Baghdad is a majority Shiite city, the areas that ISIS have taken over so far have been, in the main, Sunni (come in with a wink and a nod) or more easily attainable militarily. Baghdad would pose more of a problem.
BAGHDAD — Hundreds of young Iraqi men flocked to volunteer centers across Baghdad Saturday to join the fight against Islamic militants who have advanced across the country’s north this week.
They were responding to a call by Iraq’s most revered Shiite cleric for Iraqis to defend their country against the Sunni Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which seized Iraq’s second-largest city Mosul and Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit in a lightning advance.
Fighters from the al-Qaida-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant made fresh gains on Friday, driving government forces at least temporarily from two towns in an ethnically mixed province northeast of Baghdad.