{"id":52255,"date":"2014-06-25T10:00:42","date_gmt":"2014-06-25T14:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=52255"},"modified":"2014-06-25T08:48:51","modified_gmt":"2014-06-25T12:48:51","slug":"kerry-urges-kurds-to-stay-with-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=52255","title":{"rendered":"Kerry urges Kurds to stand with Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to the New York Times<\/a>, John Kerry, our secretary of State, unfortunately, asked Kurdish president Masoud Barzani to stand with Iraq after Barzani’s calls for an independent Kurdish state;<\/p>\n

Mr. Barzani made no secret of his disdain for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite. Mr. Barzani also bluntly expressed his sense that the gains by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the Sunni extremist group known as ISIS, had changed the political landscape.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are facing a new reality and a new Iraq,\u201d Mr. Barzani said at the start of his meeting with Mr. Kerry.<\/p>\n

Mr. Kerry\u2019s trip to the Kurdish regional capital, Erbil, was his first as secretary of state. He met with Mr. Barzani after meetings in Baghdad on Monday with Mr. Maliki and rival Shiite and Sunni politicians.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Kurds are the last best chance for Iraq. They’ve been successfully fighting al Qaeda since 2001 (you know, two years before the US invasion of Hussein’s Iraq when we’re told that that there was no al Qaeda in Iraq – look up Operation Viking Hammer) and the the current surge of al Qaeda-linked ISIS has pretty much avoided the Kurdish regions of the country. In fact the pershmerga have rushed to fill the security vacuum behind the fleeing Iraqi Army.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon eyes reactivating the Sons of Iraq<\/a> (Sunnis who sided with US troops to beat back the Sunni al Qaeda insurgents in 2006) who are not so keen on the idea these days.<\/p>\n

Being Sahwa can be dangerous. One Sunni militiaman, Abu Ahmed, said he began receiving text messages from Iraqi insurgent groups four months ago, threatening him if he remained a Sahwa member. He said he reported the threats to security forces, “but nobody cared.”<\/p>\n

“The security officials told me that the safety of my family is my own responsibility, not theirs,” said Abu Ahmed, a father of five in Muqdadiyha, a Sunni enclave outside Baghdad. Like many Iraqis, he would only identify himself by his nickname out of fear for his family’s safety. “It seems that both the government and the insurgents hate Sahwa.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maliki, on the other hand, seems to be only interested in his own safety.<\/p>\n

Iraqi officials have told The Associated Press that al-Maliki is ready to at least temporarily concede the loss of large swaths of territory to Sunni insurgents as he deploys the military’s best troops to defend Baghdad.<\/p>\n

Shiite militias responding to a call to arms by Iraq’s top cleric are also focused on protecting the capital and Shiite shrines, while Kurdish fighters have grabbed a long-coveted oil-rich city outside their self-ruled territory, ostensibly to defend it from the al-Qaida breakaway group.<\/p>\n

Government forces backed by helicopter gunships have fought for a week to defend Iraq’s largest oil refinery in Beiji, north of Baghdad.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m no strategist, but it seems to me that the ISIS has stretched itself out pretty quick and fairly thin. A coordinated counter attack by government forces around Baghdad and Peshmerga from the north would trap the 10,000 or so ISIS between the two, but I guess the Iraqis and the Kurds would have to reach down deep and set aside old differences. Since Maliki has been making promises to Sunnis and Kurds that he had no intention to keep, I guess he should step down, but it would have to be his decision to put Iraq ahead of his interests…given his history, I’m not holding my breath.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to the New York Times, John Kerry, our secretary of State, unfortunately, asked Kurdish president … Kerry urges Kurds to stand with Iraq<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}