Free Republic

An American soldier who helped rescue about 70 hostages set to be executed by Islamic State militants in Iraq has been approved to receive the Medal of Honor for actions during a daring 2015 raid, The Associated Press has learned. Sgt. Maj. Thomas “Patrick” Payne, a Ranger assigned to the U.S. Army’s Special Operations Command, will receive the U.S. military’s highest honor for valor in combat in a White House ceremony set to be held on the 19th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The medal approval was confirmed by two Defense Department officials who spoke on condition of...

Baghdad: Iran-backed Kataib Hizballah militia besieges US embassy, Trump says Iran “orchestrating” attack DEC 31, 2019 9:00 AM BY ROBERT SPENCER 20 COMMENTS The Islamic Republic of Iran has actively courted war with the U.S. for a long time, as is shown in The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Iran. The mullahs may be hoping to provoke that war now in order to distract their people from their own miserable condition and relieve the pressure that they’re under domestically. “US Embassy compound in Baghdad under siege as crowds protesting airstrikes break through gate,” by Greg Norman and Edmund DeMarche, Fox News,...

The U.S. military must figure out how to keep Iraq from breaking apart while also preventing neighboring Iran from turning Iraq into a proxy state.. It makes no sense for a nation to treat its enemies kindly and its allies harshly. Any nation that tries this foolish approach will see its enemies grow stronger and more dangerous, and will lose its allies when it abandons them. ... The man most responsible for the failure of the U.S. to give adequate support to the Kurds is Brett McGurk, President Trump’s special envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS. He held...

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Security concerns have caused Iranian officials to delay the implementation of a deal to truck crude oil from Kirkuk to Iran, the head of the Iran-Iraq Chamber of Commerce announced on Monday. The delay comes a day after a suicide bomber targeted a Hashd al-Shaabi office in Kirkuk and after ISIS killed two police officers at an oilfield in the province on Saturday. “A large number of ISIS terrorists attacked a post of the oil police force near well 43 in the Khabbaz oilfield, killing two and wounding a third,” a security source told AFP. Iraq...

The invading Turkish army shelled Afrin canton with howitzer and mortar fire tonight. Reports are coming through of aerial attack on Rajo district. Saturday afternoon, dozens of Turkish warplanes carried out a bombardment on Afrin Canton of Northern Syria, killing 7 civilians, 3 YPG/YPJ fighters and injuring 12 people. Following the deadly attack, the Turkish army has launched yet another aggression targeting south of Afrin at night. Turkish howitzer and mortar attacks target Celeme and Xelil villages in Cindires region and Iska, Basufane villages in Sherawa district. Reports suggest that Turkish jets have shelled Hecika village in Afrin’s Rajo district at night.

Turkey opened a new front in Syria's nearly seven-year-old war on Saturday, launching airstrikes against a U.S.-backed Kurdish militia in Afrin province that raise the prospect of a further strain on relations between Ankara and Washington.The operation, dubbed "Operation Olive Branch" by Ankara, pits Turkey against Kurdish fighters allied to the United States at a time when ties between Turkey and Washington - NATO allies and members of the coalition against Islamic State - appear dangerously close to a breaking point.The strikes on the Syrian-Kurdish YPG militia hit some 108 targets, the Turkish military said. On land, the Turkey-backed Free...

The war for dominance in the Middle East, following the crushing of ISIS, appears about to commence in Syria -- with NATO allies America and Turkey on opposing sides. Turkey is moving armor and troops south to Syria's border enclave of Afrin, occupied by Kurds, to drive them out, and then drive the Syrian Kurds out of Manbij further south as well. Says President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, "We will destroy all terror nests, one by one, in Syria, starting from Afrin and Manbij." For Erdogan, the Kurdish YPG, the major U.S. ally in Syria, is an arm of the Kurdish...

Southern Kurdistan Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani had a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi in Baghdad. Southern Kurdistan Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani and his deputy Qûbad Talabani went to Baghdad on Saturday. Barzani, Talabani and KDP official Fûad Hisên have met with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi in Baghdad. While details about the meeting are not clear, this is the first meeting held between the two sides after the controversial independence referendum of 25 September 2017. Before the referendum in Southern Kurdistan, Barzani had stated that “There is a bankrupt government in Baghdad”, referring to Abadi. Abadi had also...

More than 92% of voters in Iraqi Kurdistan have opted for independence, according to election monitors, in an overwhelming endorsement of a proposed split from Baghdad that has sparked increasing threats of air and land blockades that could be imposed as early as Friday. The result came after Iraq’s parliament authorised the prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, to send troops into areas disputed between Arabs and Kurds that were contentiously included in the ballot. Euphoria on the streets of Erbil in recent days has been met with sharply increasing tension in the region, which is likely to escalate in the wake...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi forces and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters reached an agreement on Friday to stop fighting in northern Iraq, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) said, although the status of any ceasefire remained unclear. A spokesman in Baghdad for the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State earlier said the deal covered all fronts in the conflict, which broke out after Kurdish authorities held an independence referendum last month in areas of northern Iraq. However, he later told Reuters that the truce had not been officially agreed, while an Iraqi military spokesman declined to comment. According to the KRG, which is based...

Einstein was right, “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” The United States pulled up stakes in Vietnam and left a very good ally, the Montagnards (or Mountain People), to suffer their own fate. History is again repeating itself with the Kurds in Iraq. For the Kurds, this is the second time around. The United States backed out on them following the First Gulf War in 1991. Yet, after having endured all Saddam’s subsequent butchery, they still supported America in...

WASHINGTON,— Heather Nauert, does not deem it “necessary ” to appoint an envoy to help resolve tensions between Iraq and previously fully autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government. Peshmerga yielded control of Kirkuk, to Quds Force-Bagdad quislings. “So, I mean, that’s a very high level of support that we have trying to help facilitate things—for things to improve in Iraq. I don’t know that there’s that much more that we can do,”...

Kurdish authorities estimate that 100,000 people have fled Kirkuk, Iraq, this week, formerly under control of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) but now lost to the Baghdad government and its Iran-backed Shiite militia allies. Kurds fleeing Kirkuk—a multi-ethnic city heavily reliant on its vast oil resources—say Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) fighters are looting, burning houses down, and attacking Kurdish citizens. The Iraqi government announced a military initiative to wrest Kirkuk out of KRG authority after September 25, when the KRG organized a non-binding referendum asking Kurds whether they would support the establishment of an independent Kurdistan. While Kirkuk has not...

The United States is concerned by reports of violent clashes around the town of Altun Kupri in northern Iraq. We are monitoring the situation closely, and call on all parties to cease all violence and provocative movements, and to coordinate their activities to restore calm. In order to avoid any misunderstandings or further clashes, we urge the central government to calm the situation by limiting federal forces’ movements in disputed areas to only those coordinated with the Kurdistan Regional Government. We are encouraged by Prime Minister Abadi’s instructions to federal forces to protect Iraqi Kurdish citizens and to not provoke...

Well, we’ve done it. We’ve given Kirkuk to the Iranians. Kirkuk. The Heart of Kurdistan. It’s the Jerusalem of the Kurds, our only trusted and loyal allies in Iraq. It’s also the last piece of terrain needed by Tehran to complete its overland, unimpeded access to the shores of the Mediterranean and to its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon. And it’s precisely where President Trump’s new hard line on Iran, barely 72 hours old, was put to the test and failed. Actually, it didn’t fail. Our State Department failed it. Rather than act to dissuade or disrupt this past weekend’s bold...

Hakan Fidan, Undersecretary of Turkey’s secret intelligence MIT, and Qasem Soleimani, Commander of the Iranian Qods Forces, took part in the operation of the Iraqi army and the Hashd al-Shaabi forces against Kirkuk, PUK Spokesperson Sadi Ehmed Pire said. Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) Spokesperson Sadi Ehmed Pire organized a press conference in Hewler and answered the questions of journalists concerning the operations against Kirkuk by the Iraqi army and Hashd al-Shaabi forces on October 16. The PUK Spokesperson stated that the attacks against Kirkuk were promoted by both Major-General Qasem Soleimani, Commander of the Qods Forces of the Islamic...

ANF and Roj News reporters Ersin Caksu and Sores Benek wrote about what happened in Kirkuk yesterday. During the invasion maneuvers of the Iraqi army and the Hashd al-Shabi on Kirkuk, the defense line formed by the guerrillas, the peshmergas who refused to withdraw and the people of Kirkuk who took up arms in the Feylaq Crossing was broken when KDP forces abandoned the general security forces buildings and withdrew from the area along with their heavy weaponry. Following the attacks the Iraqi army and the Hashd al-Shaabi forces with them launched on Kirkuk, the defense line formed by the...

KIRKUK, Iraq (AP) — The Latest on Iraq, where federal forces have moved into the disputed northern city of Kirkuk as Kurdish forces have pulled out (all times local): 3 p.m. The U.S.-led coalition battling the Islamic State group says it believes the exchange of fire between Iraqi and Kurdish forces in and around Kirkuk was a “misunderstanding.” A coalition statement says it is monitoring federal and Kurdish military vehicles and believes they are “coordinated movements, not attacks.” It said it was aware of reports of a “limited exchange of fire during predawn hours of darkness,” but “we believe the...

Iraqi forces took control of the two largest oil fields in the disputed northern province of Kirkuk on Tuesday demolishing Kurdish hopes of creating a viable independent state. The Kurds withdrew without a fight after federal government troops and militia entered the city of Kirkuk and seized the provincial governor's office and key military bases in response to a Kurdish vote for independence last month. The fields accounted for around 250,000 barrels per day of the 650,000 bpd that the autonomous Kurdish region exported under its own auspices and their loss deals a huge blow to its already parlous finances...

KIRKUK, Iraq (AP) - The Latest on Iraq, where federal forces have attacked the Kurdish-held city of Kirkuk (all times local): 2:30 p.m. A spokesman for Iraq's state-sanctioned militias says they have "achieved all our goals" in retaking areas from Kurdish forces in and around the disputed northern city of Kirkuk. Ahmed al-Assadi says federal forces came under fire from "some rebels" after launching the operation early Monday and returned fire. He says federal forces have been deployed in the area of the K-1 military base, the Kirkuk airport and a number of oil fields and installations. But he says...