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Jura said:

"The flare-up presents an awkward dilemma for the United States.

Washington has trained and equipped the advancing Iraqi troops and the peshmerga Kurdish forces on the other side. The Iraqi side is also backed up by Shiite militia forces close to Iran — at a time when the Trump administration has intensified its rhetoric about trying to curb Iranian influence in the region, including increasing sanctions on Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps last week."
etc.:
Iraqis seize military base, oil field from Kurdish forces near contested Kirkuk
October 16

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A cease-fire was reached Friday between Baghdad and Iraq’s Kurdish minority temporarily halting clashes that followed a controversial vote on Kurdish independence last month, according to the U.S.-led coalition.

The coalition was informed of the cease-fire Friday morning and coalition officials are encouraging both sides to ensure “it’s not just temporary,” Col. Ryan Dillon told the Associated Press.

Clashes broke out earlier this month when federal forces retook the disputed city of Kirkuk and other areas outside the autonomous Kurdish region that the Kurds had seized from the Islamic State group. ISIS conquered those areas after sweeping across the country in 2014. Most of the Kurdish forces withdrew without a fight, but reports of low-level clashes continued and tensions remained.

The Kurdish referendum on support for independence was held in September in the three provinces that make up the Kurds’ autonomous zone, as well as in a string of territories claimed by Baghdad, but at the time controlled by Kurdish forces.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi demanded the annulment of the vote and the transfer of border control and other infrastructure to federal forces.

Kurdish officials offered this week to “freeze” the results of the vote, but al-Abadi rejected the offer Thursday.

The cease-fire comes after more than two weeks of mostly minor clashes and warnings from the coalition that the dispute was distracting from the fight against the Islamic State group.

The coalition said Iraqi and Kurdish troop movements and skirmishes stretched its intelligence and surveillance assets. Drones that previously kept watch over IS have been diverted to flashpoints in the disputed areas.

Dillon said Thursday the infighting had also hindered the movement of military equipment and supplies to forces battling ISIS in Iraq and neighboring Syria.

Iraqi forces are currently fighting against ISIS in the last pocket of territory the group holds in western Anbar province along the border with Syria.

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Jeff Head said:

They sure are scared of those Kurds...aren't they?

They know they are good fighters and they fear that if the Iraqi Kurds ever got independence, that the Kurds in Iran and Turkey would want to cut chunks out of those countries to add to a greater overall Kurdistan...and the ones in Syria too.

And, I have to say that it is a valid concern.

Those people want to be together. As with the soviets, and as with the league of nations before, when you politically slice and dice cultures and peoples that have historically been together, you see that even after a hundred or more years, the desire for them to be back together remains strong.

I would personally like to see a Kurdistan nation. I believe such a nation would be a strong and loyal ally to the US.

At the same time,without direct US intervention, I do not see it happening because Iran and Turkey will never allow it...even though it would mean the end of all of the conflict they continuously have internally by not letting it happen.

Turkey and Iran could minimize the amount of land they would give up by being open to the creation of a Kurdistan state.

But they are simply not going to do it...and I do not believe the US would fight against Turkey to force it.

Turkey is, after all, a part of NATO, and keeping them in that position is more strategically important to the US. It is just the way things are.

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U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Monday night that American forces would hypothetically stay in Iraq in order to defeat the Islamic State group, even if the government in Baghdad requests the U.S. leave.

Tillerson, appearing with Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, indicated American forces have the right to stay in Iraq under the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), a long-standing justification for military action around the globe, until the fight against ISIS is concluded.

The statement came up in response to a question from Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., who asked “If U.S. forces are told to leave, will we depart Iraq or will be stay uninvited as our forces are doing in Syria, and under what legal authority will they remain?”

Responded Tillerson: “We will remain in Iraq until ISIS is defeated and we are confident that ISIS has been defeated.”

When Udall pushed again on what legal authority that would occur, Tillerson responded by citing the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs.

However, the secretary stressed that “we are there also at the invitation of the Iraqi government and that [Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi] has given to me no indication he is in any particular hurry to have us depart.”

Mieke Eoyang, vice president of the national security program at the Third Way think tank, called the idea of staying in Iraq against the desire of Baghdad “insanity.”

“At that point, the U.S. would be considered an invading force by the Iraqis and would become a target not only of ISIS, but the Iraqi Security Forces,” said Eoyang, a longtime Democratic staff member on the Hill.

“That’s from a practical perspective. From a legal perspective, they’re on even shakier ground. ISIS didn’t exist when they passed the 2001 AUMF and the 2002 AUMF was to enforce U.N. Security Council resolutions. They don’t have that here. Tillerson needs to go talk to Mattis and his lawyer before he commits to that position.”

Kori Schake, a fellow with the Hoover Institute who worked at both the National Security Council and the Defense Department during the George. W. Bush administration, said it is “unfortunate Secretary of State Tillerson gave the impression we would remain in Iraq without Iraqi approval.”

But, Schake thinks Tillerson may have inadvertently stumbled into that stance. Tillerson’s response came as part of a broader question from Udall about the role of Iran-backed militias in Iraq. Last week during a visit to Iraq, Tillerson called for Iran-backed militias to either turn down arms or leave the country.

“I honestly think he was trying to clean up his previous awkward suggestion Iraqi Shi’ia militia ‘go home’ to Iran, and bungled into another round of making news that will require cleaning up,” Schake said.

Asked for clarification on Tillerson’s remarks, a State Department spokesman said the department doesn’t deal in hypotheticals and deferred to the secretary’s comments. A spokesperson for for the Iraqi embassy did not immediately return a request for comment.

Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said she would “associate us” with Tillerson‘s comments, adding “I won’t answer hypotheticals. We are in Iraq to defeat ISIS and as [Tillerson] said we are there by invitation.”

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Jura said:

Oct 16, 2017

while now
Coalition announces cease-fire between Baghdad, Kurds
23 hours ago

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The U.S. would consider having U.S. and coalition troops man checkpoints between opposing Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters to prevent more clashes, a U.S. general said Tuesday.

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Maj. Gen. James B. Jarrard said there have been discussions about the possibility of coalition troops being posted to border crossings between the Kurdish autonomous region and the areas controlled by the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF).

If the Iraqis and the Kurds agreed to have U.S. and coalition troops between them, "then we will take that under consideration and we will potentially do that," Jarrard, commander of Special Operations Joint Task Force- Operation Inherent Resolve (SOJTF-OIR), said in a video briefing from Baghdad to the Pentagon.

Jarrard said that he was present with Army Lt. Gen. Paul E. Funk II, commander of Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, at recent talks in Mosul to arrange a ceasefire.

Funk said the Kurdish-ISF standoff was distracting from the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

"We don't need Iraqis killing Iraqis when we've got Daesh (ISIS) to kill out in the west," Funk told The Associated Press, referring to the last ISIS stronghold in Iraq in the border town of Al Qaim.

Following

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last month by the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordered the ISF to retake oil-rich Kirkuk and other disputed areas that had been taken over by the KRG in the long fight against ISIS.

"Obviously, there's been some turmoil," Jarrard said, but the tentative ceasefire agreement appeared to be holding and there was "great optimism that it will continue to hold into the future."

In Syria, Jarrard said that the thousands of residents who fled Raqqa in the long siege and battle to retake the so-called ISIS capital would not be permitted to return until the city had been cleared of improvised explosive devices.

He gave no timeline for the return of residents to the city that was mostly destroyed in the successful effort to drive out ISIS by the U.S. backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a mixed force of mostly Kurds and Arabs with other ethnic groups also represented.

The SDF began the drive to take Raqqa in outlying areas on June 6 and the city was retaken on Oct. 20.

Jarrard said that more than 1,200 SDF fighters were killed in the overall campaign, and another 2,500 were wounded. The 1,200 killed included 434 who were lost in the battle for the city itself, Jarrard said.

In a possible mix up due to the sometimes shaky audio connection between the Pentagon and Baghdad, Jarrard appeared to misspeak when he was asked how many U.S. troops were now in Syria.

"I think it's a little over 4,000 U.S. troops in Syria right now," Jarrard said, and then added "I'm sorry, I misspoke there. There are approximately 500 troops in Syria."

The official count on the number of U.S. troops, or "Force Management Levels," in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan has long been a matter of contention.

Defense officials have periodically acknowledged that the actual number of troops on the ground often exceeded the FMLs due to the overlap in troop rotations and the "temporary" assignment of troops for specific tasks.

In August, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis pledged to give more accurate counts, and at the time said that the actual number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan was about 12,000, as opposed to the FML number of 8,400.

Mattis said that more accurate numbers for Iraq and Syria would be forthcoming but that has yet to occur. The FML currently for the number of U.S. troops in Syria is 503, and the FML for Iraq is 5,262.

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Jura said:

Saturday at 2:58 PM
and even
US and Coalition Troops Could Stand Between Kurds and Iraqis: General

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The U.S. dream of a democratic and federal Iraq is over. Appointing Iran the next boogeyman won’t help.

Days after the Kurdish Region of Iraq held a controversial independence referendum, Baghdad sent army and militia units to attack Kurdish positions in and around Kirkuk in the disputed territories. Such swift, aggressive action demonstrated Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s insistence that Iraqi Kurds will remain a part of his country, by whatever means necessary. Now, we are seeing the first repercussions: Long-time Kurdish Region President Masoud Barzani, who pushed for the referendum, resigned on October 29, sparking riots in the Kurdish capital of Erbil and other Kurdish cities, and launching new recriminations among Kurds and between Arabs and Kurds.

For America, the short, sharp fighting in northern Iraq has revealed a brutal truth: Its dream of a democratic and federal, united Iraq is over. Ironically, that dream dies just as the Americans and their allies are winning major battlefield victories against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Raqqa, the capital of ISIS, fell to a U.S.-sponsored battlefield coalition of Syrian Arabs and Kurds. U.S.-backed Iraqi forces, meanwhile, captured Hawija, one of the last ISIS strongholds in the country. But as the fighting shows in Iraq and foreshadows in Syria, Washington never had a political plan to deal with the underlying ethnic and sectarian contests for power that originally gave birth to ISIS.

As the senior political officer of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad from 2004 to 2006, I witnessed the contentious beginnings of the recently reborn Iraqi state. It was a difficult time: Insurgents across western, central, and southern Iraq were attacking American and allied military units attempting to preserve a small measure of stability. In the spring of 2005, elected Iraqi parliamentarians began drafting a new constitution—an effort in which we played the midwife. We wanted a new, permanent government, capable of taking over security rapidly so we could withdraw U.S. forces.

From the beginning, the Kurdish negotiators in the constitution talks were nervous. Since the imposition of a no-fly zone in 1992 during the reign of Saddam Hussein, the Kurdish Region has had its own government, defended on the ground by its peshmerga fighters. In 2005, Barzani emphasized to us that the Kurdish Region ought to be able to choose independence, but would join the new Iraqi republic nonetheless. Largely at the Kurds’ insistence, the preamble to the Iraqi constitution states that the Iraqi people could “decide freely and by choice to unite our future.” In the negotiations, the Kurds stressed the inclusion of the word “freely.” They appreciated its implicit meaning: they chose freely to join Iraq, and they could choose freely to leave.

Both in 2005 and in subsequent years, Barzani emphasized that only if Baghdad scrupulously respected the obligations of the constitution would Iraqi Kurdistan remain in the Iraqi Republic. This included implementation of Article 140 of the constitution, which called for the resolution of the future of the contested city of Kirkuk and other territories straddling the border separating the Kurdish Region from the rest of Iraq. The Kurds claimed these territories had been Kurdish until Saddam expelled large numbers of Kurds and replaced them with Arab farmers from southern Iraq. Eager to get on with new Iraqi elections and facilitate a permanent government, we readily promised to ensure that scrupulous respect of the constitution.

Of course, we didn’t deliver; we probably never could have. During my four and a half years at the embassy, we protected the election process by building consensus among squabbling politicians, calmed confrontations between Barzani’s peshmerga and the Iraqi army, and ensured the inclusion of Sunni Arabs in the national government. On top of this, we also had a major insurgency and terror campaign on our hands.

We knew that our failure to address the disputed territories and conflicting Kurdish-Arab claims to places like Kirkuk was dangerous. When I was back working in Iraq again from 2008 to 2010, Ambassador Ryan Crocker predicted in a senior staff meeting that our leaving the Kirkuk issue unresolved “would destroy Iraq.” Distracted by each new crisis du jour, we never mounted a sustained, determined effort to bring Erbil and Baghdad together to resolve the smoldering problem of the disputed territories.

Events in the disputed territories now serve as a painful microcosm of how Iraqis handle major political disputes. In 2014, the Kurdish Region took advantage of Baghdad’s military weakness in the face of ISIS’s blistering advance to send peshmerga to seize Kirkuk and its adjacent oilfields. There was no political discussion or dialogue between the Kurds and the weak government in Baghdad; the Kurds just used force of arms. To be fair, had the Kurds not done this, ISIS would surely have seized the territory and its oil. It was a serious overreach for the Kurds, however: Taking the oilfields and ruling the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk further poisoned Kurdish relations with many in Baghdad. The Americans said nothing, instead insisting that the Iraqis set aside their old grievances for the sake of the struggle against ISIS.

But the Baghdad government didn’t forget what the Kurds had taken. In December 2016, one prominent pro-Iranian militia, also fighting against ISIS, vowed to reverse the Kurdish seizures, declaring that after ISIS the Kurds were Iraq’s biggest

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. Then, after the Kurdish Region’s September 25 independence referendum, the furious Iraqi parliament demanded the prime minister send troops to recapture Kirkuk. Still, the senior-most Sunni Arab in government, Parliament Speaker Salim al-Jabouri, backed Kurdish requests to set arms aside and pursue

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.

But Abadi and the Baghdad government—far stronger and with Iranian and American backing—would have none of it, rejecting appeals for dialogue and threatening force. On October 19, the outnumbered Kurds unhappily relinquished Kirkuk and the oilfields without a fight. Again rejecting renewed Kurdish appeals for dialogue, Abadi demanded that Erbil cancel the referendum and turn over its airports and control of its border points. Iraqi forces and the Iran-backed Shia Islamist Popular Mobilization brigades marched into other areas in the disputed territories and the point where Turkey, Syria, and Iraq meet. The Iraqi forces and the peshmerga eventually agreed to a temporary ceasefire on October 28, but there is no resolution in sight for the disputed territories and the future of Iraq’s Kurds.

While Abadi and others in Baghdad condemned the Kurdish vote as illegitimate, there is nothing in the Iraqi constitution that expressly forbade such a non-binding referendum. Moreover, its result merely confirmed what everyone in Iraq already knew: Iraq’s Kurds don’t

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to be in Iraq. At least not for much longer.

This poses the question of how democratic Iraq could ever be when such a large segment of its population wants out. Oil revenues can help bind Iraq’s Arab and Kurdish communities. The communities are, however, very far apart politically and socially. If Iraq is to find stability, reaching a political solution to integrate Iraqi Kurdistan into broader Iraq seems unavoidable.

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The United States always hoped Arabs and Kurds could share power in the central government. It hasn’t worked out that way. While the ceremonial president of Iraq is a Kurd, real power lies with the Shia Islamists led by the prime minister. More importantly, in a polity as fragile as Iraq’s, control over the security forces (not just the odd cabinet post like the Kurdish-held culture minister slot) is vital. While Iraq’s constitution mandated power-sharing there, too, its Shia hold the senior command posts. A former peshmerga general had held the post of chief of staff of the armed forces, but he quit in 2015, saying that Kurds made up only 1 percent of the Iraqi army. He also complained that Baghdad’s interference prevented him from exercising his command

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.

Hopes for a sharing of real power dimmed considerably in September 2016, when Iraq’s Shia-Islamist-dominated parliament booted out the finance minister, the top Iraqi Kurd in the cabinet. Now, a year later, it is impossible to imagine that power sharing in united Iraq could enable Sunni Arabs or Kurds to control any key levers of the state. The Popular Mobilization militias so strong in Baghdad, for example, would never take orders from them.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that young Kurds don’t look much to Baghdad as a beacon for their loyalty. Many young Kurds don’t even study Arabic, focusing instead on Kurdish and English. The referendum, approved by about 93 percent of voters, demonstrated that Iraqi Kurds don’t want to remain a part of Iraq forever.

Meanwhile, America has been loath to throw out its script about a democratic, united Iraq whose people come together against a weakened ISIS, despite the fact that Baghdad and Erbil have long been looking ahead to a post-ISIS future. Washington’s plan, it seems, is to swap in a new antagonist.

During a visit to Iraq on October 24, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asserted that Iran-backed militias should go home; his statement, a hamfisted appeal to Iraqi nationalism, drew the ire of Abadi, who countered that the militia fighters were Iraqi patriots, and that America should not interfere. Two days later, Tillerson again urged Iraqis to resist Iranian pressure because “Iraqis are Arabs”— a remark that surely annoyed Iraq’s Kurds and other ethnic

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. In the tortuous constitutional negotiations of 2005, the Kurds had refused to sign a text that called Iraq an Arab state. The Iraqi constitution includes no such declaration.

After all this time, Washington doesn’t seem to get it. Iraqis are preoccupied with their domestic struggles, not with interference from Iran or other foreign states—some Iraqis welcome outside help against domestic competitors. Some in the U.S. foreign policy establishment are urging the United States to mediate the dispute between Baghdad and Erbil. To pull that off, however, it would need to avoid distraction, and act with more than a little sensitivity and an awareness of Iraq’s evolution.

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Jura said:

LOL now noticed a good question Is Political Leverage, Not Capability, Behind Qatar Fighter Orders?
Sep 21, 2017

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The U.S. State Department has approved a support package for Qatar’s fleet of F-15QA fighters, with a potential price tag of $1.1 billion.

The U.S. and Qatar signed a $12 billion agreement to purchase 72 F-15QA fighters in June, but this support package was not included in that figure.

In June, long-simmering tension between Qatar and its neighbors Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates erupted, with the latter pair leading a coalition of countries that shut down relations with Doha.

While U.S. President Donald Trump initially showed support for the Saudi position, others in the administration have downplayed that reaction. Qatar is home to Al-Udeid Air Base, a central part of the U.S. air war in Iraq and Syria that houses 10,000 American troops.

In an announcement posted to the website of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the State Department claims “Qatar is an important force for political stability and economic progress in the Persian Gulf region.”

“Our mutual defense interests anchor our relationship and the Qatar Emiri Air Force (QEAF) plays a predominant role in Qatar’s defense,” the announcement adds.

Included in the package will be design and construction services, new parking/loading ramps, hot cargo pads, taxiways, hangars, back shops, alert facilities, weapons storage areas, hardened shelters, squadron operations facilities, maintenance facilities, training facilities, information technology support and cyber facilities, force protection-support facilities, squadron operations facilities, other F-15QA related support structures, construction/facilities/design services, cybersecurity services, mission-critical computer resources, support services, force protection services, and other related elements of logistics and program support.

A prime contractor to supply infrastructure will be determined through competition at a later date. Similarly, any offset packages, common for dealing with Qatar, will be finalized once a contractor is selected.

As with previous DSCA announcements, this represents a notification to Congress that a deal has been approved and not a final contract. Hence, the dollar figure will likely change in a final agreement.

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