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ISIS Hotbed Looms as Risk in Mosul Fight

Iraqi forces closing in on Islamic State-held Mosul are bypassing pockets controlled by militants such as the strategic town of Hawija, leaving the extremists free to launch counterattacks elsewhere in Iraq.

But just days into the Mosul offensive, Islamic State mounted a massive coordinated attack on oil-rich Kirkuk,

As the military and political battle against the Islamic State escalates, Muslim imams and scholars in the West are fighting on another front — through theology.

The Islamic State, however, has taken notice.

The danger is real enough that the F.B.I. has contacted some of those named in the Islamic State’s magazine “to assist them in taking proper steps to ensure their safety,”

Iraqi forces raise flag at Mosul University in push against ISIS

Published January 14, 2017 FoxNews.com Facebook0 Twitter0 Email Print A member of Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF) stands in a military vehicle at the University of Mosul during a battle with Islamic State militants, in Mosul, Iraq, January 14, 2017. REUTERS/Ahmed Saad - RTSVHSV Iraqi special forces raised the Iraqi flag above the buildings at the Mosul University complex on Friday as they continued the battle for control of the city against Islamic State militants.

"We congratulate the Iraqi Security Forces on their continued progress in Eastern Mosul,” U.S. army Col. John Dorrian, a spokesman for the U.S.-led anti-IS coalition said in a statement. “Work still needs to be done but ISIL's days in Mosul are quickly coming to an end.

Iraqi troops retake key town from ISIS in Falluja offensive

Iraqi security forces and supporting militias have retaken the key town of Karma from ISIS, the government's first significant victory

The United Nations said it fears an estimated 50,000 civilians trapped in Falluja ahead of the government advance are at extreme risk.

dvancing along the Mediterranean coast toward the Islamic State stronghold of Surt, signaling the first major assault on territory that

the terrorist group’s largest base outside of Iraq and Syria.

reduced the length of Libyan coastline controlled by the Islamic State to 100 miles from about 150 miles

The week started with word Iraqi forces were set to storm ISIS-held Fallujah.

The stalled assault on the historic jihadi stronghold signals an early warning that the country's security forces may be rushing headlong into a politically motivated battle for which they remain under-prepared.

" forces needed to ensure the safety of the estimated 40,000 civilians trapped in the city

U.S. Forces Play Crucial Role Against ISIS in Mosul

A flurry of attacks were carried out by the American-led coalition in and around Mosul on Saturday, some involving the dropping of multiple bombs.

Iraq’s federal police have fully secured the Mosul airport, while Iraq’s elite counterterrorism service seized a nearby military base last week.

Inveighing against the barbarism of ISIS, the president pointed out that it would be foolish to blame Islam, at large, for its atrocities. To make this point he noted that using religion to brutalize other people is neither a Muslim invention nor, in America, a foreign one: Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.

The "all too often" could just as well be "almost always." There were a fair number of pretexts given for slavery and Jim Crow, but Christianity provided the moral justification

Stephens went on to argue that the "Christianization of the barbarous tribes of Africa" could only be accomplished through enslavement. And enslavement was not made possible through Robert's Rules of Order, but through a 250-year reign of mass torture, industrialized murder, and normalized rape—tactics which ISIS would find familiar. Its moral justification was not "because I said so," it was "Providence," "the curse against Canaan," "the Creator," "and Christianization." In just five years, 750,000 Americans died because of this peculiar mission of "Christianization." Many more died before, and many more died after. In his "Segregation Now" speech, George Wallace invokes God 27 times and calls the federal government opposing him "a system that is the very opposite of Christ."

The Kurds have released video of last week's ISIS prison raid backed by U.S. Special Operations

KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani said on Sunday that the Islamic State group has been defeated in the eastern parts of the country, where it took over some remote districts.

ISIS has had a presence in Afghanistan for more than a year. Officials have said most militants calling themselves IS are disaffected Taliban fighters.

Afghan forces have claimed victory following a 21-day operation in the Achin and Shinwar districts of Nangarhar, claiming at least 200 militants killed, a provincial official told The Associated Press.

U.S. military battle against ISIS is "moving forward with a great sense of urgency,"

admitting that progress against the terrorists in Iraq and Syria remains slow-going.

"ISIL is dug in in, including in urban areas, and they hide behind civilians, and using men, women and children as human shields. So even as we are relentless, we have to be smart and target ISIL with precision."

ISIS’s Capital Still Hasn’t Been Cut Off

The distance from the Syrian city of Raqqa to Iraq’s Mosul is about 230 miles as the crow flies, and closer to 280 miles if one drives between the two “capitals” controlled by the self-declared Islamic State

As The Guardian reported in mid-November: “Although heavily targeted throughout the campaign, ISIS has kept a supply line between Raqqa and Mosul largely open. The highway, in particular, has been a major conduit for trade and the flow of fighters.”

killing its finance minister

Abu Saleh was killed in late November in a strike in Iraq

one of the most senior and experienced members of ISIL's financial network,

Unlike Rubio, he considers violent jihadism a small, toxic strain within Islamic civilization, not a civilization itself.

And unlike Bush, he doesn’t consider it a serious ideological competitor.

While Republicans think ISIS is strong and growing stronger, Obama thinks it’s weak and growing weaker.

The West has failed utterly to understand the appeal of the ISIS narrative, much less to develop effective counter narratives.

In the meantime ISIS is reaching out, especially in Africa but also in Central Asia and wherever a state of “chaos” or “savagery” (at-tawahoush) exists, to fill the void. It is establishing its caliphate as a global archipelago where “volcanoes of jihad” erupt, so that it may survive even if its current core base between the Euphrates River in Syria (Raqqa) and the Tigris in Iraq (Mosul) is seriously degraded.

Earlier this year the administration had announced plans to draw down to a skeleton force of around 1,000 troops in Afghanistan by the end of its term. That decision would have tied the hands of the next president as it is much easier to maintain an existing troop presence -- both from a logistical point of view as well as politically -- than it is to ramp one up substantially.

two-thirds of Afghans favored a long-term role for U.S. and other international forces, while the Afghan government, led by President Ashraf Ghana and CEO Abdullah Abdullah, have been imploring U.S. officials to maintain a substantial troop presence.

Amnesty writes: "Mass murder, gang rapes and house-to-house searches by Taliban death squads are just some of the harrowing civilian testimonies emerging from Kunduz. ...Women human rights defenders from Kunduz spoke of a 'hit list' being used by the Taliban to track down activists and others, and described how fighters had raped and killed numerous civilians."Third, an overwhelming 92% of Afghans prefer the current government to the Taliban, according to a poll taken earlier this year. In other words, not only is the United States on the right side of history in supporting the Afghan government against the Taliban, the Afghan people also overwhelmingly support this.

Republican presidential hopeful Marco Rubio on Sunday praised people for buying handguns to protect themselves from ISIS.

"I have a right to protect my family," said Rubio, a Florida senator. "I think many Americans around the country feel the same way ... If ISIS were to visit us, or our communities, at any moment, the last line of defense between ISIS and my family is the ability that I have to protect my family from them, or from a criminal, or anyone else who seeks to do us harm. Millions of Americans feel that way."

Rubio's praise for citizens arming themselves against ISIS echoes a common argument from gun enthusiasts. Easy access to guns, they argue, makes it easier for citizens to shoot mass shooters and other violent people when they begin killing people. Armed civilians almost never break up mass shootings.