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Post by Admin on Aug 8, 2014 15:51:23 GMT
President Obama said Thursday night that he has authorized two new, major actions by the U.S. military in Iraq: airstrikes against militants with the Islamic State if U.S. interests or personnel are threatened, and humanitarian assistance for thousands of civilians who have fled the Islamist advance in northwest Iraq and are now trapped on a mountain. First, the U.S. humanitarian mission on Mount Sinjar began Thursday with airdrops by military aircraft, but it could require targeted airstrikes in order to “break the siege” at the base of the mountain and allow authorities to provide more assistance to the civilians, Obama said. They would be conducted in coordination with the Iraqi government and Iraqi Kurdish security forces known as pesh merga. Second, the advance of the Islamic State near Irbil appears to be a line in the sand for the Obama administration. The United States has both diplomats and military advisers in the city, which is the capital of the Kurdistan region of Iraq. The United States also has a consulate in Irbil, creating enough interests that the United States wants to protect the city from harm. “To stop the advance on Irbil, I’ve directed our military to take targeted strikes against [Islamic State] terrorist convoys should they move toward the city,” Obama said. “We intend to stay vigilant, and take action if these terrorist forces threaten our personnel or facilities anywhere in Iraq, including our consulate in Irbil and our embassy in Baghdad.” Humanitarian air dropsThe U.S. military launched one C-17 and two C-130 cargo planes near Mount Sinjar on Thursday, dropping 8,000 prepackaged meals and 5,300 gallons of water, senior U.S. officials said. The aircraft were accompanied by two F/A-18 fighter jets, which came out of an undisclosed air base in the Middle East. The Pentagon did not indicate which units or branch of service operated any of the aircraft. Pentagon officials said in a statement that the three cargo planes released a total of 72 bundles of supplies. They flew over the drop area for less than 15 minutes, and left the area before Obama announced the actions in his 9:30 p.m. address. Senior U.S. officials left open the possibility that the United States could conduct more airdrops in coming days if it’s needed. That appears possible, considering human rights workers have estimated that up to 40,000 civilians may be trapped on the mountain, unable to return their homes for fear of being killed by militants. “We feel that this is a unique and urgent humanitarian challenge,” one senior officials said Thursday night.
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Post by Admin on Aug 9, 2014 6:45:03 GMT
Forr three years, President Obama has declared himself the man who closed the door on a dark decade of U.S. war in Iraq. Now he has opened the door again. Other than insisting no U.S. combat troops will return to Iraq, Obama's advisors outlined few clear limits and no definitive end to America's latest military mission, which began Friday with airstrikes against Sunni militants and drops of humanitarian aid. Given Obama's stated reluctance to use military force in Syria and other hot spots, the White House faced pressure to explain why Iraq was different, what airstrikes would achieve and whether Obama was launching a new phase of an old war. "I see this as a watershed event," said retired Army Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, the top commander in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005. "Now that we are using lethal force in Iraq, that's a huge bridge to cross, and it's very difficult to get back across once you are over it." The president for months resisted taking that step. In June, Obama began sending hundreds of advisors to Iraq to help train and supply government security forces under siege from the Al Qaeda offshoot known as Islamic State. Obama opted against airstrikes, aides said at the time, at least until Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's authoritarian government instituted democratic reforms. Behind the scenes, however, the U.S. factories that produce Hellfire missiles began "working seven days a week in order to meet the need and push them out to Iraq," a senior administration official said. Both manned and unmanned surveillance aircraft and satellites provided near round-the-clock intelligence on Irbil, the Kurdish regional capital, and other key areas. Then last Saturday, Islamic State fighters launched what U.S. officials called a sophisticated and multipronged attack with armored vehicles and artillery across a broad swath of northern Iraq. By Wednesday night, the militants launched assaults that raised fears of a siege on Irbil and the White House was prepared to act. The U.S. is flying armed drones and fighter jets over the approaches to Irbil, looking for targets to hit, officials said. As long as the militants can be kept out of major cities, the air campaign can degrade their strength with targeted strikes against vehicles and heavy weapons that are relatively easy to hit in the open, military officials said. That would give Kurdish fighters in the north, and the Iraqi army closer to Baghdad, time to regain their footing. Kurdish soldiers and Shiite volunteers take position on Thursday during fighting with Islamic State fighters in Amerly, north of Baghdad. The Islamic State is making fresh territorial gains. But the militants are likely to respond by dispersing forces to avoid the U.S. bombs. If they start losing equipment and taking casualties, they may pull back. At a minimum, U.S. officials say, continued airstrikes will delay or deter further advances. Some experts warned that "targeted strikes" would prove ineffective. Stephen Biddle, a defense expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said pinprick bombings have "zero meaningful chance" of ending the widening sectarian war in Iraq. Absent a clear defeat of the militants, Obama may face pressure to do more and more. "The mission creep and quagmire risk is very real," he said. If the militants, who are believed to have thousands of fighters, continue to make gains on the ground or shift to another part of Iraq, the U.S. could face pressure to widen the air campaign, or even to put U.S. personnel with Iraqi or Kurdish units on the ground, to call in more precise airstrikes and advise them on tactics, Barno said. In the past, Obama has been determined to keep limits on a Pentagon that often pushes to extend military operations. He now is invested personally in the Iraq conflict as he was not before. He may wind up confirming a lesson that Iraq already proved once: Starting a war is easy. Ending one is much harder. "Frankly the threat posed by [the Islamic State] requires a more fulsome response and a more comprehensive plan than has thus far been put forward by the administration," House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) said in a statement Friday. "We shouldn't wait until terrorists are at the doorstep of U.S. personnel or are threatening thousands of civilians with death on a mountaintop to confront this threat." The White House offered repeated assurances Friday. White House spokesman Josh Earnest declared a "specific presidential commitment" to avoid a prolonged campaign. But senior administration officials put no time frame on the bombing and offered no definition of success. In a conference call with reporters, they said U.S. warplanes could bomb around Baghdad or anywhere else in Iraq where American personnel and facilities are at risk from advancing militants. About 5,000 Americans are stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, including about 200 U.S. military personnel who guard the facility and work with Iraqi forces at a joint operations center. An additional 500 U.S. troops are at the airport, coordinating delivery of military assistance. "This is actually open wide to an expansion," Barno said. "There should be some concern that there really aren't any legitimate limits on what we might do." The risks of an open-ended air war were shown when Obama agreed to intervene in Libya in 2011. The U.S. joined what was initially called a limited international effort to halt attacks on civilians. The bombing campaign dragged on for months before rebels overthrew Libyan dictator Moamar Kadafi. The country is again torn by violence today.
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Post by Admin on Aug 12, 2014 14:46:26 GMT
The Yazidis are a religious minority of about 500,000 people whose ancient monotheistic faith has roots in Zoroastrianism and beliefs involving a 12th-century mystic and a peacock angel. Those characteristics make adherents, who are neither Muslim nor Christian, apostates in the eyes of Islamist fighters who are sweeping through villages across northern Iraq. Long stuck in the middle of an antagonistic relationship between Muslim Arabs and Muslim Kurds, the Yazidi people have been violently persecuted by both sides. After a particularly deadly crackdown in Iraq in 2007, the Yazidis were able to ensure a degree of security and influence through a carefully calculated alliance with the Kurds. Many Yazidis, who live in and around the region of northwestern Iraq known as Kurdistan, speak Kurdish, and some describe themselves as the original Kurds. The mostly Sunni Muslim Kurds say Yazidis are ethnic Kurds who simply follow a different religion. In 2009, the Yazidis exploited Iraq’s byzantine electoral rules to earn about a quarter of the seats in the government of Nineveh, one of the country’s largest provinces, and became political allies with the Kurds in an Iraq that was becoming increasingly fractured along sectarian lines. In recent days, as militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, have advanced in northern Iraq, driving religious minorities from their homes and killing others, the Yazidis have fled west of Mosul to Mount Sinjar, where they have been stranded for a week. Their plight at the hands of Sunni fighters helped precipitate American airstrikes, authorized last week. The bombing of ISIS positions in the north appeared to alter the situation at Mount Sinjar. Four American airstrikes on the extremists surrounding the mountain on Saturday, along with airdrops of food, water and supplies, have helped Yazidi and Kurdish fighters beat back ISIS and have enabled thousands of Yazidis to escape the militants’ siege. The escapees made their way on Sunday through Syrian territory to Fishkhabour, an Iraqi border town under Kurdish control. Tens of thousands more remain trapped on the mountain, and American officials cautioned that the limited airstrikes alone could not open a corridor to safety for them. Many families were separated, some in their flight to the mountains, some when they decided to descend. Yazidis are now caught up in a larger disaster occurring across Iraq, but one that is hitting Iraqi Kurdistan, once the most stable part of the country, especially hard. Despite airdrops of aid from the Iraqi government and Americans, the humanitarian situation is worsening. Tens of thousands of Yazidis are trying to find refuge and relief in Kurdistan, near the borders with Syria and Turkey. There, a mass migration, set off by increasingly widespread fears about the Sunni militants’ advance, is underway. Christians fled Mosul earlier this summer as ISIS militants took over that city. And about 580,000 people displaced by fighting or the threat of violence have moved into the Kurdistan region, with about 200,000 having moved since last week when ISIS took Sinjar and its surrounding villages, according to David Swanson, a spokesman for the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Iraq.
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Post by Admin on Aug 13, 2014 15:59:55 GMT
Americans back President Barack Obama's decision to begin conducting air strikes in Iraq, but strongly oppose sending American ground troops to fight the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, a new HuffPost/YouGov poll finds. Fifty-eight percent of Americans in the new poll supported Obama's authorization of air strikes against insurgents in Iraq, while 24 percent said they oppose the move. A similar percentage said they would approve of the use of drones. The air strikes brought a rare moment of bipartisan agreement, with 66 percent of Democrats and 65 percent of Republicans supporting the move. Independents expressed less positive opinions, with just half approving. Polls have consistently shown Americans' wariness of foreign intervention, as Obama noted in a Thursday speech. "I know that many of you are rightly concerned about any American military action in Iraq -- even limited strikes like these," he said. Now that the decision to launch strikes has been made, though, Americans are considerably more supportive than they were in earlier polling that asked them simply to consider the possibility of such strikes. A June HuffPost/YouGov poll asked Americans to weigh possible interventions in Iraq, with just 44 percent in favor of air strikes and 33 percent opposed. Approval of Obama's handling of the situation in Iraq has also risen modestly. Two months ago, just 33 percent of Americans approved, with 45 percent disapproving; in the most recent poll, views were about evenly split, with 42 percent approving, and 40 percent disapproving. His approval on Iraq rose 7 points among Democrats, and 9 points among independents and Republicans. Americans are divided about whether the U.S. government has been aggressive enough in its response to the situation in Iraq. Thirty-six percent of those polled said the American government should respond more forcefully to insurgents in Iraq, while 16 percent said the response should be less aggressive. Another 22 percent said the U.S. government's response to insurgents in Iraq has been about right. Desire for a tougher response, however, has exceeded support for actually sending in more troops. Only 15 percent supported sending American ground troops to fight the Islamic State, compared to 63 percent who opposed it. Americans were also opposed to sending American troops to assist Iraqi army units, though by a smaller margin of 45 percent to 30 percent. Republicans were the most supportive of sending ground troops to Iraq, with 25 percent of Republicans endorsing the idea. By comparison, 12 percent of Democrats and 13 percent of independents said they would support sending American ground troops to fight ISIS.
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Post by Admin on Aug 23, 2014 15:33:07 GMT
General Lord Dannatt, the former Chief of General Staff of the UK's army, said during a radio interview that the West should soften on working with Assad the way it has soften previously in Iraq Britain will not work with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to combat Islamic State (IS) fighters in the country and his permission would not be needed for any military intervention, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said on Friday. Hammond also said Britain had no plans to arm moderate fighters in Syria’s civil war, and insisted that Western troops on the ground in Iraq would only make the situation worse. Responding to comments made by former army chief Richard Dannatt, who argued that Britain should consider some kind of alliance with Assad, Hammond warned that it would deepen sectarian rifts in the region. “We may very well find that we are fighting, on some occasions, the same people that he is but that doesn’t make us his ally,” Hammond told BBC radio. “One of the first things you learn in the Middle East is that my enemy’s enemy is not necessarily my friend.” It would poison what we are trying to achieve in separating moderate Sunni opinion from the poisonous ideology of IS,” he added. Hammond also doubted Dannatt’s claims that any intervention to oust IS in Syria would need Assad’s approval.” I don’t know where the idea comes from that Assad has to assent to a military intervention in his country. There is a civil war raging in his country,” he said. Britain could use its “military prowess” as part of any international attempts to halt IS’s advance, but would not send be sending ground troops, Hammond added. “This is not a fight that can be won by Western military force on the ground — that would only serve to reinforce the narrative that IS is using to attract Sunni supporters,” he argued. “This needs to be a fight dealt with by Iraqis on the ground.” Britain will consider “sensible” requests for military supplies from Kurdish forces — it is already transporting ammunition from eastern Europe to the capital Arbil — and would be open to requests from the new Iraqi government. But it will maintain its policy of providing only non-lethal support to moderate Syrian fighters, although the situation is under constant review, he said. Hammond did not rule out Britain supporting the US in launching air strikes against Isis – a move proposed by Dannatt in his Today interview – although government sources have played down the prospect of this happening. But Hammond did confirm that Britain was looking “sympathetically” at calls to provide arms to Kurdish peshmerga fighters who are at war with Isis, and he said Britain would also consider supplying arms to the Iraqi government for the same reason once an inclusive, representative government was in place. He also said the government would consider supplying arms to the moderate opposition in Syria. Until now, only non-lethal aid has been supplied, he said.
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