ISIS – IRAQ - KURDISTAN : NEWS THREAD

[Anthea]

SLATE

The Case for Helping the Kurds
A thriving Kurdistan is necessary for a democratic Iraq.
By Fred Kaplan

It’s clear for lots of reasons—political, economic, strategic, electoral, opportunistic, moral, and simply sensible, to name a few—that President Obama has no desire to get drawn back into the Iraq war. So why is he bombing Islamist insurgents in the Kurdish region of Iraq and saying he might keep doing so for months? Because what he’s doing has nothing to do with getting drawn back into the Iraq war.

This seems a paradox, to say the least, but stick with me for a minute. We can all agree that “the Iraq war” refers to the period from 2003-11, when a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq, ousted the central Baghdad government, and dismantled all bodies of authority, thus hurling most of the country into sectarian warfare, which American commanders tried to suppress, first through crude, brutal occupation, then (in 2007) through clever counterinsurgency techniques, which played the sectarian factions off one another, vastly reducing the violence and forging a provisional truce.

However, even the advocates of this new strategy, such as Gen. David Petraeus, said all along that the benefits would be temporary at best; that all U.S. forces could do was provide “breathing space” for Iraq’s political factions to get their act together.

After American troops came home (under the terms of a 2008 treaty signed by George W. Bush at the insistence of Iraq’s parliament), it soon became clear that Iraq’s Shiite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki had no desire to get his act together and sustain the truce with his Sunni rivals; in fact, he stepped up his persecution against them—and sectarian war re-erupted.

This is the Iraq war that neither President Obama nor any sentient American should want to re-enter. Obama’s airstrikes against the Islamists’ holdings in Kurdistan are something different.

Note that three paragraphs ago, in my mini-summary of the Iraq war, I noted that the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein’s regime and the dismantlement of all his ministries hurled “most of the country into sectarian warfare.” (The emphasis, this time, is added.) The one area of Iraq that remained nearly immune from the chaos—the one area that U.S. authorities deemed “stable” through most of the occupation—was the northern area known as Kurdistan, home to roughly 6 million Kurds.

This is true, despite Kurdistan’s multiethnic population (mainly Muslims but also Yazidis, the Yarsan, Christians, and Jews) and its various conflicts over the decades with Baghdad. The main reason for Kurdistan’s stability is that in 1970 the U.S. and Iraqi governments decreed it an autonomous area. More relevant still, after the 1991 Gulf War, the U.N. Security Council, in, Resolution 688, declared the area a “safe haven” to protect Kurds from Saddam Hussein’s wrath. (He had killed thousands of Kurds with chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.) And the United States agreed to enforce the resolution with a “no-fly zone.” (In other words, all Iraqi planes trying to fly over Kurdish territory would be shot down by U.S. air or naval power.)

Under this protection, Kurdistan has thrived. Its per capita income exceeds the rest of Iraq’s by 50 percent, it has free-trade zones with Turkey and Iran (both of which were once rivals or enemies), and it has solid relations with many Western companies.

The Kurds’ growing wealth has sired tensions too. As Sunni-Shiite violence has turned Iraq into a borderline “failed state,” the Kurds have started making their own deals with oil companies and made moves toward their centurylong aspirations of complete independence (which the French and British colonialists thwarted after World War I by divvying Kurdish territory among the peripheries of Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Iran). This would deny Baghdad and Iraq’s Sunni Arabs of much oil revenue. Still, it’s become very clear that, if Iraq—whether as a centralized state or a loose federation—has any hopes of ever becoming stable, much less democratic, a thriving Kurdistan must be part of it, even a model for it.

When ISIS (now calling itself the Islamic State, or IS) crossed into Iraq in June, many in the West expressed worry but not enough to do a lot about it. First, ISIS seemed pretty small. Second, few realized that—under Maliki’s corrupt leadership—much of the Iraqi army had become a hollow shell of its former shelf. Third, ISIS was playing on the hostility of many Sunnis to Maliki’s Shiite government, so most Western leaders said the only way to solve the problem was for the Iraqis to form a new, more inclusive government; meanwhile, if we defended what was seen as an oppressive Shiite government, we would be viewed as “Maliki’s air force” and drive still more Sunnis into ISIS’s ranks.

Finally, and most pertinent in this context, it was assumed—and, at the outset, affirmed—that the Kurdish peshmerga could defend itself if ISIS moved into Kurdistan.

President Obama’s Aug. 11 announcement of airstrikes over Kurdistan and increased military shipments followed the first signs that ISIS could challenge the peshmerga after all.

In other words, Obama’s moves do not amount to a resumption of the Iraq war but rather a necessary response, not only to a humanitarian crisis but to a mortal danger facing a vital ally.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... ation.html

[Anthea]

In my valid opinion Kurdistan should declare Independence NOW

What has Iraq ever done for the Kurds ???

Nothing apart from killing them - refusing to give them back their lands - taking far too large an amount from Kurdish oil revenue

[Anthea]

Wall Street Journal

EU Prepares to Scale Up Iraq Involvement
by Laurence Norman and David Gauthier Villars

BRUSSELS—Europe was poised to scale up its involvement in Iraq, as the region's foreign ministers planned an emergency meeting for Friday to discuss the deepening crisis and France announced it would ship weapons to Kurdish fighters.

Still, more than a decade since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq created divisions within the European Union, it was unclear how many European governments were ready to play a significant military role to help Iraqi and Kurdish forces stem the advance of the Islamic State, the Sunni militant group that has overrun northern Iraq.

French President François Hollande's office said Wednesday that France had reached an agreement with Iraq's central government to immediately start delivering arms to semiautonomous Kurdish authorities in the north of the country.

"France intends to play an active role by supplying, in coordination with its partners and Iraq's new authorities, all the necessary assistance," it said.

Kurdish Peshmerga fighters are straining to repel attacks by the Islamic State, which has gained controlled of large swaths of Syria and Iraq in recent months.

Mr. Hollande's announcement comes as the U.S. is seeking to secure broad international support for its own military operation against the Islamic State. U.S. officials said Washington is exploring various ways to get ammunition and weapons from other nations to the Kurdish forces, including flying the supplies in itself.

On Tuesday, France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius urged his EU counterparts to interrupt their holidays and discuss the matter in Brussels.Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek said his government is working "on [the] preparation of military supplies" for the forces fighting the Islamic State in Iraq. The Kurds are equipped with mostly Russian and former Soviet weaponry. The Czech Republic is one of several member states from the former Soviet bloc that still has significant stockpiles of such weapons.

A spokesman for Italy's foreign affairs ministry said Rome is examining ways to assist. He pointed to comments by Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini in a radio interview Monday, in which she said the government "is evaluating ways of supporting the action of the Iraqi Kurdistan government, also from a military point of view."

Nonetheless, other major EU powers such as the U.K. appeared reluctant to get involved militarily in another Iraqi conflict. Prime Minister David Cameron said that his government didn't plan direct arms supplies to the Kurds but that the U.K. will help by transporting weapons sourced from other countries to the Kurdish authorities.

"This is a humanitarian [relief] operation that Britain is involved in," he told reporters after returning from his summer vacation for a security meeting.

On Wednesday evening, Mr. Hollande's office released a statement on a call he had with Mr. Cameron. The statement sought to minimize differences between London and Paris, saying the two governments would coordinate efforts and take "immediate complementary actions" to provide humanitarian assistance and weapons to those who have requested them.

German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said that Germany is working toward supplying the military in northern Iraq with nonlethal supplies and transport. In an interview with broadcaster N-TV, the minister expressed "great worries" about Islamic State, and the "brutality and speed" of the group's advance.

One question facing the bloc's foreign ministers on Friday is whether they can supply arms directly to the Kurds without the explicit buy-in of the Iraqi authorities.

The EU has an arms embargo on Iraq but after the U.S. invasion in 2003, the weapons ban was amended to allow arms to go to Iraq's central government and international forces in the country. There are some concerns within the bloc that this precludes member states from supplying weapons directly to the Kurds without Baghdad's agreement.

At a meeting of EU ambassadors on Tuesday, there was no opposition to the idea of helping the Kurds militarily, European officials familiar with discussions said. However, there were concerns that weapons could fall into the wrong hands and that directly supplying Kurdish authorities could in the long-term add to the fractures within ethnically divided Iraq.

"There is a tremendous sense of urgency…that the situation in Iraq is getting out of hand," the European diplomat said. "The question is how far we go in our support."

The bloc is also looking to scale up its humanitarian involvement in Iraq.

The EU announced this week additional humanitarian aid for Iraqis and officials are looking at how they can best deliver food and water to thousands of Yazidi refugees who have been pushed into Iraq's Sinjar mountains by the Islamic State offensive. The U.S. is weighing a military mission to Iraq to rescue the Yazidi refugees, a move that risks putting American forces in direct confrontation with the Islamic State fighters for the first time.

Many European governments have been reluctant to sell weapons to conflict-torn countries—a view that played out in a protracted row last year between the U.K. and France on one side and most other member states on the other over whether to allow weapons sales to Syria's opposition.

Giada Zampano in Rome,
Harriet Torry in Berlin Margaret Coker in London
Sean Carney in Prague
contributed to this article.

Write to Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com and David Gauthier-Villars at david.gauthier-villars@wsj.com

http://online.wsj.com/articles/eu-forei ... 57080.html

[Anthea]

Fox News

Iraq militants changing tactics, complicating US airstrike mission

Islamic militant forces in northern Iraq appear to be shifting tactics in the face of the newly launched U.S. airstrike campaign, Defense officials say, posing a new challenge to the Obama administration as it seeks to at least slow the terrorists’ advances.

According to officials, until now the Islamic State (IS) was behaving like a well-organized army, moving with strategic intent and pursuing military objectives. Now, officials are seeing at least a partial shift to classic insurgency tactics, as militants begin to blend in among the population, making targeting more difficult.

“One of the things that we have seen with the [IS] forces is that where they have been in the open, they are now starting to dissipate and to hide amongst the people,” Lt. Gen. William Mayville Jr., director for operations with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said. “The targeting in this is going to become more difficult.”

The comments, on one hand, demonstrate how effective airstrikes can be. One of the reasons the militants marched so quickly across Iraq is that the Iraqi Air Force didn't really exist.

On the other hand, in order for the airstrikes to be effective at this stage, U.S. ground forces would be needed to permanently push the group formerly known as ISIS back -- something that has been ruled out by Obama administration officials.

Mayville, as well as President Obama, described the operation Monday as limited in scope.

Mayville, while saying the strikes have “slowed” the group’s “operational tempo and temporarily disrupted their advances towards the province of Irbil,” also appeared to voice skepticism about how much impact they could have.

“The strikes are unlikely to affect [IS’] overall capabilities or its operations in other areas of Iraq and Syria,” he said. Mayville described the impact as “very temporary,” and predicted the forces would “look for other things to do, to pick up and move elsewhere.”

He added, ominously, “So I in no way want to suggest that we have effectively contained or that we are somehow breaking the momentum of the threat.”

Defense sources told Fox News there is tension between the Pentagon and White House and State Department because, once again, the military is being asked to fix a problem after diplomacy failed – yet they are being given a very limited mission.

"There will be no reintroduction of American combat forces into Iraq,” Secretary of State John Kerry said.

On Tuesday, Kerry was also asked about a photo of an Australian boy in Syria that is getting widespread attention – it shows the 7-year-old, brought to Syria by his father to fight, holding the severed head of a Syrian soldier. The photo elicited a strong response from the secretary of State.

“One of the most disturbing, stomach-turning, grotesque photographs ever displayed -- of a 7-year-old child holding a severed head up with pride and with the support and encouragement of a parent,” Kerry said.

Obama hinted Monday, with regard to Iraq, that there could be more military cooperation if the government follows through on the president’s decision to bypass incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and name a new prime minister-designate.

Obama called this a "promising step forward," and hinted that if they "build off today's progress," U.S. efforts to join Iraqi forces in fighting IS will be "advanced.”

Yet a political settlement may only go so far in stopping the Islamic State’s advances, as the Sunni organization is not openly seeking a power-sharing agreement with the Shias and Kurds.

On Tuesday, Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., renewed their call for the Obama administration to plot a new approach.

“We should continue to do all we can to support Iraq's political process, but the Administration cannot afford to wait until a political solution is reached in Baghdad before addressing the global threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS),” they said in a statement, calling for U.S. airstrikes against militant positions in Iraq and next-door Syria.

“Contrary to the administration's rhetoric, commencing actions such as these now can strengthen political leaders in Baghdad who seek to form an inclusive government that can unify their country and better resist ISIS,” they said. “A comprehensive strategy to counter ISIS must be devised and we must begin to implement it now, for the threat posed by ISIS only grows with each passing day, as do the risks of our delay.”

Jennifer Griffin currently serves as a national security correspondent for FOX News Channel . She joined FNC in October 1999 as a Jerusalem-based correspondent.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/08 ... e-mission/

[Anthea]

Fox News

UN declares highest-level humanitarian emergency in Iraq as clashes erupt near Baghdad

The United Nations announced it had declared the humanitarian crisis in Iraq to be the highest level of emergency, while clashes between Iraqi troops and Sunni militants west of Baghdad killed at least four children Thursday.

The U.N. on Wednesday declared the situation in Iraq a "Level 3 Emergency" -- a development that will trigger additional goods, funds and assets to respond to the needs of the displaced, said U.N. special representative Nickolay Mladenov, pointing to the "scale and complexity of the current humanitarian catastrophe."

The U.N. Security Council also said it was backing a newly nominated premier-designate in the hope that he can swiftly form an "inclusive government" that could counter the insurgent threat, which has plunged Iraq into its worst crisis since the U.S. troop withdrawal in 2011.

Since sweeping across northern and western Iraq from its base in Syria in early June, the Islamic State militant group, formerly known as ISIS, has driven hundreds of thousands from their homes. Among those who have been displaced are the minority Christian and Yazidi religious communities, while the militants have also threatened Iraqi Kurds in the Kurdish autonomous region in the north.

Tens of thousands of Yazidis have fled the Islamic State group's advance to take refuge in the remote desert Sinjar mountain range.

The U.S. and Iraqi military have dropped food and water supplies, and in recent days Kurds from neighboring Syria battled to open a corridor to the mountain, allowing some 45,000 to escape.

Two U.S. officials told The Associated Press Thursday that roughly 4,500 people remain atop the mountain, and nearly half are herders who lived there before the siege and have no interest in being evacuated.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly.

As for the Yazidis who remain on the mountain, Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby said late Wednesday that a team of military personnel had "assessed that there are far fewer Yazidis there than previously feared" and those who remain are "in better condition than previously believed and continue to have access to the food and water we dropped."

As a result, Kirby said, officials had "determined that an evacuation mission is far less likely."

The U.N. said it would provide increased support to those who have escaped Sinjar and to 400,000 other Iraqis who have fled since June to the Kurdish province of Dahuk. Others have fled to other parts of the Kurdish region or further south.

A total of 1.5 million have been displaced by the fighting since the insurgents captured Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, in June and quickly swept over other parts of the country.

Fighting erupted early on Thursday in the militant-held city of Fallujah, about 40 miles west of Baghdad. The clashes on the city's northern outskirts killed four children, along with a woman and at least 10 militants, said Fallujah hospital director Ahmed Shami. He had no further details on clashes, beyond saying that four other children and another woman were wounded in the violence.

It was difficult to gauge the situation in Fallujah, which has been in the hands of the Islamic State since early January, when the militants seized much of the Western Anbar province along with parts of the provincial capital of Ramadi.

The United States has been carrying out airstrikes in recent days against Islamic State fighters, helping fend back their advance on Kurdish regions.

Meanwhile, Iraq's central government in Baghdad continued to be mired in political turmoil, after the president nominated a Shiite politician, Haider al-Abadi, to form the next government, putting him on track to replace embattled Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Al-Maliki on Wednesday said he will not relinquish power until a federal court rules on what he called a "constitutional violation" by President Fouad Massoum.

Al-Maliki insists he should have a third term in office but he is appearing increasingly isolated as the international community lines up behind al-Abadi, who has 30 days to come up with a proposal for a Cabinet.

The U.N. Security Council urged al-Abadi to work swiftly to form "an inclusive government that represents all segments of the Iraqi population and that contributes to finding a viable and sustainable solution to the country's current challenges."

In Morocco, police dismantled a nine-person cell recruiting volunteers to fight with Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the Interior Ministry said in a statement Thursday.

The network was operating in the Mediterranean city of Tetouan, Fez and Fnideq, a small town near the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, raising funds and sending people to Syria and Iraq, the police said. A statement from the Spanish Interior Ministry, which was involved in the investigation, said the network also operated in its North African enclave of Ceuta.

While Morocco has experienced few terrorist attacks, it has become a fertile recruiting ground for jihadi networks, sending fighters to places like Syria and Mali with authorities finding new cells every few months.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/08/14 ... y-in-iraq/

[Anthea]

Reuters

Iraq's Maliki finally steps aside, paving way for new government

Nuri al-Maliki finally bowed to pressure within Iraq and beyond on Thursday and stepped down as prime minister, paving the way for a new coalition that world and regional powers hope can quash a Sunni Islamist insurgency that threatens Baghdad.

Maliki ended eight years of often divisive, sectarian rule and endorsed fellow Shi'ite Haider al-Abadi in a televised speech during which he stood next to his successor and spoke of the grave threat from Sunni Islamic State militants who have taken over large areas of northern Iraq.

"I announce before you today, to ease the movement of the political process and the formation of the new government, the withdrawal of my candidacy in favour of brother Dr. Haider al-Abadi," Maliki said.

Maliki's decision was likely to please Iraq's Sunni minority, which dominated Iraq under Saddam Hussein's iron rule but was sidelined by Maliki, a relative unknown when he came to power in 2006 with U.S. backing.

Maliki had resisted months of pressure to step down from Sunnis, Kurds, some fellow Shi'ites, Shi'ite regional power Iran and the United States. He had insisted on his right to form a new government based on the results of a parliamentary election in late April.

His stubborn insistence stirred concerns of a violent power struggle in Baghdad. But in recent days, as his support was obviously crumbling, he told his military commanders to stay out of politics.

"From the beginning I ruled out the option of using force, because I do not believe in this choice, which would without a doubt return Iraq to the ages of dictatorship, oppression and tyranny, except to confront terrorism and terrorists and those violating the will and interests of the people," Maliki said.

On Wednesday, his own Dawa political party publicly threw its support behind Abadi and asked lawmakers to work with him to form a new government. And Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, offered his personal endorsement to Abadi, distancing himself from Maliki.

U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice commended Maliki for his decision to support Abadi, and she noted a wide range of leaders from across the Iraqi political spectrum had committed to help Abadi form a broad, inclusive government.

"These are encouraging developments that we hope can set Iraq on a new path and unite its people against the threat presented by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant," Rice said in a statement.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry described Maliki's decision as "important and honorable" and said "the United States stands ready to partner with a new and inclusive government to counter this threat" from the Islamic State.

A U.S. official said that once administration officials concluded Maliki had to go, Washington pushed Iraqi politicians to take steps such as ratifying the election results and designating a prime minister but added it had not advocated specific candidates. "It was all teeth-grinding activity," said the official on condition of anonymity. "While we were pushing the process, they were determining who was going to be in the driver’s seat.

"In the end, it was the weight of the system and the weight of the history that came down, and Maliki just lost all of his support," he added. The official also said a clear shift last week against Maliki by Iraq's most influential cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, "was a big, big part of everybody accepting that there was no way forward with Maliki."

Abadi is seen as a moderate Shi'ite with a decent chance of improving ties with Sunnis. But he is faced with halting the advance of the Islamic State, which has overrun large areas of Iraq.

ANBAR AGREEMENT?

Before Maliki's announcement, a leading figure in the Sunni minority told Reuters he had been promised U.S. help to fight the Islamic State militants.

Ahmed Khalaf al-Dulaimi, the governor of the Sunni heartland province of Anbar, told Reuters his request for help, made in meetings with U.S. diplomats and a senior military officer, included air support against the militants who have a tight grip on large parts of his desert province and northwestern Iraq.

Such a move could revive cooperation between Sunni tribes, the Shi'ite-led authorities and U.S. forces that was credited with thwarting al Qaeda in Iraq several years ago.

But the U.S. State Department played down Dulaimi’s statement.

"We’ve continued meeting with a range of officials to talk through what the needs might be - the security needs - to fight ISIL across the board,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters in Washington.

Asked if Dulaimi was correct that the United States had made a commitment, Harf said she had no details. "We’re having conversations about what it (any security assistance) might look like in the future, but nothing concrete beyond that," she said.

Dulaimi said in a telephone interview: "Our first goal is the air support. Their technology capability will offer a lot of intelligence information and monitoring of the desert and many things which we are in need of.

"No date was decided but it will be very soon and there will be a presence for the Americans in the western area."

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Thursday that U.S. troops planning an evacuation of refugees further north were standing down as U.S. air strikes and supply drops had broken the "siege of Mount Sinjar," where thousands of members of the Yazidi religious minority had taken refuge from the militants.

Obama said some of the U.S. personnel sent to draw up plans for the evacuation of the Yazidis would soon leave Iraq.

Disowned by al Qaeda as too radical after it took control of large parts of Syria, Islamic State capitalised on its Syrian territorial gains and sectarian tensions in Iraq to gain control of Falluja and Anbar's capital Ramadi early this year.

Unlike Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, which set its sights on destroying the West, the Islamic State has territorial goals, aims to set up a caliphate and rages against the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 between Britain and France that split the Ottoman empire and carved borders across the Arab lands.

Seizing the capital, Baghdad, would be difficult because of the presence of special forces and thousands of Shi'ite militias who have slowed down the Islamic State elsewhere.

But a foothold just near the capital could make it easier for the IS to carry out suicide bombings, deepen sectarian tensions and destabilise Iraq.

On Thursday, Islamic State militants massed near the town of Qara Tappa, 120 km (75 miles) north of Baghdad, security sources and a local official said, in an apparent bid to broaden their front with Kurdish peshmerga fighters.

The movement around Qara Tappa suggests they are becoming more confident and seeking to grab more territory closer to the capital after stalling in that region.

"The Islamic State is massing its militants near Qara Tappa," said one of the security sources. "It seems they are going to broaden their front with the Kurdish fighters."

(Writing by Michael Georgy; Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed in Washington; Editing by Peter Millership, Jim Loney and Ken Wills)

[Anthea]

The Guardian

Western intervention over Isis won’t prevent the break-up of Iraq

This is the start of a long conflict which could cross the entire Muslim world. The west’s strategy must accept the end of the old imperial borders
Paddy Ashdow, Thursday 14 August 2014 17.41 BST

Three years ago, when the world obsessed about President Assad, some of us warned that Syria was only one frontline in a wider sectarian war between Sunni and Shia; that the spread of militant jihadism among the Sunni community, funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, was a preparation for this. And that before long this movement, like the 30 years’ religious war of 17th-century Europe, would threaten to engulf the entire Muslim world.

This is the true context in which the Isis terror in the Middle East must be seen. It is why we need to understand that, though the world watches Iraq today, just as it did Syria yesterday, the actual war being fought is a regional one, with potential to spread across Islam worldwide. It is not an accident that many Isis fighters are foreigners – many of them not even Arabs. Or that they use the most modern global communications to evangelise their medieval horrors.

Of course, seeing the humanitarian crisis in northern Iraq – for which the UN has just declared its highest state of emergency – something must be done. But then we said the same about the slaughter in the now forgotten suburbs of Damascus. What we need now is not just a plan for a tragedy, but a strategy for a widening war.

What is happening in the Middle East, like it or not, is the wholesale rewriting of the Sykes-Picot borders of 1916, in favour of an Arab world whose shapes will be arbitrated more by religious dividing lines than the old imperial conveniences of 100 years ago.

For as long as western policymakers deny, even tacitly, that this is the most likely outcome of present events, so they will fail to find solutions to the Middle Eastern conundrums that confront us. And so we come to the case of the beleaguered Kurds, and the Yazidis on Mount Sinjar. And so, we drop humanitarian aid.

But then what? We did the same in Srebrenica in 1995. It worked well enough for a few days. But in the absence of a credible western policy in Bosnia, it only gave space for mass murder later. So what credible policies are available to us in Iraq?

There are three. The first is an all-out, long-term western military engagement to defeat Isis and save Baghdad. This is favoured by some who have not yet learned the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan, and a few superannuated generals seeking more spending on defence. It is by far the least practical and most unwise option open to us. Western populations would not support it, and we no longer have the military means to do it.

The second is to help the Iraqi state to defeat Isis itself. This seems to be current western policy. But I fear it amounts to little more than elevating desperate hope over reasonable expectation. It was the collapse of the Iraqi army that gave Isis the advanced American weapons they now use to drive back the Kurds. And it has been the subsequent absence of any effective government in Baghdad that has allowed the jihadists to continue widening their advance on all fronts.

The Potemkin reconstruction of the Iraqi government in the last few days is unlikely to alter a fundamental truth: the Iraqi state is not, and is unlikely to become, an effective instrument for a western-backed attempt to tackle the Isis insurrection. Unless of course Iran too gets directly involved. But that would inevitably lead to the creation of a de facto greater Iran extending into Iraq, and to a further widening of the sectarian faultlines. This may not be avoidable – but should we be encouraging it?

The third option is to help the Kurds by all means possible – assistance to house the Yazidis, equipment, military training, advice, protective air strikes – anything short of current operational boots on the ground. The aim would be to make Iraqi Kurdistan the northern bulwark against the Isis advance. The government seems at last to be tiptoeing in this direction – but why so half-hearted? It’s a strange scruple that flies in other people’s weapons but denies access to our own. Is there a difference?

But there are downsides here too – big ones. Whether intentionally or not, we will end up acting as handmaiden to Kurdish ambitions for full independence – and in so doing, effectively assist in the dismemberment of Iraq. Part of the deal with the Kurds would have to be an end to interference in Turkey, which has its own problems with Kurdish secessionism. We would also be tacitly accepting the end of the Sykes–Picot borders in the Middle East.

So this will only work if it is not just a short-term plan, but part of an integrated long-term strategy: a new rapprochement with Iran to act as a counter-balance to those who promote Sunni jihadism; deeper engagement with Turkey; greater pressure on those Gulf states that fund jihad (is the government’s reluctance here because of Tory friends among the Gulf states?); and a new determination to deal with illegal Israeli settlements, as a prelude to a lasting peace in Palestine.

None of this will be easy, of course. But better, surely, to face up to the realities of the post-Sykes-Picot Middle East and influence it where we can, than lose the moment standing impotently by, hoping that yesterday will come back again.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... raq-muslim

[Anthea]

The Economist

Iraq and the Islamic State

Engaging the enemy

Iraq must sort out its politics to have any hope of routing the Islamic State. That will not be easy

IN JUNE, when extremists from the Islamic State (IS) took over the Iraqi city of Mosul and hurtled south towards Baghdad, the Kurds in the north reacted with glee. They had no love for IS, a group which grew out of al-Qaeda in Iraq, later re-emerged in Syria and now operates in both countries. Indeed IS is sufficiently vile and disobedient, not to mention power hungry, that not even al-Qaeda likes it any more. But the Kurds saw its success as a deserved kick in the teeth for Nuri al-Maliki, the Shia prime minister. And if the fight with IS broke Iraq into sectarian pieces, semi-autonomous Kurdistan would achieve long-dreamed-of independence.

That sentiment disappeared at the beginning of August when, possibly as a result of resistance to the south, IS pivoted to take on the Peshmerga, the Kurdish armed forces. The Peshmerga number at least 120,000 and are reputed to be Iraq’s best-trained force. Before June IS was reckoned to have barely more than 10,000 fighters all told, though “they have doubled or tripled since this started,” according to Helgurd Hikmet of the Peshmerga.

But the IS onslaught was brutal and well equipped, thanks to American hardware provided to the Iraqi government and then captured. Suicide-bombers were dispatched ahead of high-speed convoys; the troops showed an eagerness to die in battle rather than duck bullets. The Peshmerga admit that without American air strikes against IS, which started on August 8th, the fighting would have reached Erbil, their capital.

On August 10th the Peshmerga took back Gwer and Makhmur, two towns close to Erbil which had fallen to IS five days before. But that night the Kurds lost Jalawla, and IS continues to hold Sinjar and Zumar, two cities in north-western Kurdistan, as well as Mosul dam, which it seized on August 7th. It has also claimed a number of towns peopled by Christians and Yazidis, minorities who have lived on the plains of Nineveh since pre-Islamic days.

Limited objectives

In the grounds of a church in Ainkawa, a Christian neighbourhood of Erbil, Christians talk of leaving. “There is no future for us in Iraq,” says Hani, a restaurateur and father of three. Yazidis, members of a small sect that takes inspiration from Zoroastrianism, have faced the prospect of total annihilation.

Tens of thousands fled into the mountains above Sinjar to escape slaughter. Those who found safe passage back down told of bodies littering their path, some murdered by IS, others dead from starvation or heat exhaustion.

It was on the plight of the Yazidis and on “prevent[ing] genocide” that Barack Obama concentrated when he announced that America would again be intervening militarily in Iraq, almost three years after it withdrew its last troops from the country. In the first four days of air strikes, America’s manned planes and unmanned Predators carried out 15 air strikes on IS forces around Sinjar and to the west of Erbil. Meanwhile drones and surveillance aircraft carried out hundreds of intelligence flights in a scramble to understand the complex situation on the ground. Other aircraft, later joined by some from Britain, dropped supplies to the stranded Yazidis. .

While most Iraqis, especially the Kurds, cheer at America’s reinvolvement in the country, American officials have been stressing the narrowness of the mission’s scope. In addition to defending American envoys in Erbil and Baghdad, and helping to break the siege around Mount Sinjar, Mr Obama listed just a few other limited objectives. America had to worry about “key infrastructure” in Iraq—referring to such assets as the Mosul dam.

American efforts would also include “a counterterrorism element” to watch for jihadists who might launch attacks against Western targets. And America was talking about creating a “safe corridor” or some other mechanism to help Yazidis down from their sun-baked, waterless last resort. By August 14th, though, American forces had found that far fewer Yazidis remained on the mountain than previously estimated.

But although administration officials talk of IS as a broad threat to Iraqi and regional stability, as well as a seething cauldron of extremism that threatens to send hundreds of foreign passport holders back to their home countries trained to kill, America is not as yet embarked on a campaign to extirpate it. Mr Obama has repeatedly argued that IS has been strengthened by the Iraqi government’s mistakes, specifically its marginalisation of Arab Sunnis, who make up about a quarter of Iraq’s 33m population. If IS is to be turned back, Iraqi politics must turn around, too. Indeed, they must turn around first.

The Peshmerga say the forces they meet in combat are all IS. But Sunnis from disgruntled tribes, former members of Saddam Hussein’s regime and others who feel hard done by have all helped pave their way. Their support has included standing aside as IS men take control of their towns. Some Iraqis say that the Sunnis just never got over losing power when Saddam Hussein fell. But plenty, along with most Western governments, put the blame on Mr Maliki’s treatment of them. “This is not a cloud of locusts descending from nowhere,” says Peter Harling of Crisis Group, a Brussels think-tank. “It has been building up.”

Mr Maliki, prime minister since 2006, has always had sectarian and authoritarian tendencies. They were given freer rein after the Americans left in 2011. He kicked Sunnis out of the security forces, often in the name of “debaathification”. As discontent grew, he cracked down disproportionately: at a peaceful protest in the Sunni town of Hawija in April 2013 the security forces killed 50. After Falluja, a Sunni-majority city in eastern Anbar province, was taken over by rebels in December 2013, the army shelled it, and the security forces mounted a countrywide programme of mass arrests.

Awaken, again

The Kurds have grievances against Mr Maliki too. The government has refused to send Kurdistan its part of the national budget. In response the Kurds have started to export oil from fields under their control and keep the proceeds for themselves.

Although the government in Baghdad resumed military co-operation with the Kurds when IS turned north, carrying out air strikes and ferrying weaponry to the Kurds, it was too little too late to make up for the bad blood. By early August even many of the MPs in Mr Maliki’s Shia State of Law coalition realised Iraq would only continue to fray if he remained in power. Mr Maliki’s removal thus became perhaps the only goal shared by Iraqis across all the country’s divides.

On August 10th Fouad Masum, Iraq’s newly installed Kurdish president (and the man who supervised Mr Maliki’s master’s dissertation in Arabic language and literature in Erbil) appointed Haider al-Abadi to the post of prime minister, which had been vacant since the May elections. Mr Abadi is viewed by Iraqis as less divisive than Mr Maliki—but that is a low bar. It hardly bodes well that the new prime minister is a man from the same party as Mr Maliki and with a similar outlook, subject to similar Iranian influence and hemmed in by the same hollowed-out institutions and acrimonious politicking. He now has 30 days to form a cabinet.

Creating a government sufficiently inclusive to win back the trust of Sunnis, and thus undermine IS, will be no easy task. Confidence-building measures such as releasing Sunni prisoners would probably be blocked by Shia parties while the IS emergency continues. Other demands such as incorporating Sunnis back into the security forces, most likely by creating a force in the Sunni areas nominally under central command, would take months if not years.

Discussions on creating a more federal Iraq that devolves more power are likely to be necessary. Until the Sunnis are persuaded that such reforms offer a better alternative, IS will remain “an insurance policy”, says Ramzy Mardini, a visiting scholar at the Atlantic Council, a Washington, DC-based think-tank.

Like America and the UN, Iran, the country with the most influence in Baghdad since the Americans left, praised Mr Abadi’s nomination. It also appears to be restraining Mr Maliki, who is challenging Mr Masum’s decision in the courts, from going so far as to trigger armed confrontations between various militias and factions in the security forces. Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, a powerful Shia militia, and Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s top Shia cleric, have signalled their support for Mr Abadi too. Like Iran, Iraq’s Shias are rattled by IS and may be willing to make some concessions to the Sunnis to get rid of it.

Congratulating Mr Abadi on his nomination, America’s secretary of state, John Kerry, held out a list of incentives to the swift formation of an inclusive government: more American military help; economic aid; and support in resolving a row over the sharing of Iraqi oil revenues, among other disputes. With a nod towards the central government’s sensitivities, Mr Kerry was also careful to stress that Kurdish leaders had assured him of their support for a strong federal government.

In Kurdistan, meanwhile, the Peshmerga, perilously under-equipped during the fighting in early August, are rearming. The French are supplying some arms, and Pentagon commanders have vowed to make sure that the Peshmerga have access to the same sort of firepower that IS fighters have acquired, leaving open the possibility of supplying American arms.

America has no shortage of warplanes in the region, officers say; the USS George H.W. Bush, an aircraft-carrier, is nearby. But America downplays any idea that IS can be defeated with firepower alone. In a notably gloomy briefing on August 11th, Lieutenant-General William Mayville, director of operations at the Joint Staff, was at pains to make clear that American power was not “somehow breaking the momentum of the threat” posed by IS.

Announcing the deployment of 130 additional troops to the Erbil region America’s defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, stressed that this was “not a combat boots-on-the-ground operation” (see Lexington). Officials said the troops would work on the safe corridor for the stranded Yazidis, though such an effort now seems unlikely; air strikes and Peshmerga counter-attacks have made it easier for them to escape.

America is convinced that only Iraq’s Sunnis can rout the extremists; hence the inducements to the new government to get them on board. The 2007-08 defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq, IS’s predecessor, was made possible by the fighting of Sunni groups known as the Sahwa, whose work was accompanied by targeted assassinations by the Americans. The programme faltered when the Americans, who had been financing the Sahwa, withdrew, and Mr Maliki stopped the payments.

Meanwhile, next door

Quashed by the Sahwa and Americans, the forces which would grow into IS lay low before Syria’s civil war, which started in 2011, allowed them a chance to regroup. More ambitious than ever, IS now has a stronghold in Raqqa and controls oilfields, agricultural land and dams. Its high-ranking commanders are still mostly Iraqi, but it has attracted foot soldiers from Syria and beyond. Most of Syria’s Sunnis are on the whole a lot less tolerant of IS than Iraq’s are; other rebel groups hate it. But Bashar Assad, Syria’s president, has largely let the group be, using it as a scary portent of what would come if he were to fall.

In the first part of the year a sustained campaign against IS by other Syrian rebels pushed it out of some areas in the northwest of the country. However, armed with booty from Iraq, IS is starting to fight back, reportedly taking some towns close to Aleppo on August 13th. Syrian rebels fear that if IS gets squeezed in Iraq, it will focus on Syria—where American air strikes are most unlikely. Mr Obama draws a clear distinction between Iraq and Syria. American officials note that their actions in Iraq are at the invitation of the national government—putting them on the right side of international law and eliminating the need for UN or other international mandates.

The success IS has had in Syria has not gone unnoticed by President Obama’s critics. His former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, told the Atlantic magazine that the “failure” to help build up a credible fighting force of anti-Assad rebels had left “a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled”. Mr Obama strongly disputes that charge, calling it a “fantasy” that weapons handed to an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and other civilians could battle a well-armed Syrian state backed by Russia, Iran and the Hizbullah militia. Some of his own former officials, though, note that the president is, in theory, signed up to training and arming just such moderate rebels; if it is really a fantasy, why bother?

Iraq’s future hinges heavily on developments in Baghdad. If there is no progress, few predict anything less than a disaster. The most pessimistic say it is already too late—“Iraq is de facto divided and this is a war to delineate the borders,” says Mr Hikmet. Iraqis can do little but hope that their politicians act more responsibly than usual. Even then, IS will prove a problem for the region for years to come.

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/ ... ill-not-be

[Anthea]

...But Bashar Assad, Syria’s president, has largely let the group (ISIS) be, using it as a scary portent of what would come if he were to fall.

Something I have been saying all along

I have always believed that the presence of ISIS - along with other Jihadist groups in Syria - would result in the majority of the Syrian population supporingt Assad - as a marketing ploy it was a brilliant strategy and one which I am certain the Syrian regime helped to fund

[Anthea]

New York Times

E.U. Foreign Ministers Back Military Support for Kurds in Northern Iraq

BRUSSELS — Foreign ministers of the European Union on Friday unanimously endorsed the efforts of individual member states to provide military support to the beleaguered Kurds in northern Iraq, and welcomed attempts by United States forces to head​ o​​ff an escalation of the humanitarian crisis there.

Called back from their summer vacations by Catherine Ashton, the union’s foreign affairs chief, the top diplomats of the 28-nation bloc had been seeking to forge a common response to the latest escalation of the crisis in Iraq, in which the semiautonomous Kurdish north has been threatened by militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS.

Speaking to reporters before the meeting here, Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, urged Europe “to mobilize itself.” France has already said it would supply arms to the Kurds. European opinion on how to respond has been particularly inflamed by the plight of thousands of Yazidis and Christians who have been driven from their homes by threats from ISIS fighters.

A statement on the ministers’ conclusions on Iraq contained no mention of coordinated military assistance. Rather, it said they would continue to work on providing humanitarian aid and welcomed “the decision by individual member states to respond positively to the call by the Kurdish regional authorities to provide urgently needed military matériel.”

“The E.U. welcomes the U.S. efforts to support the Iraqi national and local authorities in their fight against ISIL and recognizes international and European responsibility to cooperate with Iraq in our common fight against terrorism,” the union statement said, using an alternate acronym for ISIS.

In addition to the French, the Czechs and Italians were also said to be preparing military aid for Iraq, and the British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, has said Britain would look “favorably” on Iraqi requests for arms to combat ISIS.

The meeting Friday came a day after Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq said that he had agreed to relinquish power after days of pressure from the United States and of rumors in Baghdad that a military coup was in the offing.

Ms. Ashton, speaking after the meeting, praised the “very statesmanlike way” in which Mr. Maliki had stepped aside to allow progress toward a political solution.

While the meeting did not yield any actual commitments on military aid, a senior European Union official characterized the unanimous decision to back such aid from individual members as a victory — and a necessary one at that, given that the union itself has no military forces of its own.

“I don’t know if there’s any precedent,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in accordance with protocol, “but it’s very important, and even up until today some member states had reservations” about providing arms.

The agreement was testament to the fact that “nobody underestimates the threat from ISIL,” he said. “The Baghdad authorities were very eager that we support the Kurds.”

Despite the united front on Friday, European Union members regularly struggle to agree on a coordinated response to military threats. One obstacle is Germany, which remains reluctant to test the limits of its policy prohibiting the export of weapons to conflict zones.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, said in an afternoon news conference here that the question of supplying weapons of any kind, the subject of an intense political debate in Germany, had become pressing “as it has become clearer in Europe and in Germany that the advance of the ISIS forces will not stop in Kurdistan” unless action is taken.

Mr. Steinmeier said he would fly to Baghdad and Erbil, in northern Iraq, after a short stop in Berlin, to meet with officials and observe the situation in person.

“The murderous actions and the military advance of ISIS must be halted,” Mr. Steinmeier said, adding that Europe must offer help with longer-term shelter and infrastructure, sanitation and emergency aid.

With Sunni Islamist militants threatening the country’s cohesion, the United States has suggested that Mr. Maliki’s departure might open the way to greater American military support.

This week, American forces were reported to be drawing up plans for a full-scale rescue mission for Yazidis marooned on Mount Sinjar, near the Syrian border in northern Iraq, possibly including the creation of a humanitarian corridor. But the United States military has since said that an assessment of conditions on Mount Sinjar by a small team of Marines and special forces showed that the crisis there was effectively over. Yazidi leaders and emergency relief officials have rejected that assessment.

The newfound urgency in Europe came after France broke ranks with other European countries on Wednesday and said it would help arm Kurdish pesh merga forces confronting advances by ISIS. France and Italy are also reported to be pressing for a broader European commitment to supply the Kurds with matériel including body armor, night-vision equipment and ammunition.

“These are crises that are of concern to our European neighborhood, to our security and stability,” the Italian foreign minister, Federica Mogherini, said in Brussels.

Britain had earlier positioned three Tornado warplanes for surveillance missions and a small number of Chinook heavy-lift transport helicopters at a base in Cyprus, within range of the Kurdish region, and has dropped relief supplies to Yazidis fleeing ISIS forces on Mount Sinjar. Britain has also said it would help transport arms supplies from other countries.

Britain, like France, has strong historical ties to the region. In 1916, envoys from the two nations drew up a secret deal — the Sykes-Picot Agreement — during World War I, dividing the lands of the Ottoman Empire into spheres of influence; these became the forerunners to the modern nations of Iraq and Syria.

Video clips said to have been made by ISIS in recent days show its fighters tearing down border posts between Syria and Iraq and rejecting the 1916 delineation in favor of a single Islamic caliphate.

The crisis in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq presents a more modern dilemma for European powers. Hundreds of young European Muslims are reported to have joined ISIS forces, and security services in Europe and the United States have expressed concern that some battle-hardened veterans could carry the struggle back to their homelands.

Some Europeans see Iraqi Kurdistan as a potential haven for religious and other minorities displaced by the ISIS advance. Others have been drawn to the notion of the Yazidis as hardy mountain people clinging fiercely to their culture despite years of efforts by various governments to extinguish them.

But Western governments have also been anxious to avoid encouraging Kurdish separatism in a region where Kurdish minorities stretch across national frontiers.

Some Europeans depict the conflict in Iraq as part of a much broader regional crisis. “It’s about a widening conflict between Sunnis and Shiites,” said Paddy Ashdown, a former leader of the Liberal Democrats in Britain, “and it’s time we joined the dots.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/16/world ... .html?_r=0

[Anthea]

The Canadian Press

Canada to fly weapons to Kurdish forces battling ISIS

Two of Canada's military cargo planes will soon be ferrying weapons to Kurdish forces in northern Iraq — and the Harper government sounds prepared to do even more to counter the "barbarous attacks" of hard-line Islamic militants.

A CC-177 Globemaster and a CC-130J Hercules transport will begin shuttling arms provided by allies to the Iraqi city of Irbil over the next few days, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a statement.

And a least one defence analyst says Canada should be prepared to follow Britain's lead and dispatch CH-147F Chinook helicopters to further help allied nations deliver relief supplies or facilitate humanitarian evacuations.

The cargo flights, which include some 30 air force personnel from Canadian Forces Base Trenton, east of Toronto, will continue as long as there is equipment and supplies to move.

"This support, which will be provided in close co-ordination with our allies, will enable Kurdish forces to provide effective protection to Iraqis faced with the barbarous attacks of ISIL," Harper said.

"Canada will not stand idly by while ISIL continues its murder of innocent civilians and religious minorities. We continue to monitor the situation in Iraq and are prepared to provide further assistance."

The European Union on Friday forged a unified response to the rapid advance of Islamic militants in Iraq and the resulting refugee crisis, allowing direct arms deliveries to Kurdish fighters battling the Sunni insurgents, while several EU nations pledged more humanitarian aid.

France has pledged to ship weapons to the Kurds, Britain is delivering ammunition and military supplies obtained from eastern European nations and is considering sending more weaponry. Germany, the Netherlands and others said they would also consider requests to arm the Kurds.

The U.S. is already sending weapons.

Iraq faces prolonged humanitarian crisis

The al-Qaida splinter group's hardline militants have already seized large parts of northern Iraq, sending 400,000 people fleeing for their lives. Many of those trying to escape are Yazidis, Christians and other minorities.

It's high time the debate about what to do in Iraq moved beyond the old arguments about the U.S. invasion and occupation in 2003, which many blame for the current instability, said retired colonel George Petrolekas.

"I don't buy the argument that it's not our problem: 'We didn't break it, so we shouldn't have to fix it,"' said Petrolekas, who sits on the board of the Conference of Defence Associations Institute.

"We have a moral responsibility to try."

After arming Kurdish forces, Petrolekas said, western nations will face a prolonged humanitarian crisis and a protracted battle — albeit through proxies — to extricate ISIL from northern Iraq and possibly even Syria.

Dispatching Chinooks to stand by for evacuation or aid missions just seems like sensible contingency planning, he added.

"It's a low-risk mission, if we had to pull people out."

The help announced Friday is in addition to $5 million in humanitarian aid committed last weekend by the Conservative government.

Western nations need to agree on a coherent strategy to defeat ISIL, and to consider the knock-on effects of arming the Kurds, who have fought for independence in their region from both Iraq and Turkey, Petrolekas said.

Support for 'new Iraqi government'

Nouri al-Malki, the embattled prime minister of Iraq, announced Thursday that he was stepping aside and will accept the candidacy of rival Haider al-Abadi, who was nominated last week by the Iraqi president to form a government.

While Harper did not address al-Malki's departure directly, he did say that political stability is key to resolving the crisis.

"We call on Iraq's leadership to take immediate steps to counter ISIL and the terrorists that operate under that banner," Harper said.

"We stand ready to support a new Iraqi government that addresses the needs of all Iraqis, regardless of ethnic origin or religious belief."

Friday's announcement came just as the Department of National Defence revealed the imminent departure of its final flight of non-lethal military aid to Ukraine. Over the last week, the air force has been shuttling spare body armour, helmets, medical kits, tents and surveillance equipment to forces battling pro-Russian separatists in that region.

It's not the first time Canada's air force has been called upon for its moving capacity.

Canada helped move French troops and gear to the west African country of Mali in early 2013 after al-Qaida-affiliated rebels overran the northern portion of that country.

Those flights went on over several weeks.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/iraq-co ... -1.2737723

[FreeSoul]

Sorry for any re-post

"Why Kurdish Independence Is the Only Solution for the World"
http://time.com/3105066/kurdish-independence-iraq/

"Kurdistan: Time to Make Good on a 95-Year Old Promise"
http://jurist.org/forum/2014/08/michael-kelly-kurdistan-promise.php

[Anthea]

Sorry for any re-post

"Why Kurdish Independence Is the Only Solution for the World"
http://time.com/3105066/kurdish-independence-iraq/

"Kurdistan: Time to Make Good on a 95-Year Old Promise"
http://jurist.org/forum/2014/08/michael ... romise.php

This is a particularly well written article

Having existed through millennia of foreign dominance and occupation, hard by the Zargos mountains, Kurds have a saying older than our country. "The Kurd has no friend but the mountain." Now is the time for Washington to change its policy of a unified Iraq and support Kurdish independence. Now is the time to show the Kurds they have a friend who will stand with them. Military operations by the US in northern Iraq have begun that could pave the way for this long-delayed eventuality.

http://jurist.org/forum/2014/08/michael ... romise.php

We are always happy to receive your posts esoecially as they are always so interesting and informative

[Anthea]

The Guardian

Iraq 'doomed' if new prime minister Abadi fails to bridge sectarian divide

Iraq risks being torn apart by warring sects unless Haider al-Abadi, the new prime minister, can gather the country's estranged factions behind him and form a government, senior Iraqi politicians said on Friday.

"This is all or nothing," said one senior Iraqi official who is hoping for a senior ministry within the new cabinet. "None of us are sure that he can do it. And if he can't, we are doomed."

Nouri al-Maliki, Abadi's predecessor, announced he was stepping down late on Thursday having previously rejected repeated calls for his resignation. Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Nations and the US were united in welcoming the move. "Today, Iraqis took another major step forward in uniting their country," Susan Rice, the US national security adviser, said.

But while Abadi has won broad international and regional support, he faced the formidable task of convincing Iraqi citizens that they retained a stake within the state's current borders, regional observers said.

A push by Islamic State (Isis) militants through northern Iraq to the border with the Kurdish region has alarmed the Baghdad government, drawn the first US air strikes since the end of American occupation in 2001 and sent tens of thousands of Yazidis and Christians fleeing.

A Yazidi lawmaker and two Kurdish officials claimed yesterday that Isis insurgents had killed 80 members of Iraq's Yazidi minority in a village in the country's north. "They arrived in vehicles and they started their killing this afternoon," senior Kurdish official Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters. "We believe it's because of their creed: convert or be killed."

A Yazidi lawmaker and another senior Kurdish official also said the killings had occurred and that the women of the village had been kidnapped. The reports remain unconfirmed.

The UN security council last night took aim at Islamist militants in Iraq and Syria, blacklisting six people – including the Islamic State spokesman – and threatening sanctions against those who finance, recruit or supply weapons to Isis.

The 15-member council unanimously adopted a resolution that aims to choke off funding and recruits for Isis and other terrorist groups.

Sir Mark Lyall Grant, the UK's UN ambassador, said the resolution represented a "comprehensive rejection" of Isis and sent a "clear political message" that the world will act to tackle the threat.

But he said it was only a first step and urged the international community to be "resolved, active and creative in considering what further measures should be taken to tackle this terrorist scourge".

The vote came after EU foreign ministers approved the arming by member states of Kurdish troops trying to resist the extremists' push to expand their sphere of control in Iraq.

Foreign secretary Philip Hammond said Britain – which has been transporting weapons provided by other countries – stood ready to "consider favourably" any request by Kurdish leaders for it to join the US and France by directly supplying military equipment. The US and France have both delivered weapons to Irbil, in a robust sign of support for a key regional ally.

The EU failed to reach an agreement on Friday to do likewise, but said it welcomed the fact that several member states had done so on their own initiative.

Under Maliki, the central government's authority has been so compromised that many Iraqis have lost faith in any leader's ability to reunite the country two months after an extremist insurgency overran the west and north.

Jay Garner, a retired US army general who served as Washington's first occupation chief in Iraq, told the Guardian the best the US could hope for in terms of a united Iraq was "a confederation, a federal system of Sunnis, Kurds, Shia".

He added: "I think Iraq is now partitioned and we ought to accept that. The Iraq that we knew no longer exists."

Ali Khedery, a US official who worked for five ambassadors in Baghdad and three US central command leaders, said Abadi, a long-serving member of the Shia Islamic Dawa party, had a pragmatism and a work ethic that were rare in Iraqi public life.

"In meetings with him over the past decade, he always impressed me and other senior American diplomats with his self-effacing humour, his humility, his willingness to listen, and his ability to compromise – precisely the characteristics that are needed to help heal the deep wounds Iraqis sustained under Mr Hussein and Mr Maliki," Khedery said.

"But he has a near-impossible challenge in overcoming Dawa's inherently secretive, sectarian, exclusionary, Iranian-sympathising culture."

Abadi, who once repaired lifts at the BBC in London, has found himself cast as a national saviour, a role that his years as a steady, though unheralded, backroom man in the Dawa party and years in exile do not appear to have groomed him for.

However, early reaction to his nomination has encouraged his supporters. A faction of Sunni tribes, who will be essential to any reconciliation efforts, said on Friday they would join Abadi's government if they were presented with the right terms.

Over the past three years, the tribes had grown increasingly hostile to Maliki – and were suspicious of the US-backed leader for even longer. Their statement has been seen as both an attempt to win favours from the new leader and a possible move to reset relations with Iraq's Shia majority.

Disenfranchised since power was handed to the Shias by the US-led invasion, some Iraqi Sunnis had been seduced by the Isis manifesto to reassert the sect's influence in Iraq.

Other Shia groups have also welcomed Abadi's appointment. The Sadrist bloc of firebrand Shia leader Muqtadr al-Sadr said it was encouraged by the new leadership.

"We are more optimistic since Abadi took charge and I think there is a chance for change in Iraq," said Saleh al-Obaidi.

"But only if Abadi changes the way that Maliki used to operate and doesn't follow in his footsteps."Issan al-Shimary, a Baghdad-based political analyst, said: "Iraqis are optimistic about al-Abadi but they are worried that the new government will use the same policy of allocating ministries to political parties and based on ethnicities. If this happens again, it will sap the last bit of hope of changing to a better Iraq."

Iraq's Kurds – now battling Isis on their southern frontier – have cautiously endorsed Abadi's appointment. Officials in the Kurdish capital, Irbil, say if bilateral oil and budgetary issues are addressed, the new government could reboot their strained relations with Baghdad.

Abadi has told followers his first job as prime minister will be to convince those Sunnis who have endorsed Isis in its attempt to establish a caliphate across Syria and Iraq that an Iraqi nation within its current borders remains a better option.

Regional and Iraqi officials have encouraged Abadi to start by revitalising the demoralised national military and overhauling state institutions that have been co-opted by warlords and political blocs over the past decade. Many barely function.

Abadi also aims to revive relations with Sunni Arab neighbours, including Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, which boycotted Maliki's government for close to seven years. Maliki, in turn, had accused Riyadh of bankrolling extremism in Iraq.

"He was such a divisive, polarising figure," said one senior Saudi official of the ousted leader. "A new start was essential to even beginning to sort out this mess."

US officials have indicated that an inclusive central government would make it easier to provide the same sort of military support to Baghdad they have given to the Kurds in recent weeks.

Additional reporting: Mais al-Bayaa and Spencer Ackerman

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/a ... r-al-abadi

[Anthea]

TIME

Why Kurdish Independence Is the Only Solution for the World

Even we Kurds are tired of the West rushing in to save us from Iraq. How long will the rest of the world tolerate this?

American air strikes against Islamist militants on the borders of Kurdistan this week saved millions of Kurds from a terrible nightmare. But I hope they didn’t also kill our dream of an independent state. Only a few weeks ago, Kurds were talking of declaring independence and forever separating from Iraq. We set up an electoral commission for a referendum; Iraqi flags disappeared from the tops of government buildings and amateur Kurdish banknotes began to circulate on the Internet. We had never felt closer to having our own state than we did in the past two months.

We were given this chance by the Islamist fighters who swept across Iraq, took over Sunni provinces and removed the Iraqi army—our historical nemesis—from our immediate borders. But now it seems that this same group has ruined our chance by attacking us too. Now that the United States is helping the Kurds with air power, I’m not sure if we can speak of independence anymore. The world might consider us the spoiled kid who keeps asking for more.

We might keep quiet for now, but this demand of millions of Kurds for a state of our own will resurface again. The Islamist militants aren’t going to roam along our borders forever, and the American bombing campaign will one day stop. Then we will take to the street again, wave the colorful Kurdish flag and pursue our lifelong goal.

This doesn’t mean we are opportunists. It rather means that only an independent state could answer our plight. I speak for the Kurds of Iraq. We haven’t had a happy experience with Iraq. Genocide, imprisonment, persecution and deportation have been our share in that country. There isn’t a single Kurdish family that doesn’t carry the scars of a loss. Many mothers are still waiting for the bones of their sons and daughters—buried by Saddam Hussein in the 1980s—to be found and brought home from the southern deserts of Iraq.

In Iraq we have a term, “Kurdish-Arab brotherhood,” that was coined and promoted by successive regimes. But the truth is more like Kurdish-Arab suspicion and distrust. The Kurds see Iraq as the cause of all their miseries and Iraq thinks the Kurds are the reason that the country has never been stable.

Both sides are right. Iraq has brutalized us for decades, and we have fought Baghdad politically and militarily for years. The Kurds and Iraq are like a couple that starts another fight every time they try to make up. It is a forced and loveless marriage and we need a wise judge to speed up an inevitable divorce.

A country for the Kurds will also spare the world a lot of headache. Western leaders have to pause for a moment and think how many times they have had to rush in and save the Kurds from Iraq. It has happened three times in my own life.

In 1991, when I was 12 years old, we prayed that the West would come and save us from a vengeful Iraqi army that had just been defeated by the allied forces in Kuwait, and they did. They imposed a no-fly-zone in northern Iraq and prevented a genocide. Again in 2003, we hoped that George W. Bush would topple Saddam Hussein because we feared a retaliatory chemical attack from Baghdad.

Now for a third time in less than 30 years, I see again the Western powers sending fighter jets to protect the Kurds from yet another catastrophe. For how long is the world going to do this? If they are not tired of it, the Kurds definitely are. It is absurd to tell the Kurds to stay with Iraq and then scramble fighter jets every 10 years to save them from that same country.

Part of the hostility towards the Kurds from their neighbors is because they see us as allies of the West. So now as the West is marking the centenary of the First World War that divided the Middle East and left the Kurds without a state, it is time they redeemed themselves and let the Kurds join the world community as a sovereign state.

The artificial borders of the Middle East aren’t so sacred to cling to so dearly, nor is Kurdistan a sleeping giant to be afraid of. Autonomous for 20 years, the Kurds have already passed the test for statehood. The Kurdistan Region is a place where religious and ethnic groups live side by side and the Kurds have maintained friendly relations with the East and West without holding our past tragedies against anyone.

Ayub Nuri is a Kurdish journalist from Halabja, Iraqi Kurdistan. He is editor-in-chief of Rudaw English.

http://time.com/3105066/kurdish-independence-iraq/