Thursday, April 22, 2021. The US government has no plans to pull US troops out of Iraq, a media outlet notes a basic truth (US troops remain in Iraq to keep Mustafa al-Kadhimi in power), and much more.
Will the US government ever pull US troops out of Iraq?
Meghann Mayers (MILITARY TIMES) reports::
As the U.S. prepares to draw down its last 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, the head of Central Command told reporters Thursday that there are no current plans to begin a similar withdrawal of the last 2,500 in Iraq.
There have been discussions about it with the defense secretary, Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie told Military Times, but Operation Inherent Resolve’s efforts against ISIS aren’t finished.
“We’re going to be there, our NATO partners are going to be there, to finish the ISIS fight,” he said. “And we’re going to stay in Iraq.”
"And we're going to stay in Iraq." Is that supposed to be a comforting thought? If so, to whom? The friends and family of US troops who keep getting sent to Iraq? The Iraqi people themselves who've long called for US troops out of Iraq?
On Tuesday, McKenzie gave a similar assessment during testimony before the House Armed Services Committee. "I don't see us withdrawing completely from Iraq in the future," he said.
Jared Szuba (AL-MONITOR) reports of McKenzie at that hearing:
“I don’t see us withdrawing completely from Iraq in the future,” he said.
McKenzie’s response was prompted by a question posed by Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-TN) about the potential consequences of removing the roughly 2,500 US troops who remain in Iraq as the core of the multinational campaign against the Islamic State.
As noted here repeatedly, US troops stay on the ground in Iraq to prop up unpopular leaders that the US and Iranian governments install. Jared Szuba gets at that much later in his article:
At least some of the mixed messaging out of Washington appears to be aimed at relieving pressure on Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi ahead of Iraq's October elections. Kadhimi is warding off increased hostility from pro-Iran militias who have sought the expulsion of US forces from the country.
“He’s under death threat. His family is under death threat,” said the former US official, who discussed the matter on condition of anonymity.
A convoy of Shiite militiamen armed with automatic weapons and RPGs paraded through central Baghdad ahead of this month's round of strategic dialogue, openly threatening to cut off Kadhimi's ear.
So far, the assurance of further US troop reductions appears to have found at least some audience among pro-Iran factions in Baghdad.
“Provided that their numbers, missions and whereabouts are known, there is no objection to the presence of advisers for training and development purposes,” said Mahmoud al-Rubai, spokesperson for a political wing of the pro-Iran Asaib Ahl al-Haq militia, in a statement earlier this month.
“We leave the matter to be determined by the competent authorities,” said al-Rubai.
At least three rockets hit near Baghdad international airport late Thursday, the Iraqi military said.
A total of eight missiles were fired and three landed near the airport complex, the statement said. It did not detail whether the attack caused casualties.
DEUTSCHE WELLE provides this context:
Earlier this month, several rockets had hit an Iraqi air base hosting US forces, injuring two foreign contractors and three Iraqi soldiers. In February, more than a dozen rockets had targeted the military complex inside the airport.
The attack was the 23rd such action against American interests in Iraq — including troops, the US embassy in Baghdad, and Iraqi supply convoys to foreign forces — since President Joe Biden took office in January this year. Dozens of other strikes took place from the autumn of 2019 under the administration of Donald Trump.
US troops are not fighting for democracy, they're on the ground to prop up unpopular leaders. When the Iraqi people vote one out -- as they did in 2010 -- the US government responds by nullifying the results of the election. This is a sad and dirty reality. Shame on those who can't speak of it publicly.
A lot of reports have come out this week -- Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty issued reports, for example. This go round, we're noting The US Commission on International Religious Freedom. The annual report covers the globe but we're not the section on Iraq:
In 2020, religious freedom conditions in Iraq remained poor despite the ostensibly significant Sinjar Security Agreement signed by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the Iraqi Federal Government (IFG) in October to provide protection for religious minorities. Almost four years after the defeat of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), religious and ethnic minorities in the Nineveh Plains and Sinjar continued to face immense challenges to returning safely to their towns and homes from internally displaced persons (IDP) and refugee camps. Renewed fear of persecution is growing among these communities amid lingering potential for a re-emergence of ISIS or ISIS like groups. Iranian-backed militia groups under the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), also known as Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs), continued their constant harassment of religious and ethnic minorities, especially in northern Iraq, making the improvement of religious freedom conditions more difficult. In 2020, the PMF operated with impunity in the Nineveh Plains and Sinjar, committing heinous violations against these long-suffering communities.
Although humanitarian assistance from the United States and other international donors contributed to improving the infra-structure that ISIS had ravaged across northern Iraq, a substantial proportion of displaced religious and ethnic minorities did not feel safe returning to or living in their homes in 2020. Over one million Sunni Arab Muslims remained forcibly displaced, both internally and externally. Accused or suspected of aiding ISIS, many of them continued to fear retaliation if they return to their homes in former ISIS-controlled territories. The Yazidi minority remained especially vulnerable, still largely scattered throughout the Middle East and beyond with limited opportunity to return safely to their heartland of Sinjar. Living in IDP and refugee camps further exposed Yazidis to threats from ISIS affiliates and other hostile militia groups; for example, throughout the year, ISIS hunted Yazidi boys and girls to traffic or force them into other illegal activities. Additionally, of the 6,000 Yazidi girls and women whom ISIS abducted in 2014, only a few hundred or so were able to reunite with their families during the year; Iraq’s inability to address this atrocity continued to perpetuate collective trauma throughout the Yazidi community. Also, many Iraqi Christians in northern Iraq remained displaced in 2020; those who were able to return to their homelands found their property, including places of worship, destroyed or expropriated.
Turkish airstrikes and other military operations against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Iraq, particularly in the area of Sinjar, have worsened the situation as they disproportion-ately impacted already devastated religious and ethnic minority communities. The Turkish military has reportedly taken minimal precautions to avoid civilian causalities in the area; for example, in June and July, the Turkish advance into Sinjar as part of “Operation Claw-Eagle” and “Operation Claw-Tiger” claimed the lives of five civilians and wounded dozens more.
Recommendations to the US Government
• Include Iraq on the U.S. Department of State’s Special Watch List for engaging in or tolerating severe violations of religious freedom pursuant to the International Reli-gious Freedom Act (IRFA);
• Encourage the Iraqi government, as part of high-priority bilateral relations, to implement its own stated policy to rein in the PMF, particularly those factions that continue to engage in sectarian violence; present specific obstacles to the return and rehabilitation of Yazidis, Christians, Sunni Arab Muslims and other religious and ethnic components in northern Iraq; and/or inter-vene against the protest movement on behalf of Iranian interests;
• Use diplomatic and other available chan-nels to encourage the IFG and the KRG to resolve the disputed areas per article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution while including all reli-gious and ethnic minorities in the process and comprehensively implement the Sinjar Security Agreement with full inclusion of the Yazidi community in particular;
• Impose targeted sanctions on additional PMF leaders who direct militia engagement in severe violations of religious freedom by freezing those individuals’ assets and/or barring their entry into the United States under human rights related financial and visa authorities, citing specific religious freedom violations; and
• Continue to assist Iraqi religious and ethnic minorities to rebuild communities devas-tated by ISIS and to advocate for their own interests, including opening a broad dis-cussion on governance to hold fair and free local and regional elections to select their own representatives.
Background
The Iraqi population is predominantly Muslim: 64–69 percent are Shi’a Muslim and 29–34 percent are Sunni Muslim. The Shi’a Muslim population resides predominantly in the south and eastern regions of the country, whereas the Sunnis live in the west, center, and north of the country. There are also about 200,000 Christians from vari-ous denominations, including Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants, mainly located in the Nineveh Plains in the north. However, that pop-ulation has drastically declined since 2003, when Iraqi Christians were estimated to number 1.5 million. Iraq is also home to almost 700,000 Yazidis, who remained largely internally displaced, as well as about 150,000 Kaka’is, also known as the Yarsan or Ahl al-Haq; these two communities are mainly spread across the north. Finally, a tiny Jewish community continues to reside in Baghdad and Erbil.
The Struggle of Religious Minorities in Northern Iraq
Six years after fleeing the ISIS genocide, the Yazidi community con-tinued to face severe challenges to reclaiming its homeland along with its religious and ethnic identity. The whereabouts of thousands of kidnapped Yazidi women, girls, and boys remain unknown. Despite joint efforts between the KRG and the IFG to locate abductees and reunite them with their families, few were able to return to their homes in 2020. Around 2,800 abducted Yazidis were still missing, many of them reportedly still trafficked into sex, labor, or terrorism. Furthermore, many ISIS fighters responsible for those atrocities remain at large despite Yazidi demands for accountability. The 2020 United Nations (UN) Security Council renewal of the UN Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by ISIS, which con-tinued to document atrocities and uncover mass graves throughout the year, offered some hope.
Despite international development efforts by the U.S. govern-ment to improve living conditions for religious and ethnic minorities in northern Iraq, significant obstacles remained in 2020. The presence of armed groups and checkpoints in and around Sinjar and the Nineveh Plains, particularly from Iranian-backed PMF factions, have prevented religious and ethnic minorities from returning to their communities of origin. At checkpoints, PMF fighters demanded that IDPs and refu-gees, especially religious minorities, pay excessive amounts of money to cross or risk being sent back to the camps. As a result of these and other repressive practices, less than 50 percent of the population of displaced Christians have been able to return to their homes since ISIS was defeated in 2017. Tens of thousands from that community remained in IDP and refugee camps under difficult and inhumane conditions. Christians who managed to return to their communities also faced new challenges, including a lack of basic services, dire economic conditions, and stolen properties.
Security Challenges in Northern Iraq
The continued presence of competing armed factions, backed by different regional players with varying interests in northern Iraq, represented a challenge to improved security in 2020. The Sinjar Security Agreement, signed in October, was aimed at reducing tensions between the KRG and the IFG that contributed to the security problems in northern Iraq. However, it was widely criticized for failing to address concerns of the Yazidis -- Sinjar’s most vulnerable and traumatized community. For example, the agreement allowed the KRG to appoint a mayor in Sinjar without involving and consulting Yazidi locals. Religious minorities continued to fear that the KRG and IFG’s failure to agree on security measures for disputed areas opened the opportunity for ISIS to reemerge in areas with significant minority populations. For example, in April 2020, the Iraqi government raided a home in Hawija, Kirkuk, where dozens of ISIS members were hiding. Additionally, Turkish airstrikes in northern Iraq represented another security challenge as ongoing military operations further destabilized already vulnerable Yazidi areas in Sinjar.
Other Religious Freedom Issues in Iraq
In 2020, religious freedom conditions in the KRG territory remained relatively consistent with the prior year, although the regional gov-ernment created the new Ministry of Minority Affairs to advance the rights of both religious and ethnic minorities. Moreover, the KRG continued to host hundreds of thousands of IDPs who fled in prior years from ISIS territory--mainly from Yazidi, Christian, Turkmen, and Shabak communities. A lack of security for these communities in and along disputed areas persisted throughout the year.
Religious freedom conditions in Iraq, apart from northern Iraq, remained poor. Although Sunni-Shi’a Muslim reconciliation efforts continued, there was reportedly little progress. The IFG refused to remove blasphemy and apostasy laws and continued to deny formal recognition of religious minority and nontheist groups, including Baha’is, Jehovah’s Witnesses, humanists, Kaka’is and others. Finally, the “de-Ba’athification” process, which was adopted to remove Baath party officials from the government post-2003 and has since remained a fixture in Iraqi law, continued to provide a basis for discrimination against Sunni Muslims.
Key U.S. Policy
In 2020, the U.S. government maintained support for ethnic and religious minority groups to recover and rebuild their communities through financial and programmatic support as well as civic and polit-ical engagement. Since the defeat of ISIS in 2017, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has spent over $438 million to help with reconstruction efforts in Iraq, including $38 million in 2020 alone. In addition, the U.S. government provided the Iraqi government with $60 million to help combat the spread of COVID-19.
The U.S. government also enacted punitive measures against individuals responsible for human rights violations; for example, in January 2021, immediately after the reporting period, the U.S. Department of the Treasury imposed Global Magnitsky sanctions on PMF Chairman and Iraq’s former National Security Advisor Falih al-Fayyadh for engaging in egregious human rights abuses. U.S. government officials in Bagdad, Erbil, and Washington, DC, continued to raise religious freedom issues through bilateral engagement with Iraqi counterparts.
We'll cover another report on Iraq in Friday's snapshot. Switching topics, this is from the US Green Party:
Green Party of the United States
www.gp.org
For Immediate Release:
Wednesday, April 21, 2021
Contact:
Michael O’Neil, Communications Manager, meo@gp.org, 202-804-2758
Diana C. Brown, Co-chair, Media Committee, media@gp.org, 202-804-2758
Philena Farley, Co-chair, Media Committee, media@gp.org, 202-804-2758
WASHINGTON — The Green Party of the United States said today that President Biden’s rumored climate goals of cutting greenhouse gas emissions 50% by 2030, reported in the press two days before his Earth Day Summit, is a step in the right direction but falls woefully short of what the science says must be done to avert a climate catastrophe.
“Democrats love to lecture that ‘half a loaf of bread is better than none’ but the President is offering half of a parachute when we’re about to be kicked out of an airplane,” said Green Party Communications Manager Michael O’Neil.
“The COVID pandemic showed us how quickly and profoundly we can alter the fundamentals of society when we recognize we’re in an overwhelming crisis,” said Howie Hawkins, the 2020 Green Party Presidential Nominee. “There’s no doubt that climate change is an existential crisis to humanity and the planet. Biden needs to formally declare a climate emergency and launch an all-out mobilization of national resources to give current and future generations a fighting chance for a future” said Hawkins who became the first candidate in the United States to campaign for a Green New Deal, in 2010.
The Green Party noted the science has long been clear: 7 years remain, at the world’s present rate of greenhouse gas emissions, before surpassing the limit required to keep warming below the 1.5℃ threshold that will trigger catastrophic climate change. Extreme weather, species extinction and fracturing ice sheets threatening massive sea level rise are all accelerating.
“Biden and the Democrats must, at long last, stop following the fossil fuel companies and their campaign contributions and start following the science,” said Green Party National Co-Chair Margaret Elisabeth. “That means a goal of zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Aiming short of that is a plan to fail, before we even start.”
The Green Party’s plan for a Green New Deal — to transition to 100% clean, renewable energy while ensuring living wage jobs and economic security for everyone — calls for an annual, multi-trillion dollar investment that will include:
- An immediate halt to new fossil fuel infrastructure, including new fracking and fossil fuel pipelines. Set timeline to phase out current infrastructure.
- Phasing out natural gas with its dangerous methane emissions, swiftly transitioning to geothermal and heat pumps for buildings.
- Moving from gas cars to electric and, with even greater benefit, expand and transform mass transit powered by green renewable energy.
- Retrofit tens of millions of homes annually, not a million over 8 years.
To pay for the program, the Green Party supports slashing the dangerous, bloated military budget (that devours over 60% of Congressional expenditures), enacting a carbon tax on polluters, and increasing taxes on the wealthy.
The Greens recently called for Congress to pass a ten-year, $4.1 trillion per year green economic stimulus to create 30 million jobs and accelerate the transition to 100% renewable energy by 2030. By comparison, Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure stimulus barely scrapes the surface of urgent climate needs, with only $400 billion for specific climate measures, and even that is spread out over 8 years.
Green leaders also prioritize a Just Transition to guarantee good wages for existing fossil fuel workers and to invest in frontline communities that bear the greatest risk, both at home and abroad, who’ve long been the principal victims of fossil fuel pollution and climate change. The Green New Deal revitalization will include environmental reforms beyond energy and climate goals, such as stricter EPA guidelines for disposal of toxic waste and agriculture regulations for pesticides, herbicides and use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
“Many Americans realize that the U.S. was an international climate pariah under Trump and his climate-change-denying promotion of fossil fuels. But they overlook how the U.S. was a negative force at the 2015 Paris climate summit, leading the industrial polluting nations in opposing a reduction in the global warming cap to 1.5℃ and blocking mandatory emission reductions. The world remains skeptical of the climate positions of both the Democrats and Republicans” added Green Party National Co-Chair Tamar Yager.
MORE INFORMATION
Green Party Calls for a $4 Trillion Green Economic Stimulus
Biden Should Commit to 100% Emissions Cut by 2030 at Earth Day Summit
The Green Party’s Green New Deal
Green Party of the United States
www.gp.org
202-804-2758
Newsroom | Twitter: @GreenPartyUS
Green Party Platform
Green New Deal
Green candidate database and campaign information
Facebook page
YouTube
Green Pages: The official publication of record of the Green Party of the United States
Green Papers
~ END ~
Winding down. No, I don't have COVID. I noted my doctor insisted I get tested -- and I did on Tuesday morning. The results were negative. As I noted before, it is a really bad cold. I have had it since last Friday. In the roundtable for the gina & krista round-robin, the issue came up when a number of people noted that they had been worried. I stated on Tuesday morning (in that day's snapshot) that I had a cold since last Friday and that I did not have COVID. But I never noted the results of the test and that combined with the erratic posting of the snapshot had some concerned. Per the test, I do not have COVID. Sorry if anyone wondered. As for the snapshot going up whenever, that's based upon when I can actually feel warm. I'm shivering right now. It's a very bad cold. Due to health issues -- including to keep the Big C at bay -- I'm on a number of medications (in addition to insulin) -- and they impact not just my mmune system (making a cold much worse) but also my healing rate (it slows down -- I've had a bruise on my knee since Labor Day that has only just now become a light pink). It's a bad cold and I sleep a lot and stay under the covers -- yes, in California spring -- as much as possible. Sorry if anyone worried. If I had COVID, I would announce it here. (So that someone didn't beat me to it -- the way a pain in the ass, piece of trash did with my cancer over a decade ago. It apparently made her feel special to 'report' that I had cancer -- even before I had told m kids.) I had stated Tuesday that it was a cold and not COVID and I thought t was clear that I thought I knew what I was talking about. I could have been wrong yes. But if I had been, I would've posted, "Guess what, I was wrong. Now I'm going to take some days off to address this." Instead, I've written something every day and shared multiple other things that come into the public e-mail account -- common_ills@yahoo.com
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