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The official referendum for Iraqi Kurdistan is soon. The referendum which is designed to sense the will of Iraqi Kurds about independence from Iraq and starting a Kurdish state among Iran, Syria, Iraq and Turkey. Theoretically, this might seem possible since Kurds already enjoy ...
As the three-year campaign to forcefully remove the Islamic State from Iraqi borders appears to have shifted toward Baghdad’s favor, perennial issues tied to Kurdish statehood are expected to reemerge amidst the backdrop of a rapidly changing regional order. In early June 2017, Masoud Barzani - President of Iraq’s Kurdistan ...
... of ambitious energy-related infrastructure projects in Libya would highlight Moscow’s status as an arbiter on energy-related issues within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). This agreement would also increase pressure on non-compliant states like Iraq, to adopt similar measures, even though gaining full cooperation from Baghdad is complicated by the Iraqi government’s lack of jurisdiction over Iraqi Kurdish oil contracts. In short, Russia has a major opportunity at the August 7-8 Abu Dhabi ...
... James Mattis, USMC. In addition, the US was given logistical help by Russian President Vladimir Putin, then Bush’s strategic partner. Within three months, the US had defeated its foe, liberated Kabul, and changed the regime. 2003 War of Choice in Iraq But afterwards, as Paula Broadwell observed, the initial brilliant success in Afghanistan “was squandered when the US marched headlong into Iraq in early 2003.” Instead of finishing the war of necessity in Afghanistan, Washington entered into ...
People claiming that the withdrawal from Iraq of U.S. forces carried out by the Obama Administration from 2010-2011 explains the rise of the terrorist group ISIS have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. A simple look at the timeline, geography, facts, context, and history concerning ...
... a war that lasted through most of the 1980s and precipitated the fall of the Berlin Wall and then the entire Soviet Union. As far as who learns from history, for now, the U.S. has a president in office now who campaigned on the fact that invading Iraq in 2003 was a colossal mistake, who, keeping this in mind, intervened only lightly in Libya and went out of his way to avoid being entangled in Syria. Meanwhile, Russia is placing a significant (though not huge) presence on the ground in Syria and ...
... conflict with direct intervention by degrading the Assad regime’s military capabilities and limiting the shipments of weapons into Syria with a combination of naval blockades, no-fly-zones, and the U.S. specifically partnering with its allies Iraq and (NATO member) Turkey to use drones, reconnaissance flights, and other high-tech monitoring equipment to lock down Syria’s land borders with both nations. NATO could have played a significant role in such an operation, too, not terribly ...
A Sensible Grading of Obama’s Middle East Strategy, As Opposed to Republican Nonsense: Part I: Introduction, Muslim World Reset, Iraq, Israel/Palestine If you can’t understand that Obama’s overall Middle East strategy is starting to work, you don’t know what you’re talking about By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) May 21st,...
By Brian E. Frydenborg, February 26th, 2015 (updated February 27th-28th) Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse here If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to me! Please feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at @bfry1981) One of the sad things about looking at current commentary about Russia, America, and the state of their relationship is the lack of measured and reasoned...
How the Obama Administration Removed Iraq’s Largest Political Obstacle Originally published Nov. 2nd, 2014 How Did It Come To This? At some point during Obama’s second term of his presidency, he and his Administration realized that Nuri Kamal al-Maliki was part of the problem,...
... military spending. One reason to be optimistic about addressing the IS problem is that there is a 'coaltion of the unwilling' which is nonetheless appearing more assertive than its more 'willing' counterpart back to 2003 in Iraq. No wonder since the threat for other states in the region is formidable. On the other side, the new Iraqi government shall be one of the major pieces of the puzzle since it has to become a better alternative for Iraqi Sunnites. Concentrating power ...
Dr. Glen Segell (Fellow – The Ezri Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies,University of Haifa, Israel) The Southern flank of Europe is the Mediterranean Sea. It is a small sea and many countries rely on the freedom of both sea and air traffic for their economy. On the one hand there was optimism that the Arab Spring would bring greater freedom for the individual in countries on the southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. There was further optimism that the North African countries of Tunisia...
... 1999-2000 involved approximately 80,000 Russian troops and cost the Russian government billions of dollars to raise its economy from the ashes. By comparison, Chechnya is nearly ten times smaller than the area controlled by ISIS. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria went far beyond the operational scope of its predecessor, Al-Qaeda, establishing control over a large territory in northwestern Iraq and northeastern Syria, and creating proto-state institutions of authority. This reality is especially ...
By Zhyldyz Oskonbaeva (RIEAS Senior Advisor & Eurasian Liaison) On a number of levels, the situation between the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the ethnic Kurds of Syria, Iraq and Turkey is creating a power shift that no one is discussing. In this article, I will explain why: 1) The Kurds have an unprecedented opportunity to achieve a political homeland; 2) Tehran's ...
Patrick Adams (Strategic Analyst & RIEAS Research Associate) A victory for the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria would have a wide range of economic, social and political consequences. Economically, there would be a significant and damaging effect on the world's oil supply. Socially, not only would Iraq and Syria be affected but any country ...
Quentin de Pimodan (Author based in the Middle East) Al Baghdadi's major strategic failure has been his choice of the Fertile Crescent as the region for the establishment of his Khilafa. His dream of reestablishing a Sunni caliphate with roots in Iraq and Syria will eventually be crushed by the field's realities and only exposes his own lack of knowledge about the region. Not that a Sunni leadership would be impossible to carry on the lands of the ancient Omayyad and Abbasid's ...
... positions of his friends, and alienate all neutrals while he was gradually winning the war, and at a time when UN chemical inspectors were in Damascus? The sceptic observer cannot help but remember the false intelligence on which the 2003 US invasion of Iraq was founded; Saddam Hussein did not in fact possess weapons of mass destruction. The parallel is inescapable. In May, Carla Del Ponte, leading member of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, asserted that there ...
... national working for an American PMSC in Afghanistan as anything other than a mercenary. This example is neither fictitious, nor rare. As of July 2013, 83% of the private military and security contractors working for the US Department of Defense in Iraq, and 10% in Afghanistan, are third-country nationals, i.e. neither US citizens, nor local nationals. The fact that a corporate business entity – equally profit-seeking – intermediates between the individual pecuniary motives of its employees ...
... Department of Defense, for example, had issued between 1994 and 2002 contracts worth $300 billion to US-based private companies (1); in 2009 alone, the annual figure was more than $100 billion, which accounted for 23% of the total defense budget. (2) Iraq, the focal point of PMSCs’ operations for over a decade now, saw the greatest influx of private security contractors: from 15,000-20,000 in 2003, to around 200,000 personnel in 2009. (3) The ‘mercenary’ stigma and the problem of ...
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| U.S. wants to dissolve Russia |
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| U.S. wants to establish alliance relations with Russia under the US conditions to rival China |
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Tatiana Romanova, Maxine David
Jonathan Kirshner
Aleksey Arbatov, Sergey Oznobishchev
