Tuesday, October 17, 2017
Kirkuk, Trump's First Stand against Iran in Iraq
THE REAL NEWS TODAY IS THAT MY OPERATING SYSTEM HAS CRASHED. We'll do the best we can. 🔸 KIRKUK. Iraqi forces, aided by Iranian QUDs, seized the northern city of Kirkuk and took key sites in the oil-rich area claimed by both the Kurds and the Iraqi government. The Iraqi military said it had taken control of the K1 military base, the Baba Gurgur oil and gas field, and state-owned oil company offices. 🔸 Iraqi troops moved into Kirkuk after the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) held a controversial independence referendum, retaking areas under Kurdish control since ISIS militants were stopped by Kurdish Peshmerga forces after the Iraqi army collapsed in 2014. Residents of Kurdish-controlled areas, including Kurdish voters in disputed Kirkuk, overwhelmingly backed secession from Iraq in the referendum. Iraqi Prime Minister al-Abadi called the vote unconstitutional, but the KRG said it was legitimate. Kirkuk residents are stuck in the middle and angry. 🔸 State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said Monday the US : "supports the peaceful exercise of joint administration by the central and regional governments, consistent with the Iraqi constitution, in all disputed areas.... [the US] is working with all parties to encourage dialogue...there is still much work to be done to defeat ISIS in Iraq." President Trump said US officials are "not taking sides...We don't like the fact that they're clashing." John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, warned the Iraqi government of "severe consequences" if US-supplied weaponry was misused against Kurdish forces : "The United States provided equipment and training to the government of Iraq to fight ISIS and secure itself from external threats -- not to attack...its own regional governments." 🔸 Al-Abadi said in a statement Monday the Kirkuk operation was necessary to "protect the unity of the country, which was in danger of partition" after the referendum : "We call upon all citizens to co-operate with our heroic armed forces, which are committed...to protect civilians...to impose security and order, and to protect state installations and institutions." Baghdad said Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers had withdrawn "without fighting," but reports say Iranian forces threatened them with annihilation. 🔸 Thousands fled Kirkuk, fearing likely clashes between the two sides, as well as the Iran QUDs, as Iraqi military vehicles rolled in. Reuters said Iraqi forces pulled down the Kurdish flag that had been flying alongside the Iraqi national flag. 🔸 The speed with which Iraqi forces took the center of Kirkuk led the two main armed Kurdish parties to accuse each other of "betrayal," with the Peshmerga General Command, led by President Barzani of the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), accusing officials of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of aiding "the plot against the people of Kurdistan." The PUK denied this, saying dozens of its fighters had been killed and accusing the KDP of an ill-advised referendum. 🔸 Turkey, fearing that Kurdish independence in Iraq could lead to similar calls from its own Kurdish minority, praised Baghdad, saying it was "ready for any form of co-operation with the Iraqi government in order to end the PKK presence in Iraqi territory." The PKK, a Turkish-Kurdish rebel group fighting for autonomy since the 1980s, is considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the EU and the US. 🔸 DEAR READERS, the Iraqi parliament asked al-Abadi to deploy troops to Kirkuk and disputed areas after the referendum, but he said he would accept their being governed by joint administration and didn't want armed confrontation. But, when his cabinet accused the KRG Sunday of deploying PKK fighters in Kirkuk, calling it a "declaration of war," al-Abadi unleashed the army. Kirkuk had been a demilitarized area -- police controlled Kirkuk and Iraqi troops and Kurdish Peshmerga were not allowed inside it. The Iraqi-Iran takeover upset the status quo, which must be restored. The US must be active in the dispute to hold back Iran and to support Kurdistan, our best ally.
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al-Abadi and the Iraqi-Iran coalition is in my simple opinion nothing more that than what we brought on Kurds and various other religious based sect in the region via Barrack Obama's Iran Nuclear Agreement.
ReplyDeleteAnother action just like we were told about the grandeur and need for the ACA/Obamacare Act.
We Americans have been positioned, coerced, mislead, and lied to so many times by these false lovers of the American way, the Constitution, the Rule of Law - these ProgDems.
And in the end it is up to us the defenders of America that are left to undo all that they have brought down upon us.
Well the Middle East is going to become worse before we can make it better.
al-Abadi and the Iraqi-Iran coalition is in my simple opinion nothing more that than what we brought on Kurds and various other religious based sect in the region via Barrack Obama's Iran Nuclear Agreement.
Another action just like we were told about the grandeur and need for the ACA/Obamacare Act.
We Americans have been positioned, coerced, mislead, and lied to so many times by these false lovers of the American way, the Constitution, the Rule of Law - these ProgDems.
And in the end it is up to us the defenders of America that are left to undo all that they have brought down upon us.
Well the Middle East is going to become worse before we can make it better.
Nation-building (if that is what the United States is doing in the Middle East) is a normative concept that means different things to different people. The latest conceptualization is essentially that nation-building programs are those in which dysfunctional or unstable or "failed states" (most of the Middle East) or economies are given assistance in the development of governmental infrastructure, civil society, dispute resolution mechanisms, as well as economic assistance, in order to increase stability. Nation-building generally assumes that someone or something is doing the building intentionally.
DeleteBut it is important to look at the evolution of theories of nation-building and at the other concepts which it has both supplanted and included. Many people believe that nation-building is evolutionary rather than revolutionary, that is takes a long time and is a social process that cannot be jump-started from outside. The evolution of the Italian city-states into a nation, the German city-states into the Zollverein customs union and later a nation, the multiple languages and cultural groups in France into the nation of France, the development of China from the warring kingdoms, took a very long time, and were the result, not only of political leadership, but of changes in technology and economic processes (the agricultural and then industrial revolutions), as well as communication, culture and civil society, and many other factors.
The other side of the coin is that nation-building may sometimes be simply another name for external intervention and the extension of empires. If it can be said that failed states are the cause of national, regional, or world security problems, or that human rights abuses are so extensive that the need to overcome them in turn overcomes the traditional sovereignty rights of states under international law, then intervention in the name of nation-building can be seen to be justified. Sometimes nation-building may simply be used as a justification for the expansion of imperial control. So nation-building matters, but what is meant by nation-building matters even more.
If an outside military is to be involved, it must be funded and supplied sufficiently so that it can bring order and security following conflict. Or it must stay out. Similarly, if there is to be outside civilian involvement, whether state-based, IGO or NGO, it must also have sufficient funding and technical skills in order to provide what is needed and to stay the course. Arguing for the indignity of the process should not be an excuse for exiting the process where there is need for outside help.
For the United States to be of any help to anyone in the Middle East we need a plan, an agenda, a philosophy. We haven't had one since Reagan. Bush was bogged down with a war that also had little substance and no exit theory at all.
ReplyDeleteObama was underhandedly betraying our friends and our interests.
Have we come to the dance to late with a real leader????