Clipmarks | Kurds Clips

U.S. military proposes tripartite forces for N.Iraq

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:27:32 GMT

clipped by: The Infowarrior
clipper's remarks: Could this be a precursor to Obama sending more U.S. troops to Iraq, as he has done in Afghanistan?

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

BAGHDAD, Aug 17 (Reuters) - The U.S. military commander in Iraq said on Monday he had proposed setting up security teams formed of Iraqi, Kurdish and U.S. forces to protect volatile areas disputed by Kurds and Arabs from insurgent attacks.

The idea, which might require a modification of a U.S.-Iraqi security pact to allow U.S. troops to return to towns and villages, had met with a positive response from the Baghdad government and the semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government in the north, Gen. Ray Odierno said.

The tripartite arrangement, if approved, would be "a little bit" like a U.S. peacekeeping mission between the rival forces as they face off in a potentially explosive dispute over land, power and oil, Odierno said.

EXEMPTION FROM SECURITY PACT

The Iraqi government may have to grant U.S. troops an exemption from the bilateral security agreement under which U.S. troops retreated to rural bases at the end of June and which sets an end-2011 deadline for a full U.S. withdrawal, he said

Tags: military, iraq, middle east, troops, news, politics, war, kurdish regional government, baghdad government, oil

Iraq - it`s going really well; not

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:54:38 GMT

clipped by: beanz

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Iraq Carnage Shows Sectarian War Goes On

Attacks on Ministries Kill Scores, Wound Hundreds

Gallery

BAGHDAD, Aug. 19 -- The massive car bombs that killed about 100 people and wounded more than 500 in Baghdad on Wednesday morning offered powerful new evidence of the enduring strength of Sunni extremists nearly two months after U.S. troops all but disappeared from Iraqi cities.

The coordinated bombings targeted prominent ministries, marking the most crippling attack on the Shiite-led government to date. Despite a recent U.S. focus on tension between Arabs and Kurds in northern Iraq, Wednesday's strikes suggest that the sectarian fight between Shiites and Sunnis over dominance of the country remains far from over.

U.S. officials have been urging Maliki in recent months to take more meaningful steps to reconcile with Sunnis, even those with links to Hussein's regime, to little avail.

"The Maliki government doesn't seem to be holding to its deals,"

Tags: iraq

Kurdistan Close to War with Iraq?

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 19:26:49 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: Ho hum.

Clip Source: www.opendemocracy.net

On 16 July 2009, the prime minister of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Nechirvan Barzani, said in an interview that the KRG and the Iraqi federal government were closer to war than at any time since the US-led invasion in 2003. His comment highlights the extreme tension that has mounted over recent weeks between Erbil, the seat of the KRG, and Baghdad at a time when US forces are gradually withdrawing from the country.

Forecast

The high risk of a military conflict erupting between the KRG and central government could in fact force the two sides together as it not in the interest of either to plunge the country into a civil war. Yet, Baghdad and Erbil have failed to put in place mechanisms to avoid inadvertent military conflict, or its escalation. Concerningly, the US has not managed to establish consensus or a greater degree of trust between the Iraqi Kurds and Arabs.

Tags: kurdistan, iraq

Iran Media Reporting Arrest of 3 Americans

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 11:19:42 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: The official said the account came from a fourth member of their group who was feeling sick and had stayed behind in Sulaimaniyah.

The Iranian state TV report claimed the four Americans were together when they crossed the border, but "only one returned [to Iraq], while the three were arrested."

The discrepancy could not immediately be reconciled.

The area where the three disappeared is a popular hiking destination known for a picturesque waterfall and rocky scenery as well as a thick growth of fruit and nut trees.

Kurdish officials said U.S. helicopters and Humvees deployed to the nearby city of Halabja to search for the Americans after they were reported missing on Friday but left after it was determined they had been seized by the Iranians.

U.S. asks Swiss help in accessing tourists

Clip Source: www.washingtontimes.com

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq | Iran's state TV confirmed Saturday that the government has detained three Americans who crossed the border from northern Iraq, saying they failed to heed warnings from Iranian guards.

Kurdish officials from northern Iraq said the three - two men and a woman - were tourists who had mistakenly crossed into Iranian territory Friday while hiking in a mountainous area near the resort town of Ahmed Awaa.

Kurds occupy an area that sprawls across southwestern Turkey, northern Iraq and eastern Iran. The borders are mountainous and not clearly marked.

The three Americans had traveled with a companion to Turkey, then entered the Kurdish region Tuesday through the border crossing at Zakho, the official said. They visited the Kurdish cities of Irbil and Sulaimaniyah on Wednesday. The next day, three of them took a taxi to Ahmed Awaa, a Kurdish security official said.

Tags: hiking destination, iran, mountainous kurdish region, three americans detained by iranian guards, u.s. asks swiss help

US "dark night" Policy to Ensure Iraq Remains a Client State

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 10:15:54 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: In beginning the history of the near future, it will be particularly importamnt to look at how this alleged new policy deals with the growing unrest between indigenous Iraqi factions, notably Shi;ite-Sunni, and Kurds-Baghdad government. A shortish and interesting article which offers a non-western analysis which may connect brain cells.

Clip Source: www.atimes.com

Last week, despite the death of Michael Jackson, Iraq made it back into the TV news as Iraqis celebrated a highly publicized American military withdrawal from their cities. Fireworks went off; some Iraqis gathered to dance and cheer; the first military parade since Saddam Hussein's day took place (in the fortified Green Zone, the country's ordinary streets still being too dangerous for such things); the US handed back many small bases and outposts; and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki proclaimed a national holiday - "sovereignty day", he called it.

As your eyes grow accustomed to the darkness, you begin to identify a deepening effort to ensure that Iraq remains a US client state, or, as General Odierno described it to the press on June 30th, "a long-term partner with the United States in the Middle East".

Colonialism in Iraq

senior State Department official described this new "dark of night"

how the US can continue to wield influence on key decisions without being seen to do so."

Tags: iraq

Kurdistan Intensifies Split from Iraq

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 22:27:02 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: <<<"This lays the foundation for a separate state — it is not a constitution for a region," said Osama al-Nujaifi, a Sunni Arab member of the national Parliament. "It is a declaration of hostile intent and confrontation. Of course it will lead to escalation."

Kurdish officials defended their efforts to adopt a new constitution that defines the Kurdistan region as comprising their three provinces and also tries to add all of hotly contested and oil-rich Kirkuk Province, as well as other disputed areas in Nineveh and Diyala Provinces. Iraq's federal Constitution allows the Kurds the right to their own constitution, referring any conflicts to Iraq's highest court.

Susan Shihab, a member of Kurdistan's parliament, said she no longer had faith that the rights of Kurds under the federal constitution from 2005 would be respected.

"What is missing the most in the new Iraq is confidence," she said.

At the same time, though, some Kurds acknowledge that they have grown frustrated with

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

BAGHDAD — With little notice and almost no public debate, Iraq’s Kurdish leaders are pushing ahead with a new constitution for their semiautonomous region, a step that has alarmed Iraqi and American officials who fear that the move poses a new threat to the country’s unity.

The new constitution, approved by Kurdistan’s parliament two weeks ago and scheduled for a referendum this year, underscores the level of mistrust and bad faith between the region and the central government in Baghdad. And it raises the question of whether a peaceful resolution of disputes between the two is possible, despite intensive cajoling by the United States.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is already not on speaking terms with the Kurdish region’s president, Massoud Barzani. Iraqi political leaders have vociferously denounced the constitution as a step toward splintering Iraq.

Tags: kurdistan, iraq

kurds defy baghdad, laying claim to land and oil

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:19:54 GMT

clipped by: doodleicious
clipper's remarks: geesh i can feel the heat from here

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Kurds Defy Baghdad, Laying Claim to Land and Oil

The proposed constitution enshrines Kurdish claims to territories and the oil and gas beneath them. But these claims are disputed by both the federal government in Baghdad and ethnic groups on the ground, and were supposed to be resolved in talks begun quietly last month between the Iraqi and Kurdish governments, sponsored by the United Nations and backed by the United States. Instead, the Kurdish parliament pushed ahead and passed the constitution, partly as a message that it would resist pressure from the American and Iraqi governments to make concessions.

Tags: kurds

Elite Iraqi Forces in Front After US Pullback

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 02:07:01 GMT

clipped by: zizzy

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

BAGHDAD – As Iraqi security services prepare to take back their towns from the Americans on Tuesday, the sharpest arrow in their quiver is an elite, American-trained force with a reputation that leads many Iraqis to call it "the dirty brigade."

Its real name is the Counter Terrorism Bureau, and its commander insists it's professional, nonsectarian and not dirty at all.

Violence is already rising and will likely continue after the handover as different factions test the government's ability to manage without American backup. But Kalib Shegati al-Kenani, the Iraqi Army general who heads the bureau, is confident his force can cope and that his country will not slide into renewed sectarian warfare.

Its ranks are made up of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, al-Saedi said, but it does not publish breakdowns.

Obama: Start The Revolution Without Me

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:10:04 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: So one of two things are going to happen. Either the demonstrators are going to succeed in overthrowing the current government which has already become destabilized, or the conservatives in Iran will unleash an unprecedented bloodbath against the protestors. Either way Obama's position of trying to stay in their good graces for the sake of negotiation has become obsolete, a situation that neither he nor his advisors have been able to recognize.

But so far Obama has not seized the opportunity. He insists on giving legitimacy to the current government..The world seems ready to line up against the current Iranian government and their actions as the statements of condemnation from other European countries have shown. Obama could be the one to rally them. Instead he doesn't want to "meddle".

People are taking their lives into their hands to stand up against a repressive government that poses a threat to the whole world . . . .

Clip Source: www.examiner.com

The consensus among those who understand the culture and politics of Iran is the demonstrators have crossed a point of no return. Robin Wright, who has written extensively on Iran for years said on CNN that she believes Kahmanei is fighting for his political life. And she as well as others have said this is no longer about the election. It's become much bigger. It has become what the system of government in Iran is going to be.

As events in Iran become more dramatic, Obama's position has gotten to the point where it's becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Change is occuring within Iran without Obama.With the protestors having crossed a line of no return experts say it is not going to be possible for the ruling mullahs in Iran to hold onto power without unleashing the worst violence against their own people that the middle east has seen since Sadaam used chemical weapons to put down a revolt of the Kurds.

Obama's position is becoming more and more absurd each passing minute.

Tags: "death to the ayatollah", freedom and dignity, iranian revolution, obama, weak timid speech

Turkey's Dirty War Against the Kurds

Thu, 28 May 2009 11:34:04 GMT

clipped by: gppixelworks

Clip Source: www.spiegel.de

TURKEY'S DIRTY WAR AGAINST THE KURDS

'We Used to Murder People at Night When the Soldiers Weren't Around'

When members of the special Turkish police unit Jitem arrived at night, Kurdish inhabitants of southeast Turkey knew there would be another disappearance. Investigators are now looking into the activities of this allegedly disbanded secretive organization from the 1990s -- and the 'death wells' where its victims were hidden.

PHOTO GALLERY: THE MURDEROUS TRACES OF JITEM

Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (4 Photos)

Shot 'Like an Animal'

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of civil rights activists, politicians and businesspeople suspected of having ties with the PKK were kidnapped and murdered. No one knows their exact number

Many corpses were dumped into wells; others were doused in acid and thrown into fields. The horror of the sight was meant to serve as a deterrent. But the majority disappeared without a trace and are still listed as missing.

Tags: turkey, kurds, war, murder, torture, human rights, turkish police, jitem

Iraq: Act 2 Commencing

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 01:24:53 GMT

clipped by: baydawg
clipper's remarks: everything is unraveling behind the scenes. --should have left when we had a chance

Clip Source: www.d-n-i.net

My intell friends have been watching this development in Iraq for the past several weeks. They insist everything is unraveling behind the scenes. They say it is not just a matter of money drying up — rather, the Shi’ites are soaking up all the money to keep their own militias and Shi’a-heavy “national” units loyal and willing to begin the unavoidable / inevitable Shi’a crackdown on the Kurds and Sunnis.

unless the Shi’ite Arabs can feel secure in their position as the dominant majority population and the Sunni and Kurds accept their new/old roles as the underclass, the Shi’ite Arabs will remain dependent upon US and increasingly on Iranian Khomeini’ist support and thus will cause us more problems.

One cannot stop an ethno-religious war in mid-course, resolve nothing, and expect everyone to just live side by side in peace when the war-stoppers leave.

We need to disengage from these places

Tags: war on iraq, failure, hubris, nation-building

Iraq Faces A New War That Threatens To Complicate Obama's Withdrawal Plans

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 22:53:04 GMT

clipped by: ratilfar

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

A new war is threatening Iraq just as the world believes the country is returning to peace. While violence is dropping in Baghdad and in the south of the country, Arabs and Kurds in the north are beginning to battle over territories in an arc of land stretching from Syria to Iranian border.

A renewal of the historic conflict between Arabs and Kurds in Iraq, which raged through most of the second half of the 20th century, would seriously destabilise the country as it begins to recover from the US occupation and the Sunni-Shia civil war of 2005-07.

Yet if the conflict develops into a full-scale war it will complicate President Barack Obama's plan to withdraw 142,000 US soldiers from Iraq over 16 months and redeploy many of them to the US military effort in Afghanistan.

In some respects, the Arab-Kurdish war has already started. Kurdish leaders say that in Nineveh province, Sunni Arab gunmen have killed 2,000 Kurds and 127,000 Kurds have turned into refugees over the past six years.

Tags: iraq, war, kurds, arabs, sunni, shia

Hope Bombings Will Be No More

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 12:45:17 GMT

clipped by: benaloy

Clip Source: www.csmonitor.com

Iraqi vote

Mosul, Iraq - Election day was largely free of violence as millions of Iraqis voted in provincial polls that appear to have bolstered Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's power in the south and weakened the Kurds' dominance in the north.

In parts of Iraq the mood was festive and hopeful. In Baghdad, children played soccer in streets free of cars as driving was mostly banned. Families wore their best clothes to walk to polls. Elsewhere, voting seemed oddly routine.

But while election monitors hailed a smooth vote, Iraqi officials reported that turnout was 51 percent – lower than expected, particularly in Baghdad, where only 40 percent of registered voters went to the polls.

Christians and Muslims Celebrate Christmas Holidays In Baghdad

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 11:00:48 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: Even before I can ask Interior Ministry spokesman Major-General Abdul Karim Khalaf a question, he greets me with a big smile. "All Iraqis are Christian today!" he says.

Many of the people attending the Christmas celebration appear to be Muslims, with women wearing head scarves. Suad Mahmoud, holding her 16-month-old daughter, Sara, tells me she is indeed Muslim, but she's very happy to be here. "My mother's birthday also is this month, so we celebrate all occasions," she says, "especially in this lovely month of Christmas and New Year."

Father Saad Sirop Hanna, a Chaldean Christian priest, is here too. He was kidnapped by militants in 2006 and held for 28 days. He knows firsthand how difficult the lot of Christians in Iraq is but, he tells me, "We are just attesting that things are changing in Baghdad, slowly, but we hope that this change actually is real. We will wait for the future to tell us the truth about this."

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- From a distance, it looks like an apparition: a huge multi-colored hot-air balloon floating in the Baghdad sky, bearing a large poster of Jesus Christ. Below it, an Iraqi flag.

Welcome to the first-ever public Christmas celebration in Baghdad, held Saturday and sponsored by the Iraqi Interior Ministry. Once thought to be infiltrated by death squads, the Ministry now is trying to root out sectarian violence -- as well as improve its P.R. image.

3 of 3

more photos »

Iraqi children dress like Santa's elves for the Christmas party.

On a large stage, children dressed in costumes representing Iraq's many ethnic and religious groups -- Kurds, Turkmen, Yazidis, Christians, Arab Muslims not defined as Sunni or Shiite -- hold their hands aloft and sing "We are building Iraq!" Two young boys, a mini-policeman and a mini-soldier sporting painted-on mustaches, march stiffly and salute. Watch the celebration in Baghdad »

Tags: baghdad, christmas holidays, sponsored by iraqi interior ministry, children dressed as santa's elves

Baghdad celebrates first public Christmas

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 18:55:11 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

From a distance, it looks like an apparition: a huge multi-colored hot-air balloon floating in the Baghdad sky, bearing a large poster of Jesus Christ. Below it, an Iraqi flag.

Even before I can ask Interior Ministry spokesman Major-General Abdul Karim Khalaf a question, he greets me with a big smile. "All Iraqis are Christian today!" he says.

we have to go back and strengthen community ties."

Tags: iraq, christmas, muslim, christian