Election Upset in Iraq

It's probably more a statement of the poor quality of Western reporting on Iraq -- this morning the only story I could locate about Saturday's parliamentary elections was from from Reuters, "Cleric Sadr, in surprise comeback, seems set to win Iraq election" -- than an actual upset by Muqtada al-Sadr's Alliance of Revolutionaries for Reform coalition:

In the first election since Islamic State was defeated in the country, Shi’ite militia chief Hadi al-Amiri’s bloc, which is backed by Iran, was in second place, while Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, once seen as the front-runner, trailed in third position.

The preliminary results were based on a count of more than 95 percent of the votes cast in 10 of Iraq’s 18 provinces.

Unlike Abadi, a rare ally of both the United States and Iran, Sadr is an opponent of both of the countries which have wielded influence in Iraq since a U.S.-led invasion toppled Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein and ushered the Shi’ite majority to power.

[snip]

Turnout was 44.52 percent with 92 percent of votes counted, the Independent High Electoral Commission said - that was significantly lower than in previous elections. Full results are due to be officially announced later on Monday.

Sadr and Amiri both came in first in four of the 10 provinces where votes were counted, but the cleric’s bloc won significantly more votes in the capital, Baghdad, which has the highest number of seats.

A document provided to Reuters by a candidate in Baghdad that was also circulating among journalists and analysts showed results from all 18 provinces.

Reuters could not independently verify the document’s authenticity but the results in it showed Sadr had won the nationwide popular vote with more than 1.3 million votes and gained 54 of parliament’s 329 seats.

He was followed by Amiri with more than 1.2 million votes, translating into 47 seats, and Abadi with more than 1 million votes and 42 seats, according to calculations made by Reuters based on the document. Ex-Prime Miniser Nuri al-Maliki, a close ally of Iran like Amiri, came in fourth with 25 seats.

Winning the largest number of seats does not automatically guarantee that Sadr will be able to hand-pick a prime minister. The other winning blocs would have to agree on the nomination.

In a 2010 election, Vice President Ayad Allawi’s group won the largest number of seats, albeit with a narrow margin, but he was blocked from becoming prime minister for which he blamed Tehran.

And a similar fate could befall Sadr. Iran has publicly stated it would not allow his bloc to govern and may try to form a governing coalition between its allies, Amiri and Maliki.

“We will not allow liberals and communists to govern in Iraq,” Ali Akbar Velayati, top adviser to the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in February.

His statement, which sparked criticism by Iraqi figures, was referring to the electoral alliance between Sadr, the Iraqi Communist Party and other secular groups who joined protests organized by Sadr in 2016 to press the government to see through a move to stem endemic corruption.

Iraqi Communist Party Secretary General Raed Fahmy told Reuters the vote in favor of the Sadrist list, backed by his group, ‘’is is a clear message that we must have balanced relations with all (foreign countries) based non-interference in Iraq’s internal affairs.’’

‘’Everybody is welcome to provide support to Iraq, but not at the expense of its sovereignty and independence,’’ he added.

During the campaign, frustrated Iraqis of all shades complained about their political elite’s systematic patronage, bad governance and corruption, saying they didn’t receive any benefits of their country’s oil wealth.

‘’The importance of this vote is that it is a clear message that the people wants to change the system of governance which has produced corruption and weakened state institutions,’’ said Fahmy. ‘’It is a message to provide services to the people, health and education, and to reduce social disparities.’’

These parliamentary elections must be seen as a solid defeat of the U.S.-Saudi-Israeli goal of Balkanizing Iraq. Clearly the Islamic State was a GCC-supported project to create a Sunnistan out of Iraq and Syria. It partially succeeded in Syria with U.S. troops and air power controlling one-third of the country and a hefty chunk of turf along the Iraq border.

But the citizens of Iraq are more committed to their sovereignty and national independence than at any time since the U.S. invasion. The defeat of the Salafist mercenaries played a key role in this renewal of national purpose. The same thing can be said of neighboring Syria.

The U.S.-Israeli-Saudi idea to scrap the Sykes-Picot Middle East is proving difficult to implement. It's actually reinvigorating allegiance to these old nationalist constructs.

The problem for the United States and its clients is that it has force but it can't actually hold territory, absent U.S. troops. The Salafis have proven incapable. The Israelis are too busy slaughtering Palestinians in Gaza.

The United States remains the only option for GCC states and Israel. And right now there is not enough of an anti-war movement in the U.S. to block another war from kicking off.

Big Win for Catalan Independence

The independence referendum yesterday in Catalonia was a success. The Catalan government announced that over 90 percent of almost 2.3 millions voters supported independence, this despite the mobilization of the Guardia Civil by the conservative prime minister Mariano Rajoy. Images beamed across the globe showed peaceful citizens attempting to vote being met by black-clad security officers in riot gear administering blows with truncheons and firing rubber bullets.

The old slogan from the streets during the WTO ministerial in Seattle came back to me -- "This is what democracy looks like!" It's a bad day for the Washington-Brussels consensus when Telesur can publish a headline like "Maduro to Spanish President Rajoy: Who's the Dictator Now?" and when The New York Times publishes within the first six paragraphs of its story ("Catalonia’s Independence Vote Descends Into Chaos and Clashes," Raphael Minder and Ellen Barry) that more than 750 people were injured in the crackdown.

Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont is looking for the European Union to condemn the violence, according to this morning's story by Raphael Minder, "Catalonia Leaders Seek to Make Independence Referendum Binding":

Mr. Puigdemont is committed to declaring independence, but he is also pressuring the international community to mediate in the conflict and to condemn the Madrid-ordered police clampdown.

“The European Union cannot now continue to look the other side,” Mr. Puigdemont said around midnight Sunday, although the European bloc has shown no sign so far that it was willing to support the separatist movement.

In a statement, the European Commission — the executive arm of the bloc — called for “unity and stability,” but it showed no sign that it would reverse its position and intervene on behalf of supporters of independence.

The commission described the dispute as “an internal matter for Spain,” and reiterated its warning that an independent Catalonia would not be part of the European Union.

Puigdemont will wait in vain for Brussels to say a cross word about Rajoy's crackdown. I can't help but note the contrast between Iraq and Spain. What would have happened if Iraqi prime minister Haider al-Abadi had sent security forces into Kirkuk -- a city not part of the Kurdistan Regional Government, but one included in Masoud Barzani's independence referendum nonetheless -- to block the the vote? Almost certainly the European Commission would have criticized the use of violence, even though the Kurds illegally occupy the city and siphon off it's oil wealth.

What now? Puigdemont will declare independence in the next two days. Rajoy, joined by the feckless Socialists, will counter that the declaration is meaningless since the referendum was fraudulent -- unverified, illegal, its list of registered voters based on a contested census.

But with the number of injuries Catalans sustained, they will be united, at least in the near term, in the defense of their independence.

KRG Independence Referendum Continuation of Caliphate's Political Project: Dismemberment of Iraq

You can usually infer what is troubling the Deep State by what is omitted from Foreign Policy's daily Situation Report. This morning there is zero mention of the ongoing story of Monday's independence referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan (there was a brief mention of it yesterday). The results of the referendum supposedly will be announced today. Already officials of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) have leaked to the press that the vote is overwhelmingly "Yes" to independence.

The response from KRG's neighbors has been predictable. Turkey and Iraq are conducting military drills on KRG's northern border. Erdogan threatens war. Iran has banned flights to Iraqi Kurdistan. Iraqi prime minister Haider al-Abadi has demanded the return of the international airports by Friday. Iraq's parliament has asked Abadi to send troops to secure the oil-rich multi-ethnic city of Kirkuk. KRG seized Kirkuk, basically in coordination with ISIS when the jihadis captured Mosul, back in 2014.

Mention of this by David Zucchino, in his story "Iraq Orders Kurdistan to Surrender Its Airports," fails to emphasize the simultaneity of the ISIS-Kurdish blitz:

As the Islamic State rose in northern Iraq in 2014, Kurdish fighters took advantage of the chaos, and in some cases of fleeing Iraqi troops, to expand the Kurdish territory by 40 percent.

We need to interpret the independence referendum as a continuation of the political program of the caliphate. The caliphate was always a GCC project designed to dismember sovereign nations aligned with Iran; an independent Kurdistan, or several independent Kurdish states, accomplishes this.

The U.S. position on the referendum is clearly duplicitous. While the U.S. is officially opposed, one can divine its tacit approval from The New York Times' serially sympathetic coverage of the referendum, captured in a previous Zucchino story, "As Kurds Celebrate Independence Vote, Neighbors Threaten Military Action." The Kurds are presented as victims of Iraqi genocide.

Often the most reliable way to ascertain U.S. policy is look at its organs of propaganda.

The Saudis Favor Hillary: The Erasure of Obama's Legacy and the Coming Expansion of War in the Greater Middle East

Obama has three "legacy" achievements: 1) the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a.k.a., Obamacare; 2) ending the U.S. occupation of Iraq; and 3) the deal with Iran to curtail its nuclear program.

With SecDef Ash Carter in Baghdad today promising Iraqi prime minister Abadi even more of a military commitment in the run up to the assault on ISIS-held Mosul, legacy #2 can be erased from Obama's list of accomplishments. At this point there is little doubt that the U.S. is positioning itself to take the lead on the recapture of Mosul so as to be better able to dictate terms on Iraq and Syria in a world after Sykes-Picot. In a Reuters story this morning, "U.S. Defence Chief Offers Iraq More Help, Possibly Troops-Officials," an unnamed Pentagon official pretty well sums up the Obama administration "all in" position with regards to Mosul:

"The fight of Iraq is the fight for Mosul. Mosul is the end game in Iraq," a senior U.S. defence official said, on condition of anonymity. "It’s a very large urban scenario ... We are going to need to be more aggressive, the Iraqis are asking us to be more aggressive.”

The caveat here is the fight for U.S. hegemony in the region is the fight for Mosul. A tidy U.S.-led victory, a la what Russia has achieved next door in Syria in Aleppo Province and Palmyra, will translate into a long-term military presence; a messy campaign where Iranian-backed militias do most of the fighting and the city is largely destroyed like Ramadi complicates things somewhat, not the least of which is an increase in refugees to an already post-Schengen Europe. Either way the United States will occupy Iraq for some time.

Another erasure from Obama's legacy list is the ACA. For an excellent primer on why Obamacare is headed for the dump, read "News About Obamacare Has Been Bad Lately. How Bad?," an interview with reporters Reed Abelson and Margot Sanger-Katz. UnitedHealth, an enormous insurer, decided to pull out of Obamacare markets in two states. Insurers are losing money. Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association is grumbling. Premiums are bound to increase, pricing many who don't qualify for subsidies out of the market:

Margot: . . .Every time I write a story about the health law, I get comments and emails from people just above the income cutoff for subsidies. These are the people who have been most hurt by the health law. Plans on the exchanges are just really expensive for them, and often come with big deductibles, too. And if premiums keep rising, they’ll keep getting squeezed. Analysts from the Urban Institute have done the math and found that some of them are paying more than 25 percent of their income on health care now. Still, it is awfully hard to imagine Congress approving massive new spending to make Obamacare more generous. Hillary Clinton has some proposals about affordability, but they don’t include expanding subsidies.

It turns out the free market model for health insurance doesn't really work:

Margot: Yes, I think this is one of the contradictions of the Affordable Care Act’s design. The whole idea was that competition between the insurance companies would help to hold down prices, the way it does for, say, electronics or groceries. In order for that system to work, you need people to actually switch plans if their plan starts charging more than the competition. The fact that people are actually switching seems like a sign that this market is functioning as it was designed. But as you point out, all that churn sure makes it hard for an insurer to make money by investing in its customers’ long-term health. But the individual market, pre-Obamacare, also had a lot of churn.

Reed: Yes, there’s always been churn, but the insurers got pretty good at figuring out which people they wanted to insure by turning away the people who were most likely to cost them the most money. They definitely figured out how to make money.

It’s easier to smooth all of this out if you insure more people. Do you think there’s opportunity to see the market increase in size? I know insurers in the early years suffered when some states allowed people to keep their existing plans. Those plans that were grandmothered, as it is called.

Margot: My sense from talking to folks in the industry is that the grandmothered plans really wrecked their early calculations. The Obama administration, responding to a political freakout about people whose plans were getting canceled in 2014, let states keep them for a few more years. The result was that healthy people tended to hold onto their old, cheaper plans, while sick people went to the exchanges. You can see how that might make the exchange market unprofitable for new entrants.

I do think the market size is a bit of a chicken-or-egg question. Your story last week on stability in the employer market did such a good job of laying this out. Everyone (including the Congressional Budget Office) expected that employers would start dropping coverage once the marketplaces were up and running. That didn’t happen. It means that Obamacare has been much less disruptive to the status quo than many people thought. But it also means that the exchange markets are smaller and probably more expensive than people thought, too. If prices keep going up, maybe they’ll never grow much. It certainly seems like everyone is cutting down their long-term estimates for exchange enrollment.

The last item of Obama's legacy list is the Iran deal. This is what Obama has bent over backwards -- aiding in the jihadist destruction of Syria and Iraq; actively collaborating with the Saudis in war crimes in Yemen -- to try to protect. But the Saudis are not cooperating. So over the last couple months an information war and diplomatic struggle between Obama and al-Saud has unfolded. Jeffrey Goldberg's long Atlantic Monthly piece was a major Obama salvo.

Another appeared Saturday, Mark Mazzetti's "Saudi Arabia Warns of Economic Fallout if Congress Passes 9/11 Bill." The decade-plus case brought against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia by big insurers and family members impacted by 9/11 hit a snag last September when a federal district court judge dropped the kingdom as a defendant. The bill before Congress would address the concerns of the judge, allowing the case against the Saudis to proceed. But the Obama administration is fighting it tooth and nail.

This suit against the Saudis hardly ever gets any ink. The fact that it does now when Obama is on his way to Riyadh, where he will be on Wednesday, is not a coincidence. It is part of the info war.

Michael Shear writes in "An Old Alliance Faces New Pressures as Obama Heads to Saudi Arabia" that the Saudis have washed their hands of Obama. They're waiting for Hillary:

If the Saudis are ready to turn the page on the Obama presidency, they are also anxious about what comes next, especially if Donald J. Trump or Senator Ted Cruz of Texas becomes the next president. 

Mr. Trump has railed against Saudi Arabia, telling The New York Times last month that he might halt all purchases of oil unless the Saudis show more effort in the fight against the Islamic State. “If Saudi Arabia was without the cloak of American protection,” Mr. Trump has said, “I don’t think it would be around.” 

Mr. Cruz said during a presidential debate in February that the United States should “hold our friends to account, that friends do not fund jihadists that are seeking to murder us. And when it comes to Saudi Arabia, we need to have real scrutiny and real pressure.” 

From the Saudi perspective, Hillary Rodham Clinton might represent a return to the kind of foreign policy they remember when her husband was president. But nothing is certain in this political season, and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the other candidate for the Democratic nomination, is an unknown to the Saudis. 

“Like everybody, they have no idea what to think about Trump,” Professor Gause said. “Who knows what to make of Senator Cruz on this? The Saudis don’t know him,” he added. “I think they would be perfectly comfortable with Hillary.”

During the Bush years there was a handy shortcut one could take when it came to any of his administration's initiatives. Everything he touched turned to shit. It might look like a winner for a while but eventually you could bank it would fall apart. That appears to be the case with Obama too, which would seem to argue for a larger regional war in the Greater Middle East and the almost certain demise of the European Union.

The European Union is Finished + The Battle for Mosul Set to Begin

Mark this winter as the end of the European Union. In "Clashes Erupt in Greece as Macedonia Bars Afghan Asylum Seekers," Liz Alderman lists the large number of states that now have border restrictions. Macedonian, following a decision over the weekend by Austria, Serbia and Croatia to restrict migrant entries, ruled that Afghans are economic immigrants and not refugees fleeing a war zone like their Iraqi and Syrian brothers and sisters. This comes at the same time that U.S. air power had to assist in restoring electricity to Kabul following Taliban attacks on transmission lines in Baghlan Province. Civilian casualties are up, peace talks led by Afghanistan, China, Pakistan and the United states are going nowhere and the Taliban continues to gobble up territory. It is a wonder that there aren't more Afghans fleeing to Europe.

The effect of Macedonia's decision is to push the refugees back into Greece. One could see this coming once Merkel's fantasy of having Turkey warehouse the flotsam from the West's wars repeatedly failed to launch. Now, barring a D-Day-type naval flotilla in the Aegean to block the refugees, Greece will be under great pressure to remain a viable, functioning state. As Alderman reports,

The backup of migrants was increasing the strain on Greece, which has become a focal point in the crisis. European Union officials have demanded that Athens take steps to tighten screening and slow the flow of refugees, many of whom are hoping to reach Germany, or risk suspension from the Schengen zone. 

Greece, which is reeling from a prolonged economic crisis, has protested that it lacks the funds to carry out the task adequately and was overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of people crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey, despite a pledge from Ankara to curb migrant flows in exchange for 3 billion euros, or about $3.3 billion, in aid from the European Union. 

Only in the past two weeks has Greece opened several so-called hot spot facilities on the islands where migrants are most likely to arrive. But Athens has faced a sharp outcry from locals on some of those islands, such as Kos and Leros, who say they fear that the new centers, which are used to register and hold migrants until their applications are sorted out, will turn into permanent holding camps. 

Greece is the most popular entry point into Europe for hundreds of thousands of migrants from Iraq, Syria and elsewhere. More than 56,000 migrants arrived in Greece by sea in January alone, 10 times the number in the same period last year. In the first three weeks of this year, at least 113 people died trying to make the sea crossing to Europe, the International Organization for Migration said, compared with 94 a year earlier. 

Underlining the risks of the influx for Greece, the president of the European Parliament warned this week that the country risked becoming a “parking lot” for migrants unless the European Union moved to put in effect a plan to resettle thousands of migrants stuck there and in Italy.

There has been no let-up despite the winter. With the partial truce declared for Syria a likely dud, a U.S. invasion of Libya in the works and, according to this morning's "Situation Report" by Paul McLeary and Adam Rawnsley, the battle to reconquer Mosul set to begin, the number of refugees later this spring and summer will be overwhelmingly:

The road to Mosul. The Iraqi army will likely need to deploy between eight and 12 army brigades to liberate Mosul from the grip of the Islamic State, according to a U.S. general in charge of training Iraqi forces.

“We are making plans for Mosul,” U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Richard Clarke, commander of Combined Joint Forces Land Component Command in Iraq, told reporters at the Pentagon via teleconference from Baghdad Tuesday. “We’re doing that each and every day.” The exact number of troops is still in flux, as Iraqi brigades can range in size from about 2,000 to 3,000 soldiers.

U.S. troops deployed near ISIS territory. A handful of American troops are already in place near Mosul, and have been setting up a forward operating base from which Iraqi troops will launch any future assault on the city. The Nineveh Operations Center in the small village of Makhmour will eventually house about 4,500 Iraqi soldiers who will be in the lead of the fight for Mosul. The base also houses a new command center for the Iraqi army’s 15th Division, which ran through an American-led training program last year.

And Iraqi officials look ready to go. Defense Minister Khaled al-Obaidi said earlier this month that Iraqi forces expect to start the Mosul operation “no later than the first half of this year,” while Prime Minister Haider al Abadi has predicted that 2016 would see a “final victory” against the group.

Schengen, already dead de facto, will be officially suspended. Without passport-free travel you can't claim there is a European Union. A Brexit is coming. Trump is on the rise. Can Le Pen be far behind?

War in the Middle East: It is Going to Get Even Bigger

NBC broke away from the pregame of its Sunday Night Football telecast long enough for Obama to say nothing new from the Oval Office about international and domestic terrorism, gun ownership and the war in Syria. I suppose this is a good thing. I was half expecting the president, whose legacy (long after the Affordable Care Act has been scrapped) will be to have relaunched a not so Cold War with Russia and overseen the disintegration of the Middle East, to use the Sunday national television platform to blame Putin for last week's husband-&-wife terrorism attack in San Bernardino.

Thankfully, Cold Warrior Obama restrained himself. What the viewers out in TV Land got was more of the same, particularly as it relates to the war in Syria:

Well, here's what I want you to know. The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it. We will destroy ISIL and any other organization that tries to harm us. Our success won't depend on tough talk or abandoning our values or giving into fear. That's what groups like ISIL are hoping for. Instead, we will prevail by being strong and smart. Resilient and relentless. And by drawing upon every aspect of American power. Here's how. 

First, our military will continue to hunt down terrorist plotters in any country where it is necessary. 

In Iraq and Syria, air strikes are taking out ISIL leaders, heavy weapons, oil tankers, infrastructure. Since attacks in Paris, our closest allies including France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, have ramped up their contributions to our military campaign which will help us accelerate our effort to destroy ISIL. 

Second, we will continue to provide training and equipment to tens of thousands of Iraqi and Syrian forces fighting ISIL on the ground so that we take away their safe havens. In both countries, we're deploying special operations forces who can accelerate that offensive. We've stepped up this effort since the attacks in Paris and will continue to invest more in approaches that are working on the ground. 

Third, we're working with friends and allies to stop ISIL's operations to disrupt plots, cut off their financing, and prevent them from recruiting more fighters. Since the attacks in Paris, we've surged intelligence sharing with our European allies. We're working with Turkey to seal its border with Syria and we are cooperating with Muslim majority countries and with our Muslim communities here at home to counter the vicious ideology that ISIL promotes online. 

Fourth, with American leadership, the international community has begun to establish a process and timeline to pursue cease-fires and a political resolution to the Syrian war. Doing so will allow the Syrian people and every country, including our allies but also countries like Russia, to focus on the common goal of destroying ISIL. A group that threatens us all. This is our strategy to destroy ISIL. It is designed and supported by our military commanders and counterterrorism experts together with 65 countries that have joined an American-led coalition. We constantly examine our strategy to determine within additional steps are needed to get the job done. That's why I've ordered the departments of State and Homeland Security to review the visa waiver program under which the female terrorist in San Bernardino originally came to this country.

The issue of ISIS funding itself from sales of black-market oil, Obama's first point, was brightly illuminated last week. A must-read story, "ISIS Oil," by Vijay Prashad appeared in CounterPunch. In it Prashad argues quite plainly that Turkey is working with ISIS to move oil by tanker truck from fields around Mosul in Iraq to the Turkish port of Ceyhan where it is shipped to Malta and then transshipped to buyers in Israel:

On December 2, Russia’s Deputy Minister of Defense Anatoly Antonov made a strong statement about Turkish complicity with ISIS. The charge sheet is long and detailed. It mentions many aspects, but the most incendiary is the accusation about “ISIS oil.”

ISIS controls Iraqi oil fields near Mosul. They have been making millions of dollars each day by selling oil from these fields. How does ISIS get the oil from the fields in Mosul to the market?

What ISIS has done is to use the old networks that have smuggled oil from the Kurdish Regional Government without any consideration given to Baghdad’s sovereignty over that oil. This had been a point of contention for decades, since the Kurdish region began to exercise autonomous control of the north. Kurdish oil was sold to smugglers who would cart them in tankers across the border into Turkey. In Turkey the trucks would run the length of the country to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. From Ceyhan, which is a port run by the Turkish government, the oil is purchased by transporters whose ships go to Malta, where the oil is transshipped to destinations such as Ashdod (Israel). This has long been a bone of contention between the Iraqi government, the Kurdish Regional Government and the Turkish government. It was documented by Tolga Tanış in his book Potus ve Beyefendi (2015). Tanis accuses Berat Albayrak, son-in-law of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, of involvement in this illegal scheme. ISIS has merely replaced the Kurdish Regional Government in the new arrangement.

***

That the Russians have made these allegations will only increase tensions between Ankara and Moscow. Indeed, on December 3, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that retaliation for the downed jet has not yet come. The tempo of threats has risen.

Stunningly Ceyhan Port is a few hours drive from the Incirlik Air Base, from where the US jets have been hitting targets in Syria. It is literally under the noses of the US planes that the ISIS oil has been transported. For the fourteen months that the US has been hitting ISIS targets, it has avoided striking at the oil tankers. US officials say that they did not strike ISIS oil tankers for fear of “collateral damage.” In fact, when the US did hit the oil tankers last month, they did so after warning the drivers by leaflets. This was a very noble gesture, but also out of character. The US generally does not warn its targets. It only began to hit the oil tankers after Russian jets struck them. Did the US begin its strike on the tankers so as not to be shown up by the Russians? When I put this question to a US state department official, she demurred. She said that the US was merely building up intelligence on the tanker routes and it was now prepared to hit the convoys. That it came after the Russian bombings of the tankers, she said, is mere coincidence.

***

. . . The Turkish government’s demand for a “buffer zone” is of interest to the Europeans. They believe it is for refugees. But it could just as well be to protect the tankers from the Russian bombing raids. It is precisely what makes Corbyn’s demand so important – to hold a through investigation of the ISIS oil pipeline. Such an inquiry must ask the following questions:

1) Who is carting the oil from Mosul to the Turkish border? Who owns those trucks? 

2) Who is carting the oil from the Turkish border to Ceyhan? Who owns those trucks? 

3) How does ISIS oil go through Ceyhan, a port owned by the Turkish government? 

4) Who owns the ships that cart the ISIS oil out of Turkey and to ports afield? 

5) What banks handle the transaction between the sale of ISIS oil and the foreign buyers? Should they also be implicated in the smuggling of ISIS oil? 

An investigation along these lines is overdue. It is not enough to accept or dismiss the Russian accusations. These should be used as an opportunity to clarity the actual pipelines for ISIS funding. Bombing the Omar fields in Syria – as the UK has done today – might not be sufficient. It might dust over the evidence of much greater complicity in ISIS oil.

The gist of Prashad's account was confirmed on Friday when Turkey moved additional troops and artillery to a training base outside of Mosul. As noted on the Moon of Alabama blog yesterday, "Erdogan Moves to Annexes [sic] Mosul":

On Friday a column of some 1,200 Turkish soldiers with some 20 tanks and heavy artillery moved into a camp near Mosul. The camp was one of four small training areas where Turkey was training Kurds and some Sunni-Arab Iraqis to fight the Islamic State. The small camps in the northern Kurdish area have been there since the 1990s. They were first established to fight the PKK. Later their Turkish presence was justified as ceasefire monitors after an agreement ended the inner Kurdish war between the KDP forces loyal to the Barzani clan and the PUK forces of the Talabani clan. The bases were actually used to monitor movement of the PKK forces which fight for Kurdish independence in Turkey.

The base near Mosul is new and it was claimed to be just a small weapons training base. But tanks and artillery have a very different quality than some basic AK-47 training. Turkey says it will increase the numbers in these camps to over 2000 soldiers.

Should Mosul be cleared of the Islamic State the Turkish heavy weapons will make it possible for Turkey to claim the city unless the Iraqi government will use all its power to fight that claim. Should the city stay in the hands of the Islamic State Turkey will make a deal with it and act as its protector. It will benefit from the oil around Mosul which will be transferred through north Iraq to Turkey and from there sold on the world markets. In short: This is an effort to seize Iraq's northern oil fields.

This story is backed up by The New York Times' Tim Arango, "Iraqi Officials Angered by Influx of Turkish Troops":

ISTANBUL — Turkey has sent more troops, along with armored vehicles and tanks, to northern Iraq to support a longstanding mission to train Kurdish and Sunni Arab forces in the fight against the Islamic State, touching off an uproar in Baghdad, where officials called the move a violation of Iraqi sovereignty.

The troop movements on the outskirts of Mosul apparently came in recent days and were done in coordination with the autonomous Kurdish government in northern Iraq, but not with the central government in Baghdad. They prompted the Iraqi foreign ministry to summon the Turkish ambassador in protest on Saturday and demand that the forces withdraw from Iraq.

In a statement, the foreign ministry called the Turkish troop movements a hostile act and said they had been made “without the knowledge of the Iraqi central government,” adding, “This is considered a violation and a breach of the sovereignty of the country.” Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and President Fuad Masum also voiced objections.

Days earlier, Mr. Abadi, who came to power last year with the strong support of the United States, made a similarly tough statement in reaction to the United States’ plans to deploy Special Operations forces to Iraq to conduct raids against Islamic State targets. He wrote on Facebook, “Iraq doesn’t need foreign ground troops,” and added, “This will be considered an act of aggression.” 

The reactions of the Iraqi authorities to the growing military role of the United States and Turkey inside Iraq highlighted Mr. Abadi’s weakness as he seeks to balance his relationships with the West and Iran, which backs powerful militias in Iraq. Some of the leaders of those militias are popular on the Iraqi street and have sought to undermine Mr. Abadi, saying they will fight any foreign troops on Iraqi soil. 

In an interview on Saturday, Hakim al-Zamili, the head of Parliament’s security committee and a Shiite militia leader, said the Iraqi military, if necessary, should strike the Turkish positions in the north.

What we have here is a world war in the Middle East, something that should have been obvious when Turkey shot down the Russian Sukhoi the day before Thanksgiving. Pepe Escobar in "How Russia is Smashing the Turkish Game in Syria" describes a "4+1 alliance" -- Russia, Iran, Iraq and Syria, along with Hezbollah -- against NATO and the GCC.

Reading Arango's story one is certainly reminded of June 2014 when Mosul fell to ISIS and the Iraqi Kurds took Kirkuk in what was clearly a case of coordination. At the time, the U.S. position was that Iraq's prime minister Nouri al-Maliki was to blame and had to go, which he did. Now there is a whisper campaign underway to do the same to his replacement, Haider al-Abadi. Note the conclusion to Arango's story:

Baghdad has been aware of Turkey’s presence but chose to publicly challenge it only now — underscoring, analysts say, the increasing pressure Mr. Abadi is facing from Iran and its proxies, including Iraq’s former prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. In a report published last month, Ayham Kamel, the director for the Middle East and North Africa at the political risk firm Eurasia Group, predicted that Mr. Abadi would likely be ousted sometime next year.

In the case of the United States, American officials say they negotiated with Mr. Abadi about the new deployments of Special Forces and believe his recent comments in defense of Iraqi sovereignty were made for domestic political reasons. 

Still, Mr. Abadi’s increasingly weak position in the face of Iranian pressure complicates matters for the United States as it considers increasing its military presence in Iraq to fight the Islamic State. 

While the deal reached by the West and Iran to curb Iran’s nuclear program raised hopes that Washington and Tehran could more closely coordinate campaigns against the Islamic State in Iraq, that now appears unlikely. The heads of powerful Iranian-backed militias have said they are willing to fight any new American troops in Iraq, as they did during the long American occupation after 2003. 

Rather than the United States’ and Iran’s becoming partners in the fight against the Islamic State, Iran’s presence in Iraq is seen as a constraint on the American military’s role there. 

Kirk H. Sowell, an analyst based in Amman, Jordan, and editor of the newsletter Inside Iraqi Politics, wrote in an email, “The sending of ground forces to Iraq in any appreciable numbers would almost certainly open a new front in the war, with U.S. troops fighting Shia militias instead of Islamic State.”

This is what we are looking at in Iraq and Syria -- more war, much more war -- not less. Even if ceasefires are negotiated in New York next week as peace talks on Syria reconvene, there is zero indication that the U.S. has changed its position. It is still fronting for its Islamist allies.

Take the example of Russia's claim that Turkey is trading ISIS oil. According to Neil MacFarquhar's "Russia and Turkey Hurl Insults as Feud Deepens":

Although the United States has expressed frustration with the Turks for not doing more to control a roughly 100-mile stretch of border that faces territory controlled by the Islamic State, Washington has rejected the accusation that Ankara is acting in league with the militants.

What is bizarre about this is even Hillary Clinton in the last Democratic debate acknowledged that Turkey was up to no good. It has been widely reported in The New York Times that oil moves from the caliphate into Turkey, and the jihadists and weapons move from Turkey to the caliphate.

Obama Switches Up the ISIS Narrative

An interesting item that emerged from the G7 summit in Krün was Obama's statement about the important role of foreign fighters in the offensive capabilities of Islamic State. According to Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael Shear, "Ukraine Crisis and Advance of ISIS Dominate Agenda for Group of 7":

At a news conference Monday after the close of the summit meeting, Mr. Obama acknowledged a need to accelerate the training of Iraqi military forces to counter the advance of Islamic State militants, and he said that he had asked the Pentagon for a plan to do that.

“We don’t have, yet, a complete strategy, because it requires commitments on the part of Iraqis as well,” Mr. Obama said. “The details are not worked out.” 

Mr. Obama said of the militants of the Islamic State, also known as ISIL and ISIS: “They’re nimble and they’re aggressive and they’re opportunistic.” 

He acknowledged that the training of Iraqi forces “has not been happening as fast as it needs to.” And he said the United States has “made some progress, but not enough” in stemming the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq and Syria. 

Mr. Obama said that “thousands” of new fighters were replenishing the ranks of the Islamic State faster than the coalition could remove them from the fight. 

“If we can cut off some of that foreign fighter flow, then we are able to isolate and wear out ISIL forces that are already there,” Mr. Obama said. “Because we are taking a lot of them off the battlefield, but if they’re being replenished, then it doesn’t solve the problem over the long term.”

The president also said that Turkey was not doing what was required to monitor its border with Syria and halt the stream of fighters. 

Earlier on Monday, Mr. Obama met with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi of Iraq, where he reaffirmed the world powers’ commitment to supporting Iraq in the fight against the Islamic State, which has made major gains in recent weeks. 

“Although it is going to take time, and there will be setbacks and lessons learned, we are going to be successful,” Mr. Obama said at the start of his meeting with Mr. Abadi. “ISIL is going to be driven out of Iraq, and ultimately, it is going to be defeated.”

This represents an about-face by the U.S. president. From the outset, ISIS has been defined by USG/Western media as an indigenous, Anbar-based response to the predatory overreach of Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki.

The Cracker Jacks version of the story goes something like this: Because al-Maliki refused to pay the Sunni Sons of Iraq, as was promised, Al Qaeda in Iraq rose from its ashes in Anbar, using the war next door in Syria as a proving ground, and reconstituted itself as Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

The United States spread this story last year as a way to successfully force out al-Maliki as prime minister. Now the story changes. It is really the flow of foreign fighters via the border with Turkey that makes Islamic State so lethal and not because it is an Anbar-based popular guerrilla movement.

This puts Obama more in line with the fact-based reporting of, say, a Patrick Cockburn writing for The Independent whose interviews with Sunnis who have fled Anbar establish convincingly that ISIS is foreign-led, i.e., Chechens, Saudis, Libyans, et al.

I haven't seen anything in the mainstream press drawing attention to this latest Obama somersault, though there has been a reaction to Obama's statement that "We don't have, yet, a complete strategy . . . ." For instance, Shreeya Sinha in "Obama’s Evolution on ISIS" has a helpful compendium of Obama's twists and turns, beginning with "ISIS is a J.V. squad of takfiris," or something along those lines, to the latest on June 8, "We don't have a complete strategy."

All the evasions, false starts and missteps can be attributed to the fact that Obama has to obscure the obvious -- ISIS is a creation of U.S. allies Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, the same allies the U.S. has been working with to funnel fighters into Syria. In the war against ISIS, the United States is battling an enemy that it worked to create. Naturally this kind of disingenuousness -- saying you are fighting the takfiris while aiding the takfiris -- is going to result in policy confusion.

The plan floated this morning (Michael Gordon, "U.S. Embracing a New Approach on Battling ISIS in Iraq") is that the U.S. is going to occupy Al Taqqadum, a base outside the Anbar town of Habbaniya, and use it as a training hub for the recapture of Ramadi:

To assemble a force to retake Ramadi, the number of Iraqi tribal fighters in Anbar who are trained and equipped is expected to increase to as many as 10,000 from about 5,500. 

More than 3,000 new Iraqi soldiers are to be recruited to fill the ranks of the Seventh Iraqi Army division in Anbar and the Eighth Iraqi Army division, which is in Habbaniyah, where the Iraqi military operations center for the province is also based. 

But to the frustration of critics like Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who say that the United States is losing the initiative to the Islamic State, the Obama administration has yet to approve the use of American spotters on the battlefield to call in airstrikes in and around Ramadi. Nor has it approved the use of Apache helicopter gunships to help Iraqi troops retake the city.

It was the U.S.-trained Iraqi Army that disintegrated in Mosul last year at this time. One wonders how this training mission will be any different. And where is any mention of the Shiite militias currently in Anbar, the Popular Mobilization Committees?

My sense is that this is all part of the U.S. shadow dance. The U.S. is putatively at war with ISIS, but it is really at war with its Sunni allies, who are at war with Iran; at the same time, the U.S. is also at war with Iran. Everything is topsy-turvy. To keep Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Kuwait and Qatar from ratcheting up support for the takfiri fighters, the U.S. must re-station troops in the region.

That's what we're looking at here. The GCC wants the U.S. military footprint back on the ground. Absent that, more war.

The Battle for Ramadi: Iraq's War of Liberation, U.S. Double Game Exposed

The story this morning is that a convoy of Iraqi Army troops and Shiite militia on their way to take part in the counteroffensive to retake Ramadi was hit by Islamic State suicide bombers, killing 55. That is at least how the Qatar-based Al Jazeera puts it in "ISIL suicide attacks target Iraq military convoys":

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group has reportedly carried out a series of suicide attacks on military convoys northeast and southeast of the city of Fallujah, killing at least 55 people, Al Jazeera has learnt.

Three blasts on Tuesday struck army convoys travelling in Anbar province to take part in a planned offensive aimed at retaking the provincial city of Ramadi from ISIL, Al Jazeera's Imran Khan, reporting from Baghdad, said.

He said that the attacks were a "very big blow" to the military.

ISIL has routinely used car bomb attacks to a "devastating effect" against Iraqi forces, he added.

"Car bombs have proven to be a very big problem for the Iraqi security forces," he said, noting that the tactic played a major part in the capture of Ramadi.

Brigadier General Saad Maan Ibrahim, the spokesman for the Joint Military Command, gave a lower death toll. He told The Associated Press that 17 troops were killed in the attacks.

The bombings came as Iraqi forces prepare for a massive bid to retake the capital of mainly Sunni Muslim province.

Thousands of troops and allied Shia militiamen have been deployed to the area to retake territory seized by ISIL since last year.

But if one consults the AP story where Brigadier General Saad Maan Inbrahim is quoted, "Multiple IS Suicide Attacks in Iraq's Anbar Kill 17 Troops," it is not even clear that the troops killed by the suicide bombers were on their way to Ramadi; rather, they were part of a back-and-forth effort to secure a vital section of canal outside Fallujah:

Islamic State extremists unleashed a wave of suicide attacks targeting the Iraqi army in western Anbar province, killing at least 17 troops in a major blow to government efforts to dislodge the militants from the sprawling Sunni heartland, an Iraqi military spokesman said Wednesday. 

The attacks came just hours after the Iraqi government on Tuesday announced the start of a wide-scale operation to recapture areas under the control of the IS group in Anbar. 

Brig. Gen Saad Maan Ibrahim, the spokesman for the Joint Military Command, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the attacks took place outside the Islamic State-held city of Fallujah late the previous night. 

The militants struck near a water control station and a lock system on a canal between Lake Tharthar and the Euphrates River where army forces have been deployed for the Anbar offensive, he said. 

Ibrahim added that the Islamic State extremists used a sandstorm that engulfed most of Iraq on Tuesday night to launch the deadly wave of bombings. He said it was not clear how many suicide attackers were involved in the bombings but they hit the military from multiple directions. 

Last month, the water station near Fallujah fell into the hands of IS militants — following attacks that also included multiple suicide bombings and that killed a general commanding the 1st Division and a dozen other officers and soldiers. 

Iraqi government forces recaptured the station a few days later. Fallujah lies to the east of the Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi, which was captured by the IS militants nearly two weeks ago in what was a major, humiliating defeat for Iraqi troops at the hands of the extremists. 

The Iraqi operation to retake Anbar, which is said to be backed by Shiite militias and Sunni pro-government fighters, is deemed critical in regaining momentum in the fight against the Islamic State. 

The IS group captured Ramadi in Iraq and the Syrian ancient town of Palmyra earlier this month, showing that it is able to advance in both countries despite months of U.S.-led airstrikes.

I wonder where  Al Jazeera got its 55 fatalities. No source is quoted.

What we are witnessing is a U.S. "double game" in Iraq and Syria under increasing pressure of exposure. This double game is a classic Ring of Gyges scenario where the U.S. portrays itself as pure and just and resolute in doing battle with the "evil incarnate" caliphate of Islamic State while surreptitiously doing what it can to make sure that ISIS continues to gain and hold territory at the expense of Iraq and Syria.

Why is the U.S. doing this? Because Iraq and Syria are allies of Iran, an arch foe of Uncle Sam and his corrupt despotic allies in the Gulf.

I am not a great student of the history of military campaigns, but I can't think of another example of a great power waging a public war against an enemy at the same time it seeks to bolster it.

A principal means by which the U.S. is waging its "double game" in Iraq and Syria is through information war and thought control in the media. The meme repeated in almost every story about ISIS in Iraq for the last several months is that Iraqi Shiite Popular Mobilization Forces must not take a major role in the fighting for fear that they will spread sectarian war to the Sunni-majority areas of the country. This argument is dutifully repeated time after time as if it were ancient wisdom without once mentioning the obvious: Why banish proven fighters from the battlefield for the alleged crime of sectarian hatred when practitioners of a Sunni extremist sect continue to murder and plunder and add territory to their caliphate?

This makes absolutely no sense. Nonetheless the argument is never challenged and always repeated. This is how the "big lie" works. Even a good reporter like Tim Arango, whose stories are usually reliable and illuminating, must repeat the U.S.-purveyed nonsense without question, as he does in his latest dispatch from Iraq, "Iraqi Army and Shiite Militias Begin Push to Take Ramadi From ISIS":

The United States has been training Iraqi Army recruits since December, though none of the soldiers trained so far have entered the battle. American officials have also pushed Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to increase aid to the Sunni tribes who were fighting the militants in Anbar and to avoid sending Shiite militiamen into that fight, fearing that it could intensify sectarian hostilities.

The U.S. wants the Iraqi parliament to rebuild the Sons of Iraq, the Sunni Awakening movement that is accepted to have played a role in beating back Al Qaeda in Iraq, the ISIS precursor, during the U.S. occupation. But parliament has been reticent to do so because of very legitimate fears that any money or weaponry will just end up in the hands of ISIS fighters. The war is now and you stick with forces who have been currently effective on the battlefield. And this is the Popular Mobilization Forces.

The stakes are high in the battle to retake Ramadi. The U.S. is going to do what it can to make sure the Iraqi Shiite militias aren't effective. I interpret SecDef Ashton Carter's bizarre public rebuke of the Iraqi forces for losing Ramadi as laying the foundation for an eventual U.S. ultimatum to Iraqi prime minister Abadi: either you let us manage the ground troops, or we withhold our air power. This would guarantee the kind of lengthy siege and stalemate that is a hallmark of the war in Syria.

The silver lining in recent U.S. maneuvers is that its double game has been broadly exposed. Abadi can longer be a player in the U.S.-led ruse to aid ISIS without being ousted by his Dawa Party. Even liberal outlets in the U.S. are beginning to point out how the Western media supports the caliphate.

Victory in Ramadi Bad News for ISIS and U.S. Now Genie of Popular Mobilization Forces Can't be Corked

Sitting in the airport yesterday waiting to catch a flight home, I watched a CNN interview with retired Delta Force Commander James Reese. He seemed to relish the fact that Iraqi prime minister Abadi was calling the Popular Mobilization Forces, the Shiite militias, back to Anbar Province to attempt to reclaim Ramadi. Strange since it was pressure from the U.S. that prevented the Popular Mobilization Forces from deploying in Anbar following their defeat of Islamic State in Tikrit. Abadi pulled back the Shiite militias in favor of the U.S. policy of trying to recreate the Sons of Iraq, the Sunni Awakening in Anbar. All this went unmentioned in the interview with the Delta Force analyst.

Not so in the stories filed by the Gray Lady's Tim Arango. In yesterday's "Key Iraqi City Falls to ISIS as Last of Security Forces Flee" and today's "Fall of Ramadi to ISIS Weakens Rule of Iraqi Premier," Arango clearly outlines the U.S. role in Abadi's decision both to rein in the Popular Mobilization Forces and now to unleash them. From yesterday's report Arango notes:

With defeat looming in Ramadi on Sunday afternoon, the Anbar Provincial Council met in Baghdad and voted to ask Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to send Shiite fighters to rescue Anbar, a largely Sunni province. In response, Mr. Abadi issued a statement calling for the militias, known as the Popular Mobilization Forces and including several powerful Shiite forces supported by Iran, to be ready to fight. Some of the Shiite irregular units, which were formed last summer after Shiite clerics put out a call to arms, are more firmly under the command of the government, while others answer to Iran.

The involvement of the militias in Anbar had been opposed by the United States, which leads an international coalition that has been carrying out airstrikes in support of Iraqi forces. American officials had worried that the militias could inflame sectarian tensions in the province and ultimately make it harder to pacify.

As they considered asking for the militias’ assistance, Anbar officials met over the weekend with the American ambassador to Iraq, Stuart E. Jones, to ascertain the United States’ position on the issue. According to officials, Mr. Jones told the Anbar delegation that the United States would continue its air campaign, provided that the militias were under the command of Mr. Abadi, and not Iranian advisers, and that the militias were properly organized to avoid American bombing runs.

The U.S. position in Iraq is thoroughly schizophrenic. The enemy is the super-sectarian ISIS. Yet the main reason for keeping the Shiite militias on a leash, choosing instead to let the woeful Iraqi Army lead the fight in Anbar, is to prevent sectarianism. In the meantime, Islamic State gains ground, captures new weapons recently supplied by both the U.S. and Russia, and spreads its ruthless sectarianism. Then the U.S. green-lights the Popular Mobilization Forces, cheering on the Shiite militias to take back what U.S. policy lost. It is as if the true American goal is make sure that no clear victory is achieved but that war rages on.

The limit to this U.S. schizophrenia or ruse is that it relies on Abadi to implement it -- to tether the militias at the same time maintaining the fiction that the Awakening can be reanimated. But, as Arango makes clear in his story today, Abadi is losing credibility rapidly. Iraqis overwhelmingly support the Popular Mobilization Forces, and Abadi's efforts to sideline them is increasingly perceived as an abject capitulation to foreign-backed designs to partition the country:

Some of the newer units, formed last year after Shiite clerics called on young men to take up arms and fight the Islamic State, also called ISIS or ISIL, do answer to the prime minister. Some of the most powerful groups, though, such as the Badr Organization, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Kataib Hezbollah, may answer to Mr. Abadi in individual cases — they did not advance on Anbar until the prime minister gave orders, for example. But those militias were trained and supported directly by Iran, and the militias’ leaders have grown immensely in popularity with the Iraqi public as they have won significant battles against the Islamic State.

This has presented serious challenges to Mr. Abadi’s authority. For instance, in March, at the beginning of an operation to retake the city of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, the plans were drawn up by militia leaders, and then Mr. Abadi was told it would happen. Once those fighters failed to retake Tikrit decisively, Mr. Abadi asked them to withdraw and called for help from American airstrikes, reasserting his authority for the moment.

Now that the militias have been called upon to fight in Anbar, Mr. Abadi’s authority seems to be waning again, and the militias’ cachet has only grown. One of the most popular pictures circulating on social media in Iraq on Monday showed Hadi al-Ameri, the powerful head of the Badr militia, examining a map and seemingly plotting out a new campaign in Anbar.

Fanar Haddad, an Iraqi analyst, recently wrote in an online column that the militias have “provided a potent rallying point for a reinvigorated sense of Iraqi nationalism, albeit one with distinctly Shiite overtones.” 

In an interview, Mr. Haddad said Mr. Abadi was limited in his ability to constrain the Popular Mobilization Forces — or Hashid in Arabic, as the militias are known here. “If you want to be part of Iraq’s evolving political game, you can’t go against the Hashid,” he said. “It’s just too popular.” 

The militias’ growing popularity has coincided with an even more powerful approval of Iran’s role in Iraq, at least among Shiite Iraqis. 

Once, even many Iraqi Shiites looked at Iran with some suspicion, partly because of the legacy of the long and bloody war that Iraq fought with Iran in the 1980s. A frequent gripe of the past was about low-quality Iranian goods, such as cheese and yogurt, clogging the shelves of grocery stories. 

Now, though, in the words of Ali Kareem Salman, a 31-year-old government worker in the south, “Shiites think that Iran is the protector of the Shiite sect.”

Hanan Fatlawi, a Shiite lawmaker who is one of Mr. Abadi’s most vocal critics, said: “Previously, you could divide the Shia into two sides: those who hate Iran and those who love them. But after the entrance of ISIS, and with the situation we are in, many people are grateful to Iran. Their opinion changed." 

Of the militias, she said, “Without them, there would be no Baghdad.” 

There is an essential paradox to Mr. Abadi’s leadership thus far. In nearly every way he has proved to be the inclusive leader mandated by the United States, reaching out to Sunnis and Kurds and seeking consensus. But within Iraq, he is increasingly viewed as weak and unable to effectively shift Iraq’s tragic trajectory. 

“This term ‘inclusive personality,’ I only hear from foreigners,” Ms. Fatlawi said. “He was weak from the start.”

All of which powerfully underlines the deep flaw in the U.S. strategy. The U.S. got the man it wanted to replace Maliki. But if Abadi keeps toeing the U.S. line, his days are numbered. Iraqis know that without the militias there would be no Baghdad. And if Abadi goes, Washington will be confronted with having to abandon the battlefield with Islamic State, leaving it to Iran to help defend Iraq, or having to suck it up and attempt to bribe or cajole Abadi's replacement. Either option argues for a greater role for the Popular Mobilization Forces, which means more losses for ISIS and more victories for a renascent, popular Shiite-based Iraqi nationalism -- something that the U.S. and its allies in Israel and the Gulf monarchies cannot countenance.

So the U.S. will stick with Abadi and make sure he grants the concessions necessary to remain in power; and from this perch atop the Iraqi state, the U.S. will try to dampen the flowering of Iraqi nationalism. But the one thing that the U.S. has done reliably since it toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003 -- not intentionally but as a result of the blowback from its bellicosity -- is to amplify Shiite credibility and power in the region. This is not something that is going to change.

The Conflict with the Shia Comes Into Sharper Focus: Yemen and Iraq

The problem for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf sheikhdoms is that their Wahhabite proxies, Islamic State and Al Qaeda, don't have an air force. Thus, when confronted by a seasoned, motivated fighting force like the Houthis in Yemen who have been rolling through the country at will mopping up any forces remaining loyal to the pro-Saudi president Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council can't rely on their usual weapon of choice, Salafi terror.

Hence, we have today's headline, "Saudi Jets Strike Yemen in Bid to Halt Houthis," by David Kirkpatrick. The Yemeni air force is reported to have been destroyed and the Saudis have massed 150,000 troops on their border with Yemen. The United States, while denying that it is flying sorties, is providing public relations flak and is coordinating the air campaign. Here is the roll call of nations attacking Yemen:

The United States and most of the Arab nations moved quickly to support the Saudi-led operation in Yemen, which Saudi Arabia has called Operation Decisive Storm. 

The White House said in a statement that the United States would provide “logistical and intelligence support” to the Saudi-led military operations. “While U.S. forces are not taking direct military action in Yemen in support of this effort, we are establishing a joint planning cell with Saudi Arabia to coordinate U.S. military and intelligence support,” Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said in a statement.

“The United States strongly condemns ongoing military actions taken by the Houthis against the elected government of Yemen,” she said.

“We strongly urge the Houthis to halt immediately their destabilizing military actions and return to negotiations as part of the political dialogue,” she said, adding, “The violent takeover of Yemen by an armed faction is unacceptable and a legitimate political transition – long sought by the Yemeni people – can be accomplished only through political negotiations and a consensus agreement among all of the parties.”

Four other Persian Gulf monarchies, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, joined the Saudi operation, as well as the allied Arab kingdoms of Jordan and Morocco.

Egyptian state news media reported that Cairo was also providing undefined political and military support. The Egyptian government was consulting with Saudi Arabia about the possibility of providing forces in the naval or air support or ground troops as well, the state news media reported.

Of the Persian Gulf states, only Oman declined to participate. Two other less expected nations outside the immediate region — Pakistan and Sudan — took part as well, according to the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya network.

Al Arabiya reported that in addition to 100 fighter jets, Saudi Arabia had deployed 150,000 soldiers and other naval units. But the operation has so far consisted only of an aerial campaign.

I must admit I am bit surprised that the Saudis are taking such an above-board role in the conflict; it is not the Kingdom's style. Yemen is no Bahrain. The Saudis as well as the Egyptians have been bloodied there in the past. But one thing we have come to expect from the House of Saud is that they categorically accept no victory for the Shia. One commentator on The New York Times web site sagely noted that the Saudis were not roused to similar martial action when Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula controlled large swaths of territory in Yemen. Ah, yes, but the Houthis are Zaydi, a Shiite sect.

This is not going to end well. The Houthis cannot be easily broken. The one potential positive is that war will come home to al Saud. The Houthis will be able to inflict damage on Saudi ground troops if they are ever committed to Yemen.

Part of the problem in the world today is that war doesn't come home to centers of aggression like Washington D.C. and Riyadh. Thus the war planners can plot away free of charge implementing their schemes of slaughter and destruction. This has to change.

Before signing off this morning I recommend you take the time to read Rod Nordland and Peter Baker's frontpager, "Opening New Iraq Front, U.S. Strikes ISIS in Tikrit." After doing so, it is impossible to deny that the "war" against Islamic State is merely a foil for the larger U.S.-GCC-Israeli conflict with Iran.

Obama yesterday apparently decided to grant a request for airstrikes made last week by Iraqi prime minister Abadi. The issue is that about 1,000 Islamic State fighters have holed up in parts of Tikrit preventing the 30,000 Iraqi troops (most of whom are Shiite militia) from exercising complete control of the city.

One wonders if Obama's decision to get U.S. air power off the sidelines was linked to assistance of the Saudi-led assault on Yemen. The discussion being, "If you let me help Abadi take Tikrit, I'll run the air traffic for your bombing runs on the Houthis."

In any event, there were conditions exacted from Abadi to get the airstrikes on the jihadis in Tikrit:

Mr. Abadi asked the ambassador Stuart E. Jones and Brett McGurk, the deputy special envoy for the battle with the Islamic State, for American help with the Tikrit offensive last week. The American side insisted that it could help only if operations were coordinated by a joint center with the American military in Baghdad and if there were clear targets.

The Americans wanted to work with Iraqi forces they had helped train and insisted on “deconflicting” with the Iranian-backed militias so they would not bomb them by mistake, American officials said. The Shiite militias have generally been on the east side of the Tigris River, the officials said, so it should be possible to avoid any errors.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. spoke with Mr. Abadi by telephone, and Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the head of Central Command, developed a plan for strikes and concluded that the Iraqis had met the Americans’ condition, the officials said. Although Mr. Obama does not personally sign off on most airstrikes in the fight with the Islamic State, he was brought this decision for approval because it represented a more complicated shift in policy. [A more complicated shift in policy, to attack ISIS?]

American officials seemed heartened that Mr. Abadi had made a point of calling the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Turkey last weekend to reassure them that once the Islamic State is rooted out of Tikrit, the Sunni city would be returned to the control of its Sunni police, not dominated by Shiite forces.

There you have it. Abadi, in order to get the air strikes, had to kowtow to Islamic State's sponsors to guarantee Sunni control of Tikrit post-ISIS.

The Abadi supplication is being spun as a U.S. victory, that Abadi clearly chose the United States over Iran, sending Iranian Quds Force chief Qassim Suleimani packing back to Tehran:

Mr. Obama approved the airstrikes after a request from Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on the condition that Iranian-backed Shiite militias move aside to allow a larger role for Iraqi government counterterrorism forces that have worked most closely with United States troops, American officials said. Qassim Suleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps who has been advising forces around Tikrit, was reported on Sunday to have left the area.

The United States has struggled to maintain influence in Iraq, even as Iran has helped direct the war on the ground against the Islamic State. But as the struggles to take Tikrit mounted, with a small band of Islamic State militants holding out against a combined Iraqi force of more than 30,000 for weeks, American officials saw a chance not only to turn the momentum against the Islamic State but to gain an edge against the Iranians.

If the Americans did not engage, they feared becoming marginalized by Tehran in a country where they had spilled much blood in the last decade, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

American officials now hope that an American-assisted victory by Mr. Abadi and his forces will politically bolster him and counter the view of Iranian officials, and many Iraqi Shiites, that Iran is Iraq’s vital ally. “Taking back Tikrit is important, but it gives us an opportunity to have our half of the operation win this one,” one American official said. “It’s somewhat of a gamble.”

The administration also hopes that a Tikrit victory with American air power will ensure that it is their coalition with Mr. Abadi’s forces, and not the faction led by Mr. Suleimani, that then proceeds to try to recapture the larger and more pivotal city of Mosul.

Islamic State is not the chief concern. There it is for all to see right there on the Gray Lady's front page -- a direct quote from an "America official." (Brett McGurk?) With this present war against Islamic State, and the last several years since the Arab Spring, we are seeing what will be a decades-long struggle -- a world war -- against the Shia. It will remake the West and likely destroy whatever vestiges of formal democracy remain there.

GOP Plans To Run the World from Congress + Good News Out of Tikrit

Hillary should thank her lucky stars that her Tuesday press conference, where she defended the use of her personal email account to conduct official USG business while she was Secretary of State, coincided with an open letter to Iran penned by junior Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of  Arkansas, that threatened to abolish any agreement reached by the Obama administration on that country's nuclear program. The Cotton letter, signed by 46 other Republicans in the Senate, created a social and mainstream media firestorm, which effectively bumped the Hillary email imbroglio from the top spot in the cultural consciousness. With Kerry appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, there was plentiful soundbite video of Team Obama vs. GOP presidential aspirants.

The permanent circus of partisan conflict has spread from government funding measures and Obamacare to the conduct of foreign policy. Republicans are feeling their oats. Wading into foreign affairs to undercut ongoing White House diplomacy is the GOP's way of saying, "We're not going to lose Congress in the foreseeable future. We might not win the presidency. But we don't have to. We'll run everything from the House and Senate."

One silver lining here is that Obama's ISIS AUMF request appears to be dead in the water. And the good news out of Iraq is that Islamic State has been all but defeated in Tikrit without the assistance of U.S. air power. Anne Barnard reports this morning in "Iraqi Forces Claim Western Areas of Tikrit From ISIS":

BAGHDAD — Iraqi government forces and allied militias took control of the western neighborhoods of Tikrit on Thursday, military officials said, leaving only one area, including a palace complex once used by Saddam Hussein, in the hands of Islamic State militants. 

Military officials said they were confident of declaring victory within a few days in Tikrit, a central objective in rolling back the militants and the government’s largest operation against the Islamic State since it swept into much of the country’s north and west in June. 

Top Iraqi officials, including Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, visited troops near the front lines on Tuesday night and Wednesday. They called for security forces to facilitate the return of displaced civilians from Tikrit and surrounding areas. 

Bringing civilians back without revenge attacks or continuing conflict will be the next test for Iraq’s government if it holds its gains and completes the operation in Tikrit. The government mustered a 30,000-strong force, the bulk of it fighters from Shiite militias, in an effort to retake the city.

Note the last paragraph. This is the talking point for why the U.S. sat out the Tikrit offensive. The presence of Shiite militia backed by Iran risks the sectarian cohesion of the Iraqi state. Never mind that Islamic State fighters have been slaughtering Christians, Yazidis and Shiites and desecrating antiquities, as well as raping, crucifying and immolating. Let's play up rumors of Shiite atrocities.

And this is what reliable, pro-USG scribe Anne Barnard does farther down in her story:

Iraqi officials said they would investigate reports of atrocities, filmed and posted in recent months on social media, and committed by armed men in uniforms with the insignia of a special forces unit and other regular government forces. 

The images have been circulating on social media, and they were compiled and presented to Iraqi and United States officials by ABC News. The images raised the question of whether Iraqi forces may have run afoul of a measure that requires the United States government to cut off aid to foreign militaries that commit human rights abuses.

One video shows what appears to be a 12-year-old boy being shot to death in the street after being accused of working with the Islamic State. Another shows two civilians being shot after insisting they were not involved with the militant group; fighters then riddle their bodies with bullets. Another apparently shows a civilian being beheaded, and other images show a head propped on the front bumper of a military vehicle that appears to be an American-made Humvee.

Iraqi officials have showed footage to the BBC that they said proved that the Islamic State was using chlorine gas in roadside bombs. The images show orange clouds rising from the bombs as Iraqi ordnance disposal teams detonate them. Chlorine, while not as dangerous as substances like sarin, banned by international treaty, can cause coughing and burning eyes and in close quarters can be fatal.

What is going on is the U.S. is getting pressure from its GCC allies to cut off its support of Iraq. The last paragraph about ISIS using chlorine bombs is illuminating. I'm sure Barnard and/or her editors included it to maintain a semblance of balance.

Soon, if the reconstituted military of Iraq continues its battlefield successes against Islamic State, we shall see the jihadi ratline from Turkey in full flower once again. ISIS is a GCC/Western cat's paw. The target has always been the Shiite Crescent.

Abadi No Quisling: Tough Times Ahead for Uncle Sam's Iraq Project

The idea all along has been to partition Iraq. That was clear as soon as ISIS took Mosul last June and the Kurds, in what could be termed a collaboration, took Kirkuk.

The U.S. response to black-clad jihadis massacring over 1,000 conscripts near Tikrit, you will recall, was laid back. The primary concern of the Obama administration was not to prevent further genocide; rather, it was to make sure that Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, relinquish control of the government, something that was difficult to imagine since al-Maliki's State of Law Coalition was by far the top vote-getter in last April's election.

But with ISIS on a warpath to Baghdad and the United States reticent to provide assistance (the corrupt Bob Menendez from his leadership perch on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee promised to block weapons transfers to Iraq as long as al-Maliki remained prime minister), the State Department's man in Mesopotamia, Brett McGurk, was able to engineer a soft coup. Maliki was replaced by a candidate, Haider al-Abadi,  from Maliki's Islamic Dawa Party. Abadi, educated in England, was deemed suitably pro-Western in outlook, and, more importantly, he appeared to accept U.S. diktats regarding a de facto partition of Iraq -- more autonomy for the regions with a national guard system set up whereby the sects would be formally and institutionally militarized, as well as the ministries of defense and interior being awarded to Sunnis.

Then something happened. ISIS jumped the rails and went after areas under Kurdish control. The Yazidis were massacred on Mount Sinjar and Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, was threatened, not to mention there was the potential for ISIS to blow Mosul Dam and create a humanitarian catastrophe.

All of this got the U.S. off the sidelines, dispatching warplanes for numerous bombing runs. ISIS responded with well-publicized snuff films of American reporters James Foley and Steve Sotloff. This hardened U.S. opposition to Islamic State, which prior to August 2014 was not very pronounced; one might call it a studied ignorance.

But since the end of last summer, a combination of U.S. air power working in concert with Kurdish and Iranian-backed Shiite militias has halted the Islamic State offensive, with the exception of Sunni-dominated Anbar Province.

Now the anti-ISIS alliance appears to be fraying, as longtime Syria hand Anne Barnard reports in "Iraqi Campaign to Drive ISIS From Tikrit Reveals Tensions With U.S.":

Since the Islamic State swept into Iraq in June, Iran and the United States, longtime enemies that both support the Iraqi government, have maintained an uneasy de facto alliance against the group, with the United States-led coalition unleashing airstrikes, and Shiite militias aligned with Iran fighting alongside army and Kurdish forces on the ground. There have also been growing reports of Iranian forces’ directly joining the fight within Iraq. 

The Americans’ discomfort has grown as Mr. Abadi’s government has been unable to mobilize significant Sunni forces to join the fight, something that American officials consider crucial to breaking the Islamic State’s hold on many heavily Sunni areas.

For their part, Iraqi officials increasingly complain that American support has not been as robust as Iran’s. Many Iraqis resent what they see as American squeamishness about the militias, which by all accounts have been crucial to holding back the Islamic State after regular army units fled its assault. 

“Americans consider us a militia that does not represent the government, while we are defending the country and helping the government,” said Mueen al-Kadhimy, a leader in the Badr Organization, a prominent militia. “We are the people of Iraq.”

The Tikrit offensive could prove to be a first step toward driving back the Islamic State, or it could deepen longstanding sectarian and political divides that the militants have exploited to win support from some Iraqi Sunnis and acquiescence from others. The group has also used brutal intimidation tactics against Sunnis who reject it or support the government in Baghdad.

But at the same time, Shiite militias have been accused of reprisals against the Sunni population, many of whom regard them with suspicion and fear.

The Tikrit operation is the Iraqis’ first attempt to seize the area since June, when Islamic State militants massacred more than 1,000 Iraqi Shiite soldiers as they fled a nearby military base, Camp Speicher. There have been fears that Shiite militia members from the same areas many of the soldiers hailed from could take revenge on local Sunnis if they enter Tikrit, and some militia leaders have openly called the assault a revenge operation.

“There’s a risk there,” said one senior American military official, expressing concern that the Iraqi operations might not pay sufficient attention to the risks of civilian casualties from indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire.

But the American official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing battle, acknowledged that if the Iraqis and their Iranian advisers maintained strict controls on their targeting and the operation resulted in “fewer ISIS fighters and chasing them from Tikrit, that’s not unhelpful.”

Clearly the U.S. is sitting out the Tikrit operation not at the behest of its military planners who see the advantage of an offensive tying Islamic State fighters down (as they were tied down and dealt a significant defeat in Kobani). The U.S. military is sitting out the Tikrit offensive because U.S. political leadership, which answers to the Saudis and the Israelis, cannot abide any Shiite victory.

The U.S. goal all along -- to appease Tel Aviv and Riyadh -- has been to keep Iraq fractured. If Iraq can be united under Shiite leadership with Iranian assistance this will be the U.S. plan stood on its head. The quisling Abadi will turn out to be a true Iraqi patriot.