The Middle East: War, Peace, and SNAFU, TARFU, and FUBAR

[ccp]

yea, sure.  I believe it.  NK and Iran will become nuclear with ICBMs.   Sunnis will do the same for MAD doctrine among the Arabs-Persians.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/07/17/537793465/state-department-certifies-irans-compliance-with-nuclear-deal

[Crafty_Dog]

Iran may well be technically complying; the deal does not stop it from developing ICBMs or going nuke in ten years.

[Crafty_Dog]

The United States and Russia have reached a cease-fire agreement in Syria, but the ramifications of the deal will almost certainly be less drastic than many would like. The July 7 accord covers the southwestern Syrian provinces of Quneitra, Daraa and Sweida, and marks a new level of cooperation between the United States and Russia in Syria. Prior to their bargain, coordination had been limited to deconfliction mechanisms aimed at preventing an accidental skirmish between the U.S.-led coalition and Russian-backed forces in the country.

The White House has made it clear that it hopes to use the agreement as a way to breathe new life into negotiations with the Kremlin on settling the ongoing conflict. But the end of the civil war remains a distinctly distant prospect, especially since the new cease-fire deal already has been violated several times in the past week.
Stability, or Else

The United States' newfound willingness to work with Russia in Syria didn't come out of nowhere. As the battle — or at least, the conventional battle — against the Islamic State reaches its final phases in Iraq and Syria, Washington can no longer escape the fact that it needs to plan for the aftermath. Based on the Islamic State's emergence in Iraq after the United States left, the extremist group will likely remain a persistent insurgent force for years to come, even after its conventional battlefield defeat. Absent a comprehensive and successful effort to at least stabilize Syria, the Islamic State and other extremist groups will continue benefiting from the security vacuum and chaos in the country. Indeed, it could easily rebuild and re-emerge as a powerful force: In Syria, the Islamic State already has been able to expand its power in less critical areas of the country while its enemies were distracted with one another.

It's abundantly clear that there needs to be a comprehensive stabilization effort in Syria, but whether Washington and Moscow can work together toward that goal is not as evident. A number of past cease-fire agreements spearheaded by the United States and Russia have collapsed amid bitter recriminations and violations. And beyond the implementation of the cease-fire, there is little evidence suggesting that Russia is truly interested in the same goals in Syria as the United States. Washington sees an eventual move away from Syrian President Bashar al Assad's government and toward a less divisive transitional government as a necessary step to repair damaged relations between loyalist factions and the opposition. But Moscow seems less willing to go out of its way in pushing for the dissolution of an allied government in Damascus. Moreover, as U.S. President Donald Trump emphasized in his recent address in Poland, the United States is aiming for a political solution in Syria that limits Iran's influence and reach. Considering Moscow has worked closely with Tehran on a number of fronts in Syria, it is unlikely Russia would share that same objective.
Russia's sway over the Syrian and Iranian governments is hardly exhaustive, and both countries would likely do little more than pay lip service to any Russian initiatives they deem to be against their core interests.
Easier Said Than Done

Even if Moscow held the same goals as the United States, it is not at all clear that it could actually deliver on them. There is no doubt that Russia has significant influence over the Syrian government and its Iranian patron. This influence has grown in recent years as Russia has backed loyalist forces on the battlefield and the Syrian government in the United Nations. However, Russia's sway over the Syrian and Iranian governments is hardly exhaustive, and both countries would likely do little more than pay lip service to any Russian initiatives they deem to be against their core interests. Loyalist forces have already violated numerous Russian-backed cease-fire plans, including the four de-escalation zones set up in the January negotiations among Russia, Turkey and Iran known as the Astana Process. Loyalist troops completely ignored two of the de-escalation zones as they maintained offensive operations against rebel units in those areas.

In fact, one of these failed de-escalation zones was eventually divorced from the Astana Process and taken up in the latest U.S.-Russian agreement, which also involves two other participants: Israel and Jordan. Israel is alarmed by Iran's rising influence in Damascus, heightened support for Hezbollah and growing focus on the Golan Heights. It is therefore even more determined than the United States to curb Iran's reach in Syria. But Israel remains critical of what it perceives to be a flawed cease-fire agreement between the United States and Russia. Israel is fully aware of Iran's ambitions in the region and is not convinced that the cease-fire will last. And with the United States, Jordan and Israel unwilling or unable to station monitoring forces on the ground in Syria at this time, it will be difficult to enforce the cease-fire or hold the rebels and loyalist forces accountable for any violations.

In the best-case scenario, even if local cease-fire efforts were to succeed, the greater systemic challenge of translating them into a strategic political agreement would remain. The Iranian and Syrian governments are nowhere near ready to make concessions to set up the inclusive transitional government needed to stabilize the country. Given their battlefield edge and momentum, Tehran and Damascus will instead continue with a maximalist position that seeks to increase their territorial control. Thus the alternative to the current pace of the Syrian civil war is unlikely to mark much improvement. At best, the country will be increasingly divided and partitioned into separate zones under different armed factions — hardly the stable environment that would preclude the re-emergence of the Islamic State or other violent extremist groups.

[G M]

yea, sure.  I believe it.  NK and Iran will become nuclear with ICBMs.   Sunnis will do the same for MAD doctrine among the Arabs-Persians.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/07/17/537793465/state-department-certifies-irans-compliance-with-nuclear-deal

I trust gas station sushi more than this certification.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.investigativeproject.org/6419/iran-lebanese-missile-factories-in-new-and-very

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-syria-chaos-2017-story.html  including pictures and maps

Molly Hennessy-FiskeMolly Hennessy-FiskeContact Reporter

American-backed Syrian opposition fighters were standing watch against Islamic State militants from atop a water tower earlier this month when they were shocked to face a barrage of mortar shells — not from militants, but from the Syrian army.

“We are fighting ISIS. They are fighting ISIS. Why are they fighting us?” Raad Abdullah Hamoud, 17, said as he stood at the foot of the remote desert tower. “This is what they’re doing now. Think what they’re going to do after ISIS is gone.”


Syrian opposition fighters and their U.S. allies tried to maintain a strained detente with President Bashar Assad’s Russian-backed forces as the battle against Islamic State has shifted this month across the border from northern Iraq to eastern Syria.
 
But there’s an essential conflict: Many of the U.S.-backed fighters also want to overthrow Assad, who has stubbornly clung to power through six years of a civil war that has spawned a multitude of competing armed groups and drawn in forces from Russia, the United States, Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Lebanon.


As Assad’s troops gain a foothold in Dair Alzour, the crossroads of a strategic land corridor from Tehran to Beirut, U.S.-trained opposition fighters and allies nearby said they hope to take a stand with American backing, potentially drawing the U.S. into a long and costly conflict.

In recent weeks, an 80-mile stretch of the Euphrates River has served as a buffer zone — a so-called deconfliction line — between U.S.-backed opposition fighters and the Syrian government.

To the west of the river, some of Assad’s estimated 40,000 soldiers are fighting with support from allied militias, Russia and Iran. To the east, some of the 55,000 opposition forces are fighting with help from U.S. forces. The U.S.-backed coalition said it has about 500 troops in Syria, but experts estimate that has grown to include up to 1,500 Marines, Army Rangers and special forces, plus 1,000 contractors. U.S.-backed forces have largely focused on recapturing Islamic State’s self-declared capital, Raqqah, while Assad’s forces and allies advanced on the militant stronghold of Dair Alzour to the southeast.

“The coalition mission is to defeat ISIS,” the coalition said. “We have no fight with Syrian or pro-regime forces as long as all forces adhere to the agreed-upon deconfliction line.”
 
 

But the Syrian government and its supporters have already made several forays across the buffer zone. Last month, a Syrian fighter jet clashed with U.S.-backed forces south of Raqqah. Farther south, near the border with Jordan and Iraq, what appeared to be an Iranian-made drone attacked American advisers training Syrian opposition forces at a U.S. base in Tanf. That clash came soon after U.S. warplanes struck Iranian-backed Shiite militias approaching the base for the third time in as many weeks.

A U.S. coalition spokesman declined to say last week whether it would back Syrian opposition fighters should they confront Assad’s forces.

“Future operations depend on many different factors and we will not speculate on what the coalition or partner forces may do in the future,” the statement said.

Complicating matters is the instability of the Syrian opposition’s alliance of multiethnic militias that includes Assyrian, Arab and Kurdish forces, among others. Most are fighting as part of the Syrian Democratic Forces, an umbrella group created with help from the Pentagon, but each has its own agenda for what it will do once the militants’ “caliphate” falls.

The largest opposition militia is the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, with about 25,000 troops, including Hamoud’s unit at the water tower. The militia’s political wing has been governing northeastern Syria since Assad’s government withdrew about four years ago, adopting the Marxist-inspired philosophy of Abdullah “Apo” Ocalan, whose image adorns not just YPG command posts but billboards and local squares.

Ocalan’s leadership could prove problematic for the U.S., particularly in its relations with Turkey. He was convicted of treason and sentenced to life in prison, and his Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, is considered a terrorist group by both Turkey and the U.S.

Earlier this month, YPG military leaders on the front lines said eastern Syria should govern itself according to Ocalan’s principles, not be beholden to Turkey or Assad.

“The regime allies are trying to extend, to control as much as they can,” said YPG commander Daman Frat from his post north of Dair Alzour. “We need to coordinate with the coalition to do an advance before the regime comes.”

He compared the situation outside Dair Alzour to Syria’s embattled northwestern border region of Afrin, where Turkey deployed added troops this month and shelled Kurdish fighters as tensions increased. The head of the Syrian YPG said the buildup amounted to a “declaration of war” and warned of coming clashes.
Confused by all those groups fighting in Syria? We break it down with arm patches

“If the coalition doesn’t help us now, the same thing will happen here,” Frat said — this time with the Syrian army, not Turkish, forces.

Outside his compound, a convoy of what appeared to be U.S. forces passed, headed south toward the front line. Marine convoys were visible farther north, as were encampments behind dirt berms that YPG officials identified as U.S. bases. The U.S. has at least 10 bases across northern Syria, the Turkish state news agency Anadalou reported last week.

U.S. officials declined requests to accompany or interview those forces.

Warriors, dreamers and just plain crazy: U.S. civilian volunteers fighting Islamic State in Syria »

One Kurdish commander, Orkesh Serdam, has been encouraged to see the U.S. expanding its makeshift bases in eastern Syria, but said that doesn’t mean America is willing to take on Assad’s troops.

“Now when we are fighting, we don’t put all our hope in the Americans. We always say, ‘Just imagine you don’t have airstrikes,’” said Serdam, 27.

Arab militia commanders in the Syrian Democratic Forces said they also want to recapture Dair Alzour, but are unsure if they can count on the U.S. to support them.

Members of an affiliated group, the 10,000-strong Army of the Revolutionaries militia, traveled east from Idlib province this month as a U.S.-Russian negotiated ceasefire was declared there. They had come to fight in Raqqah and, they hoped, Dair Alzour. They complained the U.S. coalition had failed to provide them with needed equipment, including armored cars and night vision goggles.

Why, the fighters asked, was the U.S. helping Iranian-affiliated Popular Mobilization Forces (also known as Hashd al Shabi) across the border in Mosul, Iraq, and would those militias ultimately help Assad — also aligned with Iran — recapture Dair Alzour?

“We all know that Hashd al Shabi are Iranian militias, they are under the control of Iran. And the U.S. is training them,” complained one of the fighters, Abu Ghayas, 45.

The Free Syrian Army, another opposition militia, already has about 2,500 forces north of Dair Alzour, according to a spokesman leading about 1,000 of the fighters in Raqqah who identified himself as Abu Imad, the nickname he’s known by on the battlefield. They are waiting to see if the battle becomes a proxy war.

“The future of Syria is in the hands of America and Russia, like a card game,” he said as he sat surrounded by dozens of fighters armed with rifles and automatic weapons at their post in an abandoned house east of the embattled city earlier this month.

Abu Imad, 30, mentioned what he saw as encouraging signs: President Trump called Assad “an animal” in an April interview with Fox News. When Syrian forces unleashed chemical weapons on civilians in the central city of Khan Sheikhoun in April, Trump ordered swift retribution in the form of missile strikes. U.S. forces had trained some of Abu Imad’s militia fighters, and promised to train an additional 500.

He hopes they follow through soon. There has been infighting among the militias. Earlier this month, a Free Syrian Army commander squabbled with a Kurdish counterpart after withdrawing some troops from Raqqah under fire. The Kurdish commander accused them of deserting. Abu Imad insisted they had only partially withdrawn.

The Sunni Muslim militia leader saw a showdown coming in Dair Alzour, at least between Syrian militias and Assad’s forces (he insisted the opposition is largely united).

“If the regime takes Dair Alzour, they will not stop there. They will go to Raqqah and Hasakah” to the north, he said. “I want America to help us fight in Dair Alzour.”

To the west in Resafa, a remote desert village built around an ancient fortress, Zinar Kobani, the local YPG commander, also said he hopes he can count on U.S. support if his forces continue on their collision course with Assad’s army.

“It’s not part of our plan to attack the regime. But if someone comes to fight us, we will fight back,” said Kobani, 27.


For now, their red line is the water tower north of Resafa. If Assad’s forces try to pass it, closing the roughly five-mile dusty no man’s land in between, YPG troops will return fire.

They recently overheard military radio chatter suggesting an attack by Syrian forces in coming days. Soon after, Syrian troops closed the gap. So far, they haven’t tried to pass the tower.

[Crafty_Dog]

Forecast Highlights

    The end of a CIA program for training and equipping rebels is a strategic shift by the United States in its approach to the Syrian civil war as it looks beyond the inevitable conventional defeat of the Islamic State.
    Such a shift, however, even if it leads to less violence in the short term, is unlikely to secure a stable Syria.
    Syria will remain a hotbed of unrest and conflict, a situation that the Islamic State will exploit to rebuild and other extremists will use to form new militant groups.

Previous U.S. policies to influence the Syrian civil war haven't worked, or at least that's what the White House seems to believe. The Washington Post reported on July 19 that U.S. President Donald Trump decided a month ago to phase out the CIA's covert train and equip program launched in 2013 to support Syrian rebel forces opposed to the government of President Bashar al Assad. The end of the program points to a strategic shift by the United States in its approach to the Syrian civil war, acknowledging Washington's inability to force al Assad from power and its almost exclusive focus on the fight against the Islamic State over the past few years. But what happens in Syria after the militant group's inevitable conventional defeat can't be ignored. And unfortunately for the United States, no matter what it does diplomatically or militarily, even if its efforts lead to less violence in the short term, it won't secure a stable Syria.
A Not-So-Covert Covert Program

Even before the United States launched its military forces against the Islamic State, Washington has long understood that the Syrian civil war is a threat to U.S. national security interests. The conflict has weakened governance in Syria, driving refugee flows across the region and into Europe and creating a power vacuum that has been exploited by various extremist organizations such as the Islamic State, enabling them to grow in strength and plan and launch attacks throughout the region and the globe.

While the Pentagon directs the mission against the Islamic State, the covert CIA program was launched even before that as a response to the Syrian civil war conundrum. The United States, having learned from the disastrous disbandment of Iraqi government institutions shortly after the 2003 Iraq War began, didn't want to see a similar government collapse in Syria. The program was launched in the hopes of bolstering the rebels to pressure the al Assad government to make the necessary concessions that could lead to a compromise transitional government that would end the conflict.

The CIA program was also a way for the United States to exert control over its regional allies and their effort to arm the rebels. Through it, the United States could have greater leverage in coordinating with Turkey, Qatar, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, among others, on the type of weaponry being sent to Syria as well as the groups receiving the support. The program achieved some success in this regard, curtailing the transfer of problematic weaponry such as man portable air defense systems.

The covert program was initially successful. It undermined loyalist forces, particularly with shipments of anti-tank guided munitions during the 2015 Idlib campaigns that negated the Syrian military's advantage in armor. The program also bolstered the longevity of the Free Syrian Army, particularly through U.S. efforts to channel the bulk of the support to the some 80 rebel groups that passed the vetting process.

But even as the pressure was mounting on the Syrian government in 2015 (partly as a result of the CIA program's enhancement of rebel capabilities), the concessions from the Syrian government never materialized. Instead, Iran dramatically escalated its support for Damascus at the same time that Russia intervened in the conflict on the side of the loyalists. Support for the rebels, including the CIA program, simply could not compete with the backing the Syrian government received, which extended beyond equipment and funding to a significant Russian air force contingent and large numbers of Iran-directed militia forces. While Tehran and Moscow were willing to put their forces in the line for the al Assad government, the United States and its regional allies were not willing to do the same for the rebels.
What Is the U.S. Willing to Do?

Over the past two years, the United States has largely focused on the fight against the Islamic State, occasionally attempting diplomatic initiatives with Russia toward an end of the conflict that were bound to fail given the disparate goals of both sides. In the meantime, the rebels suffered another massive blow with the fall of Aleppo, a defeat that was in no small part linked to Turkey's growing desire to curb the ascendant Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) to the detriment of the rebel fight against the Syrian government. With odds becoming ever more precarious, the rebel landscape (particularly in Idlib) became increasingly dominated by extremist factions such as al Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

With the conventional battle against the Islamic State reaching its last phases in Syria, it's become clear to the United States that the Syrian civil war is a conflict it can no longer largely ignore. Absent a comprehensive and successful effort to stabilize the fighting, the Islamic State or other extremist groups will continue to benefit from the chaos in the country to rebuild and potentially re-emerge as a powerful force. After all, when its enemies focused on each other in the past, the Islamic State benefited, using the security vacuum to grow and expand its power in the less critical areas of Syria.
Absent a comprehensive and successful effort to stabilize the fighting, the Islamic State or other extremist groups will continue to benefit from the chaos in the country to rebuild and potentially re-emerge as a powerful force. After all, when its enemies focused on each other in the past, the Islamic State benefited, using the security vacuum to grow and expand its power in the less critical areas of Syria.

That leaves the United States with two choices. It can either redouble its efforts to support the rebels in the hope of forcing the Syrian government to compromise, or change tack completely by giving up on the removal of the al Assad government and working with Russia on cease-fire efforts that would stabilize, if not end, the conflict.

The first option is remote. It's been abundantly clear for years that the United States has no intention of going toe to toe with Russia and Iran over Syria, and was instead absorbed almost exclusively with the fight against the Islamic State. Moreover, even if the United States again started aiding the rebels, after years of fending off Iran- and Russia-backed offensives, there is little chance that the they could pose the same threat to the Syrian government they did in 2015 and before, even with U.S. support. Facing a depleted enemy, Damascus has little incentive to compromise anyway. The second U.S. option of working with Russia in Syria at least takes advantage of Moscow's desire to engage more with the United States and to secure its achieved objectives in Syria by drawing down the conflict.
Out of the Ashes

Unfortunately for the United States, the decision to reverse its approach to the Syrian civil war won’t be painless. First, the end of the CIA program all but seals the fate of the vetted Syrian rebel groups, discarding them to be gradually overwhelmed and annihilated by extremist groups such as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Second, with Turkey still prioritizing the fight against the YPG and with the Qatar dispute roiling the Gulf Cooperation Council, the other allies of the rebels could prove equally ineffective in sustaining their proxies against the loyalists and extremists alike. Aside from Turkey-backed rebel forces integrated in its Operation Euphrates Shield, the Southern Front, and some isolated Free Syrian Army units, it's now all but inevitable that extremist rebel factions will dominate the Syrian rebel landscape. Idlib, the largest rebel bastion in Syria, may in time go over entirely to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and like-minded factions.

It's also clear that the al Assad government will persevere, securing a divisive president who will continue to foment unrest in Syria for the rest of his government's reign. Indeed, the U.S.-Russia cease-fire and de-escalation zone agreements only mask the fact that the Syrian government, with Iran's backing, has no intention of surrendering any part of the country. With Damascus angling for total victory against the rebellion and with Turkey determined to find a way to cut down the Kurdish YPG, a stable Syria in the next several years is unlikely. The country will be a hotbed of unrest and conflict, which will be exploited by the Islamic State in attempts to regroup, and by other, new extremist groups emerging from the conflict.

[Crafty_Dog]

Trump’s Syria Muddle
Iran and Russia won’t negotiate a cease-fire until they have to.
Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters, prepare to move for a battle against the Islamic state militants, in Raqqa, northeast Syria.
Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters, prepare to move for a battle against the Islamic state militants, in Raqqa, northeast Syria. Photo: Hussein Malla/Associated Press
By The Editorial Board
July 23, 2017 5:26 p.m. ET
140 COMMENTS

Does the Trump Administration have a policy in Syria worth the name? If so it isn’t obvious, and its recent decisions suggest that the White House may be willing to accommodate the Russian and Iranian goal of propping up Bashar Assad for the long term.

Last week the Administration disclosed that it has stopped assisting the anti-Assad Sunni Arab fighters whom the CIA has trained, equipped and funded since 2013. U.S. Special Operations Command chief Gen. Raymond Thomas told the Aspen Security Forum Friday that the decision to pull the plug was “based on an assessment of the nature of the program and what we are trying to accomplish and the viability of it going forward.”

That might make sense if anyone knew what the U.S. is trying to accomplish beyond ousting Islamic State from Raqqa in northern Syria. In that fight the Pentagon has resisted Russia and Iran by arming the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces and shooting down the Syria aircraft threatening them. Mr. Trump also launched cruise missiles to punish Mr. Assad after the strongman used chemical weapons.

The muddle is what the U.S. wants in Syria after the looming defeat of Islamic State. On that score the Trump Administration seems to want to find some agreement with Russia to stabilize Syria even if that means entrenching Mr. Assad and the Russian and Iranian military presence.

Cutting off the Sunni Free Syrian Army has long been a Russian and Iranian goal. FSA fighters in southern Syria have helped to contain the more radical Sunni opposition formerly known as the Nusra Front and they’ve fought Islamic State, but they also want to depose Mr. Assad. Not all of the Sunni rebels are as moderate as we’d like, but they aren’t al Qaeda or Islamic State. The arms cutoff caught the rebels by surprise and will make our allies in the region further doubt American reliability.

This follows the deal Mr. Trump struck at the G-20 meeting with Vladimir Putin for a cease-fire in southern Syria near its border with Israel and Jordan. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson hailed it as a potential precedent for other parts of Syria, and Administration sources advertised that Israel and Jordan were on board.

But we later learned that Israel is far more skeptical. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a recent cabinet meeting that “Israel will welcome a genuine cease-fire in Syria, but this cease-fire must not enable the establishment of a military presence by Iran and its proxies in Syria in general and in southern Syria in particular.”

Yet by this point any territory controlled by Mr. Assad will come with Iranian military tentacles. Iran’s Hezbollah footsoldiers from Lebanon helped rescue Mr. Assad’s military, and they’d love to open another frontline against the Jewish state.

President Trump and Mr. Tillerson may want to negotiate a diplomatic settlement with Mr. Putin on Syria, and no doubt the Russian is pitching his “common front” line against radical Islamists. But CIA Director Mike Pompeo told the Aspen forum on Friday that Russia has done little fighting against Islamic State. Mr. Putin also has no incentive to give ground in Syria while his side is winning.

Russia and Iran know what they want in Syria: a reunified country under Mr. Assad’s control. Iran will then get another Arab city—Damascus—under its dominion. It will have another base from which to undermine U.S. allies in Jordan and attack Israel when the next war breaks out. Russia wants to show the world that its allies always win while keeping its air base and a Mediterranean port.

None of this is in the U.S. interest. The only way to reach an acceptable diplomatic solution is if Iran and Russia feel they are paying too large a price for their Syrian sojourn. This means more support for Mr. Assad’s enemies, not cutting them off without notice. And it means building up a Middle East coalition willing to fight Islamic State and resist Iran. The U.S. should also consider enforcing “safe zones” in Syria for anti-Assad forces.

It’s hard to imagine a stable Syria as long as Mr. Assad is in power. But if he stays, then the U.S. goal should be a divided country with safe areas for Sunnis and the Kurds who have helped liberate Raqqa. Then we can perhaps tolerate an Assad government that presides over a rump Syria dominated by Alawites. But none of that will happen if the U.S. abandons its allies to the Russia-Assad-Iran axis. And if abandoning Syria to Iran is the policy, then at least own up to it in public so everyone knows the score.

[Crafty_Dog]

FWIW

http://thefederalist.com/2017/07/24/good-america-not-russia-stop-cia-funding-syrian-jihadists/

[Crafty_Dog]

From May 20-- this just came to my notice: 

  Articles

    Regions & Countries

    Topics

    Themes

After four months in office, U.S. President Donald Trump is beginning to hone his policy on the Middle East. As the weeks have worn on, his priorities for the region have started to emerge, and for the most part they seem to be focused on matters of security. Combating terrorist groups, including the Islamic State, and containing Iran's "destabilizing" activities in the region will be at the top of the agenda during his visit to Saudi Arabia this weekend — his first trip abroad as the leader of the free world. From there, he will travel to Israel, where he will raise the prospect of making a fresh (albeit ill-fated) attempt at reopening the country's stalled peace negotiations with Palestinian leaders.

Luckily for Trump, many of these priorities align with those of the Middle East's most prominent leaders. The president has already met with Jordanian King Abdullah II, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nuhayyan and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But his ability to maintain those relationships, all while balancing their interests with his own and nudging them toward cooperation rather than conflict with one another, will shape his success in putting his regional policy into practice. And based on his decision to dust off ties with Israel and Turkey and to encourage greater coordination among the Middle East's powerful Arab states, Trump appears determined to undo the changes his predecessor wrought on Washington's strategic relationships in the region.

Shifting the Sectarian Balance

Prior to former President Barack Obama's tenure, the balance of power in the Middle East had been upset. The removal of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein under the administration of George W. Bush left the country — and its Shiite majority — open to Iran's influence. As Washington remained distracted by growing instability in Iraq after 2003, Tehran seized the opportunity to build up its nuclear program. Iran was then able to leverage its newfound capabilities to pull the United States into negotiations, demanding that Washington recognize Tehran's prominence in the region.

By the time Obama entered office in 2009, pressure was mounting to ease back on military operations overseas. Overextended and hoping to shift its attention to other emerging foreign policy priorities, such as growing tension with Russia and a much-touted "pivot to Asia," the administration worked to minimize the risk of clashing with Iran, particularly in the critical Strait of Hormuz. After much haggling and a change of leadership in Tehran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was developed. Of course, Washington wasn't the only party that needed the nuclear deal; Tehran, too, hoped it would lessen the chance of war with the United States and allow it to concentrate on defending its interests in the region. After all, the Middle East's Sunni powers had begun to push back on Iran's attempts to meddle in Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain and Yemen. The Iranian economy had also begun to founder under the weight of sanctions related to its nuclear program, and lifting them became a top priority.

Trump assumed the presidency on the one-year anniversary of the nuclear deal's implementation. By then, the JCPOA had become a policy fixture that neither the Iranian government nor the West intended to upend. And from a strategic perspective, the United States has little to gain from walking away from the deal and ramping up the risk of conflict once more. It's no surprise, then, that Trump is trying to rein in an increasingly unrestrained Iran by bolstering its Sunni rivals in the region, rather than by scrapping the nuclear agreement outright.

Adjusting the regional balance of power is not without its own risks, however. Cozying up to Iran's fiercest competitors will doubtless ratchet up tension between Washington and Tehran — a relationship that has already been visibly strained since the start of Trump's presidency. And in a region where inertia often supersedes intention, there will be limits to the White House's success in keeping Iran in check.

Aligning Against Iran

The Trump administration's distrust of Iran has been on full display from the start. The White House has openly expressed concerns about Iranian-funded Shiite militias in Iraq, Iranian-equipped militants in Yemen and Bahrain, Iranian-backed fighters in Syria clashing with U.S. allies, and Iranian-linked Palestinian groups in Gaza threatening to attack Israel. When Washington looks at the Middle Eastern instability, it often sees Tehran at its center.

Despite the steady finger-pointing, though, Trump has approached his relationship with Iran more cautiously than his campaign pledge to rescind the JCPOA might suggest. While the president could still make good on that promise if Tehran chooses to resume the development of its nuclear program — and reneging on the deal first would almost certainly encourage that — he will likely seek to contain Iran in other ways. Chief among them will be combating militias throughout the region that Iran supports and slapping new sanctions on Iranian entities for human rights violations.

The United States will also look to crack down on Iran by targeting designated terrorist groups throughout the Middle East. Operationally, Washington's counterterrorism efforts won't mark a significant departure from Obama-era policies but would instead be an augmentation of them. This has already become clear in Trump's approach to fighting the Islamic State: Military operations to retake Mosul and Raqqa from the jihadist group have followed the blueprints laid out by his predecessor. Trump's White House has, however, granted additional decision-making power in Iraq and Syria to the Pentagon and has put more pressure on al Qaeda in Yemen.

There is a more notable strategic difference in the Trump and Obama policies. The current president's hard-line stance on Iran has created more room for the United States to call on its Sunni allies — and Tehran's adversaries — for help. Over the past few months, the White House has pushed its Middle Eastern partners, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan, to step up their roles in the ongoing fight against the Islamic State. Of course, Obama endeavored to do the same, but he lacked the common cause that Trump's renewed hostility toward Iran has created between its Sunni rivals and the U.S. administration. As Washington's ties with these states have warmed, they have proved more willing to coordinate with the United States.

Some of these allies, such as Saudi Arabia, have even positioned themselves to lead the fight against terrorism in the region — and promote their own Sunni allies in the process. Trump's presence at a Saudi-led counterterrorism summit this weekend will signal the White House's trust in these states to shape the dynamics of their own neighborhood. To that end, the administration has also encouraged the formation of a NATO-like structure among Sunni Arab states, echoing proposals Riyadh has already floated in hopes of tamping down on Iranian meddling in its backyard. Trump, who arrives in the Saudi capital today, is expected to oversee the signing of $100 billion in deals for U.S. defense firms to supply the Saudis with a variety of weapons. That would come just days after Saudi Arabia created its own state-owned defense company.

Though initiatives such as the Sunni anti-terrorism alliance will no doubt encounter familiar problems with cooperation caused by a lack of trust among Arab states, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have already signaled their willingness to work with the United States against the Islamic State and Iran. Other Sunni states, including Jordan and Egypt, have shown their commitment to regional counterterrorism efforts as well, in large part through their participation and deep military ties with the United States.

Amman and Cairo will also be critical partners to Washington on another pressing Middle Eastern issue: maintaining a balance of power between Arab states and Israel. Both have firmly rejected any interference in the political status of Jerusalem and have continued to support a two-state solution to Israeli and Palestinian sovereignty. Egypt, for its part, also stands as an example of the Trump administration's early diplomatic successes. After a year of tension between Cairo and Riyadh, Washington was able to cajole the two into mending ties. Though no amount of wheedling will persuade Cairo to abandon its position of neutrality and send troops to aid the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, the presence of a military power of Egypt's caliber in Saudi Arabia's counterterrorism campaign would lend it added weight. The United States is also rumored to have mediated a reconciliation between Egypt and Saudi Arabia in their long-standing dispute over two Red Sea islands and has encouraged Riyadh to resume sending energy supplies to Cairo.

Downplaying Human Rights and Aid

With the new administration in Washington have come other small shifts in policy that will ease tension in some of its Middle Eastern relationships. Chief among them is the lower priority placed on human rights, state-building and the promotion of democracy. Trump, for instance, is wary of being bogged down in Libya's political quagmire, despite calls for greater U.S. involvement by key allies such as Italy. Meanwhile, the president called his Turkish counterpart, Erdogan, to congratulate him two days after Turkey held a constitutional referendum granting the leader greater power — a vote many of the United States' European partners have questioned as being neither free nor fair. Trump's attempt to set a positive tone with Ankara could create room for greater cooperation in the future, though it will not help bridge the divide on some issues, such as Washington's support for Kurdish fighters in Syria.

The White House's decision to quietly lift human rights restrictions on arms sales to Bahrain will likewise smooth its historically bumpy relationship with Manama. The same can be said of Trump's unequivocal praise of al-Sisi, whose government has grown tired of being chastised for human rights abuses in the wake of the Arab Spring. But the White House's outreach hasn't been warmly received by every Middle Eastern state. The administration's emphasis on conflict above all else has shone through clearly in its proposals for slashing foreign aid. The proposed cuts in assistance offered by the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development would deal a heavy blow to the economies of many U.S. partners in the Middle East, including Jordan and Egypt. (The two are facing possible cuts of 22 percent and 47 percent, respectively, in Economic Support Fund money.) Countries deeply threatened by the Islamic State, on the other hand, are not on the list of suggested cutbacks. Though this list is just a proposal, it communicates the importance Trump has placed on targeting terrorist groups — at the expense of state building and economic development. And if the president follows through with his plan for belt-tightening, it will not go over well with the countries that are poised to lose funding.

Pursuing an Elusive Peace

Ironically, the partnership Trump's administration has touted as the most important in the Middle East — that with Israel — may also be the least fruitful. Aware of the security risks that Israel's recent assertiveness poses, the White House has adopted a more neutral position on Jewish settlement building in the West Bank. And though Washington has hinted at its intention to relocate the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem — a controversial move sure to trigger international outcry — the administration has said it will not announce the measure during Trump's trip to Israel on May 22-23.

The United States has indicated that it wants its Arab state allies to help bring Palestinian political parties to the table to negotiate a long-elusive peace deal with Israel. But moving its embassy to Jerusalem would risk shuttering the talks before they even begin and alienating countries with sizable Palestinian populations, like Egypt and Jordan. These states would then be forced to choose between appeasing their restive citizens and acquiescing to Washington's demand for their support in pursuing peace talks. Already facing instability at home, Jordan and Egypt may well choose internal calm over their external ally.

Relying on regional powers to corral feuding Palestinian factions, moreover, hasn't proved to be an effective path toward peace in the past. In fact, divisions within the parties on either side of the talks have only deepened over the past few years. Faced with a polarized ruling coalition in Israel and a fragmented leadership in the Palestinian territories, it is clear that finding a peace deal acceptable to all will be the most difficult goal to achieve among those at the top of Trump's regional agenda. And like many U.S. leaders gone before, he may not be able to surmount the many obstacles to peace that exist in the Middle East.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://sofrep.com/86353/dod-sockpuppeting-losing-game-convinces-no-one/

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.oann.com/kurdish-government-officials-meet-with-trump-administration-ahead-of-independence-vote/

[DougMacG]

Writing for Powerline, David Horowitz has this about right.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/07/david-horowitz-why-the-middle-east-is-a-disaster.php

POSTED ON JULY 30, 2017 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN MIDDLE EAST, OBAMA FOREIGN POLICY
DAVID HOROWITZ: WHY THE MIDDLE EAST IS A DISASTER

During the eight years of the Obama administration, half a million Christians, Yazidis and Muslims were slaughtered in the Middle East by ISIS and other Islamic jihadists, in a genocidal campaign waged in the name of Islam and its God. Twenty million others were driven into exile by these same jihadist forces. Libya and Yemen became terrorist states. America – once the dominant foreign power and anti-jihadist presence in the region – was replaced by Russia, an ally of the monster regimes in Syria and Iran, and their terrorist proxies. Under the patronage of the Obama administration, Iran – the largest and most dangerous terrorist state, with the blood of thousands of Americans on its hands – emerged from its isolation as a pariah state to re-enter the community of nations and become the region’s dominant power, arming and directing its terrorist proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and Yemen.

These disasters are a direct consequence of the policies of appeasement and retreat of the Obama administration. Beyond that, they are a predictable result of the Democratic Party’s long-standing resistance to the so-called war on terror, and its sabotage of George Bush’s efforts to enforce 17 UN Security Council resolutions in Iraq, aimed at maintaining international order and peace in the Middle East.

In fact, the primary cause of the disasters in the Middle East is the Democratic Party’s sabotage of the War in Iraq. Democrats first voted to authorize the armed overthrow of Iraq’s terror regime but within three months of its inception reversed their position 180 degrees and declared the war “immoral, illegal & unnecessary.” The reason for the Democrats’ reversal on the war had nothing to do with the war itself or the so-called absence of weapons of mass destruction, but was rather a political response to the fact that an anti-war Democrat, Howard Dean, was running away with their presidential nomination. It was this that caused John Kerry and his party to forget that the war was about Saddam’s defiance of 17 UN Security Council resolutions, and refusal to allow the UN inspectors to carry out their efforts to ascertain whether he had destroyed his chemical and biological arsenals.

Beginning in June 2003, Democrats began claiming – falsely – that Bush had lied to secure their support for the war. “Bush lied, people died,” became the left’s slogan to cripple the war effort. Bush couldn’t have lied because Democrats had access to every bit of intelligence information on Iraq that he did. But this false narrative began what became a five-year campaign to demonize America’s commander-in-chief and undermine his efforts to subdue the terrorists and pacify the region.

The Democrats’ anti-war crusade climaxed with the election of Barack Obama, a leftwing activist and vocal opponent of the war, and of the majority of Senate Democrats who voted for it. At the time of Obama’s election, America and its allies had won the war and subdued the terrorists by turning the Sunnis in Anbar province against them. But the new commander-in-chief, refused to use American forces to secure the peace, and instead set out to withdraw all American military personnel from Iraq. This was a fatal step that created a power vacuum, which was quickly filled by Iran and ISIS.

Obama’s generals had advised him to maintain a post-war force of 20,000 troops in country along with the military base America had built in Baghdad. But Obama had made military withdrawal the centerpiece of his foreign policy and ignored his national security team’s advice. Had he not done so, American forces would have been able to effectively destroy ISIS at its birth, saving more than 500,000 lives and avoiding the creation of nearly 20 million refugees in Syria and Iraq.

Instead of protecting Iraq and the region from the Islamic terrorists, Obama surrendered the peace, turning Iraq over to Iran and the terrorists, and betraying every American and Iraqi who had given their lives to keep them out. The message of the Obama White House – to be repeated through all eight years of his tenure – was that America was the disturber of the peace, and not “radical Islamic terrorism” – words he refused to utter. Instead he even removed the phrase “war on terror” from all official statements and replaced it with “overseas contingency operations.”

Second among the causes of the Middle East’s human tragedy was Obama’s support for the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad whom his secretaries of state, Clinton and Kerry both endorsed as a democratic reformer on the very eve of his savage war against his own people. This was followed by Obama’s refusal to enforce the red line he drew to prevent Assad from using chemical weapons on the Syrian population. When Assad did use them, Obama averted his eyes and papered over his culpability by arranging a phony deal with Russia to remove Assad’s chemical arsenal. Six years later, Assad was again using chemical weapons on Syrian civilians, the exposing Obama’s ruse.

This capitulation to the Syrian tyrant was a powerful reiteration of Obama’s signature message: The United States is the problem and is therefore committed to taking itself out of the picture. In other words, anti-American dictators and genocidal maniacs in the Middle East can have their way.

The third cause of the Middle Eastern morass was Obama’s failure, early on in his Obama administration, to support the green revolution in Iran, when its brave citizens poured into the streets in 2009 to protest a rigged election and the totalitarian regime. Obama’s silence was in effect support for the Jew-hating and America-hating regime, into whose ruling group Secretary of State Kerry’s daughter soon married. Obama’s betrayal of the Iranian people was a reiteration of his signature message to the region: America no longer cares to support freedom, and is willing to support its enemies, even those who kill Americans in the name of Islam.

The fourth cause of the Middle Eastern morass was Obama’s intervention in Egypt – his overthrow of an American ally, Hosni Mubarak, and his open support for the Muslim Brotherhood, the spawner of al-Qaeda and Hamas and the chief sponsor of the Islamic jihad against the West. Obama’s support for the Brotherhood was so strong that when it was overthrown by the Egyptian military following massive protests of the Egyptian people, the White House opposed the new regime of the pro-American General, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Through these policies, Obama alienated America’s most important Arab ally in the Middle East and opened the door to Russia’s influence in the region, and to the Kremlin’s alliance with its most barbaric regimes, Syria and Iran.

The fifth cause of the terrorist upsurge that has shattered the peace of the Middle East was Obama’s unauthorized, illegal intervention in Libya and murder of its ruler Gaddafi – a ruthless dictator no doubt – but a dedicated enemy of al-Qaeda with whom he was actively at war. The result of this naked American aggression, whose chief advocates were Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power, was a Libya devoured by the terrorist wolves who now rule it – a failed state and a haven for the bloodthirsty savages of al-Qaeda and ISIS.

The sixth reason the Middle East is now in flames is Obama’s policy of what he calls “strategic patience” but is in effect strategic cowardice and worse. Obama’s failure to act decisively against ISIS – to take only one example – allowed the Islamic State (which Obama has even refused to concede is Islamic), to become the largest terrorist force ever, and to provide its armed missionaries with a free hand to destroy the oldest Christian community in the world in Iraq, exterminating 200,000 members of the faith, while driving many more into exile.

By way of contrast and showing what the Obama White House could have done, sixth months into the Trump administration, the ISIS stronghold of Mosul is liberated and Raqqa is about to fall, spelling the end of the Islamic State. The blood of those slaughtered Christians, as well as the Yazidis and Muslims, is squarely on the head of Barack Obama and his White House enablers – the Democratic Party and the Democrats’ kept press.

The seventh cause of the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East – and the one with the most long-lasting consequences – is Obama’s embrace of the terrorist regime in Iran. Iran has killed more Americans than any other enemy of this country. Its kill list goes back to the Marine bombing of 1983 and includes the supply of every I.E.D. in Iraq used to blow up several thousand American soldiers.

Yet Obama built his entire Middle East policy around the so-called “deal” with Iran, which provides that nation with a path to nuclear weapons, and has no realistic inspection or enforcement mechanisms. The “Iran deal” lifted the sanctions that had been placed on a regime whose leaders were so openly contemptuous of Obama that they led chants of “Death to America” in the middle of the negotiations. The Iran deal brought America’s mortal enemy out of international isolation, provided it with the opportunity to acquire nuclear weapons, turned a blind eye to its ballistic missile development and stuffed its war chest with $200 billion in cash payments used to fund its weapons programs, and to support terrorist armies, including Hizbollah, Hamas and the Yemenite Houthis, busy creating havoc throughout the Middle East.

The Obama regime’s role in the human disasters in the Middle East is a warning about what happens when American leaders sympathize with our enemies, hamstring our armed forces and abandon our responsibilities to help maintain the peace and defend freedom in a fractious, authoritarian and bloody-minded world. The Obama administration’s enabling of the most barbaric forces in the Middle East is a national disgrace, and the most shameful episode in America’s post-World War II experience.

The path to rectifying these disasters and to stopping Islamic genocides of “infidels” in the Middle East, is first of all to restore America’s active presence in the region, taking a firm stance against radical Islamic terrorism. This is an effort which, thankfully, the Trump administration has already begun. Second, it is to make America’s policy firmly and consistently anti-terrorist, which the Trump administration has not yet done. This would mean, for example, cutting off all funds to the terrorist Palestinian Authority and the Hamas government in Gaza, and halting all “peace” negotiations until the Palestinians renounce terror and support Israel’s right to exist.

The lesson to remember in all this is that despite its human weaknesses and flaws, America is still the only great power in the world today that cares about human dignity and decency and has the wherewithal to defend them and the peace.

[Crafty_Dog]

Another lurker on our forum!

Excellent piece!

[Crafty_Dog]

•   Iraq: Prominent Iraqi Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr visited Saudi Arabia and met with the new crown prince. Another prominent Iraqi Shiite leader, Ammar al-Hakim, will reportedly also visit the kingdom. We need to examine why top Shiite leaders are reaching out to Saudi Arabia. What does this say about Iranian influence in Iraq and the wider balance of power across the Persian Gulf?

[G M]

http://www.meforum.org/6875/the-kurds-are-about-to-blow-up-iraq

The Kurds Are About to Blow up Iraq

by Michael J. Totten
World Affairs Journal
August 17, 2017



The overwhelming majority of Iraqi Kurds want an independent state.
Next month, on September 25, the Kurdistan Regional Government in Erbil will hold a binding referendum on whether or not to secede from Iraq. It will almost certainly pass. More than a decade ago, the Kurds held a non-binding referendum that passed with 99.8 percent of the vote.

No one knows what's going to happen. Iraq is the kind of place where just about anything can happen and eventually does.

Kurdish secession could go as smoothly as a Scottish secession from the United Kingdom (were that to actually happen) or a Quebecois secession from Canada, were that to actually happen. It could unfold like Kosovo's secession from Serbia, where some countries recognize it and others don't while the Serbs are left to stew in their own juices more or less peaceably.

This is a serious business, though, because Iraq is not Britain, and it is not Canada. And there's a potential flashpoint that travelers to the region would be well advised to stay away from for a while.

Shortly after ISIS invaded Iraq from Syria in 2014, the Kurdistan Regional Government effectively annexed the oil-rich governorate of Kirkuk. Ethnic Kurds made up a plurality of the population, with sizeable Arab and Turkmen minorities, before Saddam Hussein's Arabization program in the 1990s temporarily created an artificial Arab majority.



Since then, Kurds have been returning to the city en masse while many Arabs, most of whom had no history in the region before Saddam put them there, have left. No one really knows what the demographics look like now.

It's a tinderbox regardless of the actual headcount. Some of the Arabs who still live there could mount a rebellion at some point, either immediately or down the road. If they do, they might engage in the regional sport of finagling financial and even military backing from neighboring countries.

Then again, Arabs have been trickling north into the Kurdistan region for years because it's peaceful and quiet and civilized. It's the one part of Iraq that, despite the local government's corruption and inability to live up to the democratic norms it claims to espouse, works remarkably well.

I've been to Iraqi Kurdistan a number of times. It's safer than Kansas. My only real complaint is that it gets a bit boring after a while. If you're coming from Baghdad or Mosul, it's practically Switzerland.



Kurdish graffiti on the walls of an Iraqi army base outside Kirkuk reads, "We will not leave Kirkuk."
Kirkuk Governorate, though, is—or at least recently was—another story. The three "core" Kurdish governorates—Dohuk, Erbil, and Suleimaniyah—have been free of armed conflict since the toppling of Saddam Hussein, but Kirkuk was down in the war zone. I went there ten years ago from Suleimaniyah and was only willing to do so under the armed protection of Kurdish police officers. Had I wandered around solo as I did farther north, I would have risked being shot, kidnapped or car-bombed. I still could have been shot or car-bombed alongside the police, but at least kidnapping was (mostly) off the table. The very fact that Kirkuk was a war zone at a time when the Kurdish governorates to the north were not suggests that the Kurds may be swallowing more than they can digest.

Kirkuk has oil, though, while the governorates to the north mostly don't, so of course the Kurds want it. Baghdad, of course, wants to keep it for the same reason. Will Iraq's central government go to war over it? Probably not. Saddam Hussein lost his own war against the Kurds in the north, and he had far more formidable forces at his disposal than Baghdad does now. Still, it's more likely than a war between London and Edinburgh, or between Ottawa and Montreal.

The biggest threat to an independent Iraqi Kurdistan comes not from Baghdad but from Turkey.

The biggest threat to an independent Iraqi Kurdistan comes not from Baghdad but from Turkey. The Turks have been fighting a low-grade counter-insurgency against the armed Kurdish separatists of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) since the 1970s that has killed tens of thousands of people, and they're deathly afraid that a free and independent Kurdish state anywhere in the world will both embolden and assist their internal enemies.

While Turkey is no longer likely to invade Iraqi Kurdistan on general principle if it declares independence—a going concern shortly after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein—the Turkish government is making it clear that it is supremely unhappy with the KRG including Kirkuk in its referendum. "What really concerned us," a spokesperson for Turkey's president said in June of this year, "was that Kurdish leaders want to include Kirkuk in this process while according to the Iraqi constitution Kirkuk is an Iraqi city and is not within Kurdish boundaries ... If any attempts will be made to forcefully include Kirkuk in the referendum question, problems will be made for Kirkuk and its surrounding areas."

One can sympathize with Turkey's fears. The Marxist-Leninist Kurdistan Workers Party is, without question, a terrorist organization. Even so, nations have a right to exist even if they are inconvenient to Turkey—especially considering that Iraq's Kurds are not terrorists.

Iraq's Kurds are America's only reliable allies in the entire country.

Rather than terrorists, Iraq's Kurds are America's only reliable allies in the entire country. They're as pro-American as Texans; they're the only ones who didn't take shots at us during and after the overthrow of Saddam; and they were, for a time anyway, the only ones willing and capable of taking on ISIS directly and winning. They do not align themselves with Iranian-backed militias as the central government in Baghdad does, and they certainly aren't on side with Hezbollah and the Kremlin like the Syrian government. They are as allergic to political Islamism as Americans are. They view it, with some justification, as an alien export from the Arab world.

The Trump administration opposes Kurdistan's bid for independence. It could, says the White House, be "significantly destabilizing." Perhaps. But it's a bit rich for Americans, of all people, to say no to people who want to break away from a country that smothered them beneath a totalitarian regime, waged a genocidal extermination campaign against them, and then convulsed in bloody mayhem for more than a decade.

An independent Iraqi Kurdistan is far more likely to be stable with U.S. backing than without it.

We Americans mounted a revolution for our own independence against a government far more liberal and enlightened than Iraq's. And we support at least the notion of a Palestinian state alongside the Israeli state, the only properly functioning democracy in the entire region, despite the fact that the Palestinians have mounted one terrorist campaign after another for their own independence while the Kurds of Iraq never have.

An independent Iraqi Kurdistan is far more likely to be stable with American backing than without it, but the Kurds are going forward regardless. As Jack Nicholson's character Frank Costello said in Martin Scorsese's scorching film, The Departed, "no one gives it to you. You have to take it."

Michael J. Totten is a contributing editor at The Tower, a Middle East Forum writing fellow, and the author of seven books, including Where the West Ends and Tower of the Sun.

[Crafty_Dog]

See the relevant URL's in my post today in the Jordan thread:

[Crafty_Dog]

Who's Up and Who's Down in the Middle East
by Efraim Inbar
Israel Hayom
August 24, 2017
http://www.meforum.org/6883/where-is-the-middle-east-headed

The Middle East has been transformed by state collapse in (clockwise from upper left) Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

Since the Middle East events of 2011 (mislabeled "the Arab Spring"), the region has been in turmoil. The inability of the Arab statist structures to overcome domestic cleavages became very clear. Even before 2011, Lebanon, Iraq, Somalia, as well as the Palestinian Authority failed to hold together. After 2011, Syria and Yemen descended into a state of civil war. Similarly, Egypt underwent a political crisis, allowing for the emergence of an Islamist regime. It took a year for a military coup to restore the praetorian ancient regime. All Arab republican regimes were under stress. While the monarchies weathered the political storm, their future stability is not guaranteed.
Growing Islamist influence put additional pressure on the Arab states. The quick rise of the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq was the most dramatic expression of this phenomenon that spread beyond the borders of the Middle East. Despite its expected military defeat, the ideology behind the establishment of an Islamic caliphate and variants of radical Islam remain resonant in many Muslim quarters. Therefore, the pockets containing ISIS and al-Qaida followers, as well as the stronger Muslim Brotherhood are likely to continue to challenge peace and stability in the Middle East and elsewhere.

The Sunni-Shiite divide has come to dominate Middle Eastern politics.

The Sunni-Shiite divide, a constant feature of Middle Eastern politics, has become more dominant as Iran becomes increasingly feared. The 2015 nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) between Iran and world powers has been generally viewed in the Middle East as an Iranian (Shiite, Persian) diplomatic victory. Shiite-dominated Iraq (excluding the Kurdish region) turned into an Iranian satellite as well, while the military involvement of Iran and its proxies on behalf of Syrian President Bashar Assad in Syria appears to achieve the completion of a Shiite corridor from Iran to the Mediterranean. Iran continues its long-range missile program unabated and makes progress even in the nuclear arena within the limits of the flawed JCPOA. Its proxies rule Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus, and Sanaa, signaling increasing Iranian clout.
In contrast, the Sunni powers display weakness. Saudi Arabia (together with Sunni Turkey) failed to dislodge Assad, Iran's ally, in Syria. Saudi Arabian Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman‎ pushed Saudi Arabia into a more muscular posture, but failed to win the civil war in Yemen -- its backyard. Moreover, Riyadh has not been successful so far in strong-arming its small neighbor Qatar into dropping its pro-Islamist and pro-Iranian policies.

Egypt is an important Arab Sunni state in the moderate camp. Yet the traditional weight it has carried in the Arab world is lighter nowadays, primarily because of its immense economic troubles. Providing food for the Egyptian people is Cairo's first priority. At the same time, Cairo is fighting an Islamist insurgence at home. This situation, which leaves little energy for regional endeavors, is hardly going to change any time soon.

Israel is now an informal member of the moderate Sunni camp.

Israel is an informal member of the moderate Sunni camp since it shares its main concern -- the Iranian quest for hegemony in the region. While powerful and ready to use force when necessary, Israel, under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is reluctant to interfere beyond its borders.

This prudent approach is based on the understanding that Israel, a small state endowed with limited resources, lacks the capacity for political engineering in the Middle East. A growing Iranian presence near Israel's borders and the reestablishment of an eastern front might become a serious military challenge.

The disengagement of the U.S. from the Middle East, accentuated by the foreign policy of then-President Barak Obama, continues. Under Obama, the attempts to engage Syria and Iran were generally viewed as weakness, perceptions that were reinforced by the signing of the JCPOA with Iran. The obsessive campaign to defeat ISIS, started by Obama and continued by President Donald Trump, primarily helped Iranian schemes.

The new Trump administration has failed so far to formulate a coherent approach to the Middle East.

The new Trump administration has failed so far to formulate a coherent approach to the Middle East. Moreover, the gradual erosion in the U.S. capability to project force into the region amplifies the sense that America has lost the ability to play a role in regional politics.

The vacuum created by American feebleness has been filled to some extent by the Russians. The Russian military intervention in the Syrian civil war saved the Assad regime from defeat. It constrained Turkey's involvement in Syria and helped Iranian encroachment in the region.

The regional vacuum created by U.S. feebleness invites growing Russian and Chinese involvement.

We also see growing Chinese interest. The ambitious One Belt One Road infrastructure project tries to tie the Middle East to Chinese economic and political endeavors. China inaugurated its first overseas naval base in Djibouti in July 2017. Located astride a crucial maritime choke point, the military installation is symbolic of its growing confidence as an emerging global power, capable of projecting military force and directly protecting its interests in the Middle East, Africa and the western Indian Ocean.
Yet extra-regional powers can hardly change the political dynamics in the region. The regional forces are usually decisive in determining political outcomes. Moreover, Middle East history provides many examples of external actors being manipulated by regional powers for their own schemes.

Adopting such a perspective on outsiders, and in view of the deep crisis in the Arab world, it stands to reason that the relations between Iran and Turkey will be a key factor in designing the future trends in the region. They are the two largest powers and they are both ambitious and capable enough to play a serious role. Despite the historical rivalry and the dividing Shiite-Sunni religious identity that could lead to competition, it seems that they are cooperating. Turkey and Iran have discussed possible joint military action against Kurdish militant groups. Both are siding with Qatar. Both are using Islamic motifs and anti-Israel positions to win hearts in the Arab world. We may well see an Iranian-Turkish duumvirate in the Middle East, but the statist interests and the different interpretation of Islam could push the two former empires into an adversarial relationship.

Efraim Inbar, professor emeritus of political studies at Bar-Ilan University and former director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, is a Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the Middle East Forum.

[Crafty_Dog]

And the Winner in Syria Is ... Iran
by Jonathan Spyer
The Jerusalem Post
August 26, 2017
http://www.meforum.org/6886/and-the-winner-in-syria-is-iran
 
 
A flurry of diplomatic activity is currently taking place in the Syrian and Iraqi arenas. While the moves are occurring on separate and superficially unrelated fronts, taken together they produce an emergent picture. That picture is of two camps, one of which works as a united force on essential interests, the other of which at present does not.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week travelled to Sochi to discuss the issue of Syria with Russian officials. Specifically, Jerusalem is concerned with Iranian advances in the country. Israel considers that the de-escalation agreement for south west Syria reached by Washington and Moscow makes inadequate provision for ensuring that Teheran and its militia allies do not establish themselves along the borderline with the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan.

It is noteworthy that this visit followed an apparent failure by a senior Israeli security delegation to Washington DC to ensure a US commitment in this regard.

As the officials were talking, the fighting fronts were on the move. Sunday saw the opening of the offensive to take the town of Tal Afar, 60 kilometers west of Mosul city, from the now crumbling Islamic State. Among the forces taking part in the offensive are the Hashd al-Sha'abi/Popular Mobilization Units. The PMU is the alliance of Shia militias mobilized to fight IS in the summer of 2014. Most prominent among them are Iranian-supported groups such as the Badr Organization, Ktaeb Hizballah and the Asaib Ahl al-Haq.
 
 
Iraqi Kurds are on track to overwhelmingly vote for independence in a referendum next month.

An additional notable process now under way is the attempt to induce the Iraqi Kurds to abandon their proposed independence referendum, scheduled to take place on September 25. Iran is fiercely opposed to any Kurdish move toward independence. Teheran is in the process of moving forward to a clearly dominant position in Iraqi politics, through its sponsorship of the Shia militias and the ruling Dawa party. The last thing Teheran wants would be for a major part of the country to split away.
But as has become clear, the European and US allies of the Kurds are also hostile to any Kurdish bid for independence. Both German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have made their respective countries' opposition to the referendum and any hopes of Kurdish exit from Iraq plain.

Last week saw evidence of the growing closeness between Iran and Turkey. Iran's chief of staff, General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, met with President Recep Tayepp Erdogan. Following the meeting, Erdogan announced that the two countries have agreed on joint military action against the Kurdish PKK and its Iranian sister organization, PJAK. Bagheri's visit to Ankara was the first by an Iranian chief of staff since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
 
 
PMU deputy commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis (right) with Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani.

An additional new development came to light in the course of last week – namely, the new role of Egypt as a player in the Syrian arena. Egypt has in recent weeks played a role as a mediator in de-escalation agreements in the eastern Ghouta area and in Homs, with the permission and approval of both the Russians and the Saudis.

Finally, the recent period saw the surprising visit of Iraqi Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr to Riyadh, where he met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. Sadr, a sectarian Shia figure who retains ties to Iran, has nevertheless sought to position himself as an Iraqi patriotic leader in recent months.

So what does all this diplomatic and military activity mean?

In looking to locate the pattern of events, one becomes immediately aware that the activities of only one player add up to a unified whole. That player is Iran. In backing the Shia militias as political and military forces, opposing Kurdish aspirations to independence, seeking by all possible means to establish forces along the border with Israel, and seeking to draw Turkey away from the west and toward itself, Teheran is pursuing a coherent, comprehensive policy and strategy. This strategy ignores any distinction between Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, treating all three as a single arena of conflict. Allies and assets are all utilized to build the project of maximizing Iranian geographic reach and political and military potency within this space.

The Russians have limited goals in Syria, and little interest in Iraq.

Russia should not be considered a strategic ally in this. The Russians have more modest goals in Syria, and little interest in Iraq. Moscow favors the increased Egyptian role in Syria which Teheran surely opposes. Russia is also not indifferent to Israeli and Saudi concerns and interests, hence the Netanyahu visit to Sochi.

The US also does not currently seem to wish to be a primary player in this arena. Washington does not appear to be developing a real strategy for containing the Iranians in eastern Syria. The internal strains and turmoil in the US may indeed be a core factor preventing any real possibility of a US focus on this contest.

Washington doesn't appear to be developing a real strategy for containing Iran in eastern Syria.

This leaves the local players. The components of the Iran-led alliance in this space are Iran itself, the Assad regime, Hizballah, the Iraqi Shia militias and important elements within the Iraqi government. Turkey appears to be moving in the direction of this bloc, though its size and Sunni nature mean it will never fully be a part of it.
Perhaps most notable of all in this emergent strategic picture, in which a clear shape is discernible as the waters settle, is the absence of a really powerful Sunni Islamist bloc. The once ascendant group of Muslim Brotherhood type states and movements is effectively no more – with Qatar besieged, Turkey moving closer to Iran, and Hamas also attempting to rebuild its relations with Teheran.

The Salafi jihadis are also reduced back to the level of a terrorist irritant – a sometimes lethal one, to be sure, but far from a contender for power. The Islamic State is on the verge of destruction. The core al-Qaeda leadership is dominant only in Idleb Province in Syria.

This is an anomalous situation. Political Islam continues to dominate Sunni Arab politics at street level. But the resilience and return of relatively stable Sunni Arab autocracies in Cairo, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Amman, and the eclipse of the Sunni Arab rebellion in Syria have removed it – for now at least – from the real power game in the Middle East.

The Sunni Arab bloc lacks the organization and broad ideological commonality of the Iran axis.

What is as a result facing the cohesive and coherent Iran-led bloc is a much more nebulous gathering, but one which if combined possesses more power, more population and more wealth than the Iranians. It lacks, however, the binding organizational capacity provided by the Revolutionary Guards Corps. It also does not possess the broad ideological commonality of the Teheran-led group.

Observe the forces mentioned in this article: Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the Kurdish Regional Government, Egypt, the Kurdish paramilitary forces in Turkey and Iran. (Add in Jordan and the remaining non-jihadi Syrian rebels to complete the picture) These are the core elements, each on its own relevant front, standing in the way of Iranian advancement in the Middle East. There are differences, disputes, in some cases sharp rivalries between them. Much will depend on the creation of lines of communication and cooperation in this camp. The contest between these two groups in the Iraq-Syria space is today the core strategic conflict in the Middle East.

Jonathan Spyer, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, is director of the Rubin Center for Research in International Affairs and author of The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict (Continuum, 2011).

[Crafty_Dog]

Daniel Pipes on Trump's Foreign Policy and Turkey's Erdoğan
Vocal Europe
August 28, 2017
http://www.meforum.org/6889/daniel-pipes-on-trumps-foreign-policy-and-turkeys

[Crafty_Dog]

second post

Stratfor

Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, the Syrian army and the Islamic State agreed over the weekend on a plan to rid Lebanon of Islamic State fighters. But the implementation of the plan, which began Aug. 28, is drawing ire from Iraqi officials and from the U.S.-led coalition fighting extremism there.

Following a Lebanese army offensive on Islamic State territory, militants from the group have agreed to be moved from Arsal, a pocket in northeastern Lebanon near the border with Syria, to Abu Kamal, a town along the Syria-Iraq border. The Lebanese government, for its part, celebrated being free of the Islamic State on Aug. 30. But Iraq, dragged down as it is by its lengthy war against extremism, is not happy with the prospect of more militants at its borders.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi spoke out against the plan Aug. 30. And, in a nod to the unifying effect a common enemy can have, officials from the Iraqi Kurdistan region vowed that Kurdish peshmerga would cooperate with Iraqi forces to defend Iraq's borders against any renewed Islamic State threat. Iraqi forces are losing no time. The Anbar Operations Command launched anti-Islamic State operations in the western desert areas of Anbar province on Aug. 29 to eradicate stubborn militant cells and is patrolling the borders to stop any spillover.

The United States was uncomfortable from the outset with the Hezbollah-negotiated deal, given that it was designed to provide safe passage for militants across miles of open desert and that it could compound security threats for Iraq and for the broader region. Though it has supported similar deals with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in the past, it's since changed to a strategy to what it calls a "policy of annihilation." But the deeply divided Lebanese army was wary of confronting the Islamic State directly, and Hezbollah needed to solve the Islamic State problem in Lebanon to focus on the Syrian war effort, so the deal was struck.

The United States will not sit idly by. The U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State launched an airstrike to prevent the convoy of militants, which includes 17 vehicles and some 300-400 militants, from moving farther east toward Abu Kamal. However, because the convoy contains women and children, the United States was limited in its options. The coalition said it did bomb some vehicles that were "clearly identified" as belonging to the Islamic State.

Rumors circulating in the Lebanese press say that the United States is considering cutting vital military aid to the Lebanese army. The United States, however, is not directly blaming the Lebanese government for the deal, even if it disproves of it, and U.S. Gen. Joseph Votel reassured Lebanese army officials that Washington will continue its financial support for Lebanon's forces — negating the rumors for now. Restrictions in military aid are still possible given U.S. unease over Hezbollah's influence in the Lebanese army. But in this instance, Washington's focus is clearly on spoiling the deal on the battlefield rather than at the bank.

[Crafty_Dog]

It appears the Syrian civil war is entering its final stages. On Sept. 5, Syrian loyalist forces, in close conjunction with Iranian and Russian military forces, broke the Islamic State's three-year siege on the loyalist forces in Deir el-Zour. The arrival of the relief force in the city is one of the biggest developments on the Syrian battlefield since the loyalists captured Aleppo city, and heralds the extent to which government forces have gained the upper hand in the Syrian civil war since a year ago.

On the same day the loyalists forces reached Deir el-Zour, Israel began its largest military exercise since 1998. The combined arms exercise focuses on preparing for a potential war with Hezbollah along Israel's northern border, and is set to run for 10 days and involves tens of thousands of Israeli troops. The exercise, though planned more than a year in advance, is not unconnected to developments in Syria. Israel has been keenly observing the Syrian battlefield, deeply concerned by the momentum the Iran- and Russia-backed loyalist forces have seized over the past year.
He Who Controls Syria (and Its Borders)

Israeli leaders are increasingly aware that the Syrian civil war has reached the beginning of its end phase. As the conflict draws down, with Syrian troops reasserting their control over much of the country, Hezbollah will no longer be overstretched and encumbered by its massive involvement in the fighting. Hezbollah would in effect be able to redeploy its forces to Lebanon, boosted by years of tough combat experience as well as increased arms and equipment backing from Syria and Iran.

The relief of the Deir el-Zour garrison also factors into the increased support Hezbollah is expected to receive going forward: Retaking the city presages the completion of the logistical supply line running from Iran through Iraq to Syria and then to Lebanon. The arrival of Syrian loyalists at the Iraqi border isn't imminent: The loyalists still need to consolidate control over the city, fend off Islamic State counterattacks and cross the Euphrates River. Still, with the Iraqi border located less than 100 kilometers (62 miles) east of Deir el-Zour through sparsely populated terrain, the arrival of the loyalist forces there is more certain than ever.

The relief of the Deir el-Zour garrison also factors into the increased support Hezbollah is expected to receive going forward: Retaking the city presages the completion of the logistical supply line running from Iran through Iraq to Syria and then to Lebanon.

Contending with this loyalist advance eastward are tribal Arab fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a few thousand of whom are positioned around al-Shaddadi to the north. These U.S.-backed forces have made their ambitions to drive southward clear, and may end up skirmishing with loyalist forces on their way to the Iraqi border. The area also has many critical natural gas and oil fields, which will drive competition — and fighting — further. But the balance of forces in the area is decisively tilted toward the loyalists. And absent direct and sustained U.S. military action in support of an SDF drive south that pushes back loyalist attempts to advance (with all the ramifications such a move would have with Iran and Russia), the loyalist forces should be able to seize the energy fields and reach the Iraqi border east of the Euphrates River. Even in the unlikely event that the loyalist forces are impeded, they will still be able to secure a supply line to Iran by seizing the road through al-Bukamal further to the south that runs into Iraq at a border location on the west bank of the Euphrates River.

A More Aggressive Approach

With a direct Iranian land route to Lebanon all but certain and with the militant group able to draw down its commitments in the Syrian civil war, Israel faces the increased prospects of having to again face off against a stronger Hezbollah. The window in which Israel could attack Hezbollah while it's still distracted and overstretched with its commitments in Syria is closing. So, as Israel conducts its largest military exercise in 20 years, it's worth remembering that the military preparations are not entirely defensive. Tel Aviv will likely adopt a more aggressive approach toward Hezbollah in the coming months.

The extent of this approach depends on the calculations Israeli leaders make. The response could range from simply intensifying strikes on Hezbollah convoys to launching an outright preventive war against Hezbollah's missile and rocket stockpiles in Lebanon. Even if Israel only increases the scope of its airstrikes on Hezbollah positions in Syria, the likelihood of a full Israeli-Hezbollah conflict is very high, if not inevitable, especially as an emboldened Hezbollah would find it necessary to retaliate to deter further Israeli attacks. The Syrian civil war, then, could lead to another regional conflict, even as it reaches its end stages.

[Crafty_Dog]

Some excellent maps herein will not print here:

Syria’s Shattered Future
Sep 7, 2017

Editor’s Note: This Deep Dive was adapted from a piece originally produced for the Valdai Discussion Club, an institute devoted to analyzing Russia’s place in the world. The full version can be accessed here.

Summary

It’s useful to look at the past to predict the future. Little that happens in the world is truly new, and lessons can be learned from the way things transpired before. So, in trying to picture Syria’s future, observing the events that shaped present-day Lebanon is a useful exercise. Lebanon is much smaller than Syria, and its ethnic groups were more evenly proportioned before its civil war. Even so, in 1975, it went to war – and at war it stayed for 15 years. We expect Syria’s civil war – which is already midway through its sixth year – to last at least as long.

Lebanon’s post-war years haven’t exactly been peaceful either. Syria’s will be worse. The U.S. and Russia are working under the public supposition that Syria can be put back together once the fighting stops. They want a lot of the same things: to defeat the Islamic State and al-Qaida, then to build a new political system in the country. But Russia also wants to destroy any other rebel group fighting the Syrian regime, which Russia maintains is the legitimate government in the country, while the U.S. wants to form a new political system that is democratic and that excludes President Bashar Assad. They’re both likely to be disappointed. Syria is a broken country, and no amount of diplomatic handwringing or bombing is going to put it back together.

Demographic Chaos

The reason is simple: ethnic and sectarian chaos. The single-largest population group within the country is Sunni Arabs, whose main political forces are the Islamic State, al-Qaida and the Free Syrian Army (not counting the large number of Sunnis who still support the Assad regime). The U.S. and Russia will not accept a political system built around either of the first two forces, and the Free Syrian Army is too weak to defeat the radical Islamists or the Assad regime.

It is impossible to know the exact demographic breakdown of the country today because of the fighting and migration, but before the war, roughly 68 percent of Syria was Sunni. Of that, 10 percent was Kurdish and the rest was Arab. Alawites made up another 11 percent of the total population. We can assume that the country remains divided between three groups: Alawites, Syrian Kurds and Sunni Arabs. The Alawites are loyal to Assad; the Syrian Kurds are loyal to the People’s Protection Units, or YPG; and the Arabs are divided – some Islamist, some champions of Assad, and all competing for influence.


(click to enlarge)

The Assad regime, the Alawites and other minorities that Assad protects will never consent to democracy in Syria. To do so would open those communities to certain reprisal by Sunni Arab forces should they come to power. The same is true of the Syrian Kurds, who, despite being the smallest and newest Kurdish population in a Middle Eastern country, have secured a de facto state for themselves and are taking as much territory as they can to try to lend strategic depth to their indefensible position on the border with Turkey. Even if an agreement emerged that all sides agreed to, the system would collapse just as the U.S.-backed political system in Iraq collapsed.

Many of the areas dominated by Sunni Arabs are in the desert, in cities hugging the Euphrates River. Attacking these cities is difficult: It requires long supply lines through the desert, which invites the kind of guerrilla tactics at which IS excels. Similarly, the Alawite stronghold on the coast is mountainous and thus very defensible. Little suggests that these dynamics will change soon.

The most likely scenario is that Syria will eventually be divided into three main areas. The first area will be controlled by the remnants of the Assad regime, which will maintain authority over the major cities and the coastal strongholds that are the Alawites’ core territories. The second area will be the Syrian Kurdish territories. There are two main pockets of Syrian Kurds: an isolated and small group in Afrin canton and a larger group in northeastern Syria, which before the breakout of war had significant natural resources and decent farmland. The Syrian Kurdish territories are on a relatively flat plain and are vulnerable to attack, both from IS and from Turkey, which has thus far not attacked the Syrian Kurds besides the occasional artillery shelling.


(click to enlarge)

The third area will be a lawless swath of Sunni Arab territory. The precise names of the groups and the ideologies they employ are almost impossible to track, but they will be fighting each other for supremacy in these areas, as well as launching opportunistic attacks against Assad forces and Syrian Kurdish forces. Fighters will continue to move across the porous Iraq-Syria border and will increasingly put pressure on neighboring countries.

IS, al-Qaida and the Power of Ideas

This Sunni Arab territory deserves a closer look, specifically at the future of jihadist forces not just in Syria but throughout the region. The Islamic State and al-Qaida are the most substantial of these forces today, but this will not always be the case. Eventually, IS and al-Qaida will lose their strongholds. They will melt back into the civilian population until foreign forces leave. Another group may arise in their place, or they may regenerate their fiefs and even try to grab more land to the south, greatly straining two Sunni Arab countries that have thus far stayed out of the fray: Jordan and Saudi Arabia. They will not be able to stay on the sidelines forever.

At its height of IS expansion, the lands it controlled amounted to roughly 50,000 square kilometers (19,500 square miles), roughly the size of Croatia. Taking into account the sparsely populated deserts and other areas where IS can operate with relative freedom, even though it is not directly in control, this territory expands to approximately 250,000 square kilometers, roughly the size of Great Britain.

The U.S. State Department boasts on its website that U.S. coalition partners have recaptured 62 percent of IS territory in Iraq and 30 percent in Syria. In war, such statistics are meaningless. What matters is not the size of the territory but whether that territory is strategically important. So far, anti-IS forces in Syria and Iraq have not conquered enough territory from the Islamic State to cripple its ability to operate.

The Islamic State’s core territory is the stretch of land from Raqqa to Deir el-Zour in eastern Syria. The most recent Syrian census, done in 2004, estimated that close to half a million people lived in these two cities alone. In recent weeks, this territory has come under serious threat. Syrian Kurdish forces have closed in on Raqqa, and despite the Islamic State’s diversionary attacks, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have advanced methodically on the city. Meanwhile, the Russia-backed Syrian army has been making gains of its own. Syrian government forces crossed into Raqqa province at the beginning of June, and more important, they have begun an offensive into eastern Syria targeting Deir el-Zour and al-Mayadin.


(click to enlarge)

All evidence seems to indicate that the Islamic State has chosen to retreat from Raqqa to reinforce its position in Deir el-Zour and al-Mayadin. The SDF has made progress in Raqqa, but notably, it left the main highway heading east out of the city open. For months, reports have said IS fighters were leaving the city. When IS convoys have attempted to head west, Russia has made a point of targeting them, but there seems to be a coordinated effort between U.S. and Russian allies on the ground to push IS into a smaller area in eastern Syria that will eventually be attacked head on.

This would all seem to suggest that the defeat of the Islamic State is nigh. That would be a premature judgment. The hallmark of the Islamic State’s military capabilities has been its ability to avoid costly defeats. IS routinely retreats from positions it knows it cannot defend, regroups and then launches new attacks where its enemies are unprepared for them. If it turns out IS cannot protect its territory against the approaching forces, the most likely course of action is that IS fighters will withdraw or blend into the civilian population and give up the city without a fight. For all of the Islamic State’s religious bravado, it has shown itself to be pragmatic in its approach to war, and it would be out of character for it to make a suicidal stand against incoming forces. IS uses suicide bombs for offensive purposes; it does not view suicide in defense as any more noble than defeat.

Even if the physical caliphate is destroyed, the Islamic State’s ideology will persist in a region that is ripe for recruitment. The attacking armies are united in their opposition to IS but will find little in the way of a common cause if the Islamic State’s territorial integrity is broken. They will instead take to fighting among themselves, opening up new spaces for IS to capitalize on and return. The forces will eventually have to withdraw from formerly IS-held territories to attack al-Qaida and other targets in Syria as well, which will mean IS can bide its time. The Islamic State is playing a long game, and its religious ideology can and will preach patience to the faithful. It will not conceded defeat.

Al-Qaida’s position in Syria is more tenuous than the Islamic State’s, and as a result, al-Qaida is not seen as an equal threat and has been able to fly much more under the radar than its territorially focused offshoot. In Syria, the group has changed its name several times (the latest incarnation is Tahrir al-Sham), but it would be a mistake to call it anything but what it is: al-Qaida in Syria. Al-Qaida in Syria has tried to forge connections with other Syrian rebel groups and has captured fiefdoms of its own outside of Aleppo and Idlib. It has fewer fighters than IS, but like the IS fighters, they are extremely capable and have proved much more successful on the battlefield than any of the moderate Syrian rebel groups.

Al-Qaida is surrounded, however, by Syrian government forces. It is only a matter of time before the regime turns its attention to the group. The U.S. has said repeatedly that it plans to solve the IS problem before targeting al-Qaida, and one reason it can afford that approach is that it knows Assad and Russia view al-Qaida, which is closer to the heartland of the regime, as their more pressing problem. Once the Assad regime focuses the bulk of its forces on al-Qaida’s territories in and around Idlib, al-Qaida will gradually have to retreat and blend into the civilian population. The operation to retake these areas will come with mass executions and purges of all suspected al-Qaida sympathizers and collaborators.

The result is that likely in the next one to three years, the entities in Syria currently known as the Islamic State and al-Qaida will be dislodged from full control of their possessions. But the problem is not defeating these groups or taking their lands; with sufficient manpower and foreign support, these groups’ grip over their territories can be loosened if not broken entirely for a time. The problem is that unless a foreign force occupies these territories, the groups will reconstitute themselves and recapture the land they lost. And there is no country in the world whose strategic interests are served by holding territory in the middle of the Syrian and Iraqi deserts indefinitely.

Fighting groups like the Islamic State and al-Qaida takes place on two levels. The first is the military level. Tactical difficulties stand in the way of victory, but they can be overcome. The second level, however, is the realm of ideas. That radical Islamist ideology has a force of its own is indisputable at this point. For whatever reason – the lack of economic opportunity, the history of colonial oppression, whatever – this ideology has given meaning and organization to a generation of people.

In this sense, then, the Islamic State, al-Qaida and the myriad other groups that have sprouted up out of the power vacuum left by the civil war are unbeatable, because it is impossible to defeat an idea. This is a civil war between Muslims in the Middle East. The religious wars of Europe around the time of the Enlightenment each took decades if not centuries to play out before a somewhat stable system of political entities emerged. (And even this system eventually became so unbalanced that in the 20th century it twice brought the entire world into war.) There is no reason to expect that the Muslim wars will take less time than that, nor is there reason to believe that the U.S. or Russia or any outside power will be able to subdue these forces with the right combination of coalition fighters.

The best that can be achieved is containing these forces where they are. For the U.S., preventing their spread south into countries it counts among its allies is of prime importance. For Russia, preventing their spread north into the Caucasus is the bigger priority. Either way, the two sides share an interest in keeping these religious wars confined, as much as possible, to the deserts of the Middle East, rather than the streets of Manhattan or the subway stations of St. Petersburg.
Smoke billows in the embattled northern Syrian city of Raqqa on Sept. 3, 2017, as Syrian Democratic Forces battle to retake the city from the Islamic State. DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP/Getty Images

When it comes to Syria, then, the U.S. and Russia are already working together even if they don’t include each other in their coalitions. The tacit coordination in the Raqqa and Deir el-Zour offensives is evidence enough of that. Neither wants to see radical Islamism spread into its spheres of influence. Neither wants or has the forces available to commit to conquering radical Islamism in Syria and Iraq – and policing the territories after the fact. The U.S. and Russia do not see eye to eye on the legitimacy of the Assad regime, but the U.S. does not have the luxury of pushing for Assad’s downfall; what would arise in his place might be far worse. The U.S. will continue to search for partners to keep IS in a cage, and Russia will continue to prop up Assad as he eventually moves on to targeting al-Qaida. And while Russia and the U.S. continue to butt heads in other parts of the world, in this part of the world, they will quietly work, perhaps not quite together, but still in pursuit of a similar goal.

Great Power Politics

But the Syrian civil war will not stay contained in Syria. Even if the U.S. and Russia succeed in keeping radical Islamism bottled up in the country, Syria has become a battleground for proxies supported by countries around the Middle East. Here, too, Russia and the U.S. share an overarching goal, but occasional disagreements may arise. The only way this could be derailed is if both sides fail to put their Cold War rivalry behind them.

The balance of power in the Middle East mattered during the Cold War – when the region was responsible for a much greater share of global oil production than it is today, and when the balance of power in all regions mattered. The region’s wars were not just local; they were between the U.S. and the USSR. But those days are over. Now, Russia is back to Soviet-era levels of oil production. The U.S. has become one of the top oil producers in the world and no longer depends as much on the Middle East. And despite U.S.-Russia tensions since the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004, there is no current conflict between the two that has the same weight as the Cold War.

Russia in 2017 is smaller, weaker and less ideological than its Soviet predecessor. This does not mean Russia has given up its position as a global power, but it does mean that a region like the Middle East is less important than it once was. Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia – all former Soviet lands – are far more important for Russia’s continued power. What the Middle East offers, however, is a chance to distract the U.S. from interfering in the regions where Russia cannot afford to lose influence, as well as the potential to inflate the price of oil – Russia’s top export – by hampering Middle East producers.

The U.S., meanwhile, has been desperately searching for a way out of the Middle East since 2007. The Bush administration tried to end the Iraq War with the overwhelming force of the troop surge, which had no lasting effect. The Obama administration tried to do as little as possible, and when it did act, its policy was largely incoherent. The Trump administration now seems to be contemplating a kind of surge of its own, which is sure to be ineffective. If Russia wanted to take over management of the Middle East and its crises, the U.S. would welcome it. The point is that the Middle East is no longer a battleground for world power. It is an annoyance that neither Russia nor the U.S. particularly wants to face.

The main threat for the U.S. is that a country or group of countries will come to dominate the entire region. Besides the threat of Islamist terrorism, the U.S. views IS and its sister groups as potential unifiers of the Sunni Arab world against the United States. It also views these groups as a direct threat to the countries the U.S. depends on to maintain a balance of power in the region, particularly Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Egypt is an economic basket case with an active IS insurgency of its own in Sinai. That Jordan has gone this long unscathed is a minor miracle. According to the U.N. refugee agency, Jordan has received over 650,000 Syrian refugees since 2011 – and those are just the registered ones. Syrian nationals now make up more than 20 percent of Jordan’s population. Saudi Arabia has built the legitimacy of its political system on all the generous services that petrodollars can buy. The decline in oil prices and the kingdom’s diminished share of global production have already manifested in significant cuts to social services and to the privileges of the royal family. Saudi Arabia is a breeding ground for the types of Islamist ideologies that have broken Syria and Iraq apart, and the Islamist groups want little more than to control the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

The U.S. upended the regional balance of power in 2003, and in recent years it has tried to re-establish it on the backs of four states: Turkey, Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Israel is too small to balance against Turkey and Iran, which makes Saudi Arabia a crucial part of the equation. Without the Saudis, the region devolves into a contest between the Turks and the Iranians, and Turkey has the edge in military strength, economic heft and geography. It would win out in the long term. The U.S. and Turkey have been allies for many decades, and Turkey is a NATO member, but Turkey is strong and growing stronger, and more and more it is disagreeing with Washington on major issues of national interest. Turkey is not yet strong enough to challenge the U.S. on these issues, but that time is coming. When it does, the U.S. will want to be sure that the Turks cannot dominate the Middle East unimpeded.

This is another area where the interests of Russia and the U.S. converge. Turkey and Russia have a long history of war between them. The most recent major incident between them was in 2015, when Turkey shot down a Russian aircraft over northern Syria. They have since resolved the dispute, but relations remain uneasy and complicated. As Russia weakens and Turkey rises, Turkey will start to challenge Russian influence in the Caucasus and the Balkans, areas that for Russia hold greater strategic significance than any country in the Middle East.

This is why Russia and the U.S. have both, to varying degrees, reached out to Syria’s Kurds. In March, the Syrian Kurds said Russia had agreed to build a base in northern Syria and to send military personnel to train the YPG. Russia’s Ministry of Defense disputed this depiction, saying it was setting up a “reconciliation center.” Whatever it is called, the construction is a symbol of closer relations.

The U.S., for its part, has come to rely on the Syrian Kurds as the largest ground force in Syria that is both able and willing to take on the Islamic State directly. The Obama administration tacitly supported the Syrian Kurds, but the Trump administration went a step further in May when it announced that it would supply them with weapons to fight the Islamic State.

Russian and U.S. support has not gone unnoticed in Turkey’s capital. In the same way that Ukraine is of fundamental importance to Russia, or that Cuba is to the U.S., the Kurdish issue is crucial for Turkey. It is also the one issue that could significantly complicate Turkey’s rise to power. The Kurds in Syria are not the problem – at least, they are not the only problem. The issue is that Kurds, with all their separatist ambitions, make up about 18 percent of Turkey’s population – about 14 million people – and most of them live in the southeastern part of the country near Syria. The Kurds are not a monolithic group; the roughly 29 million to 35 million Kurds in the Middle East speak different languages, have different tribal and national loyalties, and even have different religious faiths. But Syria’s Kurds are closely related to Turkey’s Kurds. In Turkey’s eyes, the YPG is the same level of strategic threat as IS or the Kurdistan Workers’ Party militant group, or PKK.

Both the U.S. and Russia have an interest, then, in preventing Turkey from intervening in Syria in any capacity beyond fighting the Islamic State. For one thing, Turkey is anti-Assad, and the rebel groups with which it is closest are ideologically incompatible with the U.S. and Russia. For another, Turkey would try to destroy the Syrian Kurdish statelet that has popped up during the war for fear that the spirit of independence might spread into Turkey’s own Kurdish region in the southeast, which has seen more and more clashes in the past two years between the PKK and Turkish security forces. The stronger both the Syrian Kurds and the Assad regime are, the harder it will be for Turkey to extend its power into the Levant, and the greater the balance against Turkey in the region will be as its strength grows over the next two decades.

Iran is another part of the equation, and here the intersection of U.S. and Russian interests is more complicated. The U.S. signed the nuclear deal with Iran because it needed Iran’s help to contain Islamic State forces in Iraq, but the U.S. also does not want to see Baghdad and the Shiite parts of Iraq become de facto provinces of Iran. The Americans need Iran’s help – and over the long term need Iran as a counterweight to Turkish power – but they will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. They will block any attempt by Iran to establish regional dominance, just as they would stop Turkey from forming a unified Sunni Arab force.

Russian relations with Iran have historically been fraught, but at the moment they are positive. This is in part because Iran supports the Assad regime and views every group in the region that is not Sunni as a potential proxy group. Iran’s Shiite proxies, such as Hezbollah, are also important for keeping up the fight against the Islamic State. Unlike the U.S., Russia is not too concerned with Iran’s westward expansion. It would not, however, tolerate Persian influence in the Caucasus any more than it would accept Turkish influence there.

The U.S. and Russia are not in total agreement in the Middle East, but their disagreements are not close to reaching the scale of the Cold War. And they both share a desire to limit the spread of Islamist ideology and to prevent any country or group in the Middle East from rising to challenge their interests. They will continue to compete in some ways – supporting groups in Syria that are fighting groups the other supports, for instance – but they ultimately want the same thing: for the Middle East’s problems to stay in the Middle East.

Syria’s immediate future, then, is bleak and will be marred by more years of war and Islamist insurgency. IS and al-Qaida will suffer defeats but will not be defeated. Turkey will rise. Saudi Arabia will fall. Iran will scheme. The Kurds will fight. And neither the U.S. nor Russia will be able to wash their hands of the region as this chaos unfolds.

The U.S. and Russia took different routes to Syria – the U.S. through the war on terror and a botched invasion of Iraq, Russia through a revolution in Ukraine and an unexpected drop in oil prices – but both are there to stay. They are at odds in many parts of the world, especially in Eastern Europe. But in the Middle East, they will work side by side – if not together – to eliminate IS and al-Qaida and prevent the emergence of any dominant regional power. The U.S. and Russia face different challenges from an unstable Middle East and will disagree over many of the particulars, but at the broadest level they will be working toward the same goal: a predictable balance of power. The Cold War is over, but for great powers, the world is a small place. The U.S. and Russia cannot help but run into each other.

The post Syria’s Shattered Future appeared first on Geopolitics | Geopolitical Futures.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/14/israel-becomes-first-state-back-independent-kurdistan/

[G M]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/14/israel-becomes-first-state-back-independent-kurdistan/

Good.

[Crafty_Dog]

Several detailed maps in the original:
================================


In less than a week, the largest nation in the world without a state of its own — the Kurds — may finally hold a vote on whether to declare one. The approaching independence referendum, which Iraqi Kurdistan has planned for Sept. 25, marks the culmination of a long-running battle between the Kurdish government in Arbil and the central government in Baghdad. Thanks to the former's disarray and the latter's international backing, the vote seems doomed to fail in producing a distinct territory that the Kurds may call home. However, it could set Iraqi Kurdistan on a path toward greater autonomy, shaking the region from its stagnation and threatening further instability in the volatile Middle East.

A Cause That Unites and Divides

Though a familiar (and often futile) refrain throughout Iraq's history, calls for Kurdish independence have recently reached a crescendo. To most Iraqi Kurds, the referendum is a legitimate attempt to increase their autonomy from a central government that they believe to be unresponsive to their needs. Moreover, many within the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) believe that the promise of a vote — whether or not it is actually held — will help solve the troubled region's financial and political woes by giving Arbil leverage over Baghdad in the governments' negotiations over budget battles, the distribution of oil revenue and the status of disputed territories.

The rest of Iraq views the vote differently. Baghdad, along with citizens in the country's central and southern regions, has cast the plebiscite as a controversial and unconstitutional effort to destroy Iraq's territorial integrity and rob it of coveted land on the nation's fringes. The central government also worries about the precedent a Kurdish referendum might set for other regions of Iraq that have flirted with the idea of seeking more autonomy.

As history has shown, though, translating the referendum's likely "yes" result into action won't be easy. After a vote in favor of independence in 2005, Kurdish officials were thwarted in its implementation by a process rife with political and legal barriers. Many of those obstacles persist today, including infighting among Kurdish parties. Though many of Iraqi Kurdistan's factions support the plebiscite that the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) has championed, they disagree with the ruling party's motives. After all, the KDP hopes to use the vote as a mandate to keep Kurdish President Massoud Barzani or his son in power, maintaining its control over the KRG's economy in the process.

For Arbil, an Uphill Battle

Aided by inertia and the country's distraction with the Islamic State's rise, the KDP has had little trouble keeping its grip on Iraqi Kurdistan for the past few years. In fact, Arbil's participation in the fight against the extremist group has helped sway public opinion in favor of allowing the president to extend his tenure in the name of security. At the same time, Kurdish and Iraqi officials have temporarily set aside their deep-seated differences to beat back their common enemy.

But as the campaign against the Islamic State comes to an end, sparring between Arbil and Baghdad has begun to resume, driven in part by the looming independence vote. And given the immense popular support behind the initiative, it will likely be tough to stop. Nevertheless, the Gorran party is determined to try. Prominent members of Gorran, the second-largest party in the Kurdish parliament, have spearheaded a campaign to stall the referendum in hopes of weakening the position of their longtime KDP rival at the head of Kurdish politics. Though in the past the opposition party has proved willing to negotiate with its political competitors on matters related to oil revenue-sharing and the payment of civil servants' salaries, it has consistently refused to budge in its dissent regarding Barzani's extended presidency. Unless an opportunity arises to install an alternate candidate, Gorran and its allies will continue to try to block many of the KDP's proposals.

Meanwhile, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) — the third-largest party in the Kurdish Parliament — has remained steadfast in its support of the referendum and the KDP. Just last week, the smaller organization backed the ruling party's play to reopen the shuttered Kurdish Parliament so that lawmakers could issue a decision on the vote in time for its scheduled kickoff on Sept. 25. The PUK, however, is so deeply fractured that it has become an unreliable partner. The party's divisions were on full display Sept. 16 when prominent PUK leader Barham Salih defected to form a new ticket ahead of the KRG's presidential and parliamentary elections on Nov. 1. These electoral contests will lay bare the rifts running throughout Kurdish politics, regardless of whether the independence referendum takes place as planned.

Baghdad, for its part, is exhausting every legal avenue it has to make sure the vote is canceled. A nonbinding resolution by the Iraqi parliament, a ruling by the Federal Supreme Court of Iraq and firm statements by the prime minister have all challenged the constitutionality of the referendum and have demonstrated the central government's willingness to wield its legislative and judicial power against Arbil. Baghdad will continue to use these tools, and others, to try to coerce the KRG into delaying the vote in exchange for economic and political concessions. Because the two governments boast loyal military forces, however, there is a considerable risk of clashes breaking out as each side defends its interests and the territories both claim as their own, such as Kirkuk.

A Local Vote With Regional Impact

Though only Iraqi Kurds are participating in the referendum, its consequences will extend well beyond the bounds of the KRG and into the Kurdish communities of Iran, Syria and Turkey. Estimated to number some 25 million to 30 million throughout the Middle East, the Kurds live on lands that stretch across several countries' borders, and the century-long quest for statehood has repeatedly galvanized them all. Because of the overlap in the region's Kurdish communities, two of the KRG's closest neighbors — Turkey and Iran — have watched preparations for the referendum with mounting trepidation. Though long-standing rivals, Ankara and Tehran grapple with Kurdish insurgencies and secessionism at home, and in trying to stop the approaching plebiscite, they have found common ground.

Of the two, Turkey has more reason to be concerned about the vote. Home to a larger Kurdish population spread over valued arable land and strategic territory, Turkey faces more severe ramifications within its borders than Iran does in the event that Iraqi Kurdistan declares independence. In fact, Ankara's determination to prevent the Kurds from carving out a space of their own was one of the primary motives behind its military intervention into northern Syria in August 2016. Turkey will continue to work toward this goal, maintaining its pressure on Syrian Kurds while pounding the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in northern Iraq. Ankara has already threatened to ramp up its military presence in Iraqi Kurdistan if the PKK, which has waged an insurgency within Turkey's borders, continues to threaten its security. Ankara could even increase pressure by using its position as one of Arbil's largest trade partners and as the host of a Kurdish oil pipeline to cut off energy revenues to the KRG. In addition, some rivers that feed into Iraqi Kurdistan flow through Turkey, giving Ankara the ability to curtail the region's water supplies.

While Iran has a smaller stake in events in Iraqi Kurdistan, it, too, has an interest in blocking the referendum. Tehran maintains a close relationship with Iraq's central government and strong ties to many of the Shiite militias that are loosely under Baghdad's control. Some of those groups have condemned the approaching vote for fear of losing the country's disputed territories to Arbil and have moved fighters into heavily contested areas, including Diyala and Kirkuk. On Sept. 17, Iran's National Security Council chief backed the militias by vowing to close Iran's border with the KRG, blocking the passage of goods and people across it.

The Kurds do enjoy the support — at least rhetorically — of one of the most powerful external actors with a foothold in Iraqi Kurdistan: the United States. Washington, long an ally of the KRG, is sympathetic to the Kurds' push for greater autonomy. But for the United States, timing is everything. An independence referendum could disrupt the international fight against the Islamic State, which will not end for several more months. Concerned about Tehran's attempts to gain influence over Baghdad, Washington would also prefer that Iraqi leaders have the ability to prepare for the country's 2018 elections without having to address the problem of a Kurdish referendum.

Over the past few years, the United States has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Kurdish peshmerga fighters combating the Islamic State. In theory, Washington could try to leverage some of this aid to persuade Arbil to postpone the vote. Since doing so could be detrimental to the coalition against the extremist group, however, U.S. officials will likely stick to less contentious tactics as it asks the Kurds for patience in their pursuit of independence. At best, they will acquiesce and use the specter of the referendum (or the mandate it yields) to revive stalled talks between Arbil and Baghdad. At worst, the Kurds will dig in their heels, worsening the conflict between Iraq's north and south while giving foreign players an excuse to intervene as they seek to protect their own interests.

[Crafty_Dog]

second post

Negotiations are underway between the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) over the planned Kurdistan independence referendum, scheduled for Sept. 25. Numerous international powers oppose the referendum — including the United States, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Iran, Germany and other EU powers — and pressure is mounting on KRG President Massoud Barzani to delay the referendum. Meanwhile, Barzani is trying to turn popular approval among Iraqi Kurds for the referendum into a mandate that will improve his bargaining position. But the rallying support — and opposition — is bringing a political charge that's already spilled over into violence and could do so again.

The prospective referendum includes territories that the central government in Iraq and the KRG both claim as their own. As political negotiations continue, the security situation in the disputed territories is tense and risks escalating. In one such province, Diyala, Iranian-backed Shiite militias recently tried to claim territory, with militia leaders saying that the Kurds had no right to it. In Kirkuk province (which is more valuable than Diyala in part because of its oil reserves), not only do both the Iraqi and Kurdish governments lay claim to overlapping portions of the province, but outside powers Turkey and Iran also claim some degree of ownership and maintain ties to militia forces on the ground.

On Sept. 18, clashes erupted in Kirkuk between Kurdish paramilitary forces and Turkmen, resulting in the death of one Kurdish fighter and the wounding of a total of five men from both sides. As of Sept. 19, a nighttime curfew had been issued in Kirkuk to quell the violence and circumvent an escalation. Earlier the same day, in a pro-referendum rally in Kirkuk, provincial Governor Najmiddin Karim made an appearance in support of Kurdistan independence, underlining the political tension in the province. Many Kirkuk residents, particularly Arabs and Turkmen, do not support the referendum. Because neither Baghdad nor Arbil wields ultimate power over the militia forces scattered throughout the province, there is the risk further clashes will occur. More unrest could, in turn, invite the deployment of even more military forces — from both the Iraqi government and the KRG — to the province. Going forward, Kirkuk will be a province to watch as a bellwether for the mounting risk of violence over the upcoming referendum.

[Crafty_Dog]

third post

STRATFOR

    Russian state energy firm Rosneft's relationship with Iraqi Kurdistan will expand dramatically with the construction of a natural gas pipeline to Turkey.
    Iraqi Kurdistan has relied on Turkey in the past to export its oil, but the new natural gas pipeline will increase Turkey's dependence on the autonomous region.
    Turkey will welcome an alternative to Iranian and Russian natural gas, though buying from the Kurds will limit its influence over them.

The budding relationship between Russian energy firm Rosneft and Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is closer than ever. The company announced Sept. 18 that it was in the final stages of negotiating a deal with the KRG to finance and build a $1 billion natural gas export pipeline to Turkey. Once complete, the pipeline will transform the way the autonomous region in northern Iraq exports its energy. And its effect on regional politics will be no less dramatic.

Pipelines and Power

As a landlocked region, Iraqi Kurdistan relies on pipelines through nearby territories to carry the energy it exports to markets abroad. Its dependence on its neighbors has proved a vulnerability, though. The Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline that transports oil from Kurdistan to southern Turkey, for instance, gave Baghdad considerable influence over KRG leaders in Arbil because it crosses through territory under the Iraqi federal government's control. To squeeze concessions from Kurdistan, the Iraqi federal government could block the KRG's access to the pipeline.

The negotiating tool lost its power in 2014 when Arbil closed a 50-year export agreement with Ankara that enabled it to construct its own oil pipeline to Turkey through Iraqi Kurdistan. Under the new arrangement, however, the KRG simply traded its reliance on Iraq's federal government for dependence on Turkey. And though Ankara is a less demanding administrator than Baghdad was, it still has a great deal of power over Arbil, its energy exports and even its oil revenues, since the KRG conducts its energy transactions through Turkish Halkbank. Turkey, moreover, could shut off the KRG's access to the pipeline without jeopardizing its energy security because it, like Iraq, consumes only a small portion of the Kurdish oil that passes through its territory.

So far, Ankara hasn't exploited its advantage over the KRG as Baghdad did. Nevertheless, Arbil is well aware of the risk. Turkey's support for KRG President Massoud Barzani is based largely on convenience and could waver as the leader continues to back an independence referendum scheduled for Sept. 25. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently announced that his government would reveal its planned response to the referendum after meetings of his Cabinet and national security council Sept. 22. Though it's unclear whether Ankara's response will involve the KRG's pipeline, the possibility is worrisome for Arbil and has prompted it to look for a way to even the playing field with Turkey.

Enter Russia

The Rosneft-financed natural gas export pipeline would do just that. With a planned annual capacity of 30 billion cubic meters (98.43 billion cubic feet), the pipeline will be able to transport nearly two-thirds of the total volume of natural gas that Turkey imported last year. Not all of that natural gas would wind up in Turkey; some would likely travel on to markets in southeastern Europe. Even so, the pipeline would boost Turkey's consumption of natural gas from Iraqi Kurdistan, particularly since Ankara is eager to find alternative sources to reduce its dependence on Iranian and Russian supplies. The more natural gas Turkey imports from Iraqi Kurdistan, the less leverage Ankara will have over Arbil.

Rosneft stands to gain from the new pipeline, too. The firm's expansion in Iraqi Kurdistan not only dovetails with the Kremlin's strategy to insinuate itself into as many global hotspots as possible, but it also supports Rosneft's strategy to compete with Russian natural gas giant Gazprom. Rosneft has long tried to break Gazprom's monopoly on piped natural gas exports from Russia. With its plans to export natural gas each year from Iraqi Kurdistan to Turkey and southeastern Europe, Rosneft has set its sights on two of Gazprom's most important markets.

But Rosneft's pipeline deal is just the latest of in a string of recent agreements that bode well for the Kurdish energy sector. Earlier this year Rosneft became the first major oil company to start pre-purchasing Kurdish oil exports, throwing Arbil a financial lifeline. The Russian firm then used the arrangement as a springboard for the pipeline deal, along with an agreement to explore and develop five blocks in Iraqi Kurdistan. Apart from forging deeper ties with Rosneft, the KRG also finally settled its long-standing dispute with the Pearl Petroleum Co. over energy payments. The two sides reached an agreement that included future investments into natural gas production, which will contribute to the initial feedstock for the Rosneft pipeline.

The natural gas export pipeline that Rosneft and the KRG are negotiating could immediately change the way regional powers operate and behave. Although the infrastructure won't alter countries' individual interests in the region, it will change the factors at play in the dispute between Arbil and Baghdad — a dispute that will only intensify as Iraqi Kurdistan's independence referendum approaches.

[Crafty_Dog]

Iraqi Kurdistan’s Unlikely Ally
Sep 22, 2017
By Kamran Bokhari

Efforts to create a new state are always contentious and frequently violent. The Iraqi Kurds’ move toward independence, however, is even more contentious and complex than usual. The unfolding crisis affects many countries besides Iraq, including the United States, Russia, Turkey and Iran. But there’s one country that is in prime position to not just be affected by the crisis, but to shape its outcome: Turkey.

As long as it doesn’t give in to mounting pressure to cancel, the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq is expected to hold an independence referendum on Sept. 25. In the likely event that the “yes” vote prevails, the KRG leadership would use the result as the foundation for a negotiated exit from the Iraqi state. It will be an uphill battle from there. The Shiite-led central government in Baghdad has no reason to negotiate away its territory.

To make matters worse, the Kurds want to take with them disputed territories that are well south of the three provinces (Dahuk, Irbil and Sulaimaniyah) that formally constitute the KRG. These include significant parts of Ninevah, Salahuddin, Kirkuk and Diyala – areas that are energy-rich and heavily Kurdish, but also areas that Baghdad is unlikely to give up without a fight. And it won’t be alone: The government will have the full backing of its patron, Iran. Furthermore, the Sunnis – who are either a majority or a significant minority in the provinces in question – will be major participants in whatever comes next. The Islamic State, in particular, will look to exploit the situation to change its fortunes.

Unlikely Partners

With so many actors aligned against them, the Kurds will need help from a major player. Turkey may be just the partner that they’re looking for. All things being equal, Turkey should be vehemently opposed to the emergence of an independent Kurdish state across the border from its own restive Kurdish area. The political statements coming out of Turkey certainly give the impression that the government in Ankara will not tolerate the Iraqi Kurds making a run at full sovereignty. Reality is not so simple, however.

Iraqi Kurds fly Kurdish flags Sept. 15 during an event to urge people to vote in the upcoming independence referendum in Irbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq. SAFIN HAMED/AFP/Getty Images

The Turks are certainly not thrilled with the prospect of the KRG becoming the Republic of Kurdistan – definitely not at a time when the Kurds in Syria are galloping toward their own de facto Kurdistan. The Kurdish community is far from monolithic and suffers from deep divisions in all four countries where they make up a sizable share of the population. The Iraqi Kurds don’t deal much with the Kurds in Turkey, but Syria’s Kurdish separatists are closely allied with Turkey’s Kurdish rebels, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. No country has a larger concentration of Kurds than Turkey, so this is a major concern for the Turks. Fortunately for Ankara, however, it has options.

For the better part of the past decade, Turkey has been forging deeper relations with the KRG to the point that the KRG has almost become a client statelet. It has taken full advantage of the fact that the KRG is landlocked and surrounded by hostile forces. Though the Shiites who dominate the Iraqi central government agreed to give the Kurds regional autonomy, they have always sought to severely limit its scope. The key to doing so was to constrain Irbil’s ability to export the ample supply of hydrocarbons in the KRG.

The only export routes ran south through most of Iraq to the Persian Gulf – routes controlled by the Shiites. Until 2014, the KRG relied heavily on exports by road, which limited their output to roughly 60,000 barrels of oil per day. The breakthrough came when the KRG constructed a pipeline that connected to Turkey’s pipeline network and export terminals at the port of Ceyhan. This pipeline provided the KRG with an escape route from its dependence on Baghdad.

In the process, however, the KRG has come to depend on Turkey. Most of the 600,000 bpd that the KRG exports today run through Turkish territory. As much as 90 percent of the KRG’s operating budget comes from oil proceeds. Over the years, Turkish companies have begun to dominate the various sectors of the KRG’s economy, and Turkish goods dominate its markets. In this way, Turkey has become more than a close partner for the Iraqi Kurds; it’s become a necessary partner.

For Turkey, this relationship could be helpful on many fronts. First, imports from the KRG help Turkey to diversify its sources of energy. Second, the KRG has helped Turkey contain the PKK insurgency. It provides Turkey with intelligence on PKK hideouts and doesn’t make a big deal of Turkish military operations in northern Iraq. Finally, the relationship prevents Turkey’s historical rival, Iran, from enjoying a near-monopoly over influence in Iraq.

Trying Times

It’s a useful arrangement, but it’s being tested by the Iraqi Kurdish move to secede from Iraq. Turkey’s entire southern flank is chaotic, and Ankara is already busy in Syria dealing with the Syrian Kurds, the Assad regime, the Islamic State and other jihadists, Iran and Russia. Publicly, Turkey has warned the KRG that it will shut down oil exports if Irbil does not cancel the referendum. In truth, Turkey would likely be able to live with an independent Kurdistan because the new state would be so reliant on Turkey for its well-being. It’s not independence itself that complicates things for Turkey – it’s the timing.

The Turks aren’t about to throw away their entire investment of so many years by assuming an uncompromising attitude toward the Iraqi Kurds. At the same time, the KRG isn’t going to alienate the one state on which the entire political economy of its envisioned state relies. But the Kurdish leadership in Iraq has already mobilized the masses, and it can’t back down now from at least holding the referendum – if not following through on independence, should the “yes” vote prevail. It would thus not be a surprise to see Irbil and Ankara eventually reach an understanding whereby Turkey has a major seat at the table where the future of Kurdistan is being shaped gradually.
Though this is a risky move that could embolden the Syrian and Turkish Kurds to emulate their Iraqi counterparts, if an independent Kurdistan arises from the shattered state that is Iraq, it wouldn’t mean the sky is falling for Turkey. The Turks will have to carefully navigate the aftermath, but the relationship they have cultivated with the KRG gives them a lot of leverage to manage the Kurds on a regional level. The Turks can live with a Kurdistan that is beholden to them, and in fact, it will provide them with a way to manage the Syrian Kurds and to roll back Iran’s growing influence in the region. What the Turks say publicly, however, is a different story.

[Crafty_Dog]

Second post

According to Stratfor's Third-Quarter Forecast, the push by Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government for an independence referendum would inspire other Kurdish groups in the region to also push for greater autonomy. This is precisely why there is so much regional opposition to the referendum in Iraq. Roughly 25 million Kurds inhabit land that stretches through parts of Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan and Armenia. But the Kurds have no state of their own — and the countries they inhabit want to keep it that way.

Syria's Kurds are taking the first of three steps that are needed to formalize a governing structure for Syrian Kurdistan, which according to one of the region's dominant political groups, the Rojava Federal Council, stretches across the Afrin, Jazira and Euphrates regions of Syria. On Sept. 22, Kurds in northern Syria, living in territory known as Rojava, are voting for communal representatives in 3,700 communes. The leaders elected will then be included in another vote in November to create local councils and one in January to create a parliament.

Syrian Kurds, notoriously divided as they are, have tried to organize in the past, and momentum for these elections has been building for some time. But the timing of this latest attempt is still notable: It comes as the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq is preparing for an independence referendum on Sept. 25. The referendum is supported by many Kurdish groups outside of Iraq and is inspiring the Syrian Kurds to renew their bid for more autonomy. Most Middle Eastern nations have come out in opposition to the KRG's referendum, but Turkey is particularly concerned about the possibility of an emboldened Kurdish population. Turkey has been waging a long-term fight against the Kurdistan Workers' Party in Turkey, which also has a strong presence within Syria. Yet, it's important to note that just because Syria's Kurds are organizing, doesn't mean that the region has gained any actual autonomy. That is, however, what the group is eventually pushing for.

[Crafty_Dog]

How to Help Iraq’s Religious Minorities
Trump should undo an Obama policy that largely blocks them from getting U.S. aid.
Displaced Yazidis walk from Sinjar, Iraq toward Syria, Aug. 10, 2014.
By Nina Shea
Sept. 21, 2017 7:01 p.m. ET


As Islamic State heads toward defeat in Iraq, Christian and Yazidi survivors of genocide should be returning to their hometowns in Nineveh province. Instead, these fragile minority communities mostly remain stranded at displacement shelters in Kurdistan without the means to rebuild their villages. Many are fleeing Iraq, and the country now risks losing these religious minorities entirely. The Trump administration is making the situation worse by continuing Obama policies that effectively exclude these non-Muslims from U.S. aid in Iraq.

Today there are fewer than 250,000 Christians in Iraq, according to the State Department, down from as many as 1.4 million before the 2003 invasion. These Christians speak Aramaic, like Jesus of Nazareth, and trace their faith to Thomas the Apostle, whose relics were spirited from Nineveh by Orthodox monks as ISIS approached. The Iraqi Jewish community, its roots in the Babylonian exile, was forced out over the past 70 years; fewer than 10 Jewish families remain in Baghdad. Yazidis—who have lived near the Sinjar Mountains—number about 400,000. Nadia Murad, the voice for thousands of Yazidis enslaved by ISIS, warned a congressional panel earlier this year that her people could soon disappear because of emigration. This would signal the end of Iraq’s indigenous non-Muslim communities.

Since fiscal 2014, the U.S. has provided $1.4 billion in humanitarian aid for Iraq, but very little of it has reached the beleaguered Christian and Yazidi communities. This is because the Obama administration decided to channel most of it through United Nations refugee and development agencies, a practice the new administration has continued. There is no protection for religious minorities in the U.N.’s overwhelmingly Muslim camps, and Christians and Yazidis are terrified of entering them. The U.N. doesn’t operate camps in Iraq for displaced Christians, and the international body has enough resources to shelter only half the Yazidis who congregate around Dohuk, in Iraqi Kurdistan. U.N. programs also exclude the local churches that struggle to care for these minorities, forcing them to raise aid on a piecemeal and insecure basis from other sources.

President Trump has spoken about the plight of Christians in the Middle East, but he has done little to effect change. Far lower percentages of Christians and Yazidis are returning from displacement to their homes in the devastated Nineveh Plains and Sinjar, respectively, compared with the larger religious groups in Tikrit, Fallujah and Mosul. The prior administration decided to have U.S. reconstruction assistance, now at $265 million since fiscal 2015, also flow through the U.N. The director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Mark Green, started only last month and has not yet moved to change this policy.

USAID lacks direct oversight in Nineveh and relies heavily on U.N. Development Program reports that claim progress in Christian towns. One local church authority told me the U.N. reports “grossly overstate the quality and substance of the actual work” and their projects’ influence is “minimal or nonexistent.” A representative from the Nineveh Reconstruction Committee, a unified church group, told me earlier this month that the only major projects under way are its own. These are supported by Hungary and the Knights of Columbus. Samaritan’s Purse and Aid to the Church in Need are planning projects in Qaraqosh, also without U.S. government assistance. These private charities can rebuild houses, but large infrastructure projects need government aid.

The U.N. acknowledges that most of the displaced minorities have not returned home and have shown “a reluctance to return without guarantees of their security and the stability of their towns and villages.” Church leaders close to the displaced are excluded from U.N. and Iraqi government committees that decide stabilization projects, track progress and ensure locals are hired for them. Rex Tillerson’s State Department has not changed this policy. Nor has it answered my request for information.

Security remains a problem and threatens America’s regional interests. Iran is moving in on the towns minorities have been unable to reclaim. The U.N. has focused on minor projects in Bartella, a main Christian town. Yet on Sept. 15 the “Imam Khomeini” elementary school and mosque complex opened there at an official ceremony, a “gift from the Islamic Republic of Iran.” In several towns, Iranian-backed militias stand guard.

President Trump can take immediate steps to ensure U.S. aid reaches Iraq’s most vulnerable minorities. First, he can direct his administration to address their humanitarian and stabilization needs. This should include dropping the U.N. as a pass-through for U.S. aid. He can also appoint an interagency coordinator to ensure that bureaucratic hurdles don’t interfere with getting aid to all groups. These relatively small tweaks would help preserve the region’s religious minorities.

Iraq’s religious minorities are small in number, but assisting them would affirm that the U.S. stands against genocide, protects religious freedom and aids vulnerable minority groups.

Ms. Shea is director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.

Appeared in the September 22, 2017, print edition.

[ccp]

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/son-hamas-founder-shakes-un-human-rights-council-if-israel-did-not

I heard this guy speak on radio several years ago , I don't remember which show perhaps Aaron Klein

[DougMacG]

Our (second?) best ally in the region hasn't earned its iown thread?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/09/26/iraqi-kurds-voted-in-their-independence-referendum-now-what/?utm_term=.3c8718f9104f

For millions of ethnic Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan, Monday was a historic day. After a century of despair and neglect, they had the chance to vote for their own independence in a controversial referendum staged by the Kurdistan Regional Government — the body that holds sway over the predominantly Kurdish areas of northern Iraq. Official results are expected in the coming days, with a "yes" vote in favor of independence almost certain to win out.

[Crafty_Dog]

Hmmmm , , , a fair question but I'm thinking let's continue to keep the Kurds in this thread.  They are spread out over Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.  Trying to separate them out into a separate thread would likely lead to more confusion than comprehension.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/451758/donald-trump-kurdistan-independence-isis?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202017-09-26&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives

[DougMacG]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/451758/donald-trump-kurdistan-independence-isis?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202017-09-26&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives

That's right.  Who is our ally, Turkey or Kurds?

Turkey blocked our access to Iraq from the North.  How many US lives and dollars did that cost us?  Is that what an ally does?
March, 2003:  http://articles.latimes.com/2003/mar/02/world/fg-iraq2

Turkey bombs US allies:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/25/politics/turkey-bombs-kurds-iraq-us-concerned/index.html

Democracy dies in Turkey
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/04/turkey-referendum-erdogan-kurds/522894/

our policy would be like recognizing the Chinese Communist Party over the free state of Taiwan.   Ooops.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.aei.org/publication/approach-kurdistan-with-realism-not-romanticism/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiT1RCaU1tRTVPVGsyTjJJNCIsInQiOiJ4UWhwMWRwYXNZTWFITDBGTWp1clJPZ1l2dkxWSGtoXC9uOFwvbFdpbk5OYTU2OWJyNCtpN09yUTArNnJ1YU5PQm9VZ21iM1E1WXBDZzRMdUZcLzVcL1hpTkU5NTFzV2ZFOXlwU0E5dnV2aWFSU3RBeDVwQVwvQ282RFZPd3RjbTNPKytFIn0%3D

[G M]

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/2017/09/25/washingtons-despicable-hypocrisy-towards-kurds/

SPENGLER
Washington's despicable hypocrisy towards the Kurds
 BY DAVID P. GOLDMAN SEPTEMBER 25, 2017
At Asia Times today, I explain why the entire world (excepting Israel) have lined up against the Kurds:

Except for the State of Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan, there isn’t one state in Western Asia that is viable inside its present borders at a 20-year horizon. All the powers with interests in the region want to kick the problem down the road, and that is why the whole world (excepting Israel) wants to abort an independence referendum to be held by Iraq’s eight million Kurds on Sept. 25.
I just want to add that our foreign policy elite is a pack of hypocritical, yellow-bellied, two-faced, fork-tongued, lying polecats who wouldn't acknowledge the truth if it were tattooed on their ophidian foreheads.

Since September 11, 2001, we've been told that America has to ally with moderate Muslims against "extremism." There are in fact moderate Muslims in the world. The Kurds are "moderate Muslims." The Kurds do not persecute nonbelievers. They don't hate Jews and Christians. They don't forbid women to leave the house without a male relative; in fact, their militias are the only effective fighting force in the world that includes women in front-line combat units. They protect Iraqi Christians against ISIS, and Iraq's Christians in turn support Kurdish independence. They have excellent and long-standing relations with the State of Israel. Jewish life is flourishing in the Kurdish Autonomous Region in the north of Iraq.

Most of all, Kurdish fighters are the spearhead of American-backed ground forces fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq. They do not only act the way we say we want Muslims to act, protecting Christians and Jews and promoting the equality of women. They shed blood for what they believe in.

The Kurds are everything that George W. Bush and Barack Obama told us we should find in the Islamic world, and more. They want nothing but friendship with the United States of America. And we have thrown them under the bus. There isn't an Appalachian outhouse that stinks worse than our foreign policy Establishment.

Why have we thrown them under the bus? Because we're afraid of unsettling "extremists," that is, the radical jihadists who have been killing Americans for decades. Kurdish independence would below up the artificial state of Iraq, which turned into an Iranian satrapy under majority Shi'ite rule as arranged by George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice and the nation-builders of the Republican Establishment. It would destabilize Turkey, where Kurds of military age will outnumber Turks a generation from now. Turkish President Erdogan wants to restore Ottoman glory and the prospect of losing the Kurdish-majority Southeast drives him crazy. Turkey, notionally the Southeast flank of NATO, has already turned its back on the West, and lined up with Russia and China.

Thanks in small part to our bungling and in large part to Iran's predation, the whole of Western Asia is unstable. Syria and Iraq look like the kind of scene from a Quentin Tarantino film where everyone has a gun trained on everyone else. The one island of stability in the whole miserable landscape, Iraqi Kurdistan, becomes a threat to the momentary stability of the region.

There are 40 million Kurds living in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, and the question of Kurdish statehood can't be untangled from the regional mess by a referendum. There is good reason to counsel the Kurds to exercise patience and careful statecraft in clearing this minefield. But it is utterly disgusting to ignore their national aspirations. Washington has reasons of state to manage the regional crisis artfully, and to ask the Kurds to be patient. But why are we so beholden to the doomed and destructive regimes of Iran, Syria, Turkey and Iraq that we cannot extend a hand of friendship to the Kurds? Their path to statehood may be tortuous and prolonged, but America should offer our counsel and support. If we do not, the rest of the Muslim world will smile grimly and exploit our moral cowardice.

[ccp]

lets not forget George *H* Bush calling for them to rise up against Saddam , offer them zero help and they are left  to get slaughtered.

[Crafty_Dog]

IIRC that would include the Shias in the south as well-- which in part is why there was a lot of hesitation from them when we went back in.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.jordantimes.com/news/region/syria%E2%80%99s-deadliest-month-2017-claims-3000-lives

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.jordantimes.com/news/region/hizbollah-says-israel-pushing-region-war

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/COLUMN-ONE-Trump-and-Obamas-third-term-506779
COLUMN ONE: Trump and Obama’s third term


Column one: Burying Obama’s legacy 
Israeli minister: Relations with Trump are more important than calling out Nazis 
By Caroline B. Glick
October 5, 2017 20:42
   
The problem is that substantively, there is no real difference between Obama and Trump, not in the Middle East and not anywhere.


In an interview with Walla news site Tuesday, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said that “the more active the US is [in the Middle East], the better it will be for Israel.”

On paper, Liberman’s sentiments seem reasonable enough. President Donald Trump is far friendlier than his predecessor Barack Obama was. The tone of US-Israel relations has vastly improved since Trump took office.  The problem is that substantively, there is no real difference between the two administrations – not in the Middle East and not anywhere.

Take Iran’s nuclear program for example.

In accordance with the US Nuclear Agreement Review Act (2015), on October 15, Trump is obligated to make his quarterly report to Congress certifying or decertifying Iranian compliance with the terms of the nuclear deal it concluded with Obama two years ago.

The issue of whether or not to certify Iranian compliance has been the beginning, middle and end of all US policy discussions on Iran’s nuclear program since Trump entered office.

Despite Trump’s stated opposition to the deal, his top advisers Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have pressured him into twice certifying Iranian compliance.

On the face of it, the debate about Iranian compliance ought to be about competing interpretations of Iran’s behavior. In practice, though, facts play little role in the discourse.

The Iranians announced as soon as the deal was concluded that they would not permit UN inspectors to enter any nuclear site they define as a “military installation.”

This hollowed out the entire inspections regime.

After all, if Iran can bar inspectors from its nuclear installations, there is no way for inspectors to know if Iran’s nuclear operations accord with or breach of the restrictions it agreed to in the agreement.  In other words, neither Obama nor Trump has had any way to credibly certify Iranian compliance, because the US has no idea what Iran is doing.  And everyone knows this.  Since everyone knows this, the debate about presidential certification of Iranian compliance clearly is not about Iranian compliance.

Instead, the debate has been about one thing only: reality.

Specifically, does reality have a place in US policy regarding the nuclear deal with Iran? Because if reality does have a role to play, obviously, Trump cannot certify Iranian compliance.

To date, proponents of barring reality have won the debate. In testimony Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Mattis said that in his opinion, maintaining the nuclear deal is the US interest. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen.

Joseph Dunford told lawmakers that “Iran is not in material breach” of the accord.

According to an AP report Tuesday, national security officials involved in the recertification process now aim to change the Nuclear Agreement Review Act in a manner that would deny Trump the power to determine whether or not Iran is complying with the deal.  According to AP, the issue is being framed as a way to free Trump from the embarrassment of having to certify the deal every three months.

The worst thing about the entire debate about certifying Iranian compliance is not that it is delusional.  It is that it is irrelevant.

Obama’s nuclear pact is yesterday’s news.

Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran gave the Iranians all the benefits up front. In exchange for a handshake, Iran received a $100 billion in cold hard cash and foreign direct investment. The international arms markets opened to them. The international financial markets opened to them.

Non-certification won’t bring back the money.

More important than the financial advantages Iran has already won, and will not lose if the US decertifies, is the fact that due to the deal, Iran has had two years to freely advance its nuclear program without meaningful inspections and without sanctions.  And again, while the Iranians have advanced, the US has debated the two-year old deal over and over again as if it matters. This instead of constructing a strategy to block Iran’s entrance into the nuclear club.

This brings us to Iran’s ally North Korea, which thanks to feckless US policy-makers of previous administrations, is already a member of the nuclear club.

During Mattis’s testimony Tuesday he said that despite the fact that he and Trump are threatening to annihilate North Korea and Tillerson is trying to appease North Korea, there is no contradiction in the administration’s policy.

Substantively he is right. Since both of the policies being discussed are imaginary, whether the administration talks about military action or diplomacy, its statements are meaningless.

The fact is that unless the US is willing to see tens of thousands of South Koreans vaporized in a North Korean artillery assault on Seoul in response to a US military strike on Pyongyang, the US has no viable military option for dealing with North Korea. Since the Trump administration has given no indication that it is willing to see that sort of destruction in South Korea to achieve the goal of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula, its threats to annihilate North Korea are not credible.

As for Tillerson’s search for a diplomatic solution, this too is futile. For 24 years, three US administrations reached “historic deal” after “historic deal” with Pyongyang, and Pyongyang breached all of them as it raced to the finishing line of its nuclear weapons program.

Now, with Kim Jung Un testing hydrogen bombs and ICBMs and threatening to nuke Guam, there is no chance that US diplomacy will fare any better than it did in the past.

And so the US is back where it has always been. It has one card to play with North Korea: China.

China is the only actor that can end North Korea’s nuclear brinkmanship without war. But to compel China to act the US requires far more leverage over the Chinese than it has presently mustered or brought to bear.  So the only way for the US to avert war with North Korea is to escalate its competition with China on America’s terms.

Unfortunately, once Trump’s senior strategist Stephen Bannon left the White House in August, no senior administration official has been working on building leverage over China.

Back to Iran. As bad as North Korea is, at least it’s a Chinese client state. If Trump can make China an offer it can’t refuse, he can achieve the US’s strategic goals without a devastating war. 

Iran on the other hand is no one’s client. Iran has its own client states.

And just as the Trump administration is unable to extricate itself from Obama’s legacy of delusion and failure with respect to Iran’s nuclear weapons program and North Korea, so it cannot – or will not – shift away from Obama’s delusional policies toward Iran’s client states.

Consider Syria.

In Syria the Trump administration has maintained Obama’s policy of pretending that the most dangerous actor and gravest threat to the US and its interests in Syria is Islamic State.  Although under pressure by Israel, the administration has begun to talk about the threat of Iranian expansionism in Syria, it has no policy for blocking Iran’s empowerment. The same is the case with relation to Russia’s rise as a regional power broker – at the US’s expense – through its deployment in Syria.

As bad as the US’s Syria policy is, its Lebanon policy is even worse.

In Syria the US is simply pretending its enemies do not exist, or if they exist, that they do not threaten the US.  In Lebanon, the US is collaborating with its enemies.

In June Liberman told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, “Today the Lebanese army is a subsidiary unit of Hezbollah and [Lebanese President] Michel Aoun is another [Hezbollah chief Hassan] Nasrallah operative.”

Liberman’s assertions were not a theory. They were grounded in statements made by Aoun himself and by Lebanese military commanders.  But the Americans will not listen to what the Lebanese say or see what they are doing.  Instead, they remain devoted to their fantasy that the Lebanese government is independent and the Lebanese Armed Forces is not a subsidiary of Hezbollah. In support of this lie, this year the US pledged and delivered the bulk of $100 million worth of sophisticated weapons to the Hezbollah- controlled LAF.

In August, the US delivered eight M1-A2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles. According to US Ambassador Elizabeth Richard, they were the first of 32 set for delivery by the end of the year. The US had also delivered M-4 assault rifles, howitzers, grenade launchers, machine guns, mortars, hellfire missiles, night vision devices and thermal sight technology to Hezbollah’s proxy force.

As Middle East analyst Tony Badran noted, the weapons the US supplied to the LAF “have been on Hezbollah’s shopping list consistently for almost a decade.”

And the US is not only arming Hezbollah through its surrogate. It is also fighting alongside Hezbollah through its surrogate.  In August, US special forces fought alongside LAF forces to wrest control of the Lebanese border with Syria from Islamic State-associated Sunni militia.  The battle was a joint LAF-Hezbollah operation – commanded by Hezbollah.

Quoting a source “close to Hezbollah and the LAF,” Al-Monitor’s Nour Samaha wrote, “US Central Command called the Lebanese army chief and asked him to deny any cooperation [with Hezbollah], telling him that while they are aware of cooperation, it has to be denied publicly.”

In other words, it isn’t that the Pentagon isn’t aware it is empowering Hezbollah. It knows what it is doing. It just doesn’t want the American public to know what it is doing.

This brings us finally to the Palestinians. On Tuesday Jerusalem Affairs Minister Ze’ev Elkin was the first senior minister to publicly criticize the Trump administration’s policy toward Israel and the Palestinians.  Elkin told Yediot Aharonot that despite the friendly tone of administration officials and the fruitful cooperation Israel enjoys with the administration on a host of other issues, on the issue of Jewish property rights in Judea and Samaria, “they are walking on the same path as the Obama administration.”

The same of course can be said of the Trump administration’s policy toward Fatah and the Palestinian Authority. No matter how open PA President Mahmoud Abbas is about his cooperation with Hamas and no matter how many hundreds of millions of dollars he transfers to the bank accounts of terrorists, the Trump administration continues to treat Abbas and the PA as moderates and peace partners. Even worse, the administration is coercing Israel to do the same.

No matter where you look around the globe, in the Middle East, in Asia, in South America and in Europe, you see the same thing. The Trump administration has changed America’s tone in foreign affairs.

But substantively, there has been little change.

Trump may be the anti-Obama. But his policies indicate that all the same, he is the second Obama.

www.CarolineGlick.com

[Crafty_Dog]

second post



Since it first entered the conflict in 2015, Russia has changed the course of the Syrian civil war. The country managed, along with Iran, to turn the tides of battle back in the Syrian government's favor. And now that it has, it is looking for a way off the battlefield. Moscow doesn't want to be stuck in the Syrian conflict, but neither does it want to lose gains it has made there in solidifying its presence in the country and establishing itself as a critical influence in the region.

To that end, Russia has advocated a divide and conquer strategy with its Iranian and Syrian allies. First, it will draw down the rebellion against the Syrian government by offering the rebels and their backers "de-escalation zones" to freeze key sectors of the battlefield. Once the de-escalation zones have freed up enough manpower, Russia will then go after hard-line extremist groups in the country such as the Islamic State. The strategy has so far enabled Russian and Iranian-backed loyalist forces to switch their focus from fighting rebels in western Syria to claiming as much territory as possible in the eastern part of the country in the Islamic State's wake. But as Moscow is finding out, achieving its goals in Syria will be far more complicated than it anticipated.

Despite Russia's apparent advantages in Syria, the flaws in its exit plan are starting to show. The de-escalation zones the country set up during earlier peace talks in Kazakhstan have all but collapsed. Part of the problem is that independent rebel groups in the regions have shown no sign of acceding to outside pressure. The militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, for example, has refused to recognize the ceasefire negotiations and has launched offensive operations on loyalist positions in Hama province from its stronghold in nearby Idlib. Russia's own allies have also undermined its plan. Though Iran and the Syrian government understand the logic of the Russian strategy, they are reluctant to give up their claim to rebel-held territory by suspending hostilities there. Tehran and Damascus, unlike Moscow, are in the war for the long haul and won't back down until they achieve complete victory. Consequently, Syrian loyalist forces have continued their assaults on rebel positions in the west, particularly in Jobar and in the eastern Ghouta region.

Beyond the de-escalation zones' failings, Russia is also facing setbacks as the loyalist troops under its aegis push east toward the Iraqi border. Moscow is frustrated, for instance, that the U.S.-backed Syrian Arab Coalition (SAC) may block the loyalists' advance toward Deir el-Zour with its own march down the Khabur River. While the SAC has made headway, the loyalists have run up against counterattacks from the Islamic State that have caused considerable casualties across the broad battle zone in the east. These strikes have cost Russia high-ranking officers, including a lieutenant general. In addition, on Oct. 3 the Islamic State released video footage showing two captured Russians, likely private military contractors, whom the group claims to have seized in a recent raid.

Complicating matters for Moscow is the decreasing popularity of its intervention in Syria back home. According to a survey in early September from the Levada Center, an independent pollster, less than one-third of Russians support their country's involvement in the Syrian civil war, down from two-thirds in 2015. Protesters across Russia have turned out at demonstrations with signs calling on the government to end the expensive operation and to focus its spending on feeding its people instead. To shore up their positions before elections in 2018, Russian leaders have highlighted the value of the Syrian mission by pointing out that it has enabled the Federal Security Services to find and arrest Islamic State operatives planning attacks in Russia.

Yet notwithstanding the challenges that have impeded — and will continue to impede — its exit plan in Syria, Moscow is unlikely to give up on the strategy anytime soon. Russia will continue to use a combination of military pressure on rebel forces and diplomatic outreach to their supporters, and to its own allies, to influence the conflict. Even if it can't end the war in Syria, Moscow can at least try to get the conflict to a point that won't require such a big military commitment on its part.

[Crafty_Dog]

third post

Saudi King Salman just made history as the first-ever Saudi king to visit Russia. Saudi Arabia and Russia aren't on the friendliest of terms, but circumstances have aligned in such a way that each needs the other. King Salman will spend four days in Moscow, meeting with high-ranking Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, mainly on energy and the economy. But the two sides will also try to find common ground on other more contentious issues, including Russia's involvement in Middle Eastern conflicts and Saudi Arabia's ties to Muslim regions in Russia.

Saudi Arabia cut ties with the Soviet Union during the Cold War over divisions that have not completely mended. Moscow accuses Saudi Arabia of financing Muslim separatism in Russia in the 1990s, leading to two brutal wars in the Northern Caucasus. So it can hardly be blamed for worrying about Saudi Arabia's current ties to Russia's Muslim republics. The Kremlin is concerned that Muslim separatism could rise again, given that many Muslim regions, including Tatarstan, have vocally criticized the Russian government recently, and that regions, such as Chechnya, have independent, powerful military forces. Both Tatarstan and Chechnya have looked to Saudi Arabia for investment and financing in recent years. Moscow hopes that by opening a line of communication with Saudi Arabia it can curb any covert support to its Muslim regions and avoid instability.

Meanwhile, Russia is a visible and powerful force in many of the Middle Eastern conflicts on which Saudi Arabia is keenly focused, including those in Syria, Yemen and Libya. Russia and Saudi Arabia often find themselves on opposite sides in these conflicts, but sometimes there is utility in being on different sides of the same table. Saudi Arabia's chief adversary, Iran, has a complex relationship with Russia that the Saudi government could be hoping to exploit. Despite Russia's significant collaboration with Iran over the past few years, their interests don't always line up, and Saudi Arabia could use this to its advantage as it works to counter Iranian expansion in the Middle East.

Their differences aside, when it comes to energy and the economy, Russia's and Saudi Arabia's interests are overlapping more than ever. The economic yield of this week's visit is expected to be substantial: State-run energy company Saudi Arabian Oil Co., or Saudi Aramco, and the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) will reportedly be announcing a $1 billion fund for oil-services projects in Russia, and Saudi Arabia and the RDIF will set up a $1 billion technology fund; the Saudi government is expected to announce a $150 million investment into Eurasia Drilling Company; Saudi Aramco is expected to discuss a potential investment into Novatek's Arctic liquid natural gas project and to talk about a joint venture with Sibur Holding to build a synthetic-rubber manufacturing plant; memorandums of understanding will be signed, such as one planned between Saudi Arabia and Rosatom; and Saudi Arabia Military Industries has already agreed to begin negotiating the potential purchase of a significant number of Russian weapons and military equipment.

As two of the three largest oil producers in the world, Russia and Saudi Arabia are vital to any globally coordinated action on oil markets, and right now their interests align. Energy ministers Khalid al-Falih and Alexander Novak met Oct. 5 to discuss oil markets and the effort to extend a deal to reduce global oil production. Neither minister admitted they were working jointly on an extension deal, but both will certainly be closely monitoring energy markets over the next few months and, if needed, will work together on an extension. A day before the energy meeting, Putin said that he would be open to extending the deal to the end of 2018 but that a decision would not be made until around March of next year. One thing is clear: Neither country can afford for the oil market to crater because of a disorderly exit from the deal. If an extension is not negotiated, Saudi Arabia and Russia need to organize what that exit would look like.

The mutual benefits of the trip attest to the fact that the visit is mostly about Saudi-Russian economic and energy collaboration. Saudi Arabia has the hard cash that Russia needs for the myriad projects it's developing. For its part, Saudi Arabia needs Russian buy-in on its energy plans, which are vital to its broader Vision 2030 economic plan. Collaborative Russian-Saudi projects, such as the synthetic-rubber plant that would be built in Saudi Arabia, help achieve Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 aims. Any political benefit from the visit will be less immediate, but it's clear that Saudi Arabia and Russia have an interest in building closer ties for both political and economic reasons.

[Crafty_Dog]

fourth post

The U.S. military said on Oct. 6 that it would be halting some of its joint exercises with members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in an effort to encourage a resolution to the countries' monthslong dispute with Qatar, AP reported. GCC members Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates began economically boycotting Qatar on June 5, citing Qatar's alleged support for extremists and its relationship with Iran.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4955096/Full-scale-surrender-General-says-ISIS-collapsing.html#ixzz4ulskV881

[Crafty_Dog]

A very good map in this article will not post here:
=================================

Weeks after Turkish forces started to deploy in large numbers along the border with Syria, adjacent to the province of Idlib, Ankara appears to be on the verge of launching yet another significant military operation into the war-torn country. Unlike Operation Euphrates Shield, which targeted lands occupied by the Islamic State, the upcoming operation into Idlib will be directed toward lands occupied by Syrian rebels. As befitting a convoluted conflict such as Syria, Turkey's advance into Idlib will be assisted by other Syrian rebel groups trained over time by Turkey in neighboring Aleppo province. And according to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's latest statements, they will be supported by Russian aviation.

Given that Turkey has for years directly supported rebel factions in Idlib in their fight against Russian- and Iranian-backed loyalist forces, the prospect of Turkish forces advancing into Syria under Russian air cover appears jarring at face value. The signs of a significant shift in direction by Turkey on Syria, however, have been visible for some time. The first indication was the Turkish abandonment of the rebel defense of Aleppo in favor of Operation Euphrates Shield in late 2016. This occurred amid steadily improving ties between Ankara and Moscow despite both sides maintaining opposite positions on the Syrian civil war, at least in principle. There were also increasing signs throughout 2017 of a significant drop in the flow of Turkish supplies to key rebel factions in northern Syria, particularly in Idlib. Turkey instead focused its resources on developing the capabilities of its Syrian rebel proxies that were directly under its management as part of Operation Euphrates Shield in northern Aleppo province.

The biggest shift in Turkey's stance, however, came through the Astana process, where Turkey negotiated at length with Russia and Iran in a number of negotiation rounds in the Kazakh capital on the setup of "de-escalation" zones in Syria. These talks enabled the establishment of a "de-escalation" zone in Idlib, on whose borders Turkish troops are now poised alongside their rebel allies from Operation Euphrates Shield.
A map of Syria showing de-escalation zones and zones of influence

Turkey's shifting position over the past 18 months that is now culminating with a military operation into rebel-held lands can be explained by three overarching factors. The first is the dawning realization in Ankara that the rebels it supported were on the losing end of a conflict with Iran- and Russia-backed loyalist forces. Every major loyalist victory that bolstered Syrian government control in northern Syria, in turn, diminished Turkey's ability to influence events in the country.

The second factor was the growing power of independently minded rebel groups such as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in northern Syria, particularly in Idlib province. As rebel forces suffered successive defeats and despaired from ever receiving enough external support to match the level of direct backing Iran and Russia gave loyalist forces on the battlefield, they became increasingly prone to defect and turn to the better resourced and organized hardline groups such as the al Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. This trend has only accelerated in recent months with the end of the CIA program that supplied rebel groups in Syria with key weaponry such as anti-tank guided missiles. Unlike the Syrian groups supported by Turkey — and previously by the United States — in northern Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has no compunction in upholding its own interests over Ankara's. Indeed, in recent months, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has even monopolized control over Idlib province by cracking down on Turkish-backed rebel groups. For Turkey, the rise of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in Idlib threatens to entirely remove what little influence it has remaining in the province.

Finally, and most important, Turkey has consistently prioritized its goal of undermining and pushing back against Kurdish empowerment in Syria over its desire for regime change in Damascus. Before the United States started to provide significant support to the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces in 2015, and before the loyalists started to regain momentum in the conflict that same year, Turkey could undermine the Kurds and pursue regime change in Damascus through its support of rebel forces. However, as the U.S.-backed Kurdish forces spread their control over northern Syria and as the rebel hold was reduced through consecutive loyalist offensives, Turkey could no longer rely on weakened and distracted rebel forces to act as a bulwark against the Kurds, much less topple the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad. To that end, Ankara has increasingly prioritized an improved relationship with Moscow in the hopes that the influence leveraged through that relationship would allow it to counter the emboldened Kurds. For instance, Turkey still can hope to translate a cooperative mission in Idlib with the Russians into an opening for a subsequent operation against the Kurdish forces of the People's Protection Units (YPG) in Afrin canton, which are thus far insulated by a Russian presence.

A Turkish operation into Idlib province is nevertheless not without considerable risk. Indeed, there is even a possibility that it could backfire on Ankara. First, there is still no guarantee that such an operation would translate into increased Russian assistance against the YPG and predominantly Kurdish Syria Democratic Forces. Moscow, after all, has maintained its ties with the Syrian Kurds and has even blocked Turkish operations against the Kurds in the past. Further, Turkey and its local rebel allies may find themselves going up against very determined resistance from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham fighters, many of whom are locals, and operating in terrain that is geographically more challenging than that faced by Turkey and its proxies during Operation Euphrates Shield. Turkey, however, appears determined to tolerate the risks as it seeks to expand its presence and control in Syria in pursuit of its greater objectives.

[Crafty_Dog]

second post

A very good map will not post here:
=============================

As the consequences of last week's Kurdish independence referendum unfold in Iraq, the U.S. role in the conflict is under the spotlight. Over the past two years, the U.S. government has helped pay Kurdish peshmerga salaries in exchange for their support against Islamic militants in Iraq. But peshmerga officials recently told media, including Al Monitor, that there are no plans to renew direct U.S. military aid to the group. (The last round of aid expired in early September.) If Washington does, in fact, pull its direct financial aid to the Kurdish fighters, it would mark a distinct change in approach. The peshmerga have formed a critical part of the U.S. fight against the Islamic State.

Yet, that fight has changed considerably since the United States first began supporting the Kurdish forces, shifting geographically and leaving a significantly weakened Islamic State. Though the peshmerga remain key U.S. allies, they are no longer on the front lines. Kurdish fighters played a key role in clearing and securing the eastern front of Mosul in 2015, and they have fought in Nineveh, Kirkuk and Diyala provinces over the past year. But they are not active in Anbar province, where most Islamic State militants are now based. Moreover, Iraqi security forces — which have much fewer Kurdish fighters than Arab ones — have taken a more prominent role in the last two major operations against the Islamic State, in Tal Afar and Hawijah. Shiite popular mobilization forces have also figured more prominently in the most recent fighting.

It's also worth noting that, though it would be a financial blow to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), a non-renewal of direct U.S. aid to the peshmerga would not preclude the United States from supporting the Kurds in other ways, such as through the provision of training and equipment. Furthermore, if the United States does decide to pull direct aid to the peshmerga it could minimally help the KRG by giving it an easy scapegoat for any future inability to pay government salaries. And, no matter the timing, Washington's decision likely does not directly stem from its opposition to the Kurdish referendum. Still, the KRG is undoubtedly disappointed by U.S. support for the Iraqi federal government's stance against the referendum on the grounds that it will destabilize Iraq at a critical time for the country. General elections are planned for next year, and the fight against the Islamic State, though evolved, is not over.

[Crafty_Dog]

Hizballah's Nasrallah Escalates Threats as Syria Turns Into Iranian Base
by Yaakov Lappin
Special to IPT News
October 8, 2017
https://www.investigativeproject.org/6758/hizballah-nasrallah-escalates-threats-as-syria