WaPo/ABCpoll:MajorityapprovesofairstrikesinIraq

WaPo/ABC poll: Majority approves of airstrikes in Iraq …

posted at 8:01 pm on August 20, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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The White House got some good news  in today’s Washington Post/ABC News poll, which framed the situation in Iraq prior to the beheading of Foley. The majority of Americans support Barack Obama’s decision to conduct airstrikes on ISIS.  The bad news? It hasn’t impacted the approval rating of Obama on that issue at all, even though support for the policy has risen sharply over the last two months:

A majority of Americans now support airstrikes in Iraq, up 9 points since June, as President Obama targets an Islamist extremist group, according to a new poll.

The Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 54 percent support the strikes hitting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS or ISIL), while 39 percent oppose them. …

In June, before the operation began, 45 percent supported airstrikes, while 46 percent were opposed. At that point, Obama had said only that the U.S. was prepared to take military action if necessary.

Wednesday’s poll is the third in a week to show majority support for the strikes. A Pew Research poll on Tuesday found similar results, while a Fox News poll last week showed 65 percent support.

The rise in support for the policy is easy to explain. The media didn’t cover the ethno-religious cleansing of Christian communities in Mosul and Nineveh in the spring to nearly the same extent as they did the genocidal threat to the Yazidis, which dimmed the reaction to the former. The imagery of the men, women, and children trapped in the mountains without food and water created a reaction of global outrage and a demand to do something to alleviate the situation. The settlement of the Iraqi political situation may play into that too, allowing Americans to feel as though the effort didn’t amount to becoming Nouri al-Maliki’s personal air force.

Obama deserves credit for taking action, if belatedly and perhaps not as robustly as some would like. So far, though, Americans aren’t inclined to think that his policies in Iraq have improved. His approval rating in June on the question was 42/52, and today it’s 42/51. In fact, slightly more strongly disapprove now (36%, from 34%) and slightly fewer strongly approve (16% from 17%) than in June, although all of those moves are within the margin of error.

Interestingly, the American public likes the air strikes, but not arming the Kurds, which seems like more of a slam-dunk. A slight plurality opposes providing arms to the Kurds fighting ISIS, 49/45. Those who feel strongly about this have an even bigger gap toward opposition, 29/22. That’s a shame, because the Peshmerga has been an effective force in tandem with Iraqi special forces and the air strikes, as the New York Times reports today:

All bore testament to the deadly effect American airstrikes were having on the militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, who until this month were marauding over northern Iraq with little resistance and who two weeks ago seized control of the dam.

It was not until President Obama authorized airstrikes by the United States military on Aug. 7 that the Sunni fighters’ advance was halted. Two days of concerted air assaults starting Sunday around the dam then paved the way for Iraqi and Kurdish forces to reclaim the site. …

The pesh merga have received the majority of the credit for retaking the dam. But the Iraqi Special Forces troops who worked alongside them, who were created in the image of their American counterparts, have gotten far less attention. Known as the Golden Force, fighters interviewed Tuesday said they came from Baghdad and were called into the fight several days ago.

One Special Forces group, stationed by a cluster of homes close to the site’s power plant, said they were the first to enter the area after a series of airstrikes Monday afternoon. A cheery banner over the road passing by the enclave read “Tourist City in Mosul Dam.”

The fight against ISIS will have to be waged by someone that can retake ground from the terrorist army that controls it. If Americans don’t want to send US forces to do that job, the Peshmerga look like a pretty good option, as long as they can get arms and ammunition for the fight.

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Video:Iraqi,KurdishforcesretakeMosulDam?

Video: Iraqi, Kurdish forces retake Mosul Dam?

posted at 9:21 am on August 18, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Both Iraq and Kurdish Peshmerga forces have claimed a rare victory over ISIS this morning, the first in many months of setbacks and collapses. According to both, the Iraqi flag flies once more over the Mosul Dam, a critical piece of infrastructure and a potential time bomb that could kill as many as 500,000 Iraqis if destroyed:

Iraqi state television reported Monday that Iraqi national and Kurdish “peshmerga” forces had retaken the key Mosul dam from Sunni militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), but the fighting didn’t appear to be over.

If confirmed, reclamation of the nation’s largest dam would be a hugely symbolic and strategic victory in the months-long battle against ISIS, which has wrested control of a vast swath of north and west Iraq and eastern Syria.

The reports on State TV quoted a spokesman for the Iraqi military, but peshmerga fighters told CBS News they were advancing on the dam complex slowly and cautiously amid concerns that ISIS fighters might have left behind IEDs or mines, and possibly rigged parts of the dam itself with explosives.

Fox News reports that they have confirmation from multiple sources that the whole dam has now been liberated from ISIS:

Iraqi security forces and Kurdish peshmerga fighters have wrested control of the vital Mosul Dam, the largest in Iraq, from Islamic State militants, a senior official in the peshmerga forces told Fox News Monday.

Spokesman Lt. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi told The Associated Press the troops were backed by aerial support, but he didn’t specify whether there were U.S. airstrikes during the battle, adding that the troops “fully liberated” the dam Monday and “hoisted the Iraqi flag over it.”

The retaking of the entire dam complex on the Tigris River and the territory surrounding its reservoir is a significant victory against the Islamic State, the militant group formerly known as ISIS, which seized large swaths of northern and western Iraq this summer. It is the first major success for Iraqi and Kurdish forces since U.S. airstrikes began earlier this month.

The dam and its broader complex hold great strategic value as they supply electricity and water to a large part of the country.

The Associated Press was not quite as sanguine, and there are reports that control of the dam is still contested:

Boosted by two days of U.S. airstrikes, Iraqi and Kurdish forces on Monday wrested back control of the country’s largest dam from Islamic militants, a military spokesman in Baghdad said as fighting was reported to be underway for the rest of the strategic complex.

Soon after the news broke, the Islamic State group, which two weeks ago captured the Mosul Dam spanning the Tigris River just north of the city of Mosul, denied the claim, insisting it was still in control of the facility. …

Iraq’s Ministry of Defense said security forces “liberated a large part of the Mosul Dam” with the help of U.S. airstrikes, adding that forces are working to fully free the entire complex. U.S. Central Command would not immediately confirm any involvement.

However, a senior Kurdish commander told The Associated Press that his peshmerga forces had withdrawn from the dam complex on Monday afternoon because it was heavily rigged with explosives. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to media.

In an Internet statement, the Islamic State denied losing control of the dam, dismissing the government claim as “mere propaganda war.” The statement, which could not be independently verified, was posted on a website frequently used by the militants.

If the Kurdish and Iraqi forces have not yet taken control of the dam, it may be more dangerous than ever. Engineers have long had concerns about the stability of the dam even when no fighting takes place. If ISIS has booby-trapped the dam, it may not take much to destroy it and kill tens of thousands of Iraqis immediately, and maybe hundreds of thousands in a short period of time. When it comes to control of this particular facility, half-measures and partial victories won’t do.

Still, the sudden reversal of momentum comes as good news after months of horror in the Iraqi desert. ISIS hasn’t had too many setbacks in their sweep from Syria to almost the gates of Baghdad and Irbil. A few bloody noses, plus a new government in Baghdad, could have some of the Sunni tribal leaders looking for a better deal than their current one with the genocidal freaks of ISIS. The US air intervention should continue, and if this result holds up, shows that it should have started long before the Yazidis faced a genocide on Mount Sinjar.

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US,Iraq,KurdsteamuptoretakeMosul

US, Iraq, Kurds team up to retake Mosul Dam from ISIS

posted at 11:31 am on August 16, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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The creation of a new Iraqi government without Nouri al-Maliki may have already begun paying off in more muscular assistance to Baghdad as ISIS continues its sweep through the northern part of the country. The US has begun coordinating air strikes with a new offensive by Iraqi and Kurdish forces to retake control of the Mosul Dam, whose collapse could kill as many as a half-million people. The dam could play a critical role for ISIS for extortion purposes and the loss of it could cripple central Iraq, which relies on power generated from the problem-plagued dam:

U.S. warplanes carried out airstrikes in northern Iraq near ISIS-controlled Mosul Dam early Saturday morning, the Kurdish news agency Rudaw reported, citing eyewitnesses.

CNN confirmed that a U.S. and Iraqi military operation aimed at retaking the country’s largest hydroelectric dam from the so-called Islamic State was scheduled to begin early Saturday morning (Friday at 6 p.m. ET).

The operation was to begin with U.S. and Iraqi airstrikes against ISIS positions, with Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces following up on the ground.

U.S. fighter jets began carrying out the strikes early Saturday morning local time, Rudaw reported.

The loss of control of the dam created a high degree of concern in Baghdad as well as with its Western allies. Not only does the dam provide power to central Iraq, it’s also a critical part of the fresh-water infrastructure in the region. The dam itself is fragile even when the political situation is stable; the government in Iraq had planned to partner with the US and others to fix it before it collapsed on its own before ISIS pushed them out of the region. Its destruction — natural or otherwise — would be catastrophic for millions of people in Iraq.

NBC News spoke with Iraqi and Kurdish forces working together on the new offensive. They understand the need to work together, but when asked whether they can beat ISIS, the best they can say is insh’allah:

ISIS, meanwhile, has not stopped its offensive even with the US conducting airstrikes on their position. They sacked a village near Sinjar, massacring 80 or more Yazidi men and seizing over 100 women to send into slavery. The town of Kojo had been under siege for days, and finally fell yesterday. CNN notes that the reports of massacring men and sexual slavery for women is consistent with reports from similar ISIS actions in the area:

This is a campaign of annihilation against the Yazidis, and also the Christians and even Muslims who profess any heterodoxy from ISIS’ extreme ideology. The UN issued sanctions against a half-dozen of ISIS’ financiers and warned that the same will follow for anyone supplying weapons to the group:

The United Nations Security Council took aim at Islamist militants in Iraq and Syria on Friday, blacklisting six people including the Islamic State spokesman and threatening sanctions against those who finance, recruit or supply weapons to the insurgents.

The 15-member council unanimously adopted a resolution that aims to weaken the Islamic State – an al Qaeda splinter group that has seized swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria and declared a caliphate – and al Qaeda’s Syrian wing Nusra Front.

Islamic State has long been blacklisted by the Security Council, while Nusra Front was added earlier this year. Both groups are designated under the U.N. al Qaeda sanctions regime.

Friday’s resolution named six people who will be subject to an international travel ban, asset freeze and arms embargo, including Islamic State spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, an Iraqi described by U.N. experts as one of the group’s “most influential emirs” and close to its leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi.

The UN seems a bit slow to react to the crisis, which has been unfolding all year. While these sanctions are certainly welcome, they won’t do much to deflect the current trajectory of the group. They have all the arms they need for a while, thanks to the collapse of the Iraqi military, and it won’t be long before they can sell oil on the black market to get their own financing. This seems too little, too late to stop ISIS, and it’s telling that the UN can’t seem to bring itself to discuss what actually could stop ISIS — which is a multilateral force that will roll back ISIS and take control on the ground, denying them the opportunity to commit their genocides. Without that even on the table, ISIS has little to worry about in the near term, even if they do lose control temporarily of the Mosul Dam.

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Endgame:Malikitostepdown,supportAbadias

Endgame: Maliki to step down, support Abadi as new prime minister of Iraq

posted at 4:04 pm on August 14, 2014 by Allahpundit

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America was tired of him, Iran was tired of him, the Sunnis were really tired of him, even the country’s Shiite-in-chief thought it was time for him to move along. There’s no doubt he would have dug in on last weekend’s attempted coup if he thought the military would protect him, but they were prepared to cut him loose as well.

And so an ignominious reign ends with a whimper.

Maliki: I withdraw my candidacy for PM in favour of Abadi to safeguard unity & stability of Iraq, political process pic.twitter.com/iSIAWI3oai

— Sajad Jiyad سجاد (@SajadJiyad) August 14, 2014

It was Sistani’s letter a few days ago demanding a new prime minister that sunk him, apparently. Without a Shiite base of support, he had nothing.

Whether you think this is good news or bad news depends on whether you think Iraq can and should be preserved as a nation. With Abadi now in charge, the U.S. will be inclined to stick with the dream of a single multisectarian Iraq for awhile longer. Maybe Abadi can make nice with the Sunnis, which in turn would make things harder for ISIS in Anbar province. If the Sunni chieftains there now have a reason to reconcile with Baghdad, there might be a new Awakening in the offing. Good news! On the other hand, bad news: The more the U.S. clings to the “one Iraq” idea, the more it necessarily resists the idea of an independent Kurdistan. It could be that Abadi’s going to get a trial run from the White House to see how he does in making the Iraqi army less sectarian and in making sure the Kurds get their fair share of U.S. aid and arms. If he follows Maliki’s lead and tilts towards Shiite hegemony, Obama can pull the plug quickly and throw in with the Kurds. And then that’s the end of Iraq as far as America’s concerned.

Why did Iran end up pulling the plug on Maliki, though? Did they conclude, anticipating Sistani’s move, that he had lost so much support even among Shiites that he was no longer an effective proxy? Or were they worried that Iraq really was on the verge of breaking up, with Baghdad about to lose what little influence it still has over the Kurds and Kurdish oil assets?

Update: Some people on Twitter are celebrating the fact we finally, finally have a peaceful transition of power in a democratic Iraq, which will hopefully set a precedent for governments to come. I guess, but Maliki only took the civilized route when he had exhausted all other options and alienated pretty much the entire country. He left because he couldn’t find enough people in the military to keep him in power at gunpoint. He could have done this years ago — and had the opportunity — but fought bitterly to keep power, and now the country’s on the brink of breaking apart and being overrun by barbarians. Some victory.

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WaPo:ThousandsofYazidisstilltrappedonMt.

WaPo: Thousands of Yazidis still trapped on Mt. Sinjar despite Pentagon demurral on rescue

posted at 8:01 am on August 14, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Yesterday, the Obama administration finally began talking about a military operation to rescue the Yazidis stuck on Mount Sinjar, besieged by ISIS forces intent on slaughtering the tens of thousands displaced from their homes. The Pentagon then leaked that the military had in fact landed special forces on Mount Sinjar to determine whether a rescue operation could be made soon enough to make a difference. Late last night, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced that a rescue operation would be unnecessary:

Special operations forces sent to Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq have concluded there are far fewer refugees stranded there, making a rescue mission to help them off the mountain less likely.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel made the announcement at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland Wednesday night. NPR’s David Welna, who was traveling with Hagel, reports:

“They estimate that about a thousand [Yazidi refugees] have been leaving a day and that only several thousand of them are left on the mountain, and that those who are left there have sufficient provisions to remain there for now. So they seemed to conclude that those who are there will be able to make their way off the mountain without a rescue effort made.” …

While an evacuation might not happen, the U.S. “will continue to provide humanitarian assistance as needed and will protect U.S. personnel and facilities,” according to a statement from the Pentagon press office.

The Pentagon’s sunny assessment also concluded that the ISIS siege has been broken by the US airstrikes around Mount Sinjar:

Defense Department officials said late Wednesday that United States airstrikes and Kurdish fighters had broken the Islamic militants’ siege of Mount Sinjar, allowing thousands of the Yazidis trapped there to escape. …

The speed with which the Obama administration announced that the siege had been broken may cause some consternation overseas, given the increasingly dire descriptions from aid agencies about the crisis on Mount Sinjar. The United Nations on Wednesday announced its highest level of emergency for the humanitarian crisis in Iraq.

The Yazidis and the Kurds would concur that this is too optimistic by half. According to the Washington Post, those “several thousand” that remain are the least likely to be able to get themselves off the mountain — including many children:

Kurdish officials and Yazidi refugees said Thursday that thousands of desperate Yazidis remain trapped on a mountain in northwestern Iraq, even as the Pentagon appeared to back away from launching a rescue mission to save them.

Those who are still stranded on the barren, rocky slopes of Mount Sinjar are mostly the elderly, sick and very young, who were too weak to continue the grueling trek to safety in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region and were left behind by their relatives, the officials and Yazidis said.

The governor of the Kurdistan’s Dahuk province, where most of the Yazidis have fled, said he was told on Wednesday to prepare to receive 15,000 Yazidis who were to be airlifted from the mountain by the U.S. military. Although it is impossible to confirm whether there are that many Yazidis in need of rescue, Farhad Atruchi said he believes that a large number remain trapped and are unable to leave because they are too weak to make the journey.

Some of them are children. Others are too old or sick to continue the long walk to safety and were left behind by relatives fleeing the Aug. 3 onslaught against the town of Sinjar by fighters with the extremist Islamic State.

“For me, this is not correct,” he said of an assessment by the U.S. military that most of the Yazidis appeared now to have escaped. “I don’t know the exact number, whether it is 10,000 or 15,000 or 5,000, but they are there.”

The rescue was always going to be a difficult project no matter what. An airlift was highly impractical, especially under fire. It would have taken hundreds of sorties by helicopter to get the people off the mountain by air, even if everything went perfectly. Opening up a ground corridor to move that many people would have needed a substantial number of boots on the ground, including combat operations as ISIS would have attacked in force. That could have been accomplished by Peshmerga forces on the ground with American logistical support, but even that would have been risking US forces in the kind of combat situation that the administration wants to avoid.

Have the Yazidis really been able to escape the trap all by themselves?  Or are we looking for a way out? After all, even the slaughter of “several thousand” civilians is still a genocide; Saddam Hussein killed 5,000 in Halabja in what has always been considered a genocidal attack on the Kurds. If they have been left there to die when the possibility of rescue remains (a substantially large if on both counts), then the US will eventually have to answer for it.

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Report:U.S.SpecialForceshavebeenonMount

Report: U.S. Special Forces have been on Mount Sinjar for days

posted at 6:01 pm on August 13, 2014 by Allahpundit

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Maybe “boots on the ground” only applies to the ground at sea level? I’m spitballing here.

A team of US marines and special forces landed on Mount Sinjar in Iraq on Wednesday to assess options for a potential rescue of of 30,000 Yazidi civilians threatened by Islamic extremists and worn down by hunger and thirst.

The forces flew in on V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft that can land vertically. They joined a small number of American special forces who, the Guardian has been told, had been on the mountain for some days. That team had been assessing the military and humanitarian situation and guiding US air strikes against Islamic State (Isis) fighters encircling the mountain…

Fleeing Yazidis have reported seeing small teams of American soldiers high on the northern flank. “We weren’t allowed to go near them,” said a man from Sinjar who was airlifted from the former base. “They were being guarded by the Kurds.”

Their mission: Find a way to get tens of thousands of weak, dehydrated, and dying people off a mountaintop (where the temperature’s well over 100 degrees, by the way) when there are well-armed barbarians waiting below. One option is to lead them down the mountain on foot and into Kurdistan by land, but that’s tricky. ISIS is down there, of course, and the road south to Kurdish territory would take them through territory held by the jihadis. Who’s going to do the fighting if U.S. “combat troops” aren’t available and there aren’t enough Peshmerga to shoulder the load? Another option is to forget the route into Kurdistan and go north instead — but that would take everyone into Syria, where U.S. troops would be reluctant to go for political reasons. Could the Peshmerga handle that alone or would they, as one U.S. official told the NYT, need Marine support?

Option two is to simply airlift everyone off the mountain. There are four Ospreys stationed nearby in Irbil plus some unknown number of U.S. and British helicopters. That’s complicated too, though. Someone would have to set up a security perimeter on the mountain for aircraft to land, and each aircraft would probably need a combat aircraft to accompany it in case it came under fire. The sheer volume of people needing rescue is another logistical challenge. An Osprey can carry 24 people; a typical Chinook can carry around 34, although apparently some models run bigger. Assuming everything broke right — a big, secure landing area, all aircraft loaded to capacity, and, say, 10 Chinooks participating in the mission — you’d need just shy of 70 trips to get 30,000 people down. Let’s hope there are still enough physically able Yazidis on the mountain to load the weak onto the aircraft too, or else you’ll need even more troops to help carry the infirm.

Total American troops inside Iraq at the moment, by the way: 1,000 and counting.

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Tags: Iraq, iraqis, ISIS, Kurds, Marines, ospreys, peshmerga, sinjar, special forces, Syria, Yazidis

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Reports:StrandedYazidiparentscuttingtheirhandsto

Reports: Stranded Yazidi parents cutting their hands to let thirsty children drink their blood; Update: U.S. Marines, Special Forces reportedly land on Mount Sinjar

posted at 4:41 pm on August 13, 2014 by Allahpundit

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Not all Yazidis ended up on Mount Sinjar. Some of them, per the Daily Mail, journeyed through the desert (and occasionally through minefields) to shelters in Turkey and Syria.

As a Twitter buddy said, imagine how bad your situation must be if you’re fleeing to Syria.

Some 6,000 to 8,000 refugees have managed to escape to a makeshift camp in Dohuk province – but up to 30,000 still remain on Mount Sinjar in what a British aid worker has told Sky news is a “heartbreaking humanitarian crisis”…

“They’ve told us harrowing stories,” she said. “One man has just told us how he saw four children die of thirst. There was nowhere to bury them on the mountain so they just put rocks on their bodies.

“Another man was saying the children were so thirsty, their parents started cutting their own hands and giving them blood to drink.

Other Yazidis were murdered by ISIS while some face an even worse fate:

Breaking: #ISIS cmdr tells @CNN the group captured 100 #Yazidis women & children and "men were killed in large numbers"

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) August 13, 2014

I can imagine what they have planned for the women they’ve captured but I can’t bring myself to imagine what they intend to do with the children. They’ve made money ransoming prisoners in the past. Let’s hope that’s all they have in mind. And what about that potential U.S. rescue mission that Ed blogged about this morning? Per Ben Rhodes, Obama’s still mulling it over:

“What [Obama]’s ruled out is re-introducing U.S. forces into combat on the ground in Iraq,” said White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes during a press conference in Martha’s Vineyard, where the President is vacationing. “But there are a variety of ways in which we can support the safe removal of those people from the mountain.”…

Rhodes said Wednesday the U.S. is looking for the best and safest way to get the trapped Yazidis off the mountain without having to engage fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). He added that Obama, who is currently on vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, will be making a decision on how to go forward after having conversations with the military.

Obama could, I suppose, send troops to evacuate the Yazidi while insisting that they’re not “combat troops” because they’re not under orders to engage the enemy, but as Noah said on Twitter, whether we engage the enemy isn’t up to us. If ISIS engages, then those troops become combat troops. Besides, the combat/non-combat distinction won’t spare O from political agita even if ISIS doesn’t engage. His critics are looking to see if he means it when he says U.S. operations against the jihadis will remain exclusively in the air; if he’s already putting boots on the ground within a week of bombing them, then obviously the “air only” rule isn’t much of a rule. That’ll make it harder to convince the public that operations will be limited going forward. I think most people will forgive him for trying to help the Yazidis even if U.S. troops come under fire, but if it turns into another Black Hawk Down, who knows?

Via the Right Scoop, here’s Ron Paul making the case that we should let the Iraqis handle ISIS … somehow. Exit question: If we’re already at the “drinking blood for sustenance” phase on the mountain, how much time realistically is left to make a move that’ll save significant numbers of lives?

Update: Well, there you go. Boots on the ground.

US official: Team of US Marines, special forces landed on Iraq's Mt. Sinjar to assess potential civilian evacuation route – @MarthaRaddatz

— ABC News (@ABC) August 13, 2014

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FrenchForeignMinister:Maybeweshouldallcome

French Foreign Minister: Maybe we should all come back from vacation, non?

posted at 2:41 pm on August 13, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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It’s not what you think, or at least not what Laurent Fabius meant. No doubt some will see his quip about “the holiday period” as a reference to our own vacationing President, but the context of his remarks on Iraq and ISIS actually cut the opposite direction. While the US conducts airstrikes and mulls options for more effective military intervention to rescue the Yazidis threatened with genocide, the French Foreign Minister was calling out other Western nations to awaken from their stupor — and he may have struck a nerve:

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, back from a weekend trip to Iraq, urged his European counterparts to consider supplying soldiers in Iraq’s semiautonomous region of Kurdistan with weapons.

The equipment, he said, would help Kurds contain the advance of Islamist militants calling themselves the Islamic State, who have taken over large swaths of Iraq and neighboring Syria in recent months.

“There is an evident imbalance between this horrible terrorist group which has highly sophisticated weapons, and Peshmergas, the Kurdish fighters, who are extremely courageous but don’t have the same equipment,” Mr. Fabius said on France Info radio. “I know it is the holiday period in our Western countries, but when people are dying, you must come back from vacation.”

Several European countries, including France, the U.K. and Italy, have contributed to humanitarian missions in Iraq aimed at supporting Christian and Yazidi civilians who face slaughter by the Islamic State’s puritanical fighters.

But no European country has proposed sending troops to Iraq or joining the U.S. in conducting airstrikes against Islamist insurgents—a hangover from the previous Iraq war, when some European leaders were lambasted by their voters for participating.

In the literal sense, Fabius wants Western leaders to get back to work ASAP to address this crisis before it’s too late. But Fabius’ remarks apply in a more allegorical sense, too. European leaders got stung for their participation in the 2003 Iraq war, and that has pushed them to ignore the collapse of the Iraqi security forces and the rise of ISIS. Much like the Obama administration over the last three years, Europe has been content to pretend that the war in Iraq was over, and that any issues still active there was within the competence of Baghdad to resolve.

Over the last several months, though, it has become apparent that ISIS is a threat far beyond the borders of Iraq and Syria, and that communities which should fall within the concern of the West — especially the ancient Christian communities that long precede Islam — were on the verge of annihilation. The Kurds on which the West relied for integration and stability appear to be next, and without some significant help in materiel and logistics may not last much longer. Europe, like the US, has mostly been on vacation while these developments snowballed into the genocidal insanity now on display.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, the US and France have responded more realistically than others, at least in terms of supplying the Peshmerga with ammunition and competitive arms. The US has also launched airstrikes, with not too much effectiveness, while our NATO partners dither on whether to contribute to those efforts. However, the EU may finally be waking up, at least a little:

The European Union failed on Tuesday to agree on a joint position on supplying weapons to Iraqi Kurds battling Islamic State militants, but said individual members could send arms in coordination with Baghdad.

Iraqi Kurdish President Masoud Barzani asked the international community on Sunday to provide the Kurds with weapons to help them fight the militants, whose dramatic push through the north has startled world powers.

EU ambassadors, holding an extraordinary meeting to discuss the crises in Iraq, Ukraine and Gaza, gave the green light for individual governments to send arms under set conditions.

“The (ambassadors) noted the urgent request by the Kurdish regional authorities to certain member states for military support and underlined the need to consider this request in close coordination with the Iraqi authorities,” a spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said.

Diplomats said some EU states opposed sending arms, meaning there was no EU-wide agreement to do so, but that they could not prevent other countries from doing so, if they wished.

The UK’s parliament and government, though, still wants to stay on the sidelines a little while longer. The Obama administration has been working the phones to get more NATO countries to follow France’s lead, with some success. The WSJ report mentions that Turkey has agreed to get tougher on terrorism, and today’s Washington Post notes the belated efforts of the Erdogan government:

Before their blitz into Iraq earned them the title of the Middle East’s most feared insurgency, the jihadists of the Islamic State treated this Turkish town near the Syrian border as their own personal shopping mall.

And eager to aid any and all enemies of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Turkey rolled out the red carpet. …

Alarmed by the growing might of the Islamic State, Turkey has started cracking down. Working with the United States and European governments, Turkish officials have enacted new safeguards to detain foreign fighters trying to get into Syria and launched a military offensive aimed at curtailing the smuggling of weapons and supplies across the border.

But in a region engulfed by a broadening conflict, Turkey is also reaping what it sowed. It is engaging in border shootouts with rebels it once tactically aided. It is confronting spillover violence, a cutoff in its trade routes and a spreading wave of fear in Turkish towns as the Islamic State wins over defectors from rival opposition groups.

And despite the new measures, the Islamic State is still slipping through Turkish nets — raising doubts about international efforts to put a stranglehold on a radical Sunni group known for public crucifixions and the beheading of enemies.

Turkey may be belatedly returning from vacation in an allegorical sense, too, but this headache won’t go away by just closing borders and cutting off access to goods and services. The Yazidis and the Kurds will not be saved by pretending that the entire problem is Iraqi disunity, either. Fabius has a better grasp on that than most of his continental colleagues, which is why his remarks are aimed at them, rather than across the pond.

Update: Just to underscore this, White House adviser Ben Rhodes conceded that the administration has a military operation to rescue the Yazidis under serious consideration. Just don’t call it “combat,” even if combat occurs:

Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, told reporters on Martha’s Vineyard that President Obama would probably receive recommendations in the next several days about how to mount a rescue operation to help the refugees, who are stranded on a mountaintop surrounded by Sunni militants. He said those recommendations could include the use of American ground troops.

But he drew a distinction between the use of American forces to help a humanitarian mission and the use of troops in the battle against militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, something he said the president had rejected before and continued to oppose.

“What he’s ruled out is reintroducing U.S. forces into combat on the ground in Iraq,” Mr. Rhodes said. He added, using an alternative name for the militant group, that the deployment of ground troops to assist a rescue was “different than reintroducing U.S. forces in a combat role to take the fight to ISIL.”

He acknowledged that any ground troops in Iraq would face dangers, even if they were there to help the refugees find a safe way off the mountain. He said that like American forces anywhere, the troops would have the ability to defend themselves if they came under fire.

That confirms this morning’s Wall Street Journal report. If they want to rescue the Yazidis, though, they’d better hurry it up — and they’d better expect combat to erupt during the mission, too.

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Tags: Barack Obama, European Union, France, genocide, Iraq, ISIS, Kurds, Laurent Fabius, Turkey, UK, Yazidis

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FrancesendsarmstoKurdsas“timerunning

France sends arms to Kurds as “time running out” for Yazidis

posted at 8:01 am on August 13, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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The reluctance of the West in dealing directly with Kurds for their defense has ebbed as the crisis has peaked in northern Iraq. This week, the US began shipping arms semi-covertly to the Kurds, and now France has pledged publicly to arm the Peshmerga in their fight to stave off ISIS — although the French nominally went through Baghdad with the deal:

France will send arms to Kurdish forces in Iraq to support their fight against radicals of the Islamic State group, the presidency announced Wednesday.

A statement said the arms shipment will be delivered “in the coming hours” and has been agreed with authorities in Baghdad.

Citing the “catastrophic” situation in Iraqi Kurdistan, it added that “mobilization in support of Kurdistan and of all Iraq must continue.” It did not specify what weapons it was sending.

The surprise announcement comes as the United States has also increased its role in fighting back Sunni extremists of the Islamic State group that is threatening the autonomous Kurdish region in the north of Iraq. Senior American officials say U.S. intelligence agencies are directly arming the Kurds who are battling the militants, which would be a shift in Washington’s policy of only working through the central government in Baghdad.

“Agreed in Baghdad”? The new Iraqi government, which has yet to see the previous Iraqi government leave, has little choice but to agree with arming the Kurds. Their own forces are in disarray, and the Peshmerga is the only effective fighting force arrayed against ISIS. The Western partners of Baghdad certainly see that, and that’s why getting the approval of Baghdad was little more than a diplomatic nicety. Unless they want to start sending their own troops into northern Iraq, the West needs the Kurdish fighters at full capacity, and they will make sure that they have everything they need — even if that means a huge headache for Baghdad if and when ISIS is defeated. Haider al-Abadi must be thinking that he’d like to have that headache now rather than the ones he has at the moment.

Besides, there is little time left to act. The US airstrikes have not had the desired effect, and ISIS still threatens to commit genocide on Yazidis:

Time was running out for thousands of Iraqis trapped by jihadists, with the US saying on Wednesday it was assessing rescue options and the UN warning of “potential genocide”.

The United States has carried out air strikes against members of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group in the area of Mount Sinjar, where the UN refugee agency says up 20,000-30,000 people, many of them members of the Yazidi minority, are besieged.

Thousands more poured across a bridge into Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region on Wednesday after trekking into Syria to escape, most with nothing but the clothes they wore.

Some women carried exhausted children, weeping as they arrived to the relative safety of Iraqi Kurdistan.

But there are still large numbers on the mountain, said 45-year-old Mahmud Bakr.

The Christians arrived earlier, and are still working through their displacement. Most of them want to emigrate officially to the Kurdish autonomous zone, or beyond:

British Parliamentarians have begun to demand that the UK join the US in airstrikes to relieve the Yazidis:

A growing number of MPs have told Sky News it is time for the UK to join US airstrikes in Iraq to stop the advance of Islamic State fighters.

David Cameron returned from Portugal today, cutting short  his holiday by a day, and will this afternoon chair a Cobra meeting to discuss the Iraq situation amid growing pressure for the UK to act further.

The UK has stepped up its aid drops in northern Iraq and is sending a “small number” of RAF Chinook helicopters to the region. It has also already sent RAF Tornado jets equipped with sophisticated surveillance equipment to gather intelligence.

Britain is also transporting weapons for the Kurdish forces, who have been outgunned by the jihadists.

However, Downing Street has so far resisted calls for UK forces to join the US in taking military action against IS. It has also rejected demands for Parliament to be recalled to debate the crisis.

The momentum seems to be shifting toward intervention, but by the time the debate occurs, it may be too late for the Yazidis. It was already far too late for the Christians.

Update: The US has increased its military posture too:

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has announced that the United States has sent a new 130 member military assessment team to Erbil in northern Iraq to determine what further assistance the U.S. can provide in easing the humanitarian crisis of thousands of Yazidis trapped at Mount Sinjar.   For now, the United States has provided five airdrops of food and water to the Yazidis and conducted 18 airstrikes targeting ISIS fighters  surrounding the mountain or who were approaching Erbil.

Addressing a group of Marines during a visit to Camp Pendleton in California, Hagel said the team had arrived in northern Iraq “to take a closer look and give a more in-depth assessment of where we can continue to help the Iraqis with what they’re doing and the threats that they are now dealing with.”

The new team is in addition to the 40 U.S. military personnel already in Erbil who for several weeks have been manning a Joint Operations Center with Kurdish military forces.

Don’t expect too much from the move, though:

It is similar in scope to the assessment teams sent to Baghdad in June to determine potential U.S. assistance to Iraqi Security forces in the wake of the surprising ISIS advance in northern Iraq that led to the capture of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city.

At the time Pentagon officials stressed that the teams would provide useful intelligence to help determine whether U.S. military advisors should be sent to work with the Iraqi military.  The assessments were completed weeks ago, but a decision on whether to proceed to that step has yet to be made by the White House.

So we’re tripling our capability to produce recommendations that the White House can ignore at its normal rate? Got it.

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Tags: France, Haider al-Abadi, Iraq, Kurds, UK, Yazidis

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KerrywarnsMalikiasPM’sforcespositionthemselves

Kerry warns Maliki as PM’s forces position themselves in Baghdad

posted at 8:01 am on August 11, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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It’s no secret how the US feels about Nouri al-Maliki. The Obama administration has sat on its hands while Iraq comes apart at the seams in part because the White House wants to avoid propping up Maliki, who has spent the last three years alienating the Sunnis and Kurds, weakening Iraq to the point of collapse against ISIS. The US wants Maliki out in order to get a government in Baghdad that can re-engage the coalition put together by the Bush administration in the Anbar Awakening so that the Iraqi military can by itself face the threat without forcing the US to intervene militarily beyond a few air strikes.

After Maliki’s surprise address last night, though, the US doesn’t appear to have much sway. The current Prime Minister deployed special forces loyal to himself in Baghdad in what looks very much like a coup to prevent the new parliament from electing his successor:

Special forces loyal to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki were deployed in strategic areas of Baghdad on Sunday night after he delivered a tough speech indicating he would not cave in to pressure to drop a bid for a third term, police sources told Reuters. Pro-Maliki Shiite militias stepped up patrols in the capital, police said. An eyewitness said a tank was stationed at the entrance to Baghdad’s Green Zone, which houses government buildings. “We can see unprecedented deployment of army commandos and special elite forces … in Baghdad, especially sensitive areas,” one of the police sources said. The report could not immediately by confirmed by NBC News.

CNN offers this first-person perspective from the capital:

Secretary of State John Kerry warned Maliki against a coup, and lined up behind the new President, Kurdish politician Fuad Masum:

US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday warned Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki not to cause trouble as he threw his weight behind newly-elected President Fuad Masum to help fight Islamic militants. …

“We stand absolutely squarely behind President Masum (who) has the responsibility for upholding the constitution of Iraq,” Kerry said in Sydney, where he will attend annual US-Australia military talks.

“He is the elected president and at this moment Iraq clearly made a statement that they are looking for change.”

NBC reported that the US is “watching carefully” what happens next in Baghdad, while thousands of Yazidis escaped from the ISIS noose in the last couple of days. The Kurdish Peshmerga regained some territory as ISIS had to deal with American airstrikes:

The Daily Mail says that the US has begun to bypass Baghdad and send arms directly to the Kurds:

The Obama administration has begun directly providing weapons to Kurdish forces who have started to make gains against Islamic militants in northern Iraq, senior U.S. officials said today.

Previously, the U.S. had insisted on only selling arms to the Iraqi government in Baghdad, but the Kurdish peshmerga fighters had been losing ground to Islamic State (IS) fighters in recent weeks. …

The U.S. officials wouldn’t say which U.S. agency is providing the arms or what weapons are being sent, but one official said it isn’t the Pentagon.

Three guesses who’s arming the Peshmerga, and the first two don’t count. Kerry’s bluster aside, the US has no real influence in Baghdad any longer, which the White House made clear with its earlier unmet demands for political reform as a prerequisite for intervention. Maliki made it official last night. The only option left to the US is to arm the Kurds to get an effective fight against ISIS, and apparently leave Baghdad to Iran. If Masum can wrest power away from Maliki and get a Shi’a PM who can work with Kurds and Sunnis, that would be terrific — but he might have to fight through Maliki’s elite forces and Moqtada al-Sadr’s irregulars to have a chance now, and the US endorsement will hardly be a boon to that cause.

Update: In case you didn’t get it in three guesses …

CIA is now providing weapons directly to Kurdish forces fighting ISIS in Northern Iraq, officials tell @JimMiklaszewski

— NBC News (@NBCNews) August 11, 2014

Expect that to shift to the Pentagon soon enough, though. The US has no particular reason to do this covertly now that Maliki’s attempting to hijack the political process.

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Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, coup, Iraq, John Kerry, Kurds, Nouri al-Maliki, Yazidis

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