Gun trucks and humvees streamed north on a highway heading to Mosul on Sunday flying the banners of Shi’ite militias along with Iraqi flags while blaring religious songs.

The convoys were the first clear sign of a new player on the battlefield in the U.S.-backed offensive to retake Mosul from Islamic State: Hashid Shaabi or Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a coalition of Shi'ite militias.

Although it reports officially to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, the coalition is mostly made up of groups trained by Iran and loyal to its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

​​They have close ties with General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran's Quds Brigade, the extra-territorial arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. He was seen touring the frontlines around Mosul last week.

According to Shiite militias in Iraq he launched an attack against militants of the Islamic state, west of Mosul, as an offensive to retake the city continues.
He says the popular target groups rally is expelled from the city of Tal Afar, cutting off supply routes jihadist to Mosul from Syria.

Tal Afar was a majority Shi'ites swept by him in 2014. The city of Mosul, a Sunni, Shiite militias and is committed to not enter.

Iraq's offensive began last week.

Iraqi and Kurdish forces advanced and the coalition backed by the US Air Force in pressure to regain control of Mosul, is in fact the capital of Iraq.

​The Iraqi army has been accused of taking tents from refugees fleeing a conflict zone and giving them to its own troops.

The army had pledged to help the hundreds of thousands expected to be made homeless by its operation to liberate Mosul from Isil.

But when The Telegraph visited a camp in the town of Tinah, near Qayyarah in northern Iraq, this week it was told by local Iraqi police guarding the site that soldiers had come and loaded the tents on to their trucks and left.

“They were coming from Baghdad, they said they were the rapid response unit,” said one officer who did not wish to be named to protect his identity.

​​The assault on Mosul has been telegraphed well in advance and has now commenced broadly on the date that politicians and military commanders in countries involved in the operation have been publicly talking about.

This is relevant because it shows that the need to surprise the enemy was not a factor of paramount importance. Isis had been well aware that, after the recapture of Tikrit, Ramadi and Fallujah from their shrinking caliphate, Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city and the loss of which was such a humiliation for the Baghdad government, would be the next target.

The most Isis can do at this stage is to try to inflict as much damage on the approaching forces as possible. It may be the case that its fighters try to flee, if they can. Either way, whether it takes weeks or is all over in days, Mosul will be seized back. The size of the Iraqi and Peshmerga forces them, and the Western fire-power on the ground and air, will prove too much for Isis.

Assault on Mosul gathers pace
But the real problem for this mission will start when that happens. The reason Isis was able to make such a rapid advance in the west and north of Iraq was because it exploited  the anger and resentment felt by the Sunni population at their treatment in the hands of the Shia-dominated government of Nour al-Maliki.

​​Iraq has been ignored for long enough. I do not mean that it is not in the news, because it almost always is. From almost daily bombings in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, to shootings, murders and detainment of political dissidents and to the seemingly never ending cascade of corruption scandals, Iraq is almost always in the media.

However, Iraq as a cause, as a people and as a blood-soaked reminder of what humanity looks like when it has failed needs to stop being ignored in the very hearts, souls and imaginations of people around the world.

Much of the world has rightly gotten behind the Palestinian cause. Even before the formation of the State of Israel and the horrible events of the Nakba in 1948, Palestinians were treated with contempt and cruelty by their British colonial masters who facilitated mass immigration of European and other Jews to Palestine as part of a political, and not religious, Zionist project.

​British actions led to the rise of Jewish militias and terrorist organisations, such as the Stern Gang, the Haganah and others who eventually perpetrated the Nakba and murdered thousands of Palestinians while displacing countless more who now form part of the six million strong Palestinian diaspora.

QAYARA AIR BASE, Iraq (AP) — For Saif, an Iraqi army corporal, the battle for Mosul is intensely personal. Over the course of two years of Islamic State rule, the extremists destroyed his home, arrested his father, killed his brother and forced his fiancee into a marriage with an IS fighter.

Now he's looking for revenge.

"I used to be a normal person. My dream was just to save enough money to build a house so I could get married," the 30-year-old soldier said, nervously fiddling with his cigarette.

​All together seven members of his family were killed by the extremists, he said, giving only his first name because he didn't have permission from commanding officers to talk to the media. He only found out about their deaths when he saw a video the militant group released of their killings.

​Whether the popular Shiite cleric's motivations are ideological or political, Washington should make sure that neither his loyal militias nor any rogue splinter groups are tempted into further acts of violence against American personnel and interests.
​
This September, a McClatchy article outlined the kidnapping of three American defense contractors in Iraq, noting how they were held for thirty-one days and tortured after being snatched in January. Yet they were not taken by the Islamic State, nor by Iranian-backed stalwarts such as Kataib Hezbollah or Asaib Ahl al-Haq (AAH), as many analysts and columnists speculated at the time.

The true culprits belonged to Saraya al-Salam (the Peace Companies, or SAS), a Shiite militia headed by influential Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. It is still unknown if this was a warning to the United States from Sadr himself, a rogue move by a splinter group, or a sign of a larger Sadrist effort against American forces in Iraq.

​Yet the news likely came as a surprise to many observers given Sadr's high-profile focus on nonviolent political action in recent months, not to mention Washington's repeated attempts to engage him. U.S. officials have been mum on the incident thus far -- whether or not they remain so, they should keep a close eye on Sadr's camp as the battle for Mosul and other important developments unfold.

Paramilitary groups and government forces in Iraq have tortured, arbitrarily detained and executed thousands of civilians escaping areas controlled by the Islamic State group, Amnesty International warned Tuesday.

The London-based rights group said the abuses, often revenge attacks directed at Sunnis suspected of being complicit with IS, must not be repeated as Iraqi forces advance on the jihadists' stronghold in Mosul.

"After escaping the horrors of war and tyranny of IS, Sunni Arabs in Iraq are facing brutal revenge attacks at the hands of militias and government forces, and are being punished for crimes committed by the group," said Philip Luther, Amnesty's Middle East research director.

Amnesty International said that abuses, often revenge attacks directed at Sunnis suspected of being complicit with IS, must not be repeated as Iraqi forces a...

​BAGHDAD, Iraq – The man who was Iraq’s prime minister when Mosul fell to ISIS more than two years ago warned Saturday that the city’s borders must remain unchanged after liberation, in comments directed at the Kurdistan Region.

“Mosul has to be returned to its administrative units as it is and all the forces who have asserted new borders by force under the name gain by force have to withdraw,” Nouri al-Maliki, who is now a vice president, said without making a clear reference the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

The KRG has controlled some areas around Mosul since the Iraqi army turned and fled in June 2014 when some 1,500 ISIS militants routed the much larger Iraqi army.

“This is a manipulation of the circumstances and the developments that have happened,” said Maliki, who was Iraq’s prime minister and commander-in-chief of its armed forces at the time.

​Tony Blair told President George Bush that he was "solidly" behind US plans to invade Iraq before he sought advice about the invasion's legality and despite the absence of a second UN resolution, according to a new account of the build-up to the war published today.
​
A memo of a two-hour meeting between the two leaders at the White House on January 31 2003 - nearly two months before the invasion - reveals that Mr Bush made it clear the US intended to invade whether or not there was a second UN resolution and even if UN inspectors found no evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons programme.

"The diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning", the president told Mr Blair. The prime minister is said to have raised no objection. He is quoted as saying he was "solidly with the president and ready to do whatever it took to disarm Saddam".

The disclosures come in a new edition of Lawless World, by Phillipe Sands, a QC and professor of international law at University College, London. Professor Sands last year exposed the doubts shared by Foreign Office lawyers about the legality of the invasion in disclosures which eventually forced the prime minister to publish the full legal advice given to him by the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith.