of PM Nouri al-Maliki, but also other Syrian rebel groups that object to its appalling brutality - brutality that has proved even too much for Al Qaeda.

In addition, to the deep concern of Western governments, ISIL is encouraging its foreign fighters to commit atrocities in their home countries - particularly if these countries intervene in this conflict.

Earlier this month, a Frenchman who spent more than a year fighting in Syria was detained after three people were shot dead and another critically wounded outside a synagogue in Brussels.

He was carrying a Kalashnikov automatic rifle, a handgun, a 40-second film in which he appears to claim responsibility for the shootings - as well as an ISIL banner.

Carnage: Isis fighters devastated Mosul, to the north of the country, on Monday. Pictured is a member of the Iraqi security forced gunned down by the militants

Strewn: Uniforms though to belong to Iraqi soldiers were seen scattered on the road in Mosul - Iraq's second city - in this smartphone image from the conflict

It can only be a matter of time before a Briton, indoctrinated in Syria by ISIL, tries to launch a terror attack here.

Can anything be done to defeat this monstrous army? Certainly, we can’t rely on the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a dour, joyless figure who failed to win a majority in Iraq’s elections this April, and will not have a ruling coalition for months.

His regime is not only at loggerheads with Iraq’s Sunni Muslims - who see him as a puppet of Iran’s Shia regime - but also with  the ethnic Kurds in the north of Iraq, who enjoy all the trappings of independence and are in dispute with al-Maliki over the country’s oil wealth.

The Kurds’ own ferocious 250,000-strong peshmerga militia could probably make mincemeat of the jihadis, but they refuse to help unless Maliki meets their demands on oil revenue.

The result is that we are rapidly advancing to the point where Iraq disintegrates into three separate states, with the Kurds demanding full independence, ISIL establishing its own territory in the north and west, and Iraq’s Shia population settling for the rest of the country.

This would destabilise the whole region, compounding existing refugee problems and inflaming the Sunni/Shia conflict.

It is also what the West has desperately tried to stop happening for the past decade - but the cost in the blood of British, American and other countries’ soldiers means no Western leader will countenance sending troops back into Iraq.

Culled from DailyMail