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ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi forces are carrying out air strikes on Tal Afar, a town held by Islamic State west of Mosul, in preparation for a ground assault, an Iraqi military spokesman said on Tuesday.

Islamic State's self-proclaimed caliphate effectively collapsed last month, when U.S.-backed Iraqi forces completed the recapture of Mosul, the militants' capital in northern Iraq, after a nine-month campaign.

Parts of Iraq and Syria remain however under Islamic State control, especially along the border.

Iraqi authorities had said Tal Afar, 80 km (50 miles) west of Mosul, will be the next target in the war on Islamic State, who swept through parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014.

The town, which had about 200,000 residents before falling to Islamic State, experienced cycles of sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shi'ites after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and has produced some of Islamic State's most senior commanders.

"The preparations are under way, there are strikes aimed at wearing them down and keeping them busy, targeting their command and control centers, their depots... these strikes have been going on for some time," Iraqi military spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Rasool said in a statement.

"We are waiting for the commander in chief of the armed forces (Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi)to give the orders for the liberation battle to start."

Earlier on Tuesday, Baghdad-based al-Sumariya TV quoted Defence Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Khodari as saying the ground attack should start after the aerial bombardment campaign.

Tal Afar has become the focus of a wider regional struggle for influence. Turkey, which claims affinity with Tal Afar's predominantly ethnic Turkmen population, opposes the involvement of Shi'ite paramilitary groups fighting with Iraqi forces, some of which are backed by Iran.

One of Iraq's senior military commanders, Major-General Najm al-Jabouri, told Reuters last month that between 1,500 and 2,000 militants were in Tal Afar, a figure which possibly includes some family members who support them.

The U.S.-led coalition is also keeping up its support to the Iraqi forces' campaign to end the militants presence all over the country.

Coalition spokesman Colonel Ryad Dillon said last Thursday that the coalition carried out more than 50 strikes in the past week against Islamic State defensive positions, headquarters, weapons caches, and bomb factories in Tal Afar and also Kisik Junction to the east.

"We fully expect this to be a difficult fight to root out ISIS from one of their last strongholds in Iraq," Dillon told a news briefing.

Jabouri had a different assessment of the battle, expecting a relatively easy victory because the militants and their families there are "worn out and demoralized".

Islamic State has also lost swathes of Syrian territory to separate campaigns being waged by Syrian government forces backed by Russia and Iran and by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic (SDF) Forces, which is dominated by the Kurdish YPG militia. The SDF is currently focused on capturing Raqqa city from Islamic State.

Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Angus MacSwan

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Iraq bombing Islamic State-held Tal Afar ahead of assault: Iraqi military spokesman - Reuters

The soldiers have been identified as 22-year-old Sgt. Allen L. Stigler Jr., left, of Arlington, Texas, and 30-year-old Sgt. Roshain E. Brooks of Brooklyn, New York.

U.S. Army via AP

WASHINGTON -- A Pentagon spokesman says the two U.S. soldiers killed Sunday in Iraq were casualties of a U.S. artillery "mishap.

The soldiers have been identified as 22-year-old Sgt. Allen L. Stigler Jr. of Arlington, Texas, and 30-year-old Sgt. Roshain E. Brooks of Brooklyn, New York.

Both were cannon crew members assigned to 2nd Battalion, 319th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division.

The Pentagon spokesman, Army Col. Rob Manning, says an Army artillery unit was firing on an Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, mortar position "when a mishap occurred." Manning says there is no indication that ISIS played a role in the deaths. He says he cannot provide other details because the incident is under investigation.

Five others suffered injuries that Manning says are not life-threatening.

2017 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Pentagon: US soldiers killed in Iraq were casualties of artillery "mishap" - CBS News

By Gne Murat Tezcr By Gne Murat Tezcr August 15 at 8:00 AM

Three years ago this month, the Islamic State started a systematicattack againstthe Kurdish-speaking Yazidi minority based in the Sinjar area ofnorthwestern Iraq. We now have a better understanding of the militant groups patterns of violence and goals because of the discovery of mass graves, survivor testimonies and the Islamic Statespublic declarations.

This new evidence tells us that while the Islamic States extremist ideology provided the guiding principle, large numbers of locals with varying motives actively participatedin these atrocities. The pursuit of material gains and stigmatization of the Yazidis as a marginalized religious minority have been the driving factors of the violence at the local level.

The precarious existence of the Yazidis

While many other ethnoreligious groups in northern Iraq have been subject to various degrees of Islamic State violence, the treatment of the Yazidis at the hands of the groupamounts to what human rights organizationsdeem genocide: including mass executions and abductions, sexual enslavement and forced conversions. Out of an estimated 400,000 Yazidi people living in Sinjar, at least 10,000were either killed or abducted. Almost the entire population is displaced.

The Yazidis, an insulated and internally hierarchical community, have a long history of persecution and victimization at the hands of Muslim rulers and extremist organizations. While the Yazidis have lived among Sunni Arabs and Kurds side by side for centuries, discriminatory practices and social distance characterized interreligious relations, including the widespread perception that Yazidis are devil worshipers. In the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, many Yazidis gained new employment opportunities under the de facto Kurdish control over the area that generated resentment among local Arabs.

The Islamic States ideology and Yazidis

In this historical context, the rapid advance of the Islamic State into the Sinjar area became a disaster for the Yazidis. The Islamic States ideology defines the Yazidis as polytheists who have no right to exist under Islamic rule. In many instances, captured Yazidis were given the choice of conversion or death and enslavement.

In 2014, a large village about 15 miles south of Sinjar called Kocho held off Islamic State fighters in a siege that lasted 12 days. As recounted by a survivor, eventually, the Islamic State fighters stormed the village and massacred about 400 men immediately and about 80 elderly women later. The remaining women and children were treated as slaves and sold to Islamic State fighters. Even while the Islamic State took pains to say that it prohibited gang rape as Yazidi women were supposed to be the exclusive property of their owner Islamic State fighters simply sold their slaves to other fighters.

A recent study shows that perpetrators ideology often plays a decisive role in their choice of targets and means of violence. At the same time, one needs to look beyond ideology to opportunism and deep-rooted stigmatization of the Yazidi minority to explain how the Islamic States violence against that community faced no opposition from the local population.

A recurrent theme in my conversations with Yazidis and testimonies of femalesurvivors is that not only foreign fighters but also local Iraqis and Syrians, both men and women, were actively involved in their rape and enslavement. In the words of a survivor, They did not attack us because of their ideology, but to simply have the opportunity to rape us.

While some Sunnis from the Sinjar area tried to protect their Yazidi neighbors, many others, including godfathers of Yazidi boys who were supposed to act as their protectors, participated in the enslavement of women and the robbing of the Yazidis and looting of their properties resulting in revenge attacks after the defeat of the Islamic State. The mass abduction of Yazidis has become a profitable activity for both the local population and Islamic State fighters, who often sold their captives back to their families for hefty sums via smugglers.

It is too simplistic to argue that the Yazidi tragedy is a direct and inevitable result of historical religious antagonisms. Yet, even if many of these locals did not subscribe to the Islamic State ideology and were not its members, they readily dehumanized the Yazidis after the ascendancy of the Islamic State. Deep-rooted stigmatization of Yazidis and general insecurity in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq contributed to their vulnerability as a community and enabled the Islamic State to implement its exterminating ideology and find collaboration among the local population.

This pattern of genocidal political projects mobilizing ordinary people in mass crimes has been observed in settings as diverse as Nazi Germany and Rwanda. The uniqueness of the Islamic State ideology should not obscure the fragility of intercommunal coexistence in times of crises and the difficulty of intercommunal reconciliation.

Gne Murat Tezcr isthe Jalal Talabani chair of Kurdish Political Studies and directs the Kurdish Political Studies Program at the University of Central Florida.

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Three years ago, the Islamic State massacred Yazidis in Iraq. Why? - Washington Post

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The governor of the oil city of Basra has stepped down and gone to Iran after Iraq's anti-corruption body began investigating graft allegations against him, people close to him and officials said on Tuesday.

Iraq's Integrity Commission on Monday evening issued a statement asking the foreign ministry in Baghdad to ask Iran to repatriate Nasrawi.

A Basra-based politician close to Nasrawi said the accusations against Nasrawi were "politically motivated" by rivals.

"He can travel wherever he likes as long as there are no legal obstacles," the politician said, confirming that Nasrawi had left for Iran. The governor's family declined to comment and the lawyer's association in Basra said he had no known attorney.

Oil-rich Iraq ranks 166st out of 176 nations in Transparency International's Corruption Index.

In a separate case, Samir Kubba, the director general of Iraqi Airways, has been arrested and referred to trial on graft charges, a spokesman for the Supreme Judicial Council said on Tuesday.

Judge Abdul Sattar Birqadr said he faced accusations of "bribery cases and job violations".

Majid al-Nasrawi and the Iraqi Airways boss are the highest ranking public figures to come under investigation for alleged corruption since Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi was elected three years ago, partly on a pledge to fight graft.

Graft has exacerbated the effects on the economy of a sharp decline in oil revenue caused by falling crude prices and the costs of fighting Islamic State, which took control of large parts of northern and western Iraq after 2014.

Fourteen years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, the country still suffers shortages of electricity, water, schools and hospitals, and infrastructure has been widely neglected.

Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; editing by Andrew Roche

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Iraq oil city governor quits, travels to Iran after corruption investigation - Reuters

Despite the recapture of swathes of territory from the Islamic State group, the conflicts in Iraq and Syria are far from over as their governments face major political challenges, experts warn.

In July the jihadists lost control of Iraqs second city Mosul in a major setback three years after declaring a caliphate straddling the two countries.

Across the border around half of ISs de facto Syrian capital Raqa has been retaken by US-backed fighters.

But divisions across political, religious and ethnic lines will again rise to the surface in Iraq after the extremist group is driven out of its last bastions, said Mathieu Guidere, an expert on jihadist organisations.

A month before Iraq declared the liberation of Mosul, the countrys autonomous Kurdish region announced plans to proceed with a referendum on statehood in September.

The idea was not new but its timing was criticised by Baghdad, which opposes Kurdish independence, and by Washington, coming as it did with the anti-IS campaign still unfinished.

Analysts said the referendum is one of the many challenges facing the Iraq government along with the presence of a Shiite paramilitary force in Sunni-majority areas and the fate of minorities such as the Yazidis.

How the government deals with these thorny issues will determine whether it succeeds in a post-IS era, experts said.

The jihadist group is the illustration -- violent, long and complex -- of the dystrophy that reigns in Iraq, said Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, professor of international history at Genevas Graduate Institue.

- New Iraq covenant -

Ould Mohamedou advocates a new national covenant for Iraq that would allow the Shiite-dominated government to gain the trust of the Sunni population and other minorities, particularly in the northern Mosul region.

At the same time the government will also have to skilfully deal with the paramilitary Hashed al-Shaabi umbrella organisation which is dominated by Iran-backed Shiite militias.

Some of the components within Hashed al-Shaabi, which battled IS in Iraq, have for years been sending fighters to support the Syrian regime in its conflict with various rebel groups.

Even as leaders in both Iraq and Syria savour the setbacks inflicted by their forces on IS, they still need to examine the reasons that led to the formidable rise of the jihadist group.

After declaring victory over brutality and terrorism in Mosul, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said there were lessons to be learned to ensure his country never again falls into the grip of IS.

Huge mistakes have been made, he said.

- Reorganisation, redeployment -

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad also faces huge challenges in the countrys multi-sided war, despite his forces being backed by allies Russia, Iran and the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah in the battle against jihadists and rebels.

IS fighters are steadily losing chunks of Raqa to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US-backed Arab-Kurdish alliance which broke into the northern city in June.

A Russian-backed government offensive has also targeted IS forces in the central Syrian desert.

Analysts said that if Raqa falls, the Kurdish fighters that dominate the SDF could clash with regime troops.

Assad does not want an autonomous administration taking control of Raqa, said Syria expert and geographer Fabrice Balanche.

Ould Mohamedou said the war in Syria goes beyond the question of IS, having erupted six years ago with peaceful anti-government protests that were brutally put down by the regime.

In the name of the fight against Islamist terrorism, more and more Western governments have closed their eyes to the massacres perpetrated by the Syrian regime, he said.

The war in Syria has killed hundreds of thousands of people while millions more have been displaced in the two countries.

Rebuilding infrastructure and restoring stability to allow the displaced to return home will be a massive challenge.

The United Nations has said the level of destruction in Mosul alone is one of the largest and most complex challenges it has faced.

Unless all these challenges are tackled, IS jihadists driven out of territory in Syria and Iraq could re-emerge as a more brutal and formidable force.

For IS the key words now are reorganisation and redeployment, said Guidere.

Ould Mohamedou said that even if IS is defeated in Syria and Iraq it will bounce back elsewhere and... with a new look.

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Conflicts in Syria, Iraq far from over despite Islamic State setbacks - Hindustan Times