MESOPOTAMIA NEWS : KADHIMI’S ROLLING RESHUFFLE (PART 1): MILITARY COMMAND CHANGES

by Michael Knights and Alex Almeida  –  PolicyWatch 3376 September 14, 2020 – To strengthen Iraq’s capacity for resisting militia and foreign influence, Washington should keep supporting the campaign to remake the military one commander at a time.

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MESOPOTAMIA NEWS SITU REPORT IRAQ: From the ‘Republic of Fear’ to the Militias’ Republic of Terror

Munqith Dagher – Dr. Munqith Dagher is MENA director and a board member of Gallup International.Also available in العربية September 10, 2020

In 1992, as I watched the celebrations for the inauguration of al-Tabiqayn Bridge in Baghdad (formerly, al-Qa’id Bridge) on Al-Shabab Television, I turned to my wife and said: “wouldn’t it have been better for us if the cost of this bridge had been spent on better flour for us to eat, rather than this awful flour that we get now?” The following day, I went to pick up my seven-year-old son from school when suddenly his teacher said, “Pay attention to what you say in front of your children—it could cost you your life!”

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MESOPOTAMIA NEWS : SOUTH KURDISTAN AND THE PROBLEM NAMED PKK

 

The Kurdistan Region in Iraq tries to Balance Turkey, Iran and the United States

For an autonomous regional government, the Kurdistan Regional Government has a lot of international clout.  – by Seth J. Frantzman – 9.Sept 2020 THE NATIONAL INTEREST

The autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq sits at a crossroads. To its south is Baghdad, where Iranian-backed rogue militias have fired dozens of rockets at facilities housing U.S. troops. To its north is Turkey, a member of NATO, which has been carrying out operations against Kurdish militants in the mountains of northern Iraq. To its east is Iran, which has also fought a low-level Kurdish insurgency and which opposes the continuing U.S. role in Iraq. As if those weren’t enough problems, the region also has Syria to its northwest where there are questions whether the U.S.-led coalition will remain.

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MESOPOTAMIA NEWS KURDISTAN : NECHIRVAN IN TURKEY

Nechirvan Barzani clarified his position

At a time when the Kurdish people are calling for the Kurdistan Democratic Party to clarify its position on the Turkish occupation’s attacks on the areas of the legitimate right to defense, the head of the regional government sits at the table of the killers of the Kurdish people, and journalists in response see that the party clarified its position.

KURDISTAN 05 Sep 2020, Sat – 10:37 2020-09-05T10:37:00 NEWS DESK, AKRAM BARAKAT

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MESOPOTAMIA NEWS PRESS SERVICE : – Arab press: Decisive visit to Russian delegation to Damascus, Turkish message to Macron via Barzani

ANHA –  5 Sept 2020 – Sources revealed that a high-level Russian delegation will visit Damascus next week, describing this visit as pivotal, while observers said that Turkey requested Nechirvan Idris Barzani in a hurry to deliver a message through this to Macron about influence in Iraq, while the Lebanese government is just around the corner.

 

WORLD-Middle East 05 Sep 2020, Sat – On Saturday morning, Arab newspapers touched upon the Russian moves in Syria, in addition to the meeting between Erdogan and Nechirvan Barzani, and the Lebanese crisis

Al-Sharq al-Awsat: A tripartite Russian delegation on a “pivotal visit” to Damascus

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MESOPOTAMIA NEWS TODAY : Nechirvan Barzani meets with Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara / Meeting contra PKK

5 Sept 2020 – MESOP – Iraqi Kurdistan Region president Nechirvan Barzani (L) with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Ankara, September 4, 2020. Photo: Kurdistan Presidency

ANKARA,— Iraqi Kurdistan Region president Nechirvan Barzani met with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a visit to Ankara on Friday, Kurdistan presidency reported.

According to the presidency statement, at the meeting, both sides reiterated their mutual willingness to strengthen bilateral relations between Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkey, particularly, in areas of trade and economic partnerships. The two sides also discussed investment and job creation opportunities by Turkish companies in the Kurdistan Region’s diverse sectors.

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Intel: US returns Baath Party archives to Iraq

MESOPOTAMIA NEWS : With Kanan Makiya’s helping hand

 (L-R 1st row) Mohammed Azawi Ali, Abdullah Kazim Ruwayyid and Saddam Hussein, (2nd row) Awad Hamed al-Bandar, Mizhar Abdullah Ruwayyid and (3rd row) Barzan Ibrahim, Ali Dayih Ali and Taha Yassin Ramadan, attend court as the prosecution began giving its closing arguments during the trial of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and seven members of his Baathist regime on June 19, 2006, in Baghdad, Iraq.

Sep 1, 2020 AL MONITOR – A US military cargo plane arrived in Baghdad on Monday carrying more than 6 million pages of Iraqi government records dating from the Saddam Hussein era and prior.

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MESOPOTAMIA NEWS : U.S. DOWNSHIFTING IN IRAQ / THE SOUFAN CENTER

 

Bottom Line Up Front:  1.

 

  • Plans to withdraw one-third of the U.S. force from Iraq indicates that exercising significant U.S influence in the country is no longer a major priority.
  • Iranian leaders anticipate that the reduction of U.S. forces in Iraq will benefit their efforts to dominate Iraqi politics.
  • The August 2020 visit to Washington of Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi marked the evolution of the U.S.-Iraq relationship into a long-term economic and security partnership.
  • The Trump administration will not commit to using U.S. forces to help the Kadhimi government rein in Iran-backed militias.
As of late August, a number of indicators collectively suggest that the Trump administration no longer considers exercising preponderant influence in Iraq to be a top priority. The Trump administration has viewed the U.S. role in Iraq as a key tool in its campaign of ‘maximum pressure’ to weaken Iran and roll back its regional influence. Yet, despite keeping over 5,000 U.S. troops at various Iraqi bases, Iran-backed forces have repeatedly attacked U.S. forces, sometimes killing U.S. and allied military personnel and damaging the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Baghdad airport, and other locations. When they have been undertaken, U.S. retaliation and Iraqi military operations against the militias have caused them to stand down, but the groups have always resumed their attacks after a brief period of quiescence.

In the context of his re-election campaign, President Trump faces a choice between continuing to battle Iran-backed forces and adhering to his promise to reduce U.S. involvement in the region’s ‘endless wars.’ The Trump administration appears to have chosen the latter, as demonstrated during President Trump’s August 20 meeting with visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, as well as subsequent decisions on U.S. troop deployments in Iraq. Answering questions alongside Kadhimi at the White House, President Trump said: ‘So, at some point, [U.S. forces] obviously will be gone [from Iraq]. We’ve brought [U.S. force levels] down to a very, very low level. We deal — where there are attacks [by Iran-backed militias], we take care of those attacks, and we take care of them very easily… In addition to that, Iraq has been very helpful, where necessary. But we have been taking our troops out of Iraq fairly rapidly, and we look forward to the day when we don’t have to be there. And hopefully Iraq can live their own lives and they can defend themselves, which they’ve been doing long before we got involved.’

In the days after the meeting, U.S. officials speaking on background confirmed reports that U.S. force levels would be reduced from the 5,200 in Iraq now to about 3,500 by November 2020. It was also reported that the 2,000 U.S. forces that were deployed at Camp Taji, north of Baghdad, had left that base; some were reportedly sent to the Kurdish-controlled autonomous region of northern Iraq, where Kurdish leaders deny the Shia Arab-dominated, Iran-backed militias the ability to operate. Iran’s semi-official media trumpeted the evacuation of Taji, which has come under repeated Iran-supported militia attacks, as a response to the early 2020 resolution in Iraq’s parliament that U.S. troops be asked to leave Iraq. The commanders of several pro-Iranian factions and militias are prominent in Iraq’s legislative body and from that perch they exert significant pressure on the Kadhimi government. Iran’s leaders calculate that a smaller U.S. military presence will translate into diminished U.S. political influence over Iraqi decision-making, as well as a reduced U.S. capacity to retaliate for Iran-backed attacks.

The Trump administration has sought to portray its decisions not as an abandonment of Iraq, but rather a transition to a long-term security and economic partnership. White House statements surrounding the Kadhimi visit highlighted the signing of energy and other economic agreements designed to reduce Iraq’s energy dependence on Iran, and on helping Iraq conduct free and fair early elections in 2021. President Trump and other U.S. officials commented during the Kadhimi visit that the United States would move to a train, equip, and advise role and would not necessarily conduct sustained operations against Iran-backed militia forces or remnants of the Islamic State organization. In that context, the U.S. troop drawdown puts remaining U.S. forces in a precarious position insofar as militia forces might increase their attacks on U.S. troops with less fear of U.S. retaliation. U.S. officials express confidence in the ability of Iraqi forces, particularly the Iraqi Counterterrorism Service, to deter or defeat militia attacks without direct U.S. backing. But the performance of Iraqi forces during the Islamic State offensive in 2014 gives cause to be concerned about Iraq’s ability to hold off a determined military challenge on its own.

 

 

MESOPOTAMIA NEWS BACKGROUNDER : WHY RUSSIA’S GREAT POWER GAME IN IRAQ MATTERS

by Anna Borshchevskaya  National Interest August 31, 2020

Moscow’s quietly growing influence will only prop up the country’s anti-American forces and worsen its struggles with corruption and ethnosectarian tension.

The United States has invested hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraqi security but increasingly faces competition for influence in Iraq from Russia. Moscow is playing a broad—though quiet—geopolitical game. What’s worse, this advancement has gone unanswered by top policymakers in Washington. Iraq is now led by a pro-American president and prime minister, Barham Salih and Mustafa al-Kadhimi, but the Kremlin knows they are in a precarious position and will continue to quietly vie for influence in the country. In light of al-Kadhimi’s visit to Washington last month, and the importance of broadening the US-Iraq relationship, Russia’s interests matter…

Anna Borshchevskaya is a senior fellow at The Washington Institute.

Read full text   https://nationalinterest.org/blog/middle-east-watch/why-russia%E2%80%99s-great-power-game-iraq-matters-%C2%A0-168051

Trump, Kadhimi launch new chapter in US-Iraq relations

MESOPOTAMIA NEWS : THE MOST CAPABLE US PRESIDENT EVER
 
A week or so after his administration helped broker the normalization of UAE-Israel ties, US President Donald Trump was focused again on the Middle East, promising a new course in US-Iraq relations in a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi.

Respect

In introducing Kadhimi at the White House on Thursday, Trump referred to the prime minister as “a very highly respected gentleman all over the Middle East, and respected very much by our country, too.”
Kadhimi, also the head of Iraq’s National Intelligence Service, is an independent in a country thick with well-worn ethnic and sectarian political alliances and loyalties.

He assumed the premiership in May after two other candidates failed to muster support following the resignation of Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi in November 2019.

Kadhimi took the job out of a sense of service, not entitlement. Upon taking office, he found nearly empty government coffers. His inbox included the COVID-19 pandemic, plummeting oil prices, nationwide protests demanding jobs and change and the intrusive role of Iranian-backed militias.

Although Kadhimi does not command a large or dominant political bloc, he has integrity, and that counts big time in Iraq. In order to pursue his reform agenda, he moves with an unusual combination of purpose, caution and consensus. And he is moving, pressing ahead with early parliamentary elections next year, and advocating political and economic reforms to secure Iraq’s future, including reining in rogue militias that attack US personnel, and assassins who kill activists and protesters, as Shelly Kittleson reports.

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