http://rt.com/op-edge/iraq-us-weapons-zangana-140/
RT: You must have been greatly relieved back in 2003 when the intervention began and US forces effectively won your freedom?
Haifa Zangana: No, no. I mean, we understood from the beginning – many Iraqis did, including myself – that this isn’t really liberation as it’s being claimed. This is an invasion. And there’s a difference between opposing Saddam [Hussein]’s regime and the occupying of your own country.
WASHINGTON — Facing a deadly resurgence of Al Qaeda in Iraq, President Obama signaled Friday that he would begin increasing U.S. military support for Baghdad after five years of reducing it.
The new U.S. plan represents a remarkable shift for Obama, whose administration trumpeted the 2011 withdrawal of the last U.S. troops from Iraq as a major achievement and has since shifted its attention to other regional challenges, such as Syria, Egypt and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Following a White House meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, Obama said he shared Maliki's fears about militants' growing foothold in Iraq's western region and would join the Iraqi leader's effort to crack down. Administration officials said this would include growing intelligence support and new weaponry.
"We had a lot of discussion about how we can work together to push back against that terrorist organization that operates not only in Iraq, but also poses a threat to the region and to the United States," Obama said.
Closer cooperation also marks an abrupt turnaround for Maliki, who openly opposed keeping even a limited number of U.S. soldiers in Iraq after 2011, insisting the country could take care of itself.
After nearly nine years of U.S. occupation, the prospect of closer U.S. military ties remains deeply unpopular with the Iraqi public. But violence in Iraq last month surged to the highest level since 2008, with 964 Iraqis killed, and some fear the country is slipping back into civil war.
Maliki badly needs the kind of help his country received from Washington from 2006 to 2009 in battling Sunni Muslim extremists.
And the Obama administration, despite a deep reluctance to become more entangled in the Middle East, believes it cannot afford a further strengthening of the Al Qaeda affiliate, which is also called the Islamic State of Iraq in the Levant.
Officials believe the group is responsible for the deaths of 7,000 Iraqis this year.
Administration officials say that although they are not ready to send soldiers to Iraq, they will push for Congress to give Iraq the Apache helicopters, missiles and other equipment it seeks and will step up intelligence support to help Baghdad find and destroy Al Qaeda bases.
The militant group "has a presence in terms of camps and training facilities and staging areas that the Iraqi forces are unable to target effectively," said a senior administration official who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue. Officials said they believed that Al Qaeda, once strongly established in the region, could seek to strike not only in Iraq, but far from its regional base.
The turmoil in Syria has added to the instability, with fighters and weaponry crossing over the border into Iraq.
The plans for Iraq illustrate the challenges the White House faces in its efforts to limit its Middle East involvement. The Obama administration has declared it will not allow Middle East problems to consume the president's remaining three years in office, but events in the region continue to draw attention.
Maliki, who had not visited the White House for two years, spent the week in Washington lobbying administration and congressional officials for more arms, intelligence help and training.
Iraqi officials said they did not ask for special forces or CIA advisors, but were not ruling out such things.
American drone strikes, carried out with the support of Maliki's government, are another option.
Maliki's critics, who see the Shiite Muslim leader as increasingly autocratic and unwilling to share power with Iraq's Sunni Arab and Kurdish minorities, oppose increased U.S. security support, fearing he might use American weapons to attack his domestic political rivals. But Maliki's aides said Iraq could turn to other world powers if the United States turned down its request.
In his appearance with Obama, Maliki said: "We have a friendship agreement, and we have a Strategic Framework Agreement, and we need to activate them."
Many members of Congress left meetings with Maliki this week angry and frustrated that the Iraqi leader had not done more to foster an inclusive government with his rivals, and they complained that Iraq continues to allow Iran to fly arms over its airspace to help the Syrian government against rebels there.
Senior U.S. officials say that Iraq has been reducing the number of Iranian overflights and that they will press Maliki to curtail them further as part of the increased coordination.
This week, the heads of the Senate armed services and foreign relations committees wrote a letter to Obama pressing him to demand more concessions from Maliki. Yet they urged further U.S. counter-terrorism assistance.
The new militant threat is highly sectarian, killing Shiite civilians even in playgrounds and at weddings and funerals. There were 38 suicide attacks in October alone, officials say.
U.S. officials are telling Iraq that it cannot relieve the threat by military attacks alone, and that it needs to work with Sunni leaders and give them more power, as it did during the height of the carnage in 2006-08.
Iraqi officials told their U.S. counterparts that they were willing to try this approach.
Obama gently pressed for more inclusivity from Maliki, whose government fears a return to power of the Sunni leaders who dominated the Shiite majority during the rule of Saddam Hussein.
"We are deeply committed to seeing an Iraq that is inclusive, is democratic, and is prosperous," Obama said.
Maliki closed his comments by saying, for the first time in English, "So I might see you in Iraq?"
"Maybe sometime soon," Obama replied quietly, according to a transcript.
US weapons won’t solve Iraq’s security issue, will only increase civilian deaths
Published time: November 02, 2013 23:35
US weapons will not help the Iraqi government improve the country’s security situation. Instead, Iraq needs to gain the trust of the people by ending violence against them, Kurdish novelist Haifa Zangana told RT.
October was the bloodiest month in Iraq in five years. Data from the country's authorities puts the death toll at over 1,000 people. Ninety percent of those were civilian casualties.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has arrived in Washington to request US hardware to tackle Al-Qaeda in the country. Iraq is asking for Apache helicopters, F-16 fighter jets, and air-defense systems.
But Guardian contributor and former prisoner of Saddam Hussein's regime, Haifa Zangana, believes the many factions in the country’s government don’t care about the safety of citizens. Instead, he believes they are only interested in fighting each other for power.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has arrived in Washington to request US hardware to tackle Al-Qaeda in the country. Iraq is asking for Apache helicopters, F-16 fighter jets, and air-defense systems.
But Guardian contributor and former prisoner of Saddam Hussein's regime, Haifa Zangana, believes the many factions in the country’s government don’t care about the safety of citizens. Instead, he believes they are only interested in fighting each other for power.
RT: You must have been greatly relieved back in 2003 when the intervention began and US forces effectively won your freedom?
Haifa Zangana: No, no. I mean, we understood from the beginning – many Iraqis did, including myself – that this isn’t really liberation as it’s being claimed. This is an invasion. And there’s a difference between opposing Saddam [Hussein]’s regime and the occupying of your own country.
RT: Ten years on, what is your assessment of the security situation right now?
HZ: It’s absolutely terrible because it’s affecting daily life from morning until night. And every single hour of the day, people are unsafe to do anything. Whoever goes out, they don’t know whether they [will] come back safely or not. There is distrust of the regime and terrorist attacks - mostly targeting innocent people rather than other forces. So it’s a huge decline in the security. And the feeling of unsafety is driving people mad on the human level.
RT: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has asked the US for help. Could that mean a second intervention?
HZ: He’s asking to be supplied by more advanced technology in order to, he says, fight Al-Qaeda. But what he’s not mentioning is that it’s not just Al-Qaeda that is active in Iraq. Terrorist acts are part and parcel of the regime itself. There are about six other organizations or militia - they are attached to the political process and the regime itself – that are acting in a very violent way against Iraqi civilians. There’s the al-Mahdi Army militia. There’s the Badr Brigade. I can go on and on and continue counting many others. So asking for extra weapons is in fact adding to the crimes of the US since the occupation of 2003 that was committed against the Iraqi people.
Until now, the weapons available for the regime - the Maliki regime - have been used in a big way against the civilians themselves when they are demonstrating and when they are in vigils. We saw that clearly in April in Hawijah, north of Baghdad, where a vigil camp was attacked by security forces. Fifty-one people were killed. They were demonstrators. And many others - like three times that figure - were wounded. And as we know, because of the lack of health service in Iraq, many of the wounded will usually end up dead.
RT: Why can't the government cope on its own?
HZ: The government doesn’t represent the people. The government is quite busy with squabbling among the alliance – it’s a form of alliance or some political parties. Most of them have got militias and they are very busy fighting each other. This inter-fighting is causing a lot of the horrendous violence against civilians. It’s not the lack of weapons, it’s the trust of the people. It’s the real intention and the work of the regime itself and the many political parties there in order to ensure the security of the people. The only safeguard for any government in the world to reduce terrorism – whatever that is – is to build up the trust with their own people. And the Maliki regime with all its militia has failed tremendously in that aspect.
HZ: It’s absolutely terrible because it’s affecting daily life from morning until night. And every single hour of the day, people are unsafe to do anything. Whoever goes out, they don’t know whether they [will] come back safely or not. There is distrust of the regime and terrorist attacks - mostly targeting innocent people rather than other forces. So it’s a huge decline in the security. And the feeling of unsafety is driving people mad on the human level.
RT: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has asked the US for help. Could that mean a second intervention?
HZ: He’s asking to be supplied by more advanced technology in order to, he says, fight Al-Qaeda. But what he’s not mentioning is that it’s not just Al-Qaeda that is active in Iraq. Terrorist acts are part and parcel of the regime itself. There are about six other organizations or militia - they are attached to the political process and the regime itself – that are acting in a very violent way against Iraqi civilians. There’s the al-Mahdi Army militia. There’s the Badr Brigade. I can go on and on and continue counting many others. So asking for extra weapons is in fact adding to the crimes of the US since the occupation of 2003 that was committed against the Iraqi people.
Until now, the weapons available for the regime - the Maliki regime - have been used in a big way against the civilians themselves when they are demonstrating and when they are in vigils. We saw that clearly in April in Hawijah, north of Baghdad, where a vigil camp was attacked by security forces. Fifty-one people were killed. They were demonstrators. And many others - like three times that figure - were wounded. And as we know, because of the lack of health service in Iraq, many of the wounded will usually end up dead.
RT: Why can't the government cope on its own?
HZ: The government doesn’t represent the people. The government is quite busy with squabbling among the alliance – it’s a form of alliance or some political parties. Most of them have got militias and they are very busy fighting each other. This inter-fighting is causing a lot of the horrendous violence against civilians. It’s not the lack of weapons, it’s the trust of the people. It’s the real intention and the work of the regime itself and the many political parties there in order to ensure the security of the people. The only safeguard for any government in the world to reduce terrorism – whatever that is – is to build up the trust with their own people. And the Maliki regime with all its militia has failed tremendously in that aspect.
http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-us-iraq-20131102,0,5669333,print.story
U.S. to boost military aid to Iraq
In response to the resurgence of Al Qaeda in Iraq, President Obama promises to increase intelligence support and provide new weaponry to Baghdad. The move is a notable shift for his administration.
By Paul Richter
6:44 PM PDT, November 1, 2013
| advertisement |
WASHINGTON — Facing a deadly resurgence of Al Qaeda in Iraq, President Obama signaled Friday that he would begin increasing U.S. military support for Baghdad after five years of reducing it.
The new U.S. plan represents a remarkable shift for Obama, whose administration trumpeted the 2011 withdrawal of the last U.S. troops from Iraq as a major achievement and has since shifted its attention to other regional challenges, such as Syria, Egypt and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Following a White House meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, Obama said he shared Maliki's fears about militants' growing foothold in Iraq's western region and would join the Iraqi leader's effort to crack down. Administration officials said this would include growing intelligence support and new weaponry.
"We had a lot of discussion about how we can work together to push back against that terrorist organization that operates not only in Iraq, but also poses a threat to the region and to the United States," Obama said.
Closer cooperation also marks an abrupt turnaround for Maliki, who openly opposed keeping even a limited number of U.S. soldiers in Iraq after 2011, insisting the country could take care of itself.
After nearly nine years of U.S. occupation, the prospect of closer U.S. military ties remains deeply unpopular with the Iraqi public. But violence in Iraq last month surged to the highest level since 2008, with 964 Iraqis killed, and some fear the country is slipping back into civil war.
Maliki badly needs the kind of help his country received from Washington from 2006 to 2009 in battling Sunni Muslim extremists.
And the Obama administration, despite a deep reluctance to become more entangled in the Middle East, believes it cannot afford a further strengthening of the Al Qaeda affiliate, which is also called the Islamic State of Iraq in the Levant.
Officials believe the group is responsible for the deaths of 7,000 Iraqis this year.
Administration officials say that although they are not ready to send soldiers to Iraq, they will push for Congress to give Iraq the Apache helicopters, missiles and other equipment it seeks and will step up intelligence support to help Baghdad find and destroy Al Qaeda bases.
The militant group "has a presence in terms of camps and training facilities and staging areas that the Iraqi forces are unable to target effectively," said a senior administration official who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue. Officials said they believed that Al Qaeda, once strongly established in the region, could seek to strike not only in Iraq, but far from its regional base.
The turmoil in Syria has added to the instability, with fighters and weaponry crossing over the border into Iraq.
The plans for Iraq illustrate the challenges the White House faces in its efforts to limit its Middle East involvement. The Obama administration has declared it will not allow Middle East problems to consume the president's remaining three years in office, but events in the region continue to draw attention.
Maliki, who had not visited the White House for two years, spent the week in Washington lobbying administration and congressional officials for more arms, intelligence help and training.
Iraqi officials said they did not ask for special forces or CIA advisors, but were not ruling out such things.
American drone strikes, carried out with the support of Maliki's government, are another option.
Maliki's critics, who see the Shiite Muslim leader as increasingly autocratic and unwilling to share power with Iraq's Sunni Arab and Kurdish minorities, oppose increased U.S. security support, fearing he might use American weapons to attack his domestic political rivals. But Maliki's aides said Iraq could turn to other world powers if the United States turned down its request.
In his appearance with Obama, Maliki said: "We have a friendship agreement, and we have a Strategic Framework Agreement, and we need to activate them."
Many members of Congress left meetings with Maliki this week angry and frustrated that the Iraqi leader had not done more to foster an inclusive government with his rivals, and they complained that Iraq continues to allow Iran to fly arms over its airspace to help the Syrian government against rebels there.
Senior U.S. officials say that Iraq has been reducing the number of Iranian overflights and that they will press Maliki to curtail them further as part of the increased coordination.
This week, the heads of the Senate armed services and foreign relations committees wrote a letter to Obama pressing him to demand more concessions from Maliki. Yet they urged further U.S. counter-terrorism assistance.
The new militant threat is highly sectarian, killing Shiite civilians even in playgrounds and at weddings and funerals. There were 38 suicide attacks in October alone, officials say.
U.S. officials are telling Iraq that it cannot relieve the threat by military attacks alone, and that it needs to work with Sunni leaders and give them more power, as it did during the height of the carnage in 2006-08.
Iraqi officials told their U.S. counterparts that they were willing to try this approach.
Obama gently pressed for more inclusivity from Maliki, whose government fears a return to power of the Sunni leaders who dominated the Shiite majority during the rule of Saddam Hussein.
"We are deeply committed to seeing an Iraq that is inclusive, is democratic, and is prosperous," Obama said.
Maliki closed his comments by saying, for the first time in English, "So I might see you in Iraq?"
"Maybe sometime soon," Obama replied quietly, according to a transcript.
No comments:
Post a Comment