So here's a name for you: Qassim Suleimani."Every problem is 85% management."
-- a truism from W. Edwards Deming
In Persian/Farsi that's written قاسمسلیمانی. He has commanded troops at war steadily since the early 1980s. One tough problem after another. It is safe to say that among ground combat officers, he is respected as one of the best of their profession and a man of personal bravery. He builds army units on a wide range of models and he uses them effectively.
Suleimani, 57, holds rank as Major General in the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard. His job in this life is that he leads Qods, which is the unit that handles operations outside Iran.
Today Qassim Suleimani is in Baghdad.
He has been leading troops in combat since his 20s. He rose during the Iran-Iraq War to command a sector of the war front. His reach today extends to the Lebanese Hizb Allah and his own 10,000 Iranians fighting to maintain the Shi'ia government in Syria. He has snuffed drug operations and opposed the Sunni Taliban in a number of actions. He has an office in Damascus.
General Suleimani fielded most of the Shi'ia commando forces spread across Syria. He is damned for his work there by the United Nations Security Council, the European Union, the United States as a terrorist!, and by Switzerland. Apparently these worthies prefer the prisoner-executing "rebel" friends of the Saudis, his opponents in Syria.
Why the United States tagged him a "terrorist" is unclear. The Saudis likely want him assassinated, so that's a cover for it. CIA doing Saudi murders is nothing to surprise anyone.
By reputation Suleimani is incorruptible, hard working, politically inventive. In several respects he is Iran's General Giap.
The PR story coming out of Baghdad has General Suleimani "organizing a defense for the capital." There is possibly some truth to that.
What we can observe is that he is replicating an old Qods effort in Lebanon. That is, he has organized a recruiting drive that is putting Shi'ia men into militias and consolidating these units to one Army of God. This will be a permanent multi-tribal Iraqi Hizb Allah. These units owe primary loyalty to their army and to their religion's Supreme Leader and to his designees, not to their tribes.
Over the rest of this summer General Suleimani, Qods, and his Iraqi Shi'ia allies will be building a massive army to exterminate the rag-tag crew of pickup truck bandits called ISIS/ISIL. Come early fall this year, Suleimaini's new Hizb Allah will have 500,000+ reasonably trained militiamen, to which will be added 200,000+ reliable Iraqi army and 50,000 Qods shock troops.
Plus tanks. Tanks vs. Pickup Trucks. That's the fight once General Suleimani gets things organized.
That will be the start: cleaning out northwest Iraq. Kill the 8,000 to 15,000 bandits. From there, look at the map.
Distance from Baghdad to Damascus: 754 kilometers, 469 miles. A long day's drive by armored column, if General Suleimani didn't intend to kill every Sunni fighter in the country along the way.
He has at least 10,000 Qods officers and commandos in Syria now, plus parts of the Lebanese Hizb Allah, so throwing 250,000 men with full modern weaponry up there to end that fight will be the Keep It Simple Stupid opportunity.
For more on who, what, when, the Shi'ia Crescent, and how and why follow BTF.......