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The wars in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan failed not because of noble errors, but because short-sighted Western interests trumped the needs of the people. And this is why the creeping return to war will fail again

Despite an almost total lack of public debate, Western military escalation in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya is on the rise.

Renewed military interventionism has been largely justified as a response to the meteoric rise of Islamic State networks, spreading across parts of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia.

Missing from government pronouncements, though, is any acknowledgement that the proliferation of Islamist terrorism is a direct consequence of the knee-jerk response of military escalation.

Discarded to the memory hole is the fact that before each of the major interventions in these three countries, our political leaders promised they would bring security, freedom and prosperity.

Instead, they have done precisely the opposite.

White man’s burden for Afghan freedom

In October 2001, as US special forces were roaming Afghanistan in the search for Osama bin Laden, Max Boot – a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations – wrote a gushing article in the Weekly Standard titled, The Case for American Empire.

“Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets,” he said.

“Occupation would be a temporary expedient to allow the people to get back on their feet until a responsible, humane, preferably democratic, government takes over… Is this an ambitious agenda? Without a doubt. Does America have the resources to carry it out? Also without a doubt.”

Fifteen years into the war in Afghanistan, it is patently clear that this imperial dream is nothing more than a self-soothing fantasy.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Turkish prosecutors demand life sentences for 2 jailed Erdogan critics

January 27, 2016

Turkish prosecutors demand life sentences for 2 jailed Erdogan critics

A woman walks past a banner that reads, "Even you arrest (journalists) or censor (media) we know that you are a war criminal Tayyip" and with a picture of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a protest over the arrest of journalists Can Dundar and Erdem Gul in Ankara, Turkey © Umit Bektas

Turkish prosecutors are demanding life sentences for two journalists imprisoned over a report that alleges President Erdogan’s government tried to ship arms to Islamist rebels in Syria. The case is being seen as a clampdown on freedom of speech.

Prosecutors want the editor-in-chief of the Cumhuriyet newspaper, Can Dundar, and its Ankara bureau chief, Erdem Gul, each to be handed one aggravated life sentence, one ordinary life sentence and 30 years in jail, according to the Dogan news agency, which saw the indictment.

Both are currently at the Silivri prison awaiting trial. No date has been set yet.

A report by Cumhuriyet had alleged that a shipment of weapons seized at the border in January 2014 was going to rebels in Syria. It also claimed that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the head of Turkish intelligence, Hakan Fidan, were both in on the deal.

Footage accompanying the May 29, 2015 story in Cumhuriyet showed police opening crates from the stopped trucks, which appeared to contain weapons. The paper alleged they were headed for Syria to supply the opposition fighters.

These claims led to Dundar and his colleague being put in prison in November 2015.

Dundar and Gul are charged each with one count of “gathering secret state documents for the purposes of political and military espionage,” as well as “attempting to topple the government of the Republic of Turkey or attempting to stop either partially or totally the government from fulfilling its duties” and with “deliberate support for a terrorist organization without being a member.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

U.S. Ally Turkey Arrests Academics for the Crime of Signing a Peace Petition

January 19, 2016

U.S. Ally Turkey Arrests Academics for the Crime of Signing a Peace Petition

A senior Western official familiar with a large cache of intelligence obtained this summer told the Guardian that “direct dealings between Turkish officials and ranking ISIS members was now ‘undeniable.’”

ISIS, in other words, is state-sponsored — indeed, sponsored by purportedly Western-friendly regimes in the Muslim world, who are integral to the anti-ISIS coalition. Which then begs the question as to why Hollande and other Western leaders expressing their determination to “destroy” ISIS using all means necessary, would prefer to avoid the most significant factor of all: the material infrastructure of ISIS’ emergence in the context of ongoing Gulf and Turkish state support for Islamist militancy in the region.

There are many explanations, but one perhaps stands out: the West’s abject dependence on terror-toting Muslim regimes, largely to maintain access to Middle East, Mediterranean and Central Asian oil and gas resources.

– From the post: So Who’s Really Sponsoring ISIS? Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Other U.S. “Allies”

There’s been a lot going on lately, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you missed the latest drama from of U.S. ally, and sometimes ISIS/al-Qaeda supporter Turkey.

Recently, a peace petition circled the globe calling on the Turkish government to end fighting against Kurdish militants in the country’s southeast, which has reportedly led to thousands of civilian deaths. By January 15th, 2,000 Turkish academics had signed the petition, which was too much for authoritarian president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to handle. He not only publicly denounced the entire affair, he went ahead and started arresting people.

Nature reports:

Hundreds of Turkish academics are waiting to find out whether they will be prosecuted or sacked for spreading “terrorist propaganda”, after they signed a petition calling for violence to end in Turkey’s southeast, where government forces have been fighting Kurdish separatists.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Power of Exaggerated Fear

January 13, 2016

The Power of Exaggerated Fear

As the American middle class shrinks and citizens feel vulnerable and angry, politicians have found that exaggerating the dangers from some bogeyman – “the Muslim terrorists are out to get you!” – works wonders in distracting them from far more serious threats, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar describes.

Journalists have noticed how much current political campaigns are trading on fear. As observed in a recent article in the Washington Post, “Most of the Republican presidential contenders and their allies are now waging campaigns focused on fear — bombarding voters with ominous television spots that warn of national security threats and amping up their alarming rhetoric on the stump.”

ISIS and foreign terrorism figure prominently in the bombardment. As a media tracker cited in the same article observes, such scare tactics usually don’t get relied on until late in an election campaign. (The famous “Daisy” ad that Lyndon Johnson’s campaign used to associate Barry Goldwater with nuclear war in 1964 aired only once, in September of that year.)

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida.

But in the current campaign, the GOP candidates are trying to outdo each other with the fear factor as a way of getting attention before the primaries have even started, and trying to use the scaring of people as “the fastest way to create an ad that resonates.”

There is a long history across many nations of fear-based demagoguery leading to extreme and sometimes disastrous political results. Even if that isn’t the result in this U.S. election year, even if the candidates using the scare candidates do not really believe their rhetoric, and even if any one of them, once in office, would try to take a less fearful and more measured approach to business, the rhetoric and the public fear that it stokes have consequences. They help to create a political milieu in which anyone in office will have to operate.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US Enabled Saudi Arabia’s Crackdown on Pro-Democracy Protesters

January 5, 2016

US Enabled Saudi Arabia’s Crackdown on Pro-Democracy Protesters

saudi_arabia_man_execution_beheading_afp

Just days before Saudi Arabia performed a mass execution of 47 people, including four pro-democracy protesters; the US approved tens of millions in military contracts to the Saudi government. The contracts include $24 million to Raytheon Company for equipment relating to Patriot missiles, $12 million to Advanced Electronics Co. for electronics updates to F-15 fighter jets, and tens of millions of dollars to Boeing Co. for implementation of a laser guided, air-to-ground weapons system.

The Pentagon announced the contracts three days before the execution of four non-violent Shia protesters. The majority of the executions were carried out in the form of beheadings—the same form of execution favored by ISIS.

The weapons contracts draw attention to the US government’s continued arming of the Saudi government, which regularly engages in human rights abuses at home and abroad. Despite recent allegations of war crimes against Saudi Arabia for its war in Yemen, the US continues to replenish Saudi’s arsenal with billions in weapons.

As a result, Amnesty International has accused the US of violating the Arms Trade Treaty. The treaty prohibits the sale of arms if there is knowledge the weapons will be used against civilians. The International Committee of the Red Cross has documented 100 instances of the Saudi-led coalition attacking hospitals in Yemen.

Among those executed earlier this week was the Sheik Nimr al-Nimr, who was well known to Shia Muslims around the world. Al-Nimr was a leader of the 2011 Arab Spring protest in Saudi Arabia’s Shia region. His execution sparked protests in multiple countries including Iran, where protesters set the Saudi Embassy ablaze. In response to the embassy fire, Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic relations with Iran.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

From Baghdad to Bahrain…From Beruit to Tehran – Tensions Are Exploding Across the Middle East

January 4, 2016

From Baghdad to Bahrain…From Beruit to Tehran – Tensions Are Exploding Across the Middle East

Either the rebel prince succeeds in convincing enough people who matter to remove the King, or the King counters and drives the prince out. The former situation is far and away the best option for stability in the Middle East, and would likely allow the Saudi royal lineage to hold on to power for longer. If the second scenario unfolds, current leadership will crack down even harder on dissent and run the state further into the ground. This behavior will ultimately lead to an unpredictable and likely violent revolution, and if you think the Middle East is volatile now, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

As John F. Kennedy accurately noted:

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

This also applies to Saudi Arabia.

– From the post: Regime Change is Coming – Saudi Prince Calls for Coup to Remove King

If you’re like me, you’ve probably been pretty checked out of global news over the past severals days. It’s time to get checked in.

The extremely dangerous developments currently unfolding throughout the Middle East cannot be overstated. Indeed, it appears we may be on the verge of all out regional conflict. In order to understand what’s happening and where things might go, let’s review the events of recent days.

On January 2nd, Saudi officials welcomed the New Year by holding its largest mass execution since 1980. 47 individuals were put to death across 12 cities, some by firing squad, others by beheading. While the vast majority (43) were Sunni jihadists accused of attacks upon Western compounds and government buildings during the 2003-2006 period, the remaining victims were Shiite dissidents, most notably the revered and prominent cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

The resulting backlash from Beruit to Tehran, from Baghdad to Bahrain, has been nothing short of explosive. Expect this execution to be remembered as a major catalyst in the regional chaos to come.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

ISIS: The ‘Enemy’ the US Created, Armed, and Funded

January 3, 2016

ISIS: The ‘Enemy’ the US Created, Armed, and Funded

To delve into Daesh’s convoluted money trail, one must first explore its equally convoluted origins. And in both areas, the role of the U.S. and its allies can not be ignored.

(MINTPRESS) Out of nowhere, it seems, Daesh, also commonly referred to as ISIL or ISIS, spontaneously formed, a group that perverts aspects of Islam for its own violent ends, and threatens, we are told, all that the civilized world holds dear.

The “war on terror,” governments inform their citizens, has a new front. And that front is Daesh.

Let us not be too hasty. Things are not always what they appear. Daesh is well-financed, and that money must be coming from somewhere other than a ragtag band of malcontents. Daesh soldiers have advanced weaponry and sophisticated communications methods. They have tanks and Humvees. None of these can be obtained without significant funding. Though the source is quite illusive, there is some evidence that will lead to a trail.

First, we must look at Daesh’s origins, and even that is not easily discernible. Writing for The Guardian in August 2014, Ali Khedery suggests:

“Principally, Isis is the product of a genocide that continued unabated as the world stood back and watched. It is the illegitimate child born of pure hate and pure fear – the result of 200,000 murdered Syrians and of millions more displaced and divorced from their hopes and dreams. Isis’s rise is also a reminder of how Bashar al-Assad’s Machiavellian embrace of al-Qaida would come back to haunt him.

Facing Assad’s army and intelligence services, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Iraq’s Shia Islamist militias and their grand patron, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Syria’s initially peaceful protesters quickly became disenchanted, disillusioned and disenfranchised – and then radicalised and violently militant.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

ISIS oil trucks cross into Turkey every day, captured terrorist admits

January 2, 2016

ISIS oil trucks cross into Turkey every day, captured terrorist admits

A captured Islamic State militant who spoke to Sputnik news agency has bolstered claims that Turkey is involved in illegal oil deals with the jihadist group up to the hilt.

TrendsIslamic State

24-year-old Mahmud Ghazi Tatar says he joined Islamic State (IS, previously ISIS/ISIL) from the Turkish city of Adiyaman. Together with other recruits, he was transported over the border into Syria where he received terrorist training.

Having taken part in the civil war in Syria, he was captured by Kurdish forces last June and is now imprisoned.

RT obtained interview footage with the captive from Sputnik news agency. In it, the former IS fighter reveals details about Turkey’s alleged oil links to the terror group.

“At the training camp in May 2015, our commander told us that the group sells fuel to Turkey. That income covers Islamic State’s costs. The oil trucks crossing into Turkey every day carry crude oil, as well as petrol,” Tatar said, adding that the Islamic group has “enough oil to last them a long time.”

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URGENT: Russian intel spots 12,000 oil tankers & trucks on Turkey-Iraq border- General Staff http://on.rt.com/70d3

4:43 AM – 25 Dec 2015

In the words of Tatar’s commander, the oil is being sold via several businessmen and traders, although their names were not disclosed.

“ISIL also receives lots of supplies from Turkey and Arab countries,” the captured militant said.

Turkey strongly denies that it has links to the terrorists.

ISIS’s black market oil trade has come under scrutiny from the international community amid turbulent oil prices, which have fallen to half their previous level in 2015.

ISIL oil trade: step by step

Crude oil extracted at Syria’s Deir ez-Zor and Iraq’s Qayyara oil fields, which remain under under Islamic State control, is being sold for as little as $25 per barrel to smugglers, independent Syrian and Iraqi traders who transport oil using their own trucks.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Terror, climate chaos, financial crisis are the costs of ‘doing business’

December 25, 2015

Terror, climate chaos, financial crisis are the costs of ‘doing business’

The techno-narcissism of predatory neoliberal capitalism is locked into an endless war with the bastard monster of its own creation – Islamic State

Fifteen years into the 21st century, humanity has made little progress in addressing major threats to civilisation. In fact, on terrorism, climate change and the economy, we’re not making progress at all, but making things worse.

The “war on terror” has been waged for 14 years since 9/11, but far from terror being defeated, it has metastasised into a regional quasi-state occupying parts of Iraq and Syria.

Despite the much-lauded “binding” climate accord agreed in Paris, the governments most responsible for carbon emissions are still avoiding the reductions necessary to prevent us breaching crucial tipping points into dangerous climate change.

Governments have tried every neoliberal trick in the book to kick-start prosperity, but the legacy of the 2008 banking collapse lives on through tepid growth, astronomical global debt even higher than pre-crash levels, and the perpetual risk of another financial crisis.

At first glance, these failures appear unrelated.

In reality, ineffective hysteria in fighting terror, chronic inertia in tackling climate change, and impotence in the face of looming capitalist meltdown are part of the same structural problem: our civilisational paradigm.

Mind the gaps

Thanks to scientific and technological advances, information has never been so voluminous, and so accessible, to so many people.

But the epistemological gap between our perceptions of the world and how we are affecting it remains as wide as ever.

Sometimes, the gap is manufactured for political convenience. Senior US military commanders, for instance, have deliberately massaged intelligence to promote an image of victory in the war on the Islamic State (IS) – fabrications reminiscent of intelligence manipulation on weapons of mass destruction during the 2003 Iraq War.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Saudi Arabia’s Phony War on Terror

December 22, 2015

Saudi Arabia’s Phony War on Terror

BERLIN – Containing the scourge of Islamist terror will be impossible without containing the ideology that drives it: Wahhabism, a messianic, jihad-extolling form of Sunni fundamentalism whose international expansion has been bankrolled by oil-rich sheikhdoms, especially Saudi Arabia. That is why the newly announced Saudi-led anti-terror coalition, the Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism, should be viewed with profound skepticism.

Wahhabism promotes, among other things, the subjugation of women and the death of “infidels.” It is – to quote US President Barack Obama’s description of what motivated a married couple of Pakistani origin to carry out the recent mass shooting in San Bernardino, California – a “perverted interpretation of Islam,” and the ideological mother of jihadist terrorism. Its offspring include Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, and the Islamic State, all of which blend hostility toward non-Sunnis and anti-modern romanticism into nihilistic rage.

Saudi Arabia has been bankrolling Islamist terrorism since the oil-price boom of the 1970s dramatically boosted the country’s wealth. According to a 2013 European Parliament report, some of the $10 billion invested by Saudi Arabia for “its Wahhabi agenda” in South and Southeast Asia was “diverted” to terrorist groups, including Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

Western leaders have recognized the Saudi role for many years. In a 2009 diplomatic cable, then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton identified Saudi Arabia as “the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.” Thanks largely to the West’s interest in Saudi oil, however, the Kingdom has faced no international sanctions.

Now, with the growth of terrorist movements like the Islamic State, priorities are changing. As German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said in a recent interview, “We must make it clear to the Saudis that the time of looking the other way is over.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“Secret” Norwegian Report Details ISIS-Turkey Oil Trade As UN Vows To “Cut Off” Terrorist “Funding Sources”

December 18, 2015

“Secret” Norwegian Report Details ISIS-Turkey Oil Trade As UN Vows To “Cut Off” Terrorist “Funding Sources

“The resolution gives us more flexibility to go after those who are helping Isil [Isis], whether to move funds, to store funds or to earn funds”.

That’s from Adam Szubin, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the US Treasury. Szubin is referencing a Security Council resolution proposed by Washington and Moscow that calls for a crackdown on Islamic State’s access to the international financial system.

As FT reports, the “rare meeting of Security Council member finance ministers also resolved to press other nations to enforce more rigorously existing rules that are designed to limit the flow of revenues, fighters and equipment to the Islamist militant group.”

And here’s a bit of largely meaningless rhetoric from the UN itself:

At its first ever meeting at Finance Ministers’ level, the United Nations Security Council today stepped up its efforts to cut off all sources of funding for the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIL) and other terrorist groups, including ransom payments, no matter by whom.

The Council also called on Member States to promote enhanced vigilance by persons within their jurisdiction to detect any diversion of explosives and raw materials and components that can be used to manufacture improvised explosive devices or unconventional weapons, including chemical components, detonators, detonating cord, or poisons.

“They (the terrorists) are agile and have been far too successful in attaining resources for their heinous acts,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Council at the start of the debate. “As Da’esh (another name for ISIL) and other terrorist groups disseminate their hateful propaganda and ratchet up murderous attacks, we must join forces to prevent them from acquiring and deploying resources to do further harm,” he stressed.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Erdogan calls MP ‘traitor’ for telling RT that ISIS got chemical weapons via Turkey

December 18, 2015

Erdogan calls MP ‘traitor’ for telling RT that ISIS got chemical weapons via Turkey

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused opposition MP Eren Erdem of “betrayal.” Erdem told RT that Islamic State terrorists had obtained sarin gas supplies through Turkish territory – and that Ankara did nothing despite having all the evidence.

“There is a deputy in this country, buried so deep in a pit of betrayal, and to a party that claims to be as old as the republic saying during an interview to a foreign television channel that Turkey is selling chemical weapons to terrorists,” Erdogan told a crowd in the city of Konya.

The Turkish President also called the silence of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) concerning Erdem’s revelations“treason.”

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EXCLUSIVE: Sarin materials brought via Turkey & mixed in Syrian ISIS camps– Turkish MP to RT http://on.rt.com/6zep

1:49 AM – 14 Dec 2015

“What is this party waiting for? Why are they silent? This is treason. How can you allege this country sells sarin gas to the terrorist state of Syria which is run by the murderer Assad?” Erdogan said, as cited by local media.

“Shame on those who still keep him in the party!” he added.

What Erdem actually revealed in an interview with RT on Monday were the details from a criminal case opened, and then abruptly closed, by the General Prosecutor’s Office in the Turkish city of Adana. His account alleges that Turkish authorities had acquired a great deal of evidence concerning sarin gas shipments to those Al-Qaeda militants in Syria that later became known globally as Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), but did nothing to stop them.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

ISIS, Al Qaeda And The CIA: The Documented Connection

December 18, 2015

ISIS, Al Qaeda And The CIA: The Documented Connection

The Middle East is fertile ground for conspiracy theories, and one growing to towering heights these days says the US created the Islamic State. But while the US may well have aided ISIS in its formative days with covert supplies of weapons and CIA funding (directly or indirectly, via Turkey leading political families) the one nation most responsible for iteration after iteration of “terrorist organizations” is Saudi Arabia which “created” not only the Islamic State, but al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, and many other Sunni Jihadist groups in Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Pakistan.

The US has long been aware of this, of course, and it has provided material support to some of them in the distant past, for example to the Taliban in the war against Russia. But the more reasonable among us have questioned recent claims that the US intentionally created the Islamic State, a group of the same lineage as the Saudi terrorists responsible for 9/11.

Those rejecting a direct link between the US and the Islamic State instead ask a perfectly logical question: why would the US allow a country ruled by monarchs with dark-age-sensibilities get away with attacking us on 9/11, funding al-Qadea in Iraq (a group that killed a few thousand US soldiers), and now the Islamic State? Two answers: fat, senile Saudi kings are preferable to the Islamic monsters that would replace them in a regime change, and the Bush family/Carlyle Group would prefer not to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.

Thanks to the resurrection of “J Pierpont Morgan”, these doubts and questions are no longer reasonable. They are, in fact, irrelevant. Because J Pierpont Morgan, apparently experiencing a Scrooge-like transformation, has seen the light.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

You Want War With Russia?

December 17, 2015

You Want War With Russia?

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Nobody needs to read Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski’s 1997 opus to know US foreign policy revolves around one single overarching theme: prevent — by all means necessary — the emergence of a power, or powers, capable of constraining Washington’s unilateral swagger, not only in Eurasia but across the world.

The Pentagon carries the same message embedded in newspeak: the Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine.

Syria is leading all these assumptions to collapse like a house of cards. So no wonder in a Beltway under no visible chain of command — the Obama administration barely qualifies as lame duck — angst is the norm.

The Pentagon is now engaged in a Vietnam-style escalation of boots on the ground across “Syraq.” Fifty commandos are already in northern Syria “advising” the YPG Syrian Kurds as well as a few “moderate” Sunnis. Translation: telling them what Washington wants them to do. The official White House spin is that these commandos “support local forces” (Obama’s words) in cutting off supply lines leading to the fake “Caliphate” capital, Raqqa.

Another 200 Special Forces sent to Iraq will soon follow, allegedly to “engage in direct combat” against the leadership of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, which is now ensconced in Mosul.

These developments, billed as “efforts” to “partially re-engage in Iraq and Syria” are leading US Think Tankland to pen hilarious reports in search of “the perfect balance between wide-scale invasion and complete disengagement” — when everyone knows Washington will never disengage from the Middle East’s strategic oil wealth.

All these American boots on the ground in theory should be coordinating, soon, with a new, spectacularly surrealist 34-country “Islamic” coalition (Iran was not invited), set up to fight ISIS/ISIL/Daesh by no less than the ideological matrix of all strands of Salafi-jihadism: Wahhabi Saudi Arabia.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US calls on Turkey to withdraw ‘unauthorized’ troops from Iraq

December 17, 2015

US calls on Turkey to withdraw ‘unauthorized’ troops from Iraq

The US has urged Turkey to withdraw its “unauthorized” military forces from northern Iraq, calling on Ankara to respect the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

US Vice President Joe Biden has spoken to Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi regarding Turkey’s troop deployments.

“The Vice President reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to Iraqi sovereignty and territorial integrity and called on Turkey to do the same by withdrawing any military forces from Iraqi territory that have not been authorized by the Iraqi government,” the White House said in a statement.

The call between Biden and al-Abadi came two days after the Vice President’s talk with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Stressing Washington’s commitment to close cooperation with both Iraq and Turkey in the fight against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), Biden urged Ankara to continue its dialogue with Baghdad.

“The Vice President reiterated that any foreign military presence in Iraq must be with the full consent of the Iraq government,” read a statement from the White House on December 14.

Relations between Ankara and Baghdad began to unravel following Turkey’s December 4 deployment of about 150 soldiers backed by artillery and around 25 tanks to Camp Bashiqa, a base near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul that is controlled by IS. The move was protested by both the Iraqi government and thousands of its citizens across the country.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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