{"id":17509,"date":"2014-06-17T19:46:32","date_gmt":"2014-06-17T23:46:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=17509"},"modified":"2014-06-17T19:47:16","modified_gmt":"2014-06-17T23:47:16","slug":"isis-born-from-occupation-of-iraq-not-syrian-civil-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2014\/06\/17\/isis-born-from-occupation-of-iraq-not-syrian-civil-war\/","title":{"rendered":"ISIS Born from Occupation of Iraq, not Syrian Civil War"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Real News Network<\/em> has the interview video ISIS Born from Occupation of Iraq, not Syrian Civil War<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\nVIJAY PRASHAD, EDWARD SAID CHAIR, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF BEIRUT:
\nWell, ISIS has had a major breakthrough this week. It took, of course, Mosul, came down south of the Tigris, took Tikrit, which is the hometown of Saddam Hussein and therefore very significant to the three organizations that are working together–ISIS, the Military Council, which is made up of former Iraqi army people, and then the Naqshbandi movement, which is led by a former deputy of Saddam Hussein, Izzat al-Douri. So these three organizations–the Baathists, Iraqi military forces, and ISIS–have taken a vast amount of Iraq in a very short time. But mainly it had been in the north-south axis from Mosul down to near Samarra.<\/p>\n

Now they have moved westward. They’ve taken Tal Afar. They’ve already taken small roads that go toward Syria. But the Tal Afar capture has opened a corridor for them that will take them to the major eastern city in Syria of Deir ez-Zor, and from there, of course, right to Raqqah, which is the first major city in Syria that the ISIS organization had taken. So now we have from the borders of Aleppo–major city in Syria–all the way out to Mosul, we have a banner area, a kind of–we have, like, a belt controlled by the group ISIS, helped along in Iraq by former Baathists and former Iraqi military personnel.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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