Category: Iraq

| License Photo ISTANBUL, Turkey, Sept. 17 (UPI) — The Kurdish north of Iraq is secured and positioned to become a global leader in the energy sector, the top executive at Genel Energy said from Istanbul. Genel in August said net working production for the second half of the year averaged 63,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, an increase of around 50 percent from the second half of 2013. The majority of that comes from the Kurdish north of Iraq. Genel Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward told delegates gathered in Istanbul for a conference organized by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists the Kurdish region was open for business . "Without the oil industry, Kurdistan doesn’t exist," he said in his Tuesday remarks. "I am very confident in the capability of Kurdish security forces to insure that there is no sort of infiltration to the region." Iraqi and […]

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Haider al-Abadi Iraq’s parliament rejected defense and interior nominees on Tuesday, leaving the crucial ministerial posts unfilled as a U.S.-led coalition intensifies its air campaign against Islamic extremists who have seized a third of the country. The two powerful security portfolios have long been a source of tension among Iraq’s feuding political factions, and the failure to agree on the nominees marked the latest in a series of delays in forming a unified government that can confront the Islamic State extremist group. The parliament session was held as the U.S. carried out an airstrike near Baghdad for the first time since launching an aerial campaign in early August, and French warplanes flying from the United Arab Emirates began reconnaissance missions over Iraq. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi put forward Sunni lawmaker Jaber al-Jabberi as his candidate for defense minister and Shiite lawmaker Riyad Ghareeb as his pick for interior minister. […]

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BAGHDAD — Militia justice is simple, the fighters explained. “We break into an area and kill the ones who are threatening people,” said one 18-year-old fighter with Asaib Ahl al-Haq, a Shiite militia that operates as a vigilante force around Baghdad. Another 18-year-old fighter agreed. “We receive orders and carry out attacks immediately,” he said, insisting that their militia commanders had been given authority by Iraqi security officials. That free hand has helped make Asaib Ahl al-Haq the largest and most formidable of the Iranian-backed Shiite militias that now dominate Baghdad. Once a leading killer of American troops, the militia is spearheading the fight against the Sunni extremists of the Islamic State, also known by the acronyms ISIS and ISIL. That means Asaib Ahl al-Haq and the United States military are now fighting on the same side, though each insists they will not work together. But the power and […]

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PARIS — Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday that the Obama administration would keep the door open to confidential communications with Iran on the security crisis in Iraq, despite sarcastic criticism from Iran’s supreme leader, who said the American plan for bombing Islamic militants, their common enemy, was absurd. Mr. Kerry acknowledged that the United States had opposed a role for Iran at the international conference here on strengthening a coalition to help the new government in Baghdad fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Both King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and top officials from the United Arab Emirates had informed the United States that they would not attend the meeting here if Iran was present, said Mr. Kerry, who also stressed that the United States would not coordinate militarily with the Iranians. But Mr. Kerry also said that American officials were still prepared to talk […]

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Sept. 16 (Bloomberg) –- The Kurdistan Regional Government asked a U.S. judge to reject the Iraqi Oil Ministry’s bid to use new legal theories to seek a second seizure order for $100 million of Kurdish crude waiting in a tanker off the Texas coast. U.S. District Judge Gray Miller ruled last month he had no authority to decide which government rightfully owns the cargo, which was pumped from wells in the autonomous Kurdistan region of northern Iraq and exported through a Turkish pipeline. He threw out a U.S. magistrate’s arrest warrant that would have allowed federal agents to seize the crude and store it ashore at the Iraqi government’s expense, if the ship enters U.S. territorial waters, until the ownership dispute can be resolved. The judge gave the Iraqis a chance to revise their suit, and the central government asked to add new legal theories to try for a […]

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AP Photo AP Photo World Video Buy AP Photo Reprints KOEGE, Denmark (AP) — Shaho Pirani says he’s just a phone call away from leaving his quiet life in Denmark and joining Kurdish forces battling against Islamic State militants in Iraq. The 30-year-old Kurd, who fled from Iran with his older brother in 1991, says he feels a moral duty to help the Peshmerga, the armed forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government, to fight the "psychopaths" of the Islamic State group. "I feel so helpless here," Pirani told The Associated Press in an interview in his home in Koege, a tranquil Copenhagen suburb with neatly trimmed lawns and hedges. "I am ready to die for the Kurdish cause." While more than 2,000 Europeans are believed to have joined the Islamic State organization and other jihadist groups as foreign fighters, a smaller number has left Europe in recent months to […]

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A group of men transporting diesel fuel from Syria into Turkey last year, an operation also used by jihadists to fund their operations. Reuters The Islamic State is funding its rapid push into Syria and Iraq with a labyrinthine oil-smuggling operation that starts at seized Syrian oil fields, goes through makeshift refineries and can end up in jerrycans carried by mules into the hilly borderland of Turkey. Amid Western pressure to squeeze the group’s finances, Turkey is expanding efforts to crack down on the increasingly organized business, which is now generating an estimated $2 million a day. A major route linking Syrian oil fields with the smuggling enclaves of southern Turkey offers a window onto the complexity of the oil network run by Islamic State, the militant group that controls large swaths of Syria and Iraq . It also demonstrates the challenges of shutting it down. "It clearly won’t […]

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A conference to discuss how to combat the Islamic State is under way in Paris. Made up of 26 countries, including the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Russia, it aims to show a united front on fighting the militant group. WSJ’s Mark Kelly reports PARIS—Top diplomats vowed Monday to back the Iraqi government’s fight against Islamic State but struggled to agree on concrete action, underscoring divisions among world powers over how to tackle the militant group. A group of 26 countries—including the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Russia—pledged to support Baghdad’s fight against the jihadist organization "by any means necessary, including appropriate military assistance." French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters after an international conference on combating the militant group that discussions focused on ways to cut off funding to the group as well as how to stem the flow of foreign fighters to Syria and Iraq. But the gathering failed […]

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Ground crew for U.S. Marine F18’s goes through the final process of arming the aircraft prior to their missions over Iraq March 22, 2003. The United States and Britain unleashed their first daylight air strikes on Baghdad on Saturday after pounding it with a fearsome night blitz. – RTXLUSQ The US has conducted its first air strikes in support of the Iraqi military since President Barack Obama last week launched his expanded fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or Isis , in Syria and Iraq. The US Central Command said aircraft attacked Isis positions near Sinjar on Sunday and southwest of Baghdad on Monday. These were the first attacks in support of Iraqi troops as opposed to strikes to protect US personnel, help refugees or secure infrastructure. More On this story On this topic IN Iraq Six Isis vehicles and one of the militants’ firing […]

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Sunni tribes turning on ISIS and Peshmerga A Peshmerga fighter holds a rocket propelled-grenade (RPG) near an ISIS flag hoisted on the other side of a bridge in Rashad, on the road between Kirkuk and Tikrit, on Sept. 11, 2014. [JM LOPEZ/AFP/Getty Images] Iraq’s newest initiative to convince Sunnis to fight alongside the government has combusted into a volatile, multi-sided conflict in northern Diyala province – a strong indication of how difficult it will be to build and maintain a national coalition against extremist militants.The biggest flashpoint has been around Jalula, a town in Diyala along the disputed border between the autonomous Kurdistan region and Arab-dominated southern Iraq.Since Saturday, Sunni Arab tribesmen aligned wi… This content is for registered users. Please login to continue. If you are not a registered user, you may purchase a subscription or sign up for a free trial .

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