Iraq – Page 2 – CounterVortex

Greater Middle East

More US troops to Iraq?

An Iraqi military official denied reports of a deployment of more US troops to the country, asserting that Baghdad does not need foreign forces. CBS News reported that 1,500 troops from the New Jersey National Guard are being deployed to Iraq and Syria to join the US-led coalition established to fight ISIS. This would constitute the largest reserve deployment out of New Jersey since 2008. CBS cited the state’s Gov. Phil Murphy as saying the troops were being mobilized for Operation Inherent Resolve. But the report was refuted by Maj. Gen. Tahsin al-Khafaji, the head of Iraq’s Security Media Cell—a body that officially cooperates with the US-led coalition to counter online disinformation. (Map: University of Texas Libraries)

Iraq

Oil, ethnicity at issue in Kirkuk land dispute

Residents of a disputed neighborhood in Iraq’s northern city of Kirkuk staged a sit-in to protest eviction orders and criminal charges filed against them by a state-owned oil company. Hundreds of Kurdish families who were pushed out of Kirkuk during Saddam Hussein’s Arabization campaign returned to the city following the fall of his regime in 2003. With their former homes now occupied by Arab families, many took up residence in a residential complex in Arafa neighborhood, previously inhabited by functionaries of Saddam’s Baath party. Now, the North Oil Company is claiming ownership of the residential complex, and ordering the Kurdish families to vacate. Arrest orders have been issued against residents who have refused to comply. In the background lie ongoing tensions between Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government over control of the Kirkuk oil-fields. (Photo: Rudaw)

Greater Middle East

Gaza: flashpoint for regional war? (redux)

The Pentagon carried out air-strikes on Iran-backed militia forces in Iraq in retaliation for a drone attack on a US airbase in Erbil, while a senior commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps was killed in a presumed Israeli strike in Syria. Israel continues to trade cross-border fire with Lebanon’s Hezbollah, while Yemen’s Houthi armed movement claimed responsibility for drone attacks targeting the Israeli port city of Eilat. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that Israel is now fighting on “seven fronts”—Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Yemen. (Image: Pixabay)

Iraq

‘ISIS-linked’ families repatriated to Iraq from Syria

Iraq has taken in 192 families from Syria’s al-Hol camp that houses persons accused of having links to the Islamic State (ISIS). A total of 780 individuals were returned to Iraq and will be placed in al-Jadaa Center for Community Rehabilitation in Nineveh province. The families are to remain at al-Jadaa camp until they are given clearance from the Interior Ministry to return to their homes and issued identification documents. Al-Hol camp, overseen by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), is located in northeast Syria’s Hasaka province and houses over 50,000 supposedly ISIS-linked persons. (Photo: SOHR)

Greater Middle East

Gaza: flashpoint for regional war?

As Israel intensifies air-strikes in the Gaza Strip, a northern front appears to be opening in the war. Civilians are fleeing both north Israel and south Lebanon as Israeli and Hezbollah forces exchange fire across the border. Following Israeli air-strikes on targets in Syria, drone attacks by presumed Iranian-backed forces hit US military bases and outposts in both Syria and Iraq. The US responded with air-strikes on Iranian Revolutionary Guards positions in eastern Syria. The Iranian military has announced that it will launch large-scale maneuvers, involving infantry, air and naval forces. (Image: Pixabay)

Iraq

Iraq-Turkey oil pipeline to resume operation

The pipeline exporting crude oil from Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq to the Turkish port of Ceyhan is ready to resume operation, seven months after it was ordered closed by an international court ruling. The Paris-based International Court of Arbitration ruled in favor of Baghdad against Ankara, finding that the latter breached a 1973 agreement by allowing the Kurdistan Regional Government to begin independent oil exports in 2014. The judgement confirmed that Iraqi national oil company SOMO is the only entity authorized to manage export operations through the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline. The KRG has now acceded to these terms, agreeing to market through SOMO. (Photo via Iraqi News Agency)

Iraq

Turkish strikes on Iraq after Ankara blast

Turkey launched a wave of air-strikes on Kurdish rebel positions in northern Iraq, hours after a suicide blast at the Interior Ministry complex in Ankara. The Turkish military said 20 targets were destroyed and several fighters of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) “neutralized.” The People Defense Forces (HPG), armed wing of the PKK, released a statement saying a “sacrificial action” against the Ministry was carried out by a unit of their Immortal Brigade. Two assailants, both women, were killed in the attack, and two police officers wounded. The statement said the attack was a “warning” to the Turkish government over its ongoing military operations against Kurdish militants both in Syria and Iraq. (Map: CIA)

Iraq

Iraq: security forces fired on Kirkuk protesters

Iraqi security forces appear to have opened fire on demonstrators without prior warning in Kirkuk, killing at least four people and injuring 16, Human Rights Watch has found. The violence comes amid months of increasing tensions between Kirkuk’s Kurdish, Arab and Turkmen populations. An inquiry into the incident opened by Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani should be independent and impartial in its investigation of allegations of excessive use of deadly force by Iraqi security forces, HRW urged. “Time and again, the Iraqi government has responded to protests with lethal force and arrests of journalists,” said HRW Iraq researcher Sarah Sanbar. “The government needs to take concrete steps that result in accountability for these actions.” (Map: UNHCR via ReliefWeb)

Africa

Oil contracts at issue in Somaliland conflict?

Fighting continues in Somalia’s northern breakaway state of Somaliland, where three administrative regions—Sool, Sanaag, and Aynaba—have taken up arms in a bid to rejoin the internationally recognized Mogadishu government. Somaliland accuses the government of Ethiopia (which is officially attempting to broker a dialogue in the conflict) of intervening on the side of the re-integrationist rebels, headquartered in the town of Las Anod, Sool region. Somaliland has been effectively independent since 1991, and has seen a more stable and secular social order than the regions controlled by the Mogadishu government. But now Mogadishu is asserting its right to grant oil contracts to foreign companies within Somaliland’s territory. Local media note that the new conflict erupted just after Mogadishu announced the issuing of an exploration lease to Turkish Genel Energy in Somaliland—indeed, within Aynaba, one of the contested regions. The move was protested as “illegal” by the Somaliland government, based in the city of Hargeisa. (Map: Siirski via Ethiopia Insight)

Iraq

The Yezidis, ‘esotericism’ and the global struggle

In Episode 156 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses Peter Lamborn Wilson‘s last book, Peacock Angel: The Esoteric Tradition of the Yezidis. One of the persecuted minorities of Iraq, the Yezidis are related to the indigenous Gnostics of the Middle East such as the Mandeans. But Wilson interprets the “esoteric” tradition of the Yezidis as an antinomian form of Adawiyya sufism with roots in pre-Islamic “paganism.” Melek Taus, the Peacock Angel, the divine being revered by the Yezidis as Lord of This World, is foremost among a pantheon that ultimately traces back to the Indo-European gods. Wilson conceives this as a conscious resistance to authoritarianism, orthodoxy and monotheism—which has won the Yezidis harsh persecution over the centuries. They were targeted for genocide along with the Armenians by Ottoman authorities in World War I—and more recently at the hands of ISIS. They are still fighting for cultural survival and facing the threat of extinction today. Weinberg elaborates on the paradox of militant mysticism and what it means for the contemporary world, with examples of “heretical” Gnostic sects from the Balkan labyrinth. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo via Kurdistan Source)

Greater Middle East

Multiple interventions continue in Syria

An air raid on the convoy of an Iran-backed militia in eastern Syria’s Deir az-Zor province left 14 presumed fighters dead and made brief headlines. There was immediate speculation that the raid was the latest in the small but growing handful of times over the course of the 10-year Syrian war that the US has bombed forces allied with the Assad regime. The strikes did immediately follow the slaying of a US aid worker in Iraq. However, Israel has for years also carried out sporadic air-strikes on similar targets in Syria, and has likewise come under suspicion in this attack. Getting far less media attention are ongoing air-strikes by Russia and the Assad regime on the remaining pocket of rebel control in Syria’s northwest. Just three days before the Deir az-Zor attack, Russian or regime strikes in Idlib province targeted a displaced persons camp, leaving at least seven noncombatants dead—and winning few international headlines. (Image: Pixabay)

Iraq

Turkey accused of chemical attacks in Iraqi territory

Kurdish communities in cities across Europe held protests demanding action on claims that the Turkish military has repeatedly used chemical weapons in its ongoing air-strikes against strongholds of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq. The Nobel-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) said it found evidence of chlorine and other “improvised chemical agents” during an investigative mission to Iraq. The IPPNW urged international bodies including the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to launch formal investigations. The PKK has released the names of 17 guerrillas it says were killed by Turkish chemical attacks in Southern Kurdistan (northern Iraq) over the past year. Kurdish news outlets published a video that has been circulating on social media, showing two PKK fighters apparently suffering under influence of a chemical agent. The Turkish defense ministry dismissed the claims as “completely baseless and untrue.” Iraq’s parliament has established a commission to examine the charges. (Photo: ANF)