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WASHINGTON—Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) secretly traveled to northern Syria last weekend to speak with American military officials and Kurdish fighters at the forefront of the push to drive Islamic State out of their de facto capital of Raqqa, according to U.S. officials. The unusual visit, which officials said was organized with the help of the U.S. military, came as the Trump administration is debating plans for an accelerated military campaign against Islamic State, also known by the acronyms ISIS and ISIL. Mr. McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, first traveled to rebel-controlled Syria in 2013, when he met...

Today: February 16, 2004 at 12:50:13 PST Mass Migration Redraws Northern Iraq MapBy SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZIASSOCIATED PRESS SANGOOR, Iraq (AP) - In a quiet mass migration, Arabs are fleeing their villages in northern Iraq and Kurds are moving back in, reversing Saddam Hussein's campaigns of ethnic cleansing and effectively redrawing the demographic map. At the same time, politicians in Baghdad are trying to negotiate a formula for the future of Iraq, ahead of the July 1 planned transfer of power to Iraqis and the end to the U.S.-led occupation. The United States and some Iraqi leaders are pushing for a federal...

The Peshmerga are edgy in northern Iraq, and baying for revenge. After this month's devastating double-attack on the Kurdish minority's major political parties, few feel safe from the jumpy ethnic militia. Halting our car at a roadblock, half a dozen Peshmerga peer inside. One of them demands to know if we are carrying any Arabs. "What about a Canadian?" one of my fellow passengers jokes back in Kurdish. His attempt at humour is cut short by the unmistakeable sound of an assault rifle being cocked. Still, we could count ourselves fortunate at being waved through with a question and an...

The best solution is to divide Iraq into two Nations based on ethnicity: The Republic of South Kurdistan, and the Republic of Arabistan.

IRAQ: Turks Threaten to Invade February 8, 2004: On January 14 of this year Turkey's prime minister said that “Iraq's neighbors” won’t allow Iraq to shatter “along ethnic lines.” Turkey would act to stop an independent Kurd state in northern Iraq. This is not a new Turkish fear. For almost two decades “The Kurd War” has flickered in southeastern Turkey. Here’s the direct quote of Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan: "If Iraq moves toward disintegration, neighbors will get involved. Both Syria and Iran think the same way." The Turkish government has made it plain to the CPA (Coalition Provisional...

Bremer's interview.

<p>President Bush told the prime minister of Turkey yesterday that the United States supported a unified Iraq, addressing Turkish fears that the Kurds would be granted an independent state.</p> <p>"I assured him that the United States' ambition is for a peaceful country, a democratic Iraq that is territorially intact," Mr. Bush told reporters after a White House meeting with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.</p>

IRBIL, Iraq - There is growing concern among Iraq (news - web sites)'s Kurds that the United States will once again abandon them midway in their age-old aspiration to set up a federal Kurdish state. Kurdish leaders and many others in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq are convinced that Washington promised, just before invading Iraq 10 months ago, that the Kurds would be granted autonomy under a federal system after the fall of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). U.S. officials say no such guarantees were made. The Kurds, who established a semiautonomous area in Irbil, Sulaimaniyah and Dohuk...

Turkish Leader Warns of Kurd Role in Iraq Wednesday January 21, 2004 11:31 PM By LOUIS MEIXLER Associated Press Writer ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - Kurdish control of an autonomous area in a future Iraqi state would threaten the stability of the country, a view shared by northern Iraq's neighbors, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday. Erdogan, in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, said he will raise those concerns when he meets President Bush at the White House on Wednesday. Turkish leaders have repeatedly said they fear that expanding Kurdish self-rule in northern Iraq could lead to...

Turkish firms snatch lucrative deals in Kurdish north Arbil, Iraq Press, January 17, 2004 – Turkish investors are flocking to the Kurdish north although moves by Iraqi Kurds to bolster their autonomy have unnerved politicians in Ankara. “Business is something and politics something else,” said Delshad Razkar, the Kurdish businessman who works as a liaison officer for several Turkish companies in the region. Iraqi Kurds won their autonomy in 1991 when they began administering most of their region away from the authority of ousted leader Saddam Hussein. Politically, the main two Kurdish factions running the three Kurdish provinces of Sulaimaniya,...

<p>ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- Turkey's prime minister told an Iraqi leader Wednesday that Iraq's neighbors would get involved to prevent the country's breakup along ethnic lines and that Kurds would be stopped if they pursue ambitions to control oil-rich areas in northern Iraq, news reports said.</p>

On Monday, Kofi Annan will have a chance to play "a vital role" in Iraq that the U.S. has promised. Iraqi, U.S. and British representatives will troop into his New York office with a request: inform the Shiite leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, that the world body supports a reasonable timetable for Iraqi elections, not a premature election that would amount to a coup by Iraq's Shiite majority. As the U.N thus demonstrates its nation-building usefulness, the U.S. will face its own delicate task: to persuade the Kurds in the north not to demand so much autonomy that it may endanger...

The Bush administration has yet another, although this time not unanticipated, problem on its hands in Iraq. In meetings with Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, the Kurds have demanded almost complete autonomy from the Iraqi central government that is supposed to take over June 30. That likely would amount to de facto partition of Iraq, but going in, the United States is committed to preserving the integrity of the Iraqi state. The Kurdish areas, we insist, will remain part of Iraq. The problem is, in a sense, of the United States' own making. By enforcing the no-fly zone...

ON CHRISTMAS DAY in Erbil--the semi-official capital of the semi-official entity known as Iraqi Kurdistan--over 100 delegates from across northern Iraq gathered in a meeting hall that resembled nothing so much as an inner city high school auditorium, complete with rows of battered faux-leather chairs and dim fluorescent lighting. An improbably huge Kurdish flag was draped across the rear of the stage--three stripes of red, white, and green, with a golden sun at the center. The assembly was a cross-section of Iraqi society: a bespectacled professor of law from Sulaimaniya in a prim three-piece suit; a Yezidi doctor from Sinjar;...

The US Army pledged to pull down a symbolic barbed wire fence around Saddam Hussein's birthplace in a move aimed at easing tensions with Iraqis as the White House reaffirmed its commitment to Iraq's territorial integrity after a transfer of power scheduled for June. "We are strongly committed to the territorial integrity of Iraq," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters aboard Air Force One. "The Iraqi people will be the ones who will make the decisions" within the framework of a November 15 agreement on the transfer of power, and issues related to federalism will be decided "within that...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 — The Bush administration has decided to let the Kurdish region remain semi-autonomous as part of a newly sovereign Iraq despite warnings from Iraq's neighbors and many Iraqis not to divide the country into ethnic states, American and Iraqi officials say. The officials said their new position on the Kurdish area was effectively dictated by the Nov. 15 accord with Iraqi leaders that established June 30 as the target date for Iraqi self-rule. Such a rapid timetable, they said, has left no time to change the autonomy and unity of the Kurdish stronghold of the north, as...

Syria opposes any attempt to carve up its neighbour Iraq and in particular to the establishment of an independent Kurdish state, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said in a television interview aired on Monday. "We are opposed not only to a Kurdish state but also to any action against the territorial integrity of Iraq," he told the Turkish-language station of CNN television on the eve of a historic visit to Turkey, the first by a Syrian leader for 58 years. On Tuesday, al-Assad and his wife will start a three-day state visit to Turkey. Al-Assad is expected to hold talks with...