Iraqi FM calls on Arab states to pressure Turkey into recalling troops

July 26, 2016 By administrator

Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has called on Arab states to pressure Turkey into withdrawing its forces deployed in Iraq.

“We have called on the Turkish government many times via diplomats to return their forces to Turkey,” said Jaafari during the 27th Arab League Summit held in Mauritania’s capital Nouakchott on Monday.

He noted that Turkey had vowed to withdraw its troops, but is yet to abide by its promise. He further stressed that Iraq had no need for Turkish troops on its soil.

Last December, Turkey deployed some 150 soldiers, equipped with heavy weapons and backed by 20 to 25 tanks, to the outskirts of Mosul, the capital of Iraq’s northern Nineveh province.

Ankara claimed the deployment was part of a mission to train and equip Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the fight against Daesh terrorists, but Baghdad denounced the unauthorized move as a violation of Iraq’s national sovereignty.

“Iraq’s policy of good neighborliness and non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries and its commitment to good relations with Turkey does not mean it is prepared to neglect its sovereignty, which is still violated by the Turkish forces,” Jaafari said.

In June, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi (seen above) said that Baghdad was harboring serious concerns over Ankara’s intended plans for the country’s second-largest city of Mosul, adding that any interference in the northern city would result in an extended and bloody war in the region.

Six Iraqi Cabinet Ministers Resign

July 20, 2016 By administrator

Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi (file photo)

Iraq’s embattled Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi has accepted the resignations of six cabinet ministers.

The resignations come amid a months-long effort by Abadi to replace the current cabinet with non-partisan technocrats.

Abadi accepted the resignations of the ministers of oil, transport, housing and construction, water resources and industry, as well as the interior, which had been previously announced.

In February, he called for the cabinet to include technocrats, but has faced strong opposition from powerful political parties that rely on control of ministries for patronage and funds.

Powerful Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has taken up the call for a technocratic government, and has organized several mass demonstrations calling for reforms.

Protesters have broken into Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, where the government is headquartered, on multiple occasions during protests.

Based on reporting by AFP and AP

Iraq killed 1,300 Daesh militants in Mosul operations: Defense chief

June 26, 2016 By administrator

Iraqi forces inspect a building formerly used by Daesh terrorists as a home-made bomb making factory as they patrol the liberated city of Fallujah on June 23, 2016. ©AFP

(Presstv) Iraq’s defense minister says at least 1,300 Takfiri terrorists have been killed in the military operations to liberate the southern parts of Mosul, the main Daesh stronghold in the country.

Speaking at a Saturday press conference, Khaled al-Obeidi also said estimates by senior Iraqi officials show Mosul and other militant-held regions will be liberated “within a year.”

Mosul, located some 400 kilometers (250 miles) north of the capital, Baghdad, fell into the hands of Daesh terrorists in June 2014 in the first stage of terrorists’ advance through Iraq.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has promised that the liberation of Mosul is very close as it is the Iraqi forces’ “next destination” after the liberation of Fallujah, a strategic western city.

On June 18, Iraqi forces launched an offensive against Daesh terrorists to retake the southern part of Mosul and the town of Qayyarah, one day after they retook Fallujah.

Iraqi forces managed to raise their national flag on the main government complex of Fallujah on June 17. Later in the day, Abadi congratulated the nation on the liberation of the city.

The commander of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization forces, Hadi al-Ameri, said Friday that Fallujah is days away from being fully cleared from Daesh militants.

Tens of thousands of people have fled Fallujah amid heavy fighting in the city. Before being driven out, Daesh militants were using civilians as human shields to slow down army advances in the areas.

The Iraqi army is now screening 20,000 people that have left Fallujah, located roughly 69 kilometers (43 miles) west of Baghdad, to prevent the remaining terrorists from escaping among the civilians.

An unnamed spokesman for Iraq’s Joint Operations Command said on Saturday that a total of 2,185 Daesh suspects have been detained on the basis of testimonies or other information, noting that 11,605 were released and about 7,000 are still undergoing checks.

The northern and western parts of Iraq have been plagued by gruesome violence ever since Daesh terrorists mounted an offensive in the country in June 2014.

Iraqi government forces, backed by fighters from allied Popular Mobilization Units, have been pushing the militants out of the country’s territory.

Iraq faces humanitarian disaster after Fallujah breakthrough

June 20, 2016 By administrator

DISPLACED. Iraqis from the city of Fallujah rest at a safe zone on June 17, 2016 in Amiriyiah al-Fallujah, after they were evacuated by Iraqi government forces. File photo by Moadh al-Dulaimi/AFP

FALLUJAH, Iraq (UPDATED) – Aid workers scrambled Sunday, June 19, to cope with a massive influx of Iraqi civilians who fled Fallujah after government forces retook much of the city from the Islamic State group.

Tens of thousands of civilians escaped the city, just 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Baghdad, on the back of a major advance that saw Iraqi forces thrust into central Fallujah in recent days.

The humanitarian community has been struggling to cope, with thousands of people already suffering from hunger and trauma now stranded in the scorching summer heat with no shelter.

“The estimated total number of displaced from Fallujah in just the last 3 days is now at a staggering 30,000 people,” the Norwegian Refugee Council said.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said up to 84,000 people had been forced to flee their homes since the start of the government offensive against the ISIS bastion nearly a month ago.

“Agencies are scrambling to respond to the rapidly evolving situation – and we are bracing ourselves for another large exodus in the next few days as we estimate that thousands more people remain trapped in Fallujah,” the UNHCR said.

“We implore the Iraqi government to take charge of this humanitarian disaster unfolding on our watch,” NRC’s Iraq director Nasr Muflahi said.

NRC said it could no longer provide the required assistance, with water rations drying up fast.

It cited the case of a newly opened camp in Amriyat al-Fallujah, south of Fallujah, that houses 1,800 people but has only one latrine for women.

“We need the Iraqi government to take a leading role in providing for the needs of the most vulnerable civilians who have endured months of trauma and terror,” Muflahi said.

An Iraqi aid worker employed by the government at a camp in Amriyat al-Fallujah said the resources were inadequate to deal with the scope of the crisis.

“Four hundred families have reached my camp in the last 4 days, they don’t have anything,” said the camp manager, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“We were shocked by the number of displaced people and we weren’t prepared to receive them,” he said.

“We secured tents for some of them but the rest, including women and children, are sleeping on the ground under the sun,” he said. “Their situation is a tragedy.”

Sniper fire

The temperature in Baghdad has been hovering above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) and it often gets hotter in Anbar province, where inhabited areas along the Euphrates River are flanked by desert.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has promised to support the displaced.

On Friday evening, after Iraqi forces raised the national flag above the main government compound, he declared that Fallujah had been “brought back to the fold.”

Yet Iraqi forces have some work left to do, with hundreds of ISIS fighters still holed up in the city’s northern neighborhoods.

Abadi announced the liberation of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar, in December but the area was not brought under control until February.

Sporadic ISIS attacks there have continued, the latest of which was a thwarted ambush on the top military commander for Anbar on Sunday in an area called Zankura.

Despite facing less resistance than expected from ISIS in Fallujah, an emblematic jihadist stronghold, sniper fire, car bombs, and booby traps remained a risk for Iraq’s forces.

“Our forces are cleansing central Fallujah of pockets of Daesh (ISIS),” federal police chief Raed Shaker Jawdat told AFP, using an Arabic acronym for the jihadist group.

In the Officers neighborhood of Fallujah, ISIS snipers shot at an Iraqi flag pole until it broke, an AFP photographer reported.

The loss of Fallujah would continue a losing streak for ISIS that already leaves the “caliphate” it proclaimed two years ago looking moribund.

To keep the pressure on the jihadist organization, Iraqi forces also rekindled offensives east and south of Qayyarah in the north of the country.

With its strategic location west of the Tigris and its air field, Iraqi forces hope to make it a key launchpad in a major push to retake Mosul.

Abadi vowed on Friday that Mosul, the country’s second city and ISIS’s last remaining major urban hub in Iraq, would be liberated “very soon.” –

Source: Rappler.com

Fallujah: Over 350 Yazidi Women Freed from IS

June 19, 2016 By administrator

yazidi free They have been taken into IS captivity after the jihadist group overran Sinjar

FALLUJAH — A Kurdish Yazidi official in Dohuk province revealed that over 350 Yazidi abductees have been freed from the Islamic State (IS) by the Iraqi forces in Fallujah.

Hadi Dubani, the director of Yazidi Affairs in Dohuk province, told BasNews that they were informed today, June 19, by the Iraqi forces that 354 Yazidi women and girls, previously abducted by the IS militants in Sinjar, have been freed in Fallujah by the Iraqi forces.

Dubani said “The freed Yazidi women are now in Amirya area in Fallujah under the protection of the Iraqi forces. they are expected to arrive in Kurdistan Region in the near future.

Earlier this month, 4 Yazidi girls were freed by the Iraqi forces soon after the Fallujah offensive was launched; they were later reunited with their families in Erbil.

The Directorate of Yazidi Abductees Affairs in Dohuk province, which works to locate and free Yazidi captives, previously told BasNews that hundreds of Yazidi girls, who were abducted by the IS militants during the Sinjar massacre, were held in Fallujah with an uncertain future.

IS militants enslaved over 5000 Yazidi girls, women and children after they attacked the Yazidi major town of Sinjar in August, 2014; near 2000 Yazidi abductees have so far been freed from the grip of the IS militants with thousands more still being held by the extremist group.

The rescue of the Yazidi women comes after the Iraqi government forces entered Fallujah last Friday and liberated most of the city from IS.

SouthFront: Syria & Iraq battlespace, May 30, 2016

May 30, 2016 By administrator

Syria war By South Front on May 30, 2016

The Syrian Arab Republic’s flag was raised over the municipal building inside the city of Mu’adhimiyah on Sunday as a reconciliation agreement was put in place by local committees. Ajnad al-Sham had controlled it. All barricades inside the city are removed.

On Friday, the Russian General Staff reported that Russian had intensified air strikes against oil sites and smuggling routes to Turkey controlled by an al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, the Al Nusra Front. The Russian Aerospace Forces reportedly conduct air raids against Al Nusra and ISIS militants in the provinces of Aleppo and Homs. However, Russia’s Defense Ministry doesn’t provide information about the number of sorties and destroyed targets.

The ground operation of the Syrian Democratic Forces is ongoing in Northern Raqqa. There are clashes in the Ain Issa district, Brigade 93 and al-Nakhil area. Moreover, on May 29, the SDF launched a new operation against ISIS on the eastern bank of Euphrates. It’s aimed at recapturing the town of Tabqa.

The US-led coalition has bombarded ISIS positions with more than 150 airstrikes since the ground offensive in the area launched last Tuesday. According to Russian sources, Russian planes dropped arms and munitions to the SDF units in order to support the operation.

In the area of Fallujah, the Iraqi Security Forces and the Popular Mobilization Forces continued operation against ISIS. On May 28, the allies took control of Sijar and the Sijar bridge, the Mukhtar village and nearby Islamic cemetery. Separately, Iraqi forces advanced south of Fallujah, recapturing the villages of Al-Hoor and Albu Hawah. We remember, the Iraqi Army has declared on Saturday the start of an operation to liberate Fallujah’s city center. The operation is shifting to urban warfare while Iraqi forces are completing the siege of the city.

The Kurdistan Region Security Council annouced on May 29 that the Kurdish Peshmerga forces launched a military operation East of Mosul in Iraq’s Nineveh Governorate. The strategic goal of the operation is to increase pressure on ISIS militants in and around the city. Kurdish units already seized 7 villages, including Muftia, Tal Aswad. Some 5500 Peshmerga troops reportedly participate in the opperation.

The offensive is supported by the US-led coalition’s air power. There are also reports that the US soldiers loading armored vehicles have been seen outside the village of Hassan Shami, a few miles east of the frontline.

Iraqi PM Announces Start of Offensive to Liberate Daesh-Occupied Fallujah

May 22, 2016 By administrator

war on isis floga Haider Abadi announced start of military offensive to reclaim the city of Fallujah occupied by Daesh.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi on Monday announced start of military offensive to reclaim the city of Fallujah occupied by the Islamic State (Daesh) militant group.

“It is time to liberate the city of Fallujah,” Abadi said.

He added that all kinds of the armed forces were involved in the operation, as well as several groups allied to Baghdad.

Fallujah, in the western Anbar province, has been under Daesh control since 2014. Reports emerged recently that militants of the group, banned in countries including Russia, began killing residents attempting to leave the city. Daesh is suspected of planning to use the civilian population as human shields in case of an army siege.

Turkish airstrikes leave dozens of Kurdish villages in Iraqi Kurdistan empty

April 11, 2016 By administrator

MERGA, Iraqi Kurdistan,— Dozens of Kurdish villages have been abandoned and hundreds of families displaced close to Iraqi Kurdistan border with Turkey as a result of Turkish air strikes targeting militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Of the 76 villages of the Barwari sub-district of Dohuk governorate, which lies along the Turkish border, between half and a third are empty, save for a few people occasionally returning to check on their property or work on their farms, according to Kurdish government officials.

On a recent trip into the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, long a refuge for the PKK that has fought a three-decade war against Turkey for Kurdish rights, Associated Press reporters visited the village of Merga, only a few kilometers from the Turkish border.

The village, a small hamlet of perhaps a dozen houses surrounded by oak, apple and almond trees and set in a green valley among the snow-peaked mountains of the Zagros mountain range, had no inhabitants left except for four old men who said they came there only occasionally to look after their gardens.

“The aircraft keep coming here continuously. They bomb the mountain, they bomb the edge of the villages,” said Fawzi Ali, a local farmer, who had just driven up from Dohuk, where he had moved with his family last year, to check on his property. “People cannot live here.”

He said none of the four villages nearby — Hassa, Yekmal, Kharaba, and Shilaza — had any people in them.

“There is nothing here. Nothing except the mountains,” he said.

Another man, Isho Iohanna, said of one airstrike that, “We had never seen such missiles before. These missiles shook the houses and the fruits were falling from the trees.”

It is not clear exactly how many villages have been affected. According to Ismail Mustafa Rashid, governor of the Amedi district, which includes Barwari, 35 villages have been abandoned. According to Aziz Mohammed Taher, head of the agricultural department in Barwari, 25 villages have been evacuated.

They had no exact information on how many people have left the area as most seem to have moved in with relatives or rented houses in nearby villages and towns. Both officials estimated that hundreds of families have been affected.

The airstrikes, which target PKK bases in the area, seem to have largely spared the villages themselves. No civilian casualties have been reported since last August when eight people were killed in the village of Zergele.

Ali said the guerrillas of the PKK were moving through the mountain valleys and it was clear that it was them that the aircraft were targeting.

“They are in the area but nobody knows where they are exactly. They are in the mountains. They are everywhere,” he said.

Going up to the village and back, a team of AP reporters passed by PKK patrols three times, driving on the mountain roads in their trucks.

In the village of Asey, the last populated settlement on the road toward the border, Mayor Serbes Hussein said people had started abandoning their villages in the summer of last year when the airstrikes first began.

He said the conflict was having a big impact on the area.

“It is an area very rich in agriculture, mostly famous for its apples, and people were producing huge amounts to sell them in the fruit market of Dohuk,” he said, adding that seasonal labor in his village was also suffering from lack of work caused by the evacuations.

According to Aziz Mohammed Taher, an entire harvest of apples has been lost last year.

Many of Barwari’s villages, including Merga, are populated by Assyrian Christians.

The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 78-million population.

A large Turkey’s Kurdish community openly sympathise with PKK rebels.

The European Union has urged last week Turkey to restart the peace process with the Kurd.

Source: eKurd

Thousands of Iraqi civilians flee Mosul, As Iraqi army launched a major offensive

March 28, 2016 By administrator

(AFP) MAKHMOUR— Thousands of desperate civilians were fleeing fighting Sunday on the new front opened by Iraqi forces against the Islamic State group south of the city of Mosul.

Families crammed in the back of pickup trucks, sometimes bringing dead and wounded with them, emerged from the dust after crossing the front line and were met by Kurdish forces.

Iraqi army troops and allied paramilitary fighters on Thursday launched a major offensive aimed at retaking the northern Nineveh province, the capital of which, Mosul, is the main hub of IS in Iraq.

The forces have been advancing from their base in Makhmur towards the town of Qayyarah, about 60 kilometres (35 miles) south of Mosul.

Growing numbers of civilians have been fleeing the advance to Makhmur where they are being assisted by Kurdish peshmerga forces.

“So far we have received around 3,000 people and the numbers are growing every day,” Ali Khodeir Ahmed, a member of Nineveh’s provincial council, told AFP in Makhmur.

“But there are no services offered to them by the Iraqi government, we have to put them up in a stadium in Makhmur,” he said.

The Iraqi government has described the advance as the first phase of what is expected to be a long and difficult operation to retake Mosul, the country’s second city and the largest urban centre in IS’s cross-border “caliphate”.

In the desert west of Makhmur, dust storms were whipped up by the line of vehicles fleeing IS-held territory, including a pickup carrying four women and 10 children in the back.

‘Entire families have died’

A bearded man in a yellow dishdasha traditional gown emerged from the dust, holding the body of a young girl wrapped in a blanket.

“She is dead, she is dead,” he cried, his face caked in dust.

His daughter, whose back was riddled with shrapnel when shells rained down on their escape, was covered in blood.

“Some entire families have died,” the father said.

The battle has so far focused on four villages west of Makhmur. Qayyarah, an area that includes a former air base and an oil facility, lies to the west, on the other bank of the Tigris River.

Smain Nuweis fled the village of Kharbardan with his family of seven squeezed into the back of his Opel.

“We have seen a lot of suffering,” the 28-year-old said. “And it got worse now with the shelling.”

“Daesh will not allow the people to flee, they want them to stay,” said Nuweis, using an Arabic name for IS.

The provincial council official urged the government to do more for the flow of displaced people, who were given little more than water upon reaching the peshmerga.

“We need to open camps and provide urgent assistance. These people’s situation is very bad, they were barely able to take any belongings with them,” said Ali Khodeir Ahmed.

More than 3.3 million people have been displaced by conflict in Iraq since the start of 2014, according to figures from the United Nations.

IS seized control of large parts of Iraq in 2014, with Iraqi forces collapsing in the face of a lightning advance. Backed by a US-led coalition, Iraq has been clawing back territory from the jihadists in recent months.

The British are the cause of Iraq’s dismal and diminishing economy

March 28, 2016 By administrator

Photo: EPA

Rizgar Khoshnaw |

In the past few months I have written about Iraq’s pitiful economy and the rampant corruption, but I did not discuss ways to resolve this problem. Now, I am going to share my thoughts of how Iraq can recover and stop begging foreign countries, especially the Americans, for money.

Between 1980-1987 (an eight-year span) the Iraqi government had generated a total of $96 Billion (Ninety six) in oil revenue and that amount of money was enough to provide all of Iraq with free healthcare, paid full civil servant’s salaries, free education, 24 hours a day of electricity, security and so on. And, lets not forget that during these years, Iraq was at devastating war with Iran and still managed to provide Iraqis with a very comfortable and respectable life.

Contrast that with the same amount of time (period between 2004-2012) the Iraqi “government” generated a total of $800 Billion (Eight Hundred) and the Iraqi citizens do not have the very basic life necessities such as clean water and electricity. After generating $800 Billion in a short eight-year time period, Iraq has nothing to show for it and audaciously begging the International Banks to lend them a measly $2 Billion! This is absolutely disgusting to me and I do not understand how Iraqis have become so shameless and beggars.

During the 1980’s, Iraq had one leader that was evil and a thieve, Saddam Hussein, but since 2003, Iraq had managed to attract 1,000’s of thieves and corrupt “leaders” that the majority came from England!

Where did all of the money go to? From what I am reading on daily basis is that the majority of this stolen money found its way to London banks. In the past year, I have written the British embassy in Washington, DC numerous times asking them to stop the Iraqis from depositing the stolen Billions in their banks, but they never answer a single mail, phone call or e-mail. The British government/banks are turning a “blind eye” to the billions of Iraqi stolen money that is finding its way to their banks and such deliberate silence must be questioned and investigated.

What has made this money embezzlement so easy is the fact that about 80% of Iraqi “politicians” are actually British citizens and have come from England to rule/control Iraq! From the Iraqi president, Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, Finance Minister, Oil Minister and many other ministers down to advisers are all British citizens. I no longer see Iraq as “Iraq” but I see it as part of England as it controlled/managed by highly corrupt British citizens!

The only way to restore Iraq and help the Iraqis is by having an international body (hopefully lead by Americans) accompanied by some honest Iraqis, investigate and bring back ALL of the stolen billions that is now outside of Iraq. This is not a difficult mission to accomplish, but such action must start immediately before the stolen money finds its way out of England!

Rizgar Xoshnaw, a senior Kurdish writer based in Washington, a longtime contributing writer and columnist for Ekurd.net.

Source: Special to Ekurd.net