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Posted on Jul 28, 2015 in Anbar, Elections-U.S., Foreign Policy Issues, Iran, Iraq, ISIS, Israel, Kobani, Kurdistan, Middle East, Turkey, Uncategorized | 0 comments

Turkey finally joins fight against ISIS. Kurdish PKK attack Turkey. Iraqi Conundrum made more complicated.

What a merry go-around. The Kurdish Peshmerga have proven to be the best Iraqi fighters against ISIS. The Kurds have been asking for weapons from us directly, i.e., not handed out piecemeal from the weak Shia dominated Iraqi government. Something we should do, right? But wait. The Turks don’t want us to do that. We have been trying to get Turkey, the biggest power in the immediate region and a member of N.A.T.O., to let us use a base in Turkey for our air strikes against ISIS. We have also been after Turkey to help directly in the fight against ISIS. This past week they finally entered the fray, in a limited way, after attacks by ISIS on a Turkish city that lies on their border with Syria. They also finally agreed to allow us to use the air base, in exchange for us trying to create a safe zone in Northern Syria. So why don’t they want us to provide heavy military supplies directly to the Kurds to...

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Posted on Jun 17, 2015 in Anbar, Foreign Policy Issues, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Middle East, militia, Ramadi, Shia, Sunni, tribal, Yemen | 0 comments

Attempt to retake Ramadi with Shia militia (and some Sunnis begins). Yemen update: Peace talks in Geneva

    In recent weeks, we have tried to explain the fall of Ramadi in the Anbar Provence of Iraq and the crisis in Yemen where the Outhouse’s had effectively taken over the government and the key cities of Sana’a and Aden. In Ramadi, the government’s army forces, who received training at the hands of the U.S. Army trainers, once again ran from their positions leaving many of their U.S. provided arms behind for the successful ISIS victors. In Yemen, the sobriquets “terrorist” and “Iranian surrogate” were loosely applied to the Houthis. This ignored the fact that the Shia Houthis were formed to fight al Qaeda in Yemen and were supported by the former leader of Yemen, the Sunni Ali Abdullah Saleh. I argued that historically the Houthis were always willing to negotiate, recognizing the minority position that Shia occupy in Yemen. In Ramadi as in the rest of Anbar, the population is overwhelmingly Sunni. The government forces are Shia and not very effective at fighting ISIS. The key...

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Posted on Jun 10, 2015 in Anbar, Foreign Policy Issues, Iran, Iraq, President Obama, Ramadi, Shia, Sunni, tribal | 0 comments

Ramadi disaster awaiting? Why are we still committed to nation-building in Iraq?

  We keep hearing that we are not in the business of “nation-building.” Yet our insistence that all military aid must go through the national government in order to provide a unified, integrated Iraq, clearly is nation-building. And like many such efforts, this one seems elusive to the edge of calling it impossible. We’ve had how many years now, from Bush to Obama, where the Shia dominated government has failed to take the suggested steps towards integrating the Kurds and Sunnis into a national unified Iraq? Simply put, the Shia national forces have no will to fight. And the Shia don’t trust the Sunni Militia after years of Saddam Hussein. Hussein was a Sunni, though he eschewed any religious power in his Baath Party rule of Iraq. Embarrassed by their troops’ helter-skelter retreats in Mosul, and more recently in Ramadi where they left valuable weapons behind in their rush to run from the battles—even when they significantly out numbered their ISIS opponents–Shia governmental leaders have yielded the battlefield to...

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Posted on May 12, 2015 in Elections-Non-U.S., Foreign Policy Issues, Israel, Middle East, President Obama, Yemen | 0 comments

Cease fire in Yemen: false alarm or the beginning of a choppy road to peace (for a while)

  Yemen III In our April13 post, we noted that the Houthis were considerably more than just an Iranian surrogate in Yemen. Indeed, we pointed out, the Houthis, as part of the minority Shia were basically concerned with fairness for their people in a Sunni dominated country. About forty percent of Yemen’s population is Shia. In fact, since their formation in 2004, they had been fighting the al Qaeda Sunni militant jihadists in the North (practically they were behind the group Believing Youth, formed in Sana’a in the early to mid 90’s). And, recall, the Yemen version of Al Qaeda had just seen their numbers and power increased due to a merger with Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia forming Al Qaeda for the entire Arabian Peninsula, but based in Yemen. Most of this activity took place in North Yemen. Under an Arab League sponsored armistice, and with more forceful pressure from Saudi Arabia, the two non-Houthi key figures contending for power were named head of the new government, namely...

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Posted on Apr 21, 2015 in Foreign Policy Issues, Israel, Middle East, President Obama | 1 comment

Is the fall of Ramadi as unimportant as the U.S. claims? Facing ISIS-the Iraqi conundrum.

    As I write this post, Ramadi, the largest city and capital of al Anbar Governate, is about to fall to ISIS. Part of the Sunni Triangle, Ramadi is strategically located on the Euphrates River, only 70 miles from Baghdad. And yet Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey said its loss was “not symbolic in any way.” Perhaps his politically ignorant comment was made to downplay probable fall-out from if Ramadi is lost. If Dempsey truly believes that this city, which is the largest Dulaimi tribal populated one in the Triangle, isn’t symbolically important in the fight against ISIS, then it is no surprise that ISIS has found such fertile ground in the Sunni dominated parts of Iraq. Let’s hope that General Dempsey will be overruled. In order to grasp the symbolic, if not strategic, role that Ramadi and the rest of the Sunni Triangle plays in the fight against ISIS, it may be worthwhile to recollect the conundrum that we face in Iraq. Our Allies...

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