Free Republic

The president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq, Nechirvan Barzani, traveled to Tehran on Monday to meet with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who warned him to prevent “anti-revolutionary elements” from getting too friendly with the autonomous Kurdish region. The warning appeared to be a threat intended to dissuade Kurdish cooperation with the United States and any potential cordial ties with neighboring Israel. The KRG maintains friendly relations with the United States and cooperates militarily with Washington, particularly against the Islamic State (Isis) jihadist organization. The KRG’s Peshmerga forces were pivotal in the ouster of the ISIS “caliphate” from...

The incident occurs after a meeting between Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on Tuesday. ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Turkish warplanes have conducted airstrikes in the Yezidi (Ezidi)-populated city of Shingal in northern Iraq; sources told Kurdistan 24 on Wednesday. According to the sources, there were some airstrikes to the west of Baraa village, located close to the border with Syria. Snip- In April 2017, Turkish airstrikes supposedly targeting the PKK-affiliated YBS killed five Peshmerga soldiers and wounded nine others, as well as causing extensive damage to the area, resulting in condemnation from...

Armenia has been in the grips of a mass public protest movement since early April, when opposition leader and member of parliament Nikol Pashinyan launched street demonstrations and strikes in cities all over the country against former president Serzh Sargsyan’s attempt to be named the next prime minister. But after Sargsyan stepped aside, the acting prime minister, Karen Karapetyan (a former chief executive of Gazprom’s fully owned Armenian subsidiary, who has long surrounded himself with support from Russian oligarchs), refused to accept the conditions of a peaceful transition of power to the opposition. To reinforce these counterrevolutionary measures, Samvel Karapetyan...

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – US forces have reached on the top of Mount Sinjar (Shingal) to establish a new a military base, a Kurdish Ezidi official said on Friday. “Today, 15 military vehicles of US troops arrived on top of Mount Shingal and stationed themselves near Mira peak on the mountain,” Jalal Khalo, deputy mayor in Shingal, told Kurdistan 24. The US forces are preparing to build a military base on the mountain, Khalo added. Mount Shingal is one of the most strategic locations in Iraq, lying near the border with Syria and 125 km west of Mosul. The Kurdish...

A special screening of a documentary about the Peshmerga. http://www.rudaw.net/english/world/070320181 ‘to have the Peshmerga enter into the Congress through this documentary, to have the Peshmerga raising their voice through this documentary inside the house of the law in America for me is an important event,". French filmmaker Bernard-Henri Levy

WASHINGTON DC, United States (Kurdistan 24) – In an interview with Kurdistan 24, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R, California) explained why he felt strongly that the US must support the Kurds. “I am totally dismayed that there’s been any talk whatsoever about reducing our arms support for the Kurdish people, who are fighting against evil forces in the Middle East,” he said. Rohrabacher described the Kurds as “a stalwart in the fight against the evil of radical Islamic terrorism, or, let’s say, radical terrorists who are using Islam.” “The Kurds need to be recognized for this,” he affirmed, as he cautioned...

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,”...

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...

Picture taken on October 14, 2017 shows civilian taking up arms to defend the oil-rich city of Kirkuk against a potential attack by the Iraqi forces. Photo: Rudaw TV KIRKUK, Kurdistan Region – Peshmerga intelligence shows beyond a doubt that Iranian Revolutionary Guards are among the ranks of the Iraqi army and the Hashd al-Shaabi stationed south and west of Kirkuk. “The Iraqi army and the Hashd al-Shaabi are not the only state that are attacking us. We have intelligence with 100 percent accuracy that there are also the Iranian army and the Revolutionary Guards among them,” Shwan Shamerani,...

'They're giving up,' said Lieutenant General Paul Funk, who commands the coalition task force fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. 'Their leaders are abandoning them.' In uncommon scenes, large groups of militants were turning themselves over to Kurdish Peshmerga forces, in the city southwest of Kirkuk. snip 'The speed at which the enemy gave up surprised me,' Funk said in a phone interview from Baghdad, after Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the liberation of Hawija. Funk said about 1,000 militants surrendered in the past three or four days of fighting in Hawija. The coalition had estimated up to...

The US government has stopped paying Kurdish peshmerga fighters’ salaries after a yearlong agreement expired over the summer, and there are no current plans to renew it. Under the deal negotiated by the Barack Obama administration in July 2016, the United States agreed to pay stipends to some 36,000 Kurdish fighters battling the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq. The agreement was expected to be renewed over the summer for another year, but US and Kurdish officials tell Al-Monitor that talks stalled as the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) pursued a divisive referendum on independence and the IS presence in the region...

Yazidi civilians have taken up arms in the Khanasor neighbourhood of Shingal after clashes with Peshmerga and Yazidi forces. Clashes erupted between peshmerga forces allied to the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of the Kurdish Regional Government and Yazidi Shingal Resistance Units (YBS) in Khanasor, a neigbourhood to the west of Mosul on Friday morning.After more than an hour of fighting, in which one YBS fighter has been killed and at least 7 from both sides have been injured, clashes have stopped. Both sides accused one another for the eruption of fighting.Kom News briefly spoke to Kurdish Policy co-founder Kamal Chomani...

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) issued a report on Monday responding to allegations by the US State Department that ranged from press violations to torture in the Kurdistan Region. The report by the KRG’s High Committee to Evaluate and Respond to International Reports comes after nearly a year of investigations that examined various points addressed in the 2015 US Department of State’s annual report on Human Rights Practices in Iraq, which also examined the rights situation in Kurdistan. Among other things, the US report contained allegations that the Peshmerga were systematically destroying Arab homes in towns...

BASHIQA, Iraq (Reuters) - The bells have rung out after two years of silence in the Mar Korkeis church in the town of Bashiqa, some 15 km (10 miles) north of Mosul, Islamic State's last major city stronghold in Iraq. Kurdish Peshmerga fighters retook the town on Nov. 7, ending two years of rule by the hardline Sunni group which persecuted Christians and other minorities in the Nineveh plains, one of the world's oldest centres of Christianity. Women trilled to celebrate the moment when a new crucifix was erected on the church, replacing one that was broken by the Islamic...

When ISIS swept into the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar in 2014, a few young Yazidi women took up arms against the militants attacking women and girls from their community. “They took eight of my neighbors and I saw they were killing the children,” Asema Dahir told Reuters last month at a checkpoint near a front line north of Mosul. Dressed in military fatigues, the 21-year-old is now part of an all-female unit in the Kurdish peshmerga forces, which have played an important role in pushing back ISIS in northern Iraq.

The 31-year-old Keating attended the Naval Academy before becoming a Navy Seal based out of Coronado, California Keating was the grandson of Charles Keating, Jr., the Arizona financier at the center of the 1989 savings and loan scandal, which led to five U.S. Senators being accused of corruption. The senators allegedly involved were dubbed 'The Keating Five.' Keating was advising Peshmerga forces but was less than 2 miles behind the front lines in the town of Tel Askuf, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said in a statement. A defense official told Fox News the he was killed by small arms...

The self-proclaimed Islamic State broke through a line of Kurdish forces in Iraq and killed a U.S. service member Tuesday who were there to advise them, a U.S. defense official told the Daily Beast. U.S. advisers had arrived on Monday morning to assist the Kurdish forces, known as peshmerga, in the northern city of Mosul, checking on “their morale and defenses,” the official said. The U.S. forces were as many as 3 miles from the frontlines when the ISIS fighters attacked, the official said. ISIS fighters “appeared to penetrate the forward line” and began attacking the peshmerga. A U.S. service...

<p>Iran was ordered by a U.S. judge to pay more than $10.5 billion in damages to families of people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and to a group of insurers.</p> <p>U.S. District Judge George Daniels in New York issued a default judgment Wednesday against Iran for $7.5 billion to the estates and families of people who died at the World Trade Center and Pentagon. It includes $2 million to each estate for the victims’ pain and suffering plus $6.88 million in punitive damages.</p>

That sounds more dramatic than it actually was. Turkey sent around 150 soldiers and two dozens tanks to Bashiqa, just northeast of Mosul in what Ankara described as an effort to replace an existing contingent of around 90 troops that have supposedly been on a "training" mission with the Peshmerga for the better part of two years. As we documented over the weekend, this is hardly the first time the Turks have entered the country. However, the circumstances are quite different this time around. That is, this isn't a anti-terror mission aimed at tracking the PKK. Over the weekend, we...

Separately from the political news this morning, the Sunday shows like This Week and CNN are discussing this video from a Kurdish news site which features “helmet-cam” footage of the U.S.-Kurdish joint rescue mission that liberated 70 prisoners from an ISIS prison in northern Iraq. The video shows Kurdish Peshmerga special forces and supported by elite U.S. Delta Force soldiers, searching prisoners; then after a moment, in a darker passage, gunfire and prisoners running around a dark corner, waved along by armed troops. After a few moments, the offscreen gunfire increases in frequency and volume and the prisoners run...