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InquisitR: The United States has deployed a squadron of tactical aircraft to be used in the efforts to defeat the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group that controls regions of Syria and Iraq, military officials announced this week. The warplanes, a squadron of Marine Corps EA-6B Prowler aircraft, were sent to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey to act as tactical support for U.S. and coalition operations.
CNN reported on April 15 that the U.S. European Command announced that the Prowler squadron, part of Marine Corps Tactical Warfare Squadron 4, were deployed to attack ISIS’s ability to communicate in areas of engagement. Mission specifics were not spelled out, of course, but Prowlers not only can intercept ISIS communications but also disrupt — or jam — frequencies of communication devices and radar. Jamming capability benefits are manifold, from disrupting cell phones used in triggering Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) to blocking ISIS propaganda transmissions.
Lt. Col. David Westover Jr., spokesperson for European Command, told CNN the following “the Prowler is a force multiplier continuing to do what it has for the last 45 years: support warfighters flying in the air and fighting on the ground by giving them the electronic communications dominance to ensure a decisive win.”
The Prowler aircraft has a long and distinguished history, dating back to its first deployment in the skies over Vietnam in 1972. Besides its more recent use in Iraq and Syria against ISIS (since 2014), the aircraft has also been instrumental in peace-keeping efforts around the world, such as when it was employed to assist in maintaining the “no-fly zone” over the war-torn area of former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
The deployment of the Prowler squadron to aid in the fight against ISIS is just the latest addition to the armament being sent to combat the terrorist organization. Just last week, an untold number of B-52 Stratofortress bombers were deployed to Qatar to run missions against ISIS troop concentrations and targets of strategic value. It was the first time since Operation Desert Storm that B-52s had seen service in the Middle East, although a number of the Air Force’s oldest and most reliable aircraft had been used in the war in Afghanistan.
But Prowlers and B-52s aren’t the only weapons the U.S. military is now using to fight ISIS. It was announced earlier in the week, according to Reuters, that the U.S. and its coalition partners were also using cyber attacks as part of their military strategy against ISIS. This is done using “cyber bombs” against ISIS internet capabilities, placing increased pressure on the terrorist organization, which has been quite effective in disseminating terrorist propaganda online, not to mention its use of the internet as a recruitment tool.
Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said the following on Tuesday from an aircraft headed to a Colorado air base.
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NYT: BAGHDAD — President Obama will send American military advisers closer to the front lines of the conflict against the Islamic State in Iraq, part of a series of measures that will broaden the United States military campaign against the extremist group there.
The advisers, who until now had been assisting Iraqi military divisions, which have about 10,000 troops, will now also work with units of about 2,000 soldiers who are more directly involved in day-to-day combat, according to Defense Department officials.
The officials said the advisers will not be on the actual front lines, but American and Iraqi commanders want them to move closer to the fighting so they can provide timely tactical guidance to the Iraqis as they prepare for the long-awaited assault on the northern city of Mosul, seized by the Islamic State in 2014.
Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter made the announcement in a speech to dozens of American troops at the airport in Baghdad.
To give the Iraqis more capabilities on the battlefield, the Pentagon will also deploy a handful of Apache attack helicopters, Mr. Carter said. The Apaches, known for their withering — and accurate — rocket and cannon fire, can provide strong air support to ground forces. The Pentagon will also deploy several long-range artillery units, Mr. Carter added.
“We want to have our forces there with them so they can help them and they can bring the great weight of the coalition’s enablers to this campaign,” Mr. Carter said. “It’s all consistent — these additions are consistent with our overall strategic approach which is to enable the Iraqi security forces, not to substitute for them.”
Earlier Monday, Mr. Carter flew by helicopter into the Green Zone, where he met with the Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, who has been contending with Shiite leaders backed by Iran who oppose an expanded American role in the country.
“We’re on the same page as the Iraqi government,” Mr. Carter said on Monday.
The package of military aid will involve sending to Iraq more members of the Army Special Forces, or Green Berets, who specialize in advising and training foreign military forces. Mr. Obama will increase the number of American forces that commanders can use in Iraq by 217, to 4,087. That number, however, is largely symbolic because the Pentagon uses a system that has exceptions for commandos and soldiers who are supposed to be in the country less than four months. Defense Department officials have said that there are more than 5,000 service members in Iraq.
The Kurds are an important part of the anti-Islamic State campaign in the north, and Mr. Carter said the United States would give the Kurdish regional government more than $415 million.
The announcement came as the Obama administration has said that the campaign against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, is gaining momentum. In recent weeks, the Iraqi military reclaimed the city of Hit. At the end of December, the Iraqis, with the help of American air power, drove the Islamic State out of Ramadi, the biggest city in western Iraq.
Yet it has been nearly two years since the United States began military operations against the Islamic State and the organization still controls a significant portion of the northern and western parts of Iraq, including Mosul, the second largest city in the country. American commanders estimate that there are 5,000 Islamic State fighters in Mosul and about 5,000 more elsewhere in Iraq and more than 10,000 in Syria.
For more than five years, Donald Trump’s new top campaign aide, Paul Manafort, lobbied for a Washington-based group that Justice Department prosecutors have charged operated as a front for Pakistan’s intelligence service, according to court and lobbying records reviewed by Yahoo News.
Manafort’s work in the 1990s as a registered lobbyist for the Kashmiri American Council was only one part of a wide-ranging portfolio that, over several decades, included a gallery of controversial foreign clients ranging from Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos and Zaire’s brutal dictator Mobutu Sese Seko to an Angolan rebel leader accused by human rights groups of torture. His role as an adviser to Ukraine’s then prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, prompted concerns within the Bush White House that he was undermining U.S. foreign policy. It was considered so politically toxic in 2008 that presidential candidate John McCain nixed plans for Manafort to manage the Republican National Convention — a move that caused a rupture between Manafort and his then business partner, Rick Davis, who at the time was McCain’s campaign manager.
Manafort’s work for the Kashmiri group has so far not gotten any media attention.
But it could fuel more questions about his years of lobbying for questionable foreign interests before Manafort, 67, assumed his new position as chief delegate counter and strategist for a presidential candidate who repeatedly decries the influence of Washington lobbyists and denounces the manipulation of U.S. policy by foreign governments.
Court records show that Manafort’s Kashmiri lobbying contract came on the FBI’s radar screen during a lengthy counterterrorism investigation that culminated in 2011 with the arrest of the Kashmiri council’s director, Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, on charges that he ran the group on behalf of Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, as part of a scheme to secretly influence U.S. policy toward the disputed territory of Kashmir.
Paul Manafort, convention manager for the Trump campaign, on “Meet the Press,” April 10. (Photo: William B. Plowman/NBC/NBC NewsWire via Getty Images)
The Kashmiri American Council was a “scam” that amounted to a “false flag operation that Mr. Fai was operating on behalf of the ISI,” Gordon D. Kromberg, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case, said in March 2012 at Fai’s sentencing hearing in federal court. While posing as a U.S.-based nonprofit funded by American donors sympathetic to the plight of Kashmiris, it was actually bankrolled by the ISI in order to deflect public attention “away from the involvement of Pakistan in sponsoring terrorism in Kashmir and elsewhere,” Kromberg said. Fai, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and tax fraud charges, was then sentenced to two years in federal prison.
Lobbying records filed with the secretary of the Senate show that Manafort’s lobbying firm, Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, was paid $700,000 by the Kashmiri American Council between 1990 and 1995. This was among more than $4 million that federal prosecutors alleged came from the ISI; Fai collected the money over 20 years from “straw” American donors who were being reimbursed from secret accounts in Pakistan. (The funds were in some cases delivered to Fai in brown paper bags stuffed with cash — and then the donors reimbursed with wire transfers from ISI operatives, according to an FBI affidavit.)
Manafort, who handled the Kashmiri account for his firm, was never charged in the case, and Kromberg told Yahoo News that what knowledge, if any, he had of the secret source of money from his client was not part of the Justice Department’s investigation. (While registering with Congress as a domestic lobbyist for the Kashmiri American Council, Manafort never registered with the U.S. Justice Department as a foreign agent of Pakistan, as he would have been required to do if he was aware of the ISI funding of his client.)
But a former senior Pakistani official, who asked not to be identified, told Yahoo News that there was never any doubt on Pakistan’s part that Manafort knew of his government’s role in backing the Kashmiri council. The former official said that during a trip from Islamabad in 1994 he met with Manafort and Fai in Manafort’s office in Alexandria, Va., “to review strategy and plans” for the council. Manafort, at the meeting, presented plans to influence members of Congress to back Pakistan’s case for a plebiscite for Kashmir (the largest portion of which has been part of India since 1947), he said. (Internal budget documents later obtained by the FBI show plans by the council to spend $80,000 to $100,000 a year on campaign contributions to members of Congress.) “There is no way Manafort didn’t know that Pakistan was involved with” the council, the former official said, although he added: “Some things are not explicitly stated.”
Neither Manafort nor the Trump campaign responded to requests for comment for this story. (“I’m not working for any client right now other than working for Mr. Trump,” Manafort recently said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” when asked by moderator Chuck Todd about his past “controversial” clients.)
Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, executive director of the Kashmiri American Council, in 2007. (Photo: Roshan Mughal/AP)
But Manafort’s former partner Charlie Black, now an adviser to rival Republican presidential candidate John Kasich, said that as far as the firm was concerned, the Kashmiri council was a domestic, not a foreign, client. “Nobody was more surprised than me that the guy was taking the money from Pakistan,” Black said in a telephone interview. “We didn’t know anything about it.”
But there was no doubt on the part of the Indian government about where the money was coming from. Its officials repeatedly alleged that the Kashmiri council was a front group for Pakistan during the period that Manafort’s firm was lobbying for it. The issue blew up in September 1993 after Manafort and one of his lobbying associates, Riva Levinson, traveled to Kashmir and, according to Indian officials, posed as CNN reporters in an effort to gather video footage of interviews with Kashmiri officials.
“The whole thing was obviously a blatant operation of producing television software with a deliberate and particularly anti-Indian slant by lobbyists hired by Pakistan for this very purpose,” Shiv Shankar, then the Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in a letter to CNN in Atlanta at the time. (Levinson did not respond to a request for comment from Yahoo News. At the time she denied the Indian allegations, telling a UPI reporter, “We never misrepresented ourselves as journalists.”)
Exactly what Manafort did for the Kashmiri council is unclear from the sketchy lobbying reports his firm filed with the secretary of the Senate. Those reports show his firm first registered as lobbyists for the group in October 1990, the same year the group was founded by Fai. The reports list little beyond the purpose of the lobbying: to seek support for a House resolution by then-Rep. Dan Burton to sponsor a “peaceful resolution” of the Kashmir dispute. They also show payments to the firm of $140,000 a year. (During this time, Black, Manafort had a long list of other domestic clients that included the NRA, the Tobacco Institute and the Trump Organization, which paid the firm $70,000 a year to lobby Congress on casino gambling, aviation and tax issues, according to the lobbying records.)
“We went to the Hill for them to raise the profile of the [Kashmiri] cause,” said Black about the firm’s work for Fai’s council. “But nobody in Bush 41 [the administration of George H.W. Bush] or the Clinton administration wanted to touch it. We never got any real attention for it.”
The FBI came across evidence that ISI was actually not pleased with Manafort’s work. The bureau’s investigation began in 2005 with a tip from a confidential informant (who was seeking a reduced prison term) that Fai and an associate in Pakistan, Zaheer Ahmad, were agents of the ISI. As part of the probe, agents obtained secret national security warrants to wiretap Fai’s communications; they also searched his home and offices. Among the evidence they seized: a December 1995 letter from Fai’s main ISI handler, identified as a Pakistani Army brigadier general named Javeed Aziz Khan, who went by the name of “Abdullah,” that criticized Fai for renewing a contract with a public relations firm, according to the FBI affidavit from a counterterrorism agent, Sarah Webb Linden, that was filed to support Fai’s detention in July 2011.
Lobbyist Charlie Black (Photo: Tom Williams/Roll Call/Getty Images)
Eight months later, at Fai’s sentencing hearing, prosecutor Kromberg for the first time identified the public relations firm as Black, Manafort, according to court records. He then detailed a dispute between Fai and his ISI handler over the Black, Manafort contract. Fai wrote back to Khan the next day insisting that the ISI official had in fact approved the renewal of the contract and noted that to “make it appear” that the council was a Kashmiri organization “financed by Americans,” there was a preexisting agreement that nobody from the Pakistani Embassy would ever contact Black, Manafort, said Kromberg. But Fai was overruled, according to Kromberg’s account. The ISI handler wrote back to Fai stating that that “‘we’ — a reference to the ISI — were unsatisfied with the performance of Black, Manafort & Stone, and advised Fai to terminate the contract immediately,” according to a transcript of Kromberg’s statement to the court.
Meanwhile, the FBI pursued even more alarming allegations relating to Ahmad, Fai’s Pakistan-based associate. According to a ProPublica account, the bureau questioned witnesses about a trip that Ahmad had allegedly made to Afghanistan with a Pakistani nuclear scientist, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood; the scientist was suspecting of having met with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in August 2001 to discuss the terror leaders’ interest in acquiring nuclear weapons.
Manafort, for his part, appears to have expanded his business connections in Pakistan. In 2013 he acknowledged to French investigators that, in 1994, he had received $86,000 from two arms dealers involved in the sale of French attack submarines to Pakistan’s navy. The payments were part of an arrangement to compensate Manafort for political advice and polling he provided to French presidential candidate Édouard Balladur — one part of a wide-ranging French investigation into alleged kickbacks from arms sales dubbed by the French press “the Karachi affair.”
One puzzling question about the Kashmir case is why, six years after the investigation began, the FBI decided to arrest Fai in 2011. One explanation, a source familiar with the case said, is that it came during a period of mounting tensions between the United States and Pakistan, much of it due to concerns among U.S. national security officials about the “double game” being played by the ISI. In May of that year, President Obama ordered the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden without informing the Pakistani military, in part because of fears that elements of the ISI (an arm of the military) might have been protecting the al-Qaida leader. Just weeks later, federal prosecutors in Chicago presented damning testimony in federal court that an ISI handler had directed one of the confessed conspirators in the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai — which killed 164 people, including six Americans — that was perpetrated by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani-based group with links to al-Qaida committed to “liberating” Muslims from Indian rule in Kashmir.
Then, on July 18, after Fai returned from a trip to the United Kingdom, the FBI confronted him for the third time about whether he had any connections to the ISI — and he denied it. Fai was arrested, and he and Ahmad (who remained in Pakistan and died later that year) were charged in federal court with being unregistered foreign agents of Pakistan.
Thank you Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, for your wonderful speech last Friday, January 23rd.
We have, with President Obama, someone who believes in development and diplomacy. Coming to the State Department yesterday sent a very strong signal. A few of you may even know, as I mentioned in my testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee, that the President’s late mother was an expert in microfinance and worked in Indonesia. I have been involved in microfinance since 1983, when I first met Muhammad Yunus and had Muhammad come to see us in Arkansas so that we could use the lessons from the Grameen Bank in our own country. I was actually looking forward to being on a panel with the President’s mother in Beijing on microfinance.
You were very warmly welcomed by foreign service workers who have been struggling through eight years of the US losing its moral footing in the world. You brought up a favorite subject, microcredit, and two of my favorite people (along with yourself), President Obama’s late mother, Ann Dunham Soetero, and Muhammad Yunus, my “boss.”
One of those helping President Obama’s late mother organize that meeting was Lawrence Yanovitch now heading up Poverty issues at the Gates Foundation. He spoke to me about his work with Ann Dunham Soetero when in Paris last year. This Obama victory is also a victory for her and her work with microcredit.
Microcredit is not the only answer but it surely should be an important part of not only how we restructure our own American economy, but how we support others around the world.
Microcredit helps women. Microcredit helps fight against fundamentalism and violence against women, children, immigrant communities, and makes the business-model approach to ending poverty a human one.
Muhammad Yunus’ work with the Grameen Bank has now made it to the US with Grameen America. Organizations such as the Grameen Foundation have been replicating this model around the world.
President Obama’s late mother “got it,” Hillary Clinton “got it”…years before others. Now let’s grow it at home and around the world. It’s one banking system that is actually working. What other bank these days is made up mostly of women borrowers and can claim a 98-99% payback rate? Surely not Citibank!
Thank you to DailyCaller News Foundation: Hillary Clinton’s Department of State awarded at least $13 million in grants, contracts and loans to her longtime friend and Clinton Foundation donor Muhammad Yunus, despite his being ousted in 2011 as managing director of the Bangladesh-based Grameen Bank amid charges of corruption, according to an investigation by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
The tax funds were given to Yunus through 18 separate U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) award transactions listed by the federal contracting site USAspending.gov.
They highlight how Clinton mixed official government business with Clinton Foundation donors. Yunus gave between $100,000 to $300,000 to the foundation, according to the Clinton Foundation website.
Groups allied to Yunus received an additional $11 million from USAID, according to the contracting website. Yunus had business relationships with all of them.
For more than 30 years, Yunus oversaw the distribution of Grameen Bank “micro-credit loans” to the poor to set up small businesses. He was eventually regarded as a saint among many anti-poverty activists.
But he also got a big helping hand over the three decades Bill and Hillary Clinton actively promoted him and repeatedly showcased him as a celebrity figure at major Clinton Foundation functions.
The former president is credited with launching a personal lobbying campaign to press the Nobel Committee to award its peace prize to the Yunus. It did so in 2006.
Secretary Clinton’s mixing of official work with foundation donors is reportedly the focus of a second, less publicized FBI public corruption investigation of the former secretary of state. The more widely known FBI probe focuses on her use of a private email server located in her New York residence to conduct official government business.
“Presumably if The Daily Caller News Foundation has this information, then the FBI has it,” said Robert T. Hosko, former assistant director of the Bureau’s criminal division. “Certainly, the FBI would want to know the nature of these relationships,” he told TheDCNF.
“That’s precisely the sort of thing that the FBI would be looking at and should be looking at to determine whether there’s an official act of corruption,” he said.
The FBI declined comment, saying, “we generally do not comment on whether or not we’re conducting a particular investigation.”
Clinton was not shy about using her post as America’s chief diplomat on behalf of Yunus and Grameen Bank when the Bangladesh government announced an investigation into multiple allegations of financial mismanagement by the political activist.
Clinton rocked the Bangladeshi political establishment when she publicly intervened on behalf of Yunus in 2011 as the South Asian government prepared to launch its probe.
With Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dipu Moni — also a woman — at her side, Clinton said at a State Department news conference that “we have expressed directly to the government our concern and hope that the Grameen Bank … is able to continue to function productively on behalf of the people of Bangladesh.”
Emails from Clinton’s private server disclose that Bill and Hillary Clinton closely monitored the Bangladesh government’s investigation of Yunus, who is a high-profile fixture at most of the Clinton Foundation’s major gatherings. The foundation features him at 37 places on its website.
David Bossie, president of the conservative activist group Citizens United and a long-time Clinton critic, called for the FBI to look into possible conflicts of interest linked to the long association between Yunus and the Clintons.
“The mixing of State Department and U.S. government business with Clinton Foundation donors and interests is a prime example of what the FBI could be investigating in addition to the private email server setup.” Bossie told TheDCNF.
The Clinton-Yunus relationship dates from Bill Clinton’s tenure as Arkansas governor, when he and Hillary fell in love with the concept of micro-credit loans. Yunus, then a Bangladesh economist, has championed the micro-credit cause through Grameen Bank since 1978.
Things went terribly wrong for Yunus and Grameen Bank about five years ago when a number of independent authorities decided to take a closer look at the bank and the 50 inter-related enterprises Yunus created, most of which operate in Third World countries where there is little financial oversight.
Former Secretary Clinton and her husband closely followed Yunus’ mounting problems. A June 11, 2012 email from Amitabh Desai, the foundation’s foreign policy director, for example, alerted Hillary Clinton of a Yunus response to the Bangladesh investigation.
“In case you haven’t seen it already, WJC wanted HRC and you to see this,” Desai said in the email routed through Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, and Huma Abedin, her deputy chief of staff. “WJC” is Bill Clinton and “HRC” is Hillary Clinton.
Hosko said the email “is potentially an indicator of the co-mingling of state business with the Clinton Foundation. It is very concerning.”
Clinton’s aid to Yunus also included 18 grants, contracts and loans awarded to two of his America-based foundations, the Grameen Foundation USA and Grameen America, according to USASpending.gov.
The awards, totaling $13 million, were issued by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the development arm of the State Department, beginning when Clinton became secretary of state. Another $11 million in federal funds went to organizations allied with Yunus.
When asked to explain the Yunus grants and loans, USAID Spokesman Raphael Cook said the agency didn’t have the “manpower” to respond to questions about the transactions.
Other federal agencies also opened their coffers to Yunus after Clinton entered the administration. The Department of Treasury awarded a $600,000 grant directly to Grameen America under a fund designed to boost financial institutions in community development. A Treasury Department spokesman declined to provide any details beyond the fact the funds were for activities in New York.
A series of Small Business Administration grants to Grameen America also began in July 2011, totaling $934,000. Those grants were for “salaries and expenses” for the foundation to operate its New York offices where Clinton once a U.S. senator.
In addition to being revered among anti-poverty activists, Yunus was popular among elements of the Bangladesh military. When a group of generals overthrew the Bangladesh government in January 2007, Yunus considered establishing a new political party to lead the new military-led government, thereby legitimizing the coup.
The BBC reported April 7, 2007, that “the army would sponsor Nobel Peace prize winner Dr. Muhammad Yunus as a new leader.”
Sabir Mustafa, the BBC’s Bengali Service editor, added that “Dr. Yunus is still viewed as a credible candidate by elements in the army.” In the end, Yunus opted not to create the new party.
The Grameen Foundation, USA did not respond to a request for comment from TheDCNF. Neither did spokesmen for the Clinton presidential campaign or the Clinton Foundation.
Three Russian helicopters entered Polish air space last week, flying across the country’s north-eastern border with Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave, a Polish newspaper reported on Monday.
Russian helicopters. Photo: Alan Wilson/Flickr.com The type of choppers involved in the incident last week reported by Gazeta Polska Codziennie was not specified by the paper.
Citing a forestry official whom it described as an eye-witness, Gazeta Polska Codziennie reported that the Russian machines, flying low and in formation, entered several kilometres into Polish territory.
“It wasn’t long before the helicopters returned over the border,” the official was quoted as saying. He added that Polish border guards quickly arrived at the scene.
IBTimes: The passage of Crimea’s secession referendum and the peninsula’s likely annexation to Russia brought jubilant crowds into the streets there, but cast a chill over most of Ukraine and its neighbors.
With Vladimir Putin’s Russia seeming intent on redrawing international boundaries, other nations formerly under Soviet power may be wondering if their frontiers are secure.
Wedged between Lithuania and Poland is the small Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, a snippet of the Soviet past that was left behind in part so Russia could have access to the Baltic Sea, and where it currently keeps its Baltic Fleet. The Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet is based at Sevastopol, Crimea, center of the present conflict.
While the Kaliningrad region doesn’t share the unrest that has troubled Ukraine and the Crimea, which Russia says obliged it to intervene there, it is still a cause for concern to its neighbors. Of particular note to Lithuania are the 170,000 ethnic Russians living within its borders, primarily in the port city of Klaipeda, which is close to Kaliningrad, and Visaginas, which is on the eastern border with Belarus.
While a scenario of intervention similar to Crimea seems unlikely, Lithuanians are concerned, along with Poland, which borders the south of Kaliningrad, and has began military maneuvers with the United States.
Nadia Diuk, vice president of the National Endowment for Democracy, said on a recent PBS show that Kaliningrad could act a base of operations for all kinds of incursions into non-Russian territory. Both Poland, a former Soviet satellite, and Lithuania, a former Soviet republic, are now NATO members, largely because of their fear of Russia.
The Poles have been looking over their shoulders since the Ukraine conflict began, and since Russia accused them of setting up military training camps for the Euromaidan protesters in Kiev. The former head of the Ukrainian security service, Aleksandr Yakimenko, claimed that snipers in the Ukrainian unrest were acting under Polish and American orders.
Just last week, Poland appeared to be fearing the worst, as it invoked a NATO rule allowing a member state to call for military consultations with allies if it feels threatened. Since then Poland and the United States have stepped up military exercises. In additon, the United States supplied additional military aircraft to assist the NATO air defense mission for the Baltic states.
A fragment of the former German East Prussia, Kaliningrad, formerly known as Königsberg under German rule and famous as the birthplace of philosopher Immanuel Kant, was annexed by the Soviets in 1945 and during the Cold War was one of the most secretive and militarized regions of the USSR.
The Russians still consider the Baltiysk naval base, their only ice-free port on the Baltic, a vital asset. Kaliningrad is also home to two Russian air bases. It’s unclear how many soldiers Russia has in the region, but it is known that short-range ballistic missiles have been deployed there since 2012.
Add in more Apache helicopters so the real numbers of new deployments remain unknown. Today there is a cap of 3950 troops in Iraq but that number is hardly the real numbers in this mission creep. The real objective is taking back Mosul, a mission that will take a long time and honestly major coordination. The other truth is countless Iraqis are fleeing Mosul right now, destinations are unknown as well.
FNC: The U.S. has agreed to deploy more than 200 additional troops to Iraq and to send Apache helicopters for the first time into the fight against the Islamic State group in Iraq, U.S. defense officials said Monday.
The decisions reflect weeks of discussions with commanders and Iraqi leaders, and a decision by President Barack Obama to increase the authorized troop level in Iraq by 217 forces — or from 3,870 to 4,087.
The new plan, expected for weeks, would mark the first major increase in U.S. forces in nearly a year. Last June the Obama administration announced that hundreds of troops would be deployed to help the Iraqis retake Ramadi — a goal they accomplished at the end of the year.
Of the additional troops, most would be Army special forces, who have been used all along to advise and assist the Iraqis. The remainder would include some trainers, security forces for the advisers, and more maintenance teams for the Apaches.
The increased military support comes as the U.S.-led coalition looks to better enable local Iraqi and Syrian forces to retake the key cities of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.
The advise-and-assist teams — made up of about a dozen troops each — would embed with Iraqi brigades and battalions, putting them closer to the fight, and at greater risk from mortars and rocket fire. They would have security forces with them.
Putting the U.S. teams with Iraqi forces closer to the battlefront will allow them to provide more tactical combat advice as the Iraqi units move toward Mosul, the country’s second-largest city. Until now, U.S. advisers have worked with the Iraqis at the headquarters level, well back from the front lines.
The Apaches are considered a significant aid to any attack on Mosul, providing precision fires in the fight.
Last December, U.S. officials were trying to carefully negotiate new American assistance with Iraqi leaders who often have a different idea of how to wage war. At that time, the Iraqis turned down a U.S. offer to provide Apache helicopters for the battle to retake Ramadi.
Speaking to U.S. troops at the airport in Baghdad, Defense Secretary Ash Carter also said that he will send an additional rocket-assisted artillery system to Iraq. The system is likely to be used by Army soldiers who replace the Marines current stationed at a small outpost outside of the Iraqi base of Mohkmour.
U.S. officials have also said previously that the number of special operations forces in Syria would be increased at some point, but Carter did not mention that in his comments. Officials spoke about the plan on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Carter’s announcement Monday came after several meetings with his commanders and Iraqi leaders about how the U.S. can best help Iraqi forces retake Mosul.
He met with Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, the top U.S. military commander for the Islamic State fight, as well as a number of Iraqi leaders including, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Iraq’s minister of defense Khalid al-Obeidi.
He also spoke by phone with the president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, Massoud Barzani
Late last month, U.S. Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that he and Carter believed there would be an increase in U.S. forces in Iraq in the coming weeks.
Later this week, Obama will be in Saudi Arabia to meet with Gulf leaders and talk about the fight against the Islamic State.
Carter has said the U.S. wants Gulf nations to help Iraq rebuild its cities once IS militants are defeated.
U.S. military and defense officials also have made it clear that winning back Mosul is critical, but will be challenging, because the insurgents are dug in and have likely peppered the landscape with roadside bombs and other traps for any advancing military..
A senior defense official told reporters traveling with Carter that while Iraqi leaders have been reluctant to have a large number of U.S. troops in Iraq, they also need certain capabilities that only more American or coalition forces can provide.
Iraqi leaders, said the official, back the addition of more U.S. troops if they directly coincide with specific capabilities that Iraq forces needs to fight IS and take back Mosul. The official was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly so spoke on condition of anonymity.
U.S. leaders have also made it clear that ongoing political disarray and economic problems must be dealt with in order for Iraq to move forward.
This week, the country has been struggling with a political crisis, as efforts to oust the speaker of parliament failed. Al-Abadi’s efforts to get a new cabinet in place met resistance, and influential Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr issued a deadline, giving parliament 72 hours to vote in a new Cabinet.
At the same time, the costs of the war against IS, along with the plunge in the price of oil — which accounts for 95 percent of Iraq’s revenues — have caused an economic crisis, adding fresh urgency to calls for reform. Iraqi officials predict a budget deficit of more than $30 billion this year.
