Category Archives: al Qaida al Nusra Boko Haram

Life in Raqqa, Syria After Islamic State is Defeated

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While the United States and coalition forces were providing military support in many forms to the Free Syrian Army and the Syrian Democratic Forces to destroy Islamic State, Russia has officially declared the exclusive victory.

Further, against the countless pro-Assad factions including Iranian militia and Russian forces, Bashir al Assad will remain in power and adhere to all edits from Moscow and Tehran.

The history city of Aleppo fell to Islamic State but such was not going to be the case again for Raqqa, the declared home for the terror group. Christians, Alawites and Druze all lived in Raqqa.

Yet how do Syrians and children find life and normalcy upon their return to Raqqa?

What remains is a modern day Hitleresque condition of destruction.

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RAQQA, Syria—The municipal soccer stadium here was always called “The Black Stadium” because of its dark concrete construction, but that name took on a whole new meaning when it became an arena for horror under the rule of the so-called Islamic State.

Today, ISIS is gone and the bleachers are draped with the flags of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). This was the final redoubt of a handful of ISIS fighters, and when it fell last Friday, victory over that terror organization in its de facto capital was declared complete. But much of the city is destroyed, and for the few people who’ve made it back, memories of what life here was like are hard to retrieve.

“Before, we would play football matches here, before it came under Daesh [ISIS] control,” Issa Xabur, a 42-year-old civilian who once lived in Raqqa, told The Daily Beast as we explored precincts where the spectacle of death replaced the spectacle of sport. “The stadium became known for beheading people,” said Xabur. “It was used as a prison. Eighty percent of the people that were imprisoned here were killed.”

In the locker rooms, showers, and gym beneath the stadium, ISIS created cells and torture chambers for its feared security arm, known as the Amni.

One can still find graffiti written by prisoners and fighters. Some of it is in Russian, some in Arabic, some in English.

On one shattered wall, we read that “Hussam Alkjwan was killed in 25/2/2016.” We don’t know why. Beneath it in broken English, perhaps written by a jailer, is a list of reasons why someone could be arrested:

If you are reading this there’s four main reasons why you are Here!

1-You did the crime and caught Red Handed!

2-Using Tweeder [Twitter] GPS Locations! Or having GPS Locations switched upon turned ‘ON’ the Mobile Phone

3-Uploading videos and photos from a Sensitive Wifi internet source, i.e. You need your Amirs permission

4-A suspect! Off the street! The Police have good reason to do this!

It didn’t matter what you did or did not do, the ISIS police had “good reason” to bring you in.

And it didn’t matter that you might be waiting in this hole to die. You were supposed to keep the faith:

Be Patience, Be Patience, Be Patience!

The Enemy of the Muslims, Sataan will do every Whispering while [unclear]

Trust in Allah and lots of remembering of Allah, Dua [prayers] to Allah! …

Issa Xabur himself was arrested several times by ISIS and spent five days in this Black Stadium prison. “I couldn’t talk to anyone,” he told The Daily Beast. “They were hitting people with tires, and hanging people from the roof. People from Tunisia were responsible for torturing,” he said.

In the prison beneath the stadium we see iron cables and plastic straps used to tie people down. Other reporters have come across primitive exercise machines turned into bloodied instruments of torture. And in these dark corridors, mingled with the smell of dust and concrete, there is still the smell of human death.

“People were arrested when they were accused of being unbelievers, or of dealing with the coalition or the regime,” Xabur said.

Then, suddenly it’s evident that journalists are not the only ones interested in visiting the liberated stadium.

“Who are you working for?” demands a local SDF commander who seems to come out of nowhere. I am told to switch off my camera, and three soldiers in U.S. uniforms come into the prison to check it out. A few hours later, another group of U.S. soldiers arrives at the Black Stadium with cameras and a video drone.

Zagros, a Kurdish fighter with the SDF, sees a certain irony in all this U.S. military tourism. “The U.S. soldiers did not fight in the city of Raqqa,” he tells me. They provided support from behind the lines. “Now they come to see the prison.”

The situation for civilians in the last days of the Raqqa campaign was very difficult.

“We went as a group to a Daesh leader, who told us if you leave, we will kill you,” said Walid, 45, as we talked in a mosque. “There was no water or food, and we drank water that was not suitable for drinking,” he added.

“Whenever ISIS left a house, they booby-trapped it. My wife and mother died, but I am still alive. We were not allowed to leave during the liberation campaign.”

Ali, 21, is in the Ain al Issa refugee camp. He left Raqqa months ago after being imprisoned more than 10 times by ISIS, he says.

“I saw them killing the people with my own eyes. They tortured people, cut their hands, and heads,” he said.

By some accounts, in the final days of battle, after many Syrian members of ISIS were allowed out of the city under a truce, the few dozen foreign fighters in the Black Stadium held hundreds, or even thousands, of people as human shields. Ali thinks that the captured foreign fighters that held civilians hostage should be executed.

“They should be killed, because if they return [to their home countries], they will create problems as they did here,” he said.

ISIS flyers scattered around the city already are covered with dust, but they are easy enough to read. They show the many punishments ISIS carried out for spying, homosexuality, and theft.

Jihan Sheikh Ahmed, the official spokesperson for the SDF Raqqa campaign, left Raqqa before it came under ISIS control. “But my family lived for two years under Daesh rule,” she says. “It was a nightmare for them and for the people. [They] could not breathe freely or live freely. The children could not play in the street, and they terrorized the people by cutting their heads and thus imposing themselves in the name of the caliphate.”

The Black Stadium was not the only venue for atrocity. There was also Naim Square in the heart of the city.

“I was from Raqqa,” said a woman SDF commander during a celebration of the city’s liberation by women fighters in Naim Square. In the old days, she said, “we were coming to Naim Square to eat ice cream and take a walk. But after Daesh came here and announced its ‘state’ in this place, they spread killing among the people and instilled terror among them. Moreover, they brought children to watch the killings to terrorize their hearts.”

Nearby wrought iron fences were used like the pikes of old, to hold severed heads.

ISIS also enslaved many Yazidi women when they captured the town of Sinjar in August 2014. The region was the heartland of the non-Muslim minority. A few dozen of them were liberated in Raqqa when the SDF came in.

“They [ISIS] brought Yazidi women to Raqqa, to sell them here, kill our people, and cut off their hands and hang them here,” said the woman commander.

Even some ISIS wives who are now being held in a refugee camp in Ain al Issa feel sorry for the Yazidi women.

Aisha Khadad, a Syrian English teacher, was married to an imprisoned French ISIS member and said she rarely saw a slave out in the open in Raqqa. “They were sold to the emirs,” she said, and the emirs live mostly in Iraq.

“I was so sad for them,” Khadad told The Daily Beast. “Suddenly a man comes to your house who wants to rape you and use you as a slave.” And under the ISIS regime he had every right to do that.

SDF spokesperson Jihan Sheikh Ahmed now promises that they will change the mentality of the people of Raqqa who lived through these horrors.

“We want to return the children to their childhood, and when we beat Daesh, the hope of life is beginning to grow in the people again, and we want the people to understand that Daesh will never return, and when life returns to Raqqa, many things will change,” she said.

However, she added that it could take time for civilians to return. “They [ISIS] planted a lot of mines here, so we will form a military zone for two months to remove the mines, and then we start rebuilding the city,” she concluded.

When leaving the city, I could still see the human bones of victims of ISIS that were executed near the clock tower in Raqqa, and an ISIS flag still was flying over a destroyed building near the clock tower. And it made me think, “Even time will not erase all the wounds here.”

 

McCain/Graham Knew About Niger

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McCain and Graham both stated they were unaware of the operations in Niger, much less the other countries located in West Africa. The United States has an estimated 7000 troops operating in about 50 countries in Africa. Militant Islam has no boundaries globally.
The mission of both Islamic State, al Qaeda and associated terror groups is to embed soldiers, sympathizers and moles in villages across various regions globally where they know the United States is operating with intelligence teams, hearts and minds missions and train and assist operations. The enemy knows these operations well due to previous tactics and operations in both Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.
U.S. troops often pay village elders and chieftans for information or clues in efforts to locate specific terrorist soldiers or to validate intelligence.
Such was the case in Niger. Predictions are such that Morocco and the Sinai are worse.

U.S. officials increasingly believe that the military unit ambushed by an Islamic State militant group (ISIS) affiliate in Niger was attacked as the result of being set up by people in a village sympathetic to local jihadis.

Details about the October 4 attack that left four U.S. soldiers—all Green Berets—dead are only now being revealed.

The militants were likely tipped off by at least one accomplice who may have lived within the local population, U.S. officials briefed on the case told NBC News. Almou Hassane, the mayor of the village in question, Tongo Tongo, told Voice of America that “the attackers, the bandits, the terrorists have never lacked accomplices among local populations.”

Nigerien authorities have detained the chief of the village, Mounkaila Alassane, adding to the suspicion that the dozens of ISIS-affiliated militants who attacked the unit had prior information about the soldiers’ movements.

A joint U.S. and Nigerien patrol spent the evening near the Malian border before the attack. Local reports indicate that the purpose of their mission may have been to locate an associate of Abu Adnan al-Sahraoui, a member of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, or ISGS, the affiliate suspected of the ambush.

“They must have spent the night in the northwest of Tongo Tongo,” Hassane said.

The soldiers met with elders of the village, which they knew was likely sympathetic toward ISIS, and officials told NBC News that villagers made efforts to delay the Green Berets’ departure.

When the soldiers left the village in unarmored vehicles, dozens of jihadis launched a sneak attack with machine-gun fire and then mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. The soldiers exited their vehicles and started to fire back, but were outnumbered and outgunned. They tried to retreat but were ambushed again a mile away.

On Monday, General Joseph Dunford, the U.S. military’s top officer, said he wanted to uncover what happened, for the public and for the relatives of those killed in the attack.

“We owe you more information; more importantly, we owe the families of the fallen more information,” Dunford said. “Did the mission change? It’s a fair question.”

He said the troops did not call for help from French special forces until an hour after coming into contact with the enemy in Niger. He said a U.S. drone responded in “minutes” but did not fire. He would not comment on whether it was armed or not.

“I make no judgment as to how long it took them to ask for support,” Dunford said. “I don’t know that they thought they needed support prior to that time. I don’t know how this attack unfolded. I don’t know what their initial assessment was of what they were confronted with.”

French jets arrived one hour after the call for assistance but did not strike because they did not have accurate intelligence about the combatants on the battlefield and were not liaising with the U.S. military. Dunford said at present there was no indication that the soldiers were acting outside their remit or orders from their superiors.

“I don’t have any indication right now to believe or to know that they did anything other than operate within the orders that they were given,” Dunford said. “That’s what the investigation’s all about. So I think anyone that speculates about what special operations forces did or didn’t do is doing exactly that—they’re speculating.”

The Islamic State in the Greater Sahara is a relatively new and local branch of ISIS that has conducted several small attacks in the region, particularly in Burkina Faso, which neighbors Niger. The jihadi affiliate gave its allegiance to ISIS and the group accepted its bayah, or pledge, in October 2016.

The ISIS affiliate in the area that stretches across six African countries from Senegal to Chad is overshadowed by more dominant radical Islamist groups, in this case Al-Qaeda’s affiliates—Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Ansar Dine and Al-Mourabitoun.

Veterans Sue U.S. Firms’ Bribes Funded Iraq Militia

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Suit: U.S. Firms’ Bribes Funded Iraq Militia Attacks on Americans

WASHINGTON — A group of American veterans filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against U.S. and European drug companies and medical device makers, accusing them of supporting an Iran-backed Iraqi militia that killed and wounded hundreds of Americans.

The suit is filed under a law that allows Americans injured by terrorism overseas to seek civil damages. The more than 100 plaintiffs include injured U.S. Iraq war veterans and their families. The defendants are either parent companies or subsidiaries of AstraZeneca plc (AZN); Johnson & Johnson (JNJ); Pfizer Inc. (PFE); Roche Holding AG (RHHBY); and the General Electric Company (GE).

The 203-page lawsuit accuses the companies of paying bribes to officials of Iraq’s health ministry that benefited the Mahdi Army, an Iranian-backed militia that the suit says worked closely with Hezbollah, a Lebanese group that has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.

Iraqi Shiites of the Mahdi Army militia loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr vow to fight ISIS in a show of strength in a military parade on June 21, 2014 in the Sadr City district of Baghdad, Iraq.Scott Peterson / Getty Images file

The companies sold Iraq’s government-run healthcare system millions of dollars worth of drugs and medical devices, and paid the bribes, the suit alleges, as a cost of doing business.

Related reading: Mahdi Army

Related reading: By late 2006, at the height of sectarian violence, the Sadrists were a formidable military force. In the wake of the February 2006 bombing of the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra (one of the holiest Shi’a shrines) and frequent attacks by al Qaeda in Iraq, JAM positioned itself as a security guarantor for the Shi’a. However, the organization also spawned death squads responsible for sectarian cleansing.9  By mid-2006 these militias were engaged in a violent campaign of expansion into Sunni and mixed Sunni-Shi’a neighborhoods. JAM soon controlled large areas of Baghdad and they increasingly relied upon corruption, intimidation, and extortion to enhance their wealth and power. More here.

After the U.S. invasion, Iraq’s political factions divvied up government departments under a political spoils system, and the Mahdi Army’s political wing took control of the health ministry. The state-owned drug purchasing monopoly, Kimadia, demanded a 20 percent “religious tax” from the vendors on every contract, the lawsuit said.

“That policy required, as a general matter, companies doing business with Kimadia to pay commissions of at least 20 percent on every contract, the lawsuit says. “This was sometimes paid in the form of in-kind bribes but was often paid in cash as well. Such cash payments were typically called ‘commissions’ — the Iraqi euphemism for bribes. From 2004-2013, it was standard practice for companies dealing with (the Ministry of Health) to pay ‘commissions’ on every major sales contract.”

The in-kind bribes were in the form of what were known as “free goods,” including drugs and medical devices, that Iraqi officials would sell on the black market, says the lawsuit, which specifically accuses each defendant of paying such bribes.

The suit says the defendants paid the bribes even though they knew or should have known that the money was going to a dangerous armed faction.

Image: Moqtada al-Sadr
Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr delivers a speech to his supporters following Friday prayers at the grand mosque of Kufa in the holy city of Najaf, on April 3, 2015.Haidar Hamdani / AFP/Getty Images file

“Defendants knew or recklessly disregarded that their transactions helped fund Jaysh al-Mahdi attacks on Americans,” the suit says, using an Arabic term for the Mahdi Army.

In a statement, Pfizer said it “categorically denies any wrongdoing.” Roche said it had not been served with the suit and could not comment. A GE spokesperson said the company became aware of the complaint Tuesday and is “thoroughly reviewing the allegations.” The other companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Mahdi Army, led by Muqtada al-Sadr, is an Iranian-backed militia that opposed the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. It was never designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., a fact that could pose a legal hurdle for the plaintiffs. The suit argues that it acted as a terrorist organization and worked closely with Hezbollah, a designated terrorist organization.

Sadr posed a problem for the American war effort from the start, when he allegedly stabbed to death a U.S.-backed political opponent in 2003. American authorities issued a warrant for his arrest on murder charges but never executed it, fearful of the backlash it might cause among his Shiite supporters.

The U.S. thrice contemplated operations to kill Sadr but decided against doing so, a former CIA officer with personal knowledge told NBC News.

Sadr and his militia fought on and off for years against U.S. forces. In 2004, after the U.S. closed his newspaper, his forces seized control of Shiite areas around Iraq, leading to fighting that killed at least 19 Americans.

The lawsuit cites media and government reports asserting that the Mahdi Army worked closely with Hezbollah to attack American forces, including with sophisticated Iranian-build roadside bombs that penetrated U.S. armor.

Those bombs, known as explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, killed 196 Americans and wounded 861 from 2005 to 2011, according to a U.S. military study cited in the lawsuit.

The suit was brought by the Washington, D.C.-based law firms of Sparacino & Andreson PLLC and Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Frederick, PLLC.

One of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, David C. Frederick, represented NFL players in their suit against the NFL over brain injuries. That case resulted in a $765 million settlement fund for players.

Some of the defendants have been accused in the past of violating the U/S. law against bribing foreigners to secure business.

In 2010, GE paid $23.4 million to the federal government to settle allegations by the Securities and Exchange Commission that its subsidiaries had violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in connection with alleged kickbacks paid in Iraq under the United Nations’ oil-for-food program. The GE subsidiaries were selling medical and water purification equipment to the Iraqi government.

The kickbacks were paid from 2000 to 2003 and consisted of cash, computer equipment, medical supplies, and services to the Iraqi Health Ministry or the Oil Ministry, the government said at the time.

In 2011, Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay a $21.4 million penalty to resolve criminal FCPA charges with the Justice Department, and another $48.6 million in disgorgement and prejudgment interest to settle the SEC’s civil charges, in a case alleging improper payments to doctors in Greece by J&J subsidiary DePuy Inc.

Last year, AstraZeneca PLC agreed to pay more than $5 million in penalties after the SEC accused it of violating the books and records and internal controls provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in connection with allegedly illegal payments made by subsidiaries in China and Russia to boost drug sales. AstraZeneca settled the enforcement action without admitting or denying the SEC’s findings.

 

DG Parker MI5 Declares Terror Threats Worst Yet

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MI5 Director General (DG) Andrew Parker addressed an audience  in Central London today, in which he spoke about the international counter terrorism threat that we are facing and how MI5 works with partners to tackle it.  This marks the first time that a DG has given a speech on-camera.

MI5 also continues to counter threats from terrorism in Northern Ireland and the actions of hostile states seeking to carry out damaging espionage activity.

  MI5 photo

Mr Parker said MI5 remains a multi-dimensional organisation that is constantly evolving and continues to be innovative in order to meet the changing threat.

He added:

Day in and day out we are identifying and disrupting threats: stopping terrorism. Our response is unrelenting. Those that wish our country harm can expect to meet MI5 and the police. And they will face the full force of the law and be brought to justice.

We face this new order of challenge from a position of strength. The UK has world-class intelligence agencies and counter terrorism policing. We are developing, growing and sharpening our capabilities all the time.

Throughout our history MI5 has been all about innovating to meet the changing threat and the shifting technological environment. We review every major operation and learn from our successes. And when an attack happens we are determined, using the harsh light of hindsight, to squeeze out every last drop of learning so that we can be the very best we can be, now and in the future.

…the challenge that we face is undoubtedly a stark one. More threat, coming at us more quickly, and sometimes harder to detect. But it is a challenge that we and our partners are rising to and are facing down. We are committed to this for the long haul. Our unrelenting focus will remain on doing everything in our power every day to keep Britain safe.

Andrew Parker, director general of the security service, gave a rare public speech, calling the threat “multi-dimensional, evolving rapidly and operating at a scale and pace we’ve not seen before”.

Another 20 terrorist attacks on the UK were foiled over the past four years and “many more” were prevented, he said.

The intelligence chief said there has been a “dramatic upshift” this year, which resulted in the London and Manchester attacks which killed a total of 36 people. He said continental Europe has faced a similar surge, particularly in France, Belgium, Germany and Spain.

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Mr Parker said MI5 has more than 500 live investigations involving roughly 3,000 people known to be involved in extremist activities.

In addition, he said, more than 20,000 individuals have been scrutinized in the past for possible terror ties and there are undoubtedly “violent extremists” who have thus far not been detected by the Security Service.

The director called on technology companies to work with the government on preventing their social media platforms from being used by extremists for communications that cannot be monitored.

When asked if Facebook and Google were doing enough on this front, Mr Parker declined to discuss specific companies.

He praised advancements in communications technology, but said an “unintended side effect” has been to make it easier for extremists to avoid legal monitoring by using apps, including many that provide encryption, to avoid detection. He said companies should to more to prevent this abuse of their communications systems. More here

Trump not Taking Sides, Took a Side Against Kurds

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Hey President Trump, fire Brett McGurk. Qassem Suleimani has been declared a terrorist and has countless sanctions, why is he allowed to travel including 3 trips to Moscow?

Why is the United States neutral?

Kirkuk, home to some 1 million Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen and Christians, has been at the heart of a long-running dispute between the autonomous Kurdish region and the central government in Baghdad. Both are close allies of the U.S. There are 35 million Kurds in 4 countries, they are essentially stateless….McMaster, you out there? What say you?

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On Sunday, Qassem Suleimani, Iran’s chief spymaster, travelled to the Iraqi city of Sulaimaniya to meet with the leaders of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or P.U.K., one of the two main Kurdish political parties. For years, the P.U.K. and its sister party, the Kurdish Democratic Party, or K.D.P., have been struggling to break away from the rest of Iraq and form an independent state. A Kurdish republic is opposed by all the region’s countries—the governments in Baghdad, Turkey, and Iran—which fear that sizable Kurdish minorities in all three nations will begin to act autonomously.

It is not known what Suleimani—the Middle East’s most cunning operative—told the P.U.K.’s leaders. But, within hours, their fighters began abandoning their posts, making way for Iraqi military units just across the front lines. Not long after, Iraqi forces took over the former Kurdish positions and a stretch of oil fields near the city of Kirkuk. With the Iraqi Kurds now split in two—the P.U.K. on one side and the K.D.P. on the other—hopes for an independent Kurdish state appear to be fading fast. “It was a horrible, horrible betrayal,” a senior official in the Kurdish Regional Government told me.

“Everyone is calling it the P.U.K. drug deal,” a former senior American official who works in the region told me. Notably, many P.U.K. units refused the order to stand down and fought the oncoming Iraqi units.

Last week, Iraqi military units began massing near the Kurdish-Iraqi border. The Iraqi units are dominated by “popular mobilization forces,” which is another way of saying Iranian-trained militias that operate inside Iraq. Those militias—controlled by Suleimani—are staunch backers of the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, in Baghdad. Most of these groups have dark pasts; the main militia that moved into Kurdish territory this morning was Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, which battled American soldiers in Iraq during the war there. Its leader, Qais Khazali, is believed to be the principal planner of the kidnapping and execution of four American soldiers in Karbala in 2007. The military operation in the Kurdish region is very much a joint Iraq-Iran project; the flag of Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq was planted at one of the Kurdish bases that was taken over. Also accompanying Iraqi forces in Kirkuk was Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, an Iraqi militia commander convicted of bombing the American Embassy in Kuwait in 1983; he has been designated a terrorist by the United States government. More here from NYT’s.

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***  Iraq Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi enters Yezidi town of Sinjar following Peshmerga withdrawal. Hashd al-Shaabi group cuts electricity in Kirkuk city as it seeks to take control of Kurdish Peshmerga positions. Iraqi military says it has seized large oil fields near Kirkuk from Kurdish forces.

***

How bad was it and where does this go for the Kurds?

The game of brinkmanship blew up in the faces of Baghdad and Irbil on October 16 as talks gave way to fighting in south Kirkuk and Tuz Kharmato in Salahaddin.

At the start of October 15, the central and Kurdish regional governments were in the middle of heavy talks to resolve the crisis in Kirkuk. The problem started when Prime Minister Haidar Abadi mobilized the joint forces and demanded that the Kurds withdraw from areas they occupied in 2014 including several military bases, an airport and the Bai Hassan and Avana oil fields in southern Kirkuk. Baghdad demanded that the Kurds abide by the constitution and cancel the results of the September independence referendum. It also accused the Kurds of moving in fighters from the Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) into Kirkuk in a bald attempt to get Ankara more involved in the dispute. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) rejected those calls as the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) met in Dokan. Talks were held there because the KDP and PUK were so far apart on this crisis. The KDP has been steadfast in rejecting any terms set by Baghdad. It has also been beating the war drum accusing the Abadi government of acting like the Baath and constantly warning that the federal government was going to attack Kirkuk. The PUK on the other hand is divided. Many in the party’s leadership are open to making compromises, but others such as Kirkuk Governor Najmaldin Karim and Vice President Kosrat Rasul are siding with the KDP and calling for a defense of Kirkuk. Iranian General Qasim Suleimani of the Quds Force was also in Kurdistan, while America’s Brett McGurk arrived in Baghdad, both trying to mediate. There were reports on social media that the PUK had made a local deal to allow the federal forces into certain areas of the province, but that broke down and fighting ensued.

There were clashes in both southern Kirkuk and Tuz Kharmato in Salahaddin. First, the government had given the Peshmerga until October 15 to withdraw from several positions in Kirkuk. That expired, and talks were still going on between both sides. On October 16, the Golden Division, the army’s 9th Division, and Federal Police began advancing along two axes from Dibis in the west and Hawija in the south towards the K1 military base and the Bai Hassan and Avana oil fields. When the Golden Division entered an industrial district fighting broke out that included mortars and artillery. There were also clashes in Tuz Kharmato, and the Hashd were said to be moving to cut the road from there to Kirkuk.

There are various factors leading to this huge breakdown in Iraq, but there’s also a good chance that the conflagration won’t last. First, Kurdish President Massoud Barzani pushed through the independence referendum on his own without consulting with other Kurdish parties, but rather assuming they would all come on board, which they didn’t. There was also no preparation for Baghdad’s response, and the KDP constantly attacked the federal government for not following the constitution and being a reincarnation of the Saddam regime. Second, Prime Minister Haidar Abadi was put under intense pressure by parliamentarians demanding the Kurds be punished for the election. Abadi had to respond to the KRG as a result imposing a flight ban, talked about shutting down border points, etc. Third, he took it from those measures that were largely symbolic to demanding that the Kurds withdraw from southern Kirkuk to their pre-2014 positions, which was a huge escalation and threatened a military confrontation. That blew up in his face. All the while, Baghdad and Irbil offered talks, but on terms that neither would agree upon. The Americans started off telling the Kurds not to hold the referendum, to offering to defuse the situation, but came in too late. With fighting underway Washington is likely to pressure the two sides to halt. However, getting the two sides to come together and achieve anything substantial will be hard at best as the political repercussions of this clash will run deep.