American airstrikes on Syria sheer overkill
Michael Jansen The author, a well-respected observer of Middle East affairs, has three books on the Arab-Israeli conflict. The author, a well-respected observer of Middle East affairs, has three books on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
28 Feb 2021 A view of the city after airstrikes by the US bombers. “America is back. America is back!” proclaims US President Joe Biden. Indeed, America is back, back bombing eastern Syria. Bombing pro-Iranian militias which Biden accuses of mounting strikes on Iraqi bases housing US forces and on Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone where the US embassy is located. However, the militiamen targeted were far from the sites of the attacks and were not involved. Biden chose to hit them in Syria because to bomb them in Iraq would ruffle Iraqi feathers. Syria has become a shooting gallery for US leaders seeking to demonstrate that they are pre
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Tensions between the US and Iran-supported Iraqi militias spilt into the open on Thursday when President Joe Biden ordered an attack on facilities in Syria belonging to Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid Al Shuhada.
The US said the air strikes were in response to rocket attacks against an American military base in Erbil that killed a civilian contractor and wounded an American soldier.
The militias targeted are just two of many
loosely grouped under Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Units, also known as Hashed Al Shaabi, which is nominally integrated into the Iraqi state and has the loyalty of a large proportion of the Iraqi parliament.
There is growing fear in Iraq of a potential Turkish military incursion to drive the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) out of Sinjar, a contested area in the country’s north. Such a move would prove highly counterproductive. It would risk weakening Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, who is already struggling to implement urgent political and economic reforms. It would also enable the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMUs) and other armed groups to strengthen their political and military posture, while severely damaging the bilateral relationship between Turkey and Iraq. And such an operation would be unlikely to achieve lasting gains against the PKK, given the considerable resistance Turkish forces would face from Iranian-backed armed groups operating in the area. Accordingly, European states should warn the Turkish government about the dangers of an incursion into Sinjar, while pressing Baghdad to intensify its efforts to re-establish control of the area.
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Sputnik International
Workers Revolutionary Party
Iraqis demonstrate outside the US embassy in Baghdad
IRAN’s Foreign Ministry has strongly condemned the assassination in January of top anti-terror commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike in Iraq, stating that the United States made a grave mistake by making such a coward move.
‘By cowardly assassinating Gen. Soleimani, US committed a grave mistake,’ the ministry said in a post published on its official Twitter page on Tuesday, as the anniversary of the crime draws near.
It added that Iraq’s parliament resolution calling on the government to end the deployment of all foreign military troops on the Arab country’s soil ‘is the beginning of the end of the malign presence in our region.’