130 more U.S. military advisers arrive in northern Iraq
Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY 11:08 p.m. EDT August 12, 2014 AFP_532392134_66435148
(Photo: AHMAD AL-RUBAYE, AFP/Getty Images)
ABOARD MILITARY AIRCRAFT, OVER THE BERING SEA — The military has sent 130 additional advisers to northern Iraq to plan for the evacuation of refugees under siege by Islamist militants, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced Tuesday.
"This is not a combat boots on the ground kind of operation," Hagel told Marines at Camp Pendleton in California.
The Marines and special operations forces have been sent to the city of Irbil in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq to assess the humanitarian crisis in the Sinjar Mountains and ways to end it, said a senior Defense Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk publicly about the mission.
USA TODAY earlier reported that the 130 advisers had been sent to Iraq before Hagel's announcement.
There were about 300 U.S. military advisers already in Iraq, as well as other troops there to protect the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
The plight of the refugees prompted President Obama to order both airstrikes against the Islamic State militants and humanitarian airdrops there last week. In an interview with USA TODAY on Tuesday, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the military's effort there could take months but will be limited. He added that the effect of the airstrikes had blunted the momentum of the militant group, and shipping heavier arms to Kurdish allies will help solidify the gains.
The survival of the refugees, including members of the Yazidi sect, has been assured for now, Dempsey said, but their fate and rolling back the gains the Islamic State has made — such as seizing the city of Mosul — will require the new Iraqi government to reach out to Sunnis and Kurds.
"The crisis has been abated but not solved," said Dempsey, who is traveling to a series of meetings in Vietnam.
Also Tuesday, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called on the White House to seek congressional approval for the airstrikes in Iraq. Kaine supports the humanitarian mission but emphasized that the administration needs congressional authority to continue the attacks.
"This is especially the case since the president has indicated that our renewed military engagement in Iraq could be a long-term project," Kaine said in a statement. "I have long stressed that Congress must formally approve the initiation of significant military action."
In the interview, Dempsey talked about the military's mission in Iraq, the threat from the Islamic State and what will be needed to confront it.
He described the Pentagon's role as "limited but I think appropriately so." Its unique capabilities in spy and surveillance aircraft, logistics and targeted airstrikes have filled critical gaps that Iraqi and Kurdish forces could not, he said.
"You hear the term mission creep beginning to make its way around the airwaves," Dempsey said. "What we do is mission match."
Airstrikes in the region won't be needed "in perpetuity" to prevent the slaughter of refugees or to defend Irbil, he said. Instead, the mission could take months.
The threat from the Islamic State has occupied Dempsey — and the Pentagon's attention — for more than a year, he said. Its apocalyptic vision poses a threat, for now, to Iraq and Syria. Unchecked, the group could attack Israel and, ultimately, the United States, he said.
They have successfully co-opted, or coerced, many of the 20 million disenfranchised Sunni Muslims living in Syria and Iraq, he said.
"This is a group with a long-term vision," Dempsey said. "And the long term vision is completely antithetical to any of our values."
Airstrikes have had the effect of ending what has been a long winning streak for the Islamic State, he said. The effect has encouraged Middle East and European allies to offer heavier weapons and training to the Kurds' peshmerga fighters, he said.
"The airstrikes have made it clear both to the Iraqi security forces and to the pesh and to (the Islamic State) that they're no longer uncontested," Dempsey said. "The pace at which they were advancing has been abated. It doesn't mean it will stay abated."
The Kurds will be receiving armor-piercing weapons to attack militant vehicles seized from the Iraqi army, rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns, Dempsey said. He described the effort to arm them as "ongoing" without indicating who was providing the weapons.
Demspey expressed optimism that the new Iraqi government would reach out to Sunnis and Kurds and take on the fight. Earlier this summer, they folded quickly, giving up Mosul without a real fight.
If Iraq does not form an inclusive, effective government, military efforts there won't have a lasting effect.
"Then all we're really doing," Dempsey said, "is painting over the rust."
France Plans Arms Shipments to Kurdish Forces in Iraq
By SCOTT SAYARE and ALAN COWELLAUG. 13, 2014
PARIS — Breaking ranks with other European countries, France announced on Wednesday that it would send arms to the embattled Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq threatened by Sunni militants who have also encircled refugees on a remote mountaintop.
“In order to respond to the urgent needs expressed by the Kurdistan regional authorities, the president has decided, in agreement with Baghdad, to deliver arms in the coming hours,” said a statement from the office of President François Hollande.
The presidential statement said that the population of Iraqi Kurdistan was facing a “catastrophic situation” and that arms deliveries would be coordinated with government officials in Baghdad.
Mr. Hollande noted his support for Iraq’s designated new prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, and called for the quick establishment of a unity government capable of repelling advances by militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. Continue reading the main story
The announcement came a day after the European Union failed to establish a common policy among its 28 members but agreed that individual states could, in agreement with Baghdad, send weapons to the Kurdish pesh merga forces.
The French move also coincided with what seemed to be the gathering pace of American efforts to help evacuate thousands of Yazidi people trapped on Mount Sinjar, possibly by establishing a humanitarian corridor to save them from militants laying siege to them.
In London, the British authorities, facing a mounting drumbeat of calls on Wednesday for stronger military action in northern Iraq, announced plans to send a “small number” of Chinook helicopters and to transport military equipment supplied by other countries to Kurdish fighters in the American-led campaign against Sunni militants, officials said.
But the government in London continued to insist that it was focused on humanitarian relief efforts, notably to get water and other supplies to thousands of Yazidis besieged on the arid, baking heights of Mount Sinjar, rather than on offering direct military involvement.
In recent days, with many government leaders including Prime Minister David Cameron on vacation, Britain has slowly stepped up its relief effort, sending three Tornado warplanes on surveillance missions to support airdrops by C-130 military cargo planes.
“Our focus remains the humanitarian situation, particularly those trapped on Mount Sinjar,” Mr. Cameron’s office said in a statement .. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cobr-meeting-on-iraq-12-august-2014 . “Three U.K. aid drops have now taken place, with two C-130s delivering 3,180 reusable water containers, filled with a total of 15,900 liters of clean water, and 816 solar lanterns overnight.”
“We will continue with these deliveries,” the statement said. “And, as part of our efforts to alleviate humanitarian suffering in Iraq, we are sending a small number of Chinook helicopters to the region for use if we decide we need further humanitarian relief options.”
Chinooks are twin-rotor heavy-lift helicopters often used to transport troops and equipment. Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story
France was also planning a second shipment of 20 tons of humanitarian aid, including medicine, tents and water treatment equipment, that was expected to arrive in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, on Wednesday, the Foreign Ministry in Paris said.
The shipment would help 50,000 people and more aid would be sent in coming days “to aid populations in serious danger,” The Associated Press reported.
The deployment brought the number of American military personnel in Iraq to more than 1,000, less than three years after the last combat troops left the country. A senior administration official also said the American military was drawing up plans for consideration by President Obama that could include American ground troops in what is likely to be an international effort to rescue the refugees.
Around 900 American military advisers and security personnel were already in Iraq working with Iraqi security forces and protecting American personnel at the embassy in Baghdad and at other sites.
Col. Tim Collins of the British Army, who gained prominence in the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, said the British aid effort was a “pebble in the ocean” compared to what was needed, saying the government had “left for lunch” while politicians shied from a moral obligation to help arm and train the Kurdish pesh merga forces.
The newspaper also quoted Gen. Sir Mike Jackson, head of the British Army during the Iraq invasion, as saying: “Given our history over recent years in Iraq, we have a moral duty to do what we can on humanitarian grounds. I would have no difficulty at all in saying that we should be alongside the United States and up the British ante to the use of air power, on humanitarian grounds.”
Even within the Anglican Church, there were voices raising the possibility of a stronger military response.
The Rev. Rose Hudson-Wilkin, a chaplain in Parliament, said in a television interview: “When you hear of such tragedy unfolding before your very eyes, you cannot help but see this is genocide. And I just think that Britain, the European Union, the world community, we have got to respond.”
She added: “Maybe we need to go to the extent of military action, I don’t know. But we need to somehow go to the assistance of these people.”
Some lawmakers have also called for Parliament to be recalled from its summer recess to debate the possibility of a broad international campaign against the Sunni militants.
Scott Sayare reported from Paris and Alan Cowell from London.
Nuri Kamal al-Maliki Credit Khalid Mohammed/Associated Press
By TIM ARANGO AUG. 14, 2014
BAGHDAD — Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki on Thursday night said he agreed to relinquish power, state television reported, a move that came after days of crisis in which Mr. Maliki’s deployment of extra security forces around the capital raised worries of a military coup.
While the country is not at peace, Mr. Maliki’s decision, nonetheless, appeared to pave the way for the first truly peaceful transition of power, based on democratic elections and without the guiding hand of American military forces, in modern Iraq’s history.
In stepping aside Mr. Maliki agreed to end his legal challenge to the nomination of his replacement, which was made on Monday when Iraq’s president nominated Haider al-Abadi, a member of Mr. Maliki’s own Shiite Islamist Dawa Party.
“Maliki steps down as prime minister in favor of Abadi,” the state television said on its Arabic-language news crawler.
Mr. Maliki’s decision came after days of negotiations with his former Shiite allies, who urged Mr. Maliki to give up in the face of growing international opposition to his rule, including from the United States and Iran, and the sense among most Iraqi leaders that his removal was necessary to bring the country together in the face of an onslaught by Sunni militants with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Mr. Abadi, according to the constitution, has 30 days from the time of his appointment – which was Monday – to form a new government. During that time, Mr. Maliki remains the caretaker prime minister, and the commander-in-chief of the military.
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