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While reports of ISIS outright defeat in Iraq are dramatically overstated, theres no denying that after over a year of heavy offensives, theyve lost a lot of territory, and dont constitute much of a de facto state there any longer. This is believed to be shifting ISIS focus to the west, into neighboring Syria.

The assumption is that this focus shift is a major reason why ISIS is so heavily committing to its ongoing offensive in the Deir Ezzor Province, where theyve seized several districts of the capital city, and are trying to advance toward the key military airport in the area.

The airport on the outskirts of Deir Ezzor has long been seen as a huge strategic goal for ISIS, and has been attacked repeatedly, albeit unsuccessfully. It is the last military airport in eastern Syria which has never fallen to a rebel faction.

ISIS seems to be shifting away from territorial holdings in Iraq, and back toward a transitional insurgency, while in Syria they look to be trying to double down on protecting their territory, which is still substantial, and are likely to try to make pushes like the Deir Ezzor offensive to shore up their control over the eastern half of the country.

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ISIS Shifts Focus to Syria as They Lose Ground in Iraq - Antiwar.com

Joel Wing, a high school social studies teacher in Oakland, was at home working on his MacBook Air one recent afternoon when he saw troubling news out of Baghdad.

The United Nations had just released its estimate for the number of soldiers and other fighters killed in Iraq in November: 1,959 security forces dead, a number that looked like the highest monthly total in two years.

But that wasnt what was really troubling Wing. The U.N. also announced that it would be releasing no future combatant casualty estimates: Iraqi military commanders had been criticizing the reports, calling their numbers inaccurate and much exaggerated, and the international agency was bowing out until a sound methodology of verification can be found to better substantiate the figures.

It was a sad moment for tracking the violence and security situation in Iraq, said Wing, who immediately fired back on his nine-year-old blog, Musings on Iraq.

The Iraqi Joint Operations Command said that those figures were exaggerated without giving any correction of its own, Wing wrote, noting that the U.N.s decision, will create a huge gap in keeping up with the cost of the war.

Someone would have to fill it. For many who have followed the war in Iraq and the number of lives it has claimed, that would be Wing.

The 47-year-old teacher at Oakland Technical High School has never been to Iraq, but he has become one of the go-to sources for reliable data and trends on the violent toll of the 14-year-old conflict in the troubled country.

Wing, a native of Berkeley who earned a bachelors and masters in international relations at San Francisco State University, then a teaching credential at nearby Mills College, has been teaching English and social studies at Oakland Technical High School since 1995.

Back then, Wings main passion was music. He played bass in several punk, ska and heavy metal bands: Dance Hall Crashers, Corrupted Morals, Bumblescrump and Desecration. Rasputin Records in Berkeley put his photo in the window on Telegraph Avenue, and as the bands toured, he got to know members of big-league groups like Metallica and Green Day.

But when the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Wing found himself deeply troubled and was determined to understand the country. He launched his blog as a way to reflect and connect with experts.

Four years ago, as he sensed a battle looming to confront the militant group Islamic States widening hold on territory, he began compiling and posting casualty figures. Soon, academics and experts around the world began following his work.

Wing is older now, with shorter, spiky black hair and glasses, but still has no particular political agenda and takes no outside funding for his blog. His twitter profile photo is of Raiden, the Japanese god of thunder and lightning recently popularized in the Mortal Kombat video game (and the 1986 cult classic Big Trouble in Little China).

Wing reads 44 English and Arabic language newspaper daily, with the help of Google Translate, and has always posted regular analysis, civilian and combatant casualty totals.

Since the offensive began to retake Mosul, he expanded his blog to include daily analysis of the attacks.

He has shared interviews with Iraq experts, including Bruno Geddo, head of the U.S. refugee agency in Iraq, the governor of Anbar province, former military commanders, CIA analysts and diplomats.

Wing compiles figures from attacks reported in the media as well as from U.N. figures. He includes locations, allowing him to report that 63% of attacks last year occurred in the provinces surrounding Baghdad and Mosul.

The totals represent a disturbing trend: The number of Iraqi combatants killed in November was 1,988, the highest monthly death toll since Islamic State seized Mosul in June 2014 and more than all the Americans killed each year since the 2003 invasion.

(A total of 4,514 U.S. forces have been killed in Iraq, with the highest death toll occurring in 2007, when 904 Americans were killed, according to the icasualties website.)

Wing loves to network and talks to everyone, from contractors removing roadside bombs in Fallujah to Iraqi reporters in Baghdad, one of whom was killed in a bombing last year which was documented on his blog.

Michael Knights, an Iraq expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, called Wing a committed Iraqi analyst very emblematic of how technology mixed with obsessive interest can nowadays create experts in unconventional ways.

His work is a solid collation of open source data and decent trend spotting from the data. It is a legitimate source. He spotted a lot of stuff before traditional analysts and even intel agencies, Knights said.

Hamit Dardagan, who co-founded the London-based Iraq Body Count website in 2003, which tracks mainly civilian casualties, called Wing amazing, his numbers credible.

Dardagan said Iraqi government criticism of the release of casualty statistics appears politically motivated.

Combatant casualty figures are closely guarded by Iraqi military commanders, who see them as damaging to morale and a propaganda boost for Islamic State.

Theyre concerned about winning and anything that might weaken morale is something theyre going to be very careful with, Dardagan said.

As Wing sees it, hes providing a public service. Violence is part of everyday Iraqi life. Its important to keep track of whats going on and how much the violence has cost the country in terms of peoples lives, he said.

Theres a history of such laymen tracking Iraq casualties. After the 2003 invasion, a Bay Area anti-war activist and Georgia software engineer built the icasualties.org site into the most reliable source for accurate figures on U.S. casualties there and, later, in Afghanistan. But that website, like others of its kind, doesnt track Iraqi combatants.

Wing has faced his share of scrutiny from Iraq experts.

All of these people are in Washington, D.C., and theyre like, Who is this Joel Wing guy? Why is he in California? A high school teacher?, Wing said as he sat in his classroom after school one recent afternoon, the wall covered with whiteboards and photos from dozens of former pupils.

Hes had a student serve in Afghanistan, but not in Iraq. His 12th grade American history students, whom he calls my kids, seem to take only a passing interest in his blog and the Iraq books on his desk (hes reading Sir John Chilcots 12-volume report on the war, published in July).

Wing tries to limit blogging to his lunch, conference period and after school, but that doesnt always work. His girlfriend has taken to calling his MacBook your other girlfriend, he said, because Im always on the computer doing Iraq stuff.

The Pentagon has asked Wing to come work for them as an analyst, but he declined. He also declined two opportunities to travel to Iraq, once when the U.S. ambassador asked him to serve at the embassy for six months. He cant leave his 140 students behind, he says.

I'm very committed to teaching at a public urban school, Wing said, and wasn't going to step away from the kids for that much time.

molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

Twitter: @mollyhf

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Who's tracking casualties in Iraq? A California high school teacher - Los Angeles Times

Travel writer and backpacker Jonny Blair at the Blue Mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif during a 2016 visit: The city the third-largest in Afghanistan was one of the first to fall in 2001 after the American-led invasion

From Bangor, Co Down, Jonny Blair has travelled to Afghanistan, Iraq, El Salvador and many places you may not have even ever heard of such as Transnistria and the Republic of Karakalpakstan.

A travel writer and backpacker, he has been travelling full-time for seven of the past 13 years and has visited around 120 countries many of them currently struggling under the weight of years of warfare.

I like to go to places where there are typically less tourists, or preferably, no other tourists, says Blair, who takes up jobs along the way and blogs at dontstopliving.net.

It gives me an adrenalin rush and a passion for writing about off-the-wall spots. As a travel writer, nothing upsets me more than another boring article on Thailand or Australia, so I try to steer away from that market and find out about a place nobody heard of.

Typically unknown wacky regions like Gorno Badakhshan, Transnistria and Ladonia hit my niche, but the media-hyped danger spots like Afghanistan, El Salvador and Iraq do too. You can even find less touristy places in Ireland - has anyone else heard of Podjistan for example? Look it up, its on the island of Ireland [The Peoples Republic of Podjistan is a micronation in Banbridge, Co Down].

In 2013, I visited Iraq. We toured the northern Kurdish part including Erbil, Duhok, Mosul and Sulaymaniyah. In Sulaymaniyah, I was able to visit Iraqs first museum, housed at Amna Suraka a complex notorious for being a killing zone and house of horrors under the Saddam Hussein regime. I found the country to be extremely welcoming and peaceful especially in the mountain villages near Amadiya and in Erbil. Erbil even has a strip of bars and a Christian quarter, so Iraq is not the complete warzone the media claim its a huge country and the dangers are more prevalent in some parts.

This year, I visited the autonomous regions of Karakalpakstan and Gorno Badakhshan and crossed the land border to Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, I got to play football with teenagers in Samangan, tour Tashkurgan, and visit the home of Zoroastrianism at Balkh and the stunning Blue Mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif.

Afghanistan was brilliant, and emotional. Its a huge country and of course parts of it are very remote, extreme and full of mountains and scenery Ireland would be proud of. Its not a complete country of war and people need to realise that.

Most people live their daily lives as normal and most people are the same as you or I. I was crying when I left the football pitch that day by the Buddhist monastery and it was an emotional sendoff at the border exit bridge in Hairatan as well. I also got to hang out with an Afghanistan former under-19 international footballer and we watched Buzkashi, their national sport [horse-mounted players attempt to place a goat in a goal].

Despite travelling to these countries, the main security incidents I have experienced in life have been in Belfast, or in Caracas [Venezuela] or at the Tajikistan to Uzbekistan border. But the buzz of travel always wins over the dodgy moments.

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'I've been to Afghanistan and Iraq, but main security incident I experienced was in Belfast' - Irish Times

By Isabel Coles | KHAZER, Iraq

KHAZER, Iraq Bushra Mohammed married two years ago in her hometown of Mosul and bore a child last spring but as far as the Iraqi state is concerned she is single and her son does not exist.

Bushra is one of thousands of Iraqis emerging from more than two years of Islamic State rule to find themselves in legal limbo: neither her marriage nor her son's birth certificate issued by the militants are recognised by the Iraqi government.

As Iraqi forces retake territory from the militants, the state is working to reverse the bureaucratic legacy of Islamic State, which subjected millions to its rule after seizing large parts of Iraq during the summer of 2014.

At a makeshift court housed in a cluster of portacabins at a camp for the displaced in Khazer near Mosul, Iraqi bureaucrats are busily converting certificates issued by the self-declared caliphate into official government documents.

"We are changing them so that we can feel like citizens again," said 20-year-old Bushra, her infant child tugging at the bottom of her abaya. "(Islamic State) are not a state: this is a state."

Despite the violence and privation that came with Islamic State rule, life went on in Mosul and other areas controlled by the militants: people married, had children, divorced and died.

Outside the portacabin court, displaced Iraqis clutch Islamic State documents as proof not only of their rites of passage, but also of the sophisticated bureaucracy the militants ran in their ambition to create a state for all Muslims.

"We don't recognise Daesh (Islamic State) procedures," said judge Khalid al-Shammari, his suit and tie incongruous with the spartan portacabin in which he sits.

"We are emergency judges, like you have emergency doctors. These are exceptional circumstances."

IDENTITY CHALLENGE

Untangling Islamic State's bureaucratic legacy is proving complex though.

Even proving identities is complicated by the fact most of those displaced by the fighting don't have national ID cards because the authorities in the Kurdish region where the camp is located have taken them away for security purposes.

Divorces pose a particular challenge as Iraqi law demands that both wife and husband be present to terminate a marriage. But couples who separated while under Islamic State rule often end up fleeing in different directions.

"Sometimes one is liberated and the other is still in an area controlled by Islamic State," judge Shammari said.

The procedures for registering deaths are particularly stringent to prevent people taking advantage of the chaos to fake their own deaths so they can escape justice, or claim inheritances before time, the judge said.

Marwa Salem is running up against those obstacles as she tries to register the death of her father, who she said was killed by Islamic State for cooperating with the Kurdish security services.

The militants dumped his body on the outskirts of the village where they lived near Mosul and gave his family a receipt for his death.

Before his death can be recognised by the Iraqi authorities, she must take the case to another court that deals with terrorism cases in a different city, but people staying in the camp are not permitted to leave for now.

THE ONLY WAY

Some people converting their documents in the makeshift court had initially tried to skirt Islamic State's bureaucracy but ended up having to comply.

Abu al-Abbas, 22, got married shortly after Mosul fell but instead of going to an Islamic State court he arranged for a cleric to preside over the wedding ceremony.

His neighbour also circumvented Islamic State procedures, but was found out and flogged by the militants as punishment.

Fearful of being discovered himself, Abu al-Abbas said he then went to an Islamic State court where a judge tested his knowledge of Islam before signing off on the marriage.

"Their way was the only way," Abu al-Abbas said, lining up outside a portacabin to register his marriage yet again.

The process is basic, with clerks using pen and paper rather than digital databases. In one cabin, staff enter details in a notebook which has the word "computer" written on the front.

The judges and their staff hope they will soon be able to return to Mosul as Iraqi forces advance.

"In Mosul we had everything but here we are in a caravan," said a legal assistant, laboriously transcribing personal details from a stack of forms into a ledger.

Two non-governmental organisations - Qandil, a Swedish group that works mainly in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region, and the Norwegian Refugee Council - are helping with the process.

Couples registering marriages first have their fingerprints taken. Then they are called into another portacabin where a judge, seated behind a plastic table with two witnesses present, asks for their dates of birth, when they married and the value of the dowry paid to the wife.

The couples step out into the camp and wait for their Iraqi documents to be processed, ripping up their Islamic State certificates as they go.

(Editing by David Clarke)

WASHINGTON Hundreds of thousands of people from all over the United States are expected to pack into downtown Washington on Saturday for a women's march in opposition to the agenda and rhetoric of President Donald Trump.

VERONA, Italy/BUDAPEST Sixteen people were killed and about 40 were injured when a bus carrying Hungarian students burst into flames on a highway in northern Italy, police and the fire service said on Saturday.

LONDON/VIENNA Thousands of women took to the streets of European capitals to join "sister marches" in Asia against newly installed U.S. President Trump ahead of a major rally in Washington expected to draw nearly a quarter of a million people.

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Iraq slowly untangles Islamic State's bureaucratic legacy - Reuters

In a speech at Camp Lejeune in early 2009, President Obama outlined how he planned to end the U.S. military commitment to Iraq stressing his administration would notlet the pursuit of the perfect stand in the way of achievable goals. After December 2011, he predicted, it would be up to the Iraqis to secure their own future. His message resonated with the majority of Americans weary of continued troop commitment after six years of occupation and high U.S. casualties. When Obama took office, over 49 percent of Americans wanted to end the U.S. military presence there as soon as possible. By October 2011, two months before the last soldier would depart Iraq, three quarters of Americans approved of Obamas withdrawal plan.

Critics of the 2011 withdrawal often forget that the presidents timeline, while fueled by the American peoples desire to put Iraq in the past, was in fact already determined by the Status of Forces Agreement set by the Bush administration in 2008. Then Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki described the deal thus: The incomplete sovereignty and presence of foreign troops are the most dangerous, most complicated, and most burdensome legacy we have faced since the time of dictatorship. Iraq should get rid of them to protect its young democratic experiment.

In 2009, Obama hoped to amend the Status of Forces Agreement to leave a residual U.S. presence to assist Iraqi forces. Maliki, however, refused to grant these soldiers immunity from prosecution. For many observers, this outcome seemed to politically suit the White House. In December 2011, State Department lawyers concluded that without approval from the Iraqi Parliament, American soldiers could not stay in the country.Malikis obstinancy aided his sectarian agenda that favored Shia communities.The leverage that the military presence afforded U.S. diplomats weakened, leaving Maliki increasingly unchecked. He reinforced his grip on the Iraqi militarys Special Forces, turning them into a private militia used to intimidate dissenters and ensure loyalty from the intelligence and judicial services.

In 2013, anger and discontent among Sunni populations sparked nationwide and peaceful protests against Malikis policies in 2013. Rather than take advantage of this opportunity to engage in dialogue with this well-organized movement, Obama turned his attention away from Iraq. During the first two years of his second term, the president did not make any substantive comment about Iraq, and in June 2013, he proposed 70 to 95 percent cuts in U.S. funding for Iraqi peacebuilding, human rights, and civil society.

By that time, Malikis security forces had cracked down violently on protesters in Hawija a Sunni Arab town in northern Iraq now controlled by ISIS killing at least 42 unarmed civilians. As one demonstrator told NPR, For a year, we did not attack anyone; we were an example of democracy on an international level....The world simply turned its face from us and gave Maliki the permission to attack the demonstrations and kill innocent demonstrators. The international Crisis Groups Joost Hiltermann would later call Hawija a poster child for all the ills that would facilitate the [ISIS] takeover one year later. With silence from Washington and seemingly no protection from international or Iraqi leaders, many Sunnis returned to an insurgency that had largely been crushed in 2011.

The two years following ISISs emergence in 2014 have witnessed Obamas reengagement with Iraqs challenges and political leaders. Learning from his mistakes in 2011-2014, he tried to adopt a more balanced approach to protect Iraqi civilians, support humanitarian efforts, and address corruption in the Iraqi government. After ISIS swept into Mosul in June 2014, the president predicated his support on Malikis removal a line that succeeded in ushering Haidar al-Abadi into the Prime Minister role. Since then, the White House has supported Abadis efforts to address inefficiencies, nepotism, and corruption inside the Iraqi political system, while also maintaining a more balanced approach to the countrys many ethnic and sectarian constituencies.

As the fight against ISIS in northern Iraq grinds on, lessons learned since 2011 that military and political disengagement can have tragic results should guide Washingtons policy in Baghdad. Iraq today faces daunting challenges as it defends against ongoing insurgency, rebuilds a shattered country, confronts regional actors seeking to infringe on its sovereignty, and manages ongoing economic crisis. The Obama administration has taken important steps to support these efforts: boosting the U.S. militarys train and equip program for Iraqi Army and Special Forces, providing continued air support for the counter-ISIS fight, pledging funds to help clear mines and debris from liberated areas, implementing civil society programs through USAID, and holding pledging conferences to encourage other nations to contribute as well.

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Obama's legacy in Iraq - The Hill (blog)