Iraqi Security Forces Try to Wrest Control of Fallujah Back From Militants
VOA News, Jan. 2, 2013

Iraqi special forces have launched attacks on militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an Al-Qaeda-linked group that claims it seized control of half of the city of Fallujah and parts of Ramadi earlier in the week.

ISIL reportedly captured several police stations, took weapons and freed prisoners, according to a senior police officer.

An interior ministry official told AFP that ISIL controlled half of Fallujah and said the situation was similar in Ramadi.

The violence in the volatile Anbar province was sparked Monday when Iraqi security forces took down a Sunni Arab protest camp in Ramadi [....]

Iraqi security forces fight militants in Anbar province (Video)
BBC News, 9 hours ago

Special forces in Iraq are fighting jihadist militants who have reportedly taken over swathes of two cities.

The clashes with Sunni fighters from the al-Qaeda linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) are taking place in Fallujah and Ramadi.

Tim Allman reports [...]

Iraq Fighters, Qaeda Allies, Claim Falluja as New State
By Yasir Ghazi and Tim Arango, New York Times, Jan. 3/4, 2014

BAGHDAD — Black-clad Sunni militants of Al Qaeda destroyed the Falluja Police Headquarters and mayor’s office, planted their flag atop other government buildings and decreed the western Iraqi city to be their new independent state on Friday in an escalating threat to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, whose forces were struggling to retake control late into the night.

The advances by the militants — members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS — came after days of fighting in Falluja, Ramadi and other areas of Anbar Province [....]

Assertions by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria fighters that they were in complete control of Falluja were disputed by government security forces and an alliance of tribal leaders who have joined them. By nightfall, the security forces and tribal militia members had recaptured a part of the main street and a municipal building.

Mohamed al-Isawi, the head of the Falluja police, said in a telephone interview that he was gathering men in an area north of Falluja, as a staging ground for what he hoped would be a decisive battle to retake full control of the city.

“We succeeded today with the tribesmen in getting back the main street of Falluja after a big fight,” Mr. Isawi said, “and now we are keen to fight the terrorists and liberate our city from any traces of the criminals.”

But Islamic State of Iraq and Syria fighters still appeared to have the upper hand, witnesses and others reached by telephone said [....]

There is no longer any doubt that the mother of all jihads is on. Yes, boys and girls, it's starting to look like not just a proxy war in the region but a religious war just like the ones in your history books:

Islamist group ISIS claims deadly Lebanon blast, promises more violence
By Mohammed Tawfeeq and Laura Smith-Spark, CNN, Jan. 4, 2014

A Sunni Islamist militant group claimed responsibility Saturday for a car bomb attack in Lebanon's capital two days earlier which killed four people and injured dozens.

The group, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, known as ISIS, said Thursday's suicide blast in southern Beirut was the "first small payment" in a bigger push against the Lebanon-based Shiite militia Hezbollah.

The al Qaeda-affiliated group has been pushing for a fundamentalist Islamic state carved out of northern Syria, while Hezbollah fighters have been supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's brutal push to crush a rebellion there.

The ISIS statement said it targeted "the Shiite Satan party" -- meaning Hezbollah -- in order "to crush its strongholds in the heart of its home in what is called the security zone in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Thursday in a first small payment from the heavy account that is awaiting those wicked criminals." [....]

I am thinking about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and how the Al Qaeda powers-that-be at the time didn't always agree with his plans. I'm also thinking of Muqtada al-Sadr and his minions....

The continuing evolution of al-Qaeda 3.0
By Bruce Riedel, Al-Monitor, Jan. 3, 2014

Al-Qaeda the organization(s) and al-Qaedism the idea are thriving across the Arab world like never before due to the failure of the Arab Awakening to create competent reformist governments. The counter-revolution keeping old autocrats in power or putting new ones into power is already creating the next generation of al-Qaeda converts.

Less than three years ago, al-Qaeda, the organization and its ideology, was on its back foot. Osama bin Laden, its charismatic founder and leader, was killed in the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad. Many of his key lieutenants, including the Pakistani Ilyas Kashmiri and the Yemeni-American Anwar al-Awlaki, were hunted down and killed by drones. The al-Qaeda narrative that only violent jihad and terror can bring change to the Muslim world came under attack as dictators were toppled from Tunis to Cairo to Sanaa by mostly peaceful protest. The Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda’s old adversary, seemed poised to dominate Arab politics and demonstrate that real change was possible without terror.

It was Awlaki who predicted al-Qaeda’s comeback. Writing in his English-language journal Inspire, Awlaki described the Arab Awakening as a “tsunami” of change that would inevitably benefit al-Qaeda. He said the hopes of reformists and democrats would be shattered against counter-revolutionary plots by reactionaries and that the breakdown of law and order would benefit the global jihad.

As 2014 begins, the picture is very different from 2011. Most dramatic has been the rise of al-Qaeda-affiliates in the Fertile Crescent, from Beirut to Baghdad. Al-Qaeda in Iraq, once wrongly proclaimed defeated by the surge, has revived and is more deadly than ever as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) [....]

Iran ready to help Iraq fight al-qaida
Jerusalem Post, 01/06/2014

Iran is prepared to assist Iraq in fighting al-quida, Press TV reported on Sunday night.

Deputy Chief of Staff of Iran's armed forces brigade General Mohammad Hejazi says that Iran is willing if needed to give military assistance to Iraq to help combat al-qaida.

“Nothing has been discussed about a joint operation against Takfiri terrorists, but if Iraqis need equipment and consultation, we will help them,” the Iranian commander said.

Iran offers to help Iraq in fight against al-Qaeda
Associated Press, Jan. 6, 2014

A senior Iranian military official on Monday Iran is ready to help Iraq battle al-Qaeda “terrorists” in the neighboring country’s Sunni-dominated western Anbar province [....]

U.S. and Iran Face Common Enemies in Mideast Strife
By Thomas Erdbrink, New York Times, Jan. 6/7, 2013

The United States and Iran are being drawn together by their mutual opposition to a movement of Sunni fighters raising Al Qaeda’s flag in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.

U.S. veterans despondent over al-Qaeda’s resurgence in Iraq
By Ernesto Londoño, Washington Post, January 10, 2014

[....] “Could someone smart convince me that the black flag of al-Qaeda flying over Fallujah isn’t analogous to the fall of Saigon?” former Army captain Matt Gallagher asked on Twitter. “Because. Well.”

Gallagher, 30, who left the Army to pursue a writing career in New York, has kept close tabs on Iraq since the end of his deployment as a platoon commander in the outskirts of Baghdad in 2009. He has a Google alert for Saba al-Bor, a small village northwest of Baghdad where his infantry platoon spent 15 months living in terror of armor-penetrating roadside bombs and in awe of the complexities of tribal politics.

Gallagher, who was part of the troop surge ordered by the George W. Bush administration, felt his stomach churn a couple of months ago when an alert prompted him to click on a video of a suicide bombing in his old battleground [....]