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Iraqi oil exports up in July

Though exports from a northern pipeline are idled, the Iraqi government said Monday its oil exports for July were higher than the previous month. Assim Jihad, a spokesman for the Iraqi Oil Ministry, said southern ports exported 75.7 million barrels of oil in July and brought in close to $8 billion for the Iraqi economy. Iraq exported 72.8 million barrels of oil from southern ports in June. The pipeline from the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk to the Turkish port city of Ceyhan has been closed because of terrorist threats since May. Iraqi oil exports so far this year peaked at 80 million barrels in May. A Sunni-led insurgency emerged shortly afterward, putting pressure on the central government in Baghdad. The U.S. State Department said it was monitoring a new push by the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in the northwestern Iraqi border town of Sinjar. "The […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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How the U.S. got mixed up in a fight over Kurdish oil — with a unified Iraq at stake

The oil tanker SCF Byrranga, which was renamed the United Kalavrvta in March, is seen near the Isle of Arran, Scotland. The tanker is currently off the coast of Texas, carrying $100 million worth of Kurdish crude oil. (Tom Duncan/Reuters) Sixty miles off the coast of Texas sits a crude-oil tanker fully loaded with years of antagonism between the Kurdish region of Iraq and the central government in Baghdad. The United Kalavrvta, a tanker the length of three football fields, is carrying about 1 million barrels of crude oil from the Kurdish region of Iraq. It set sail for Galveston, but it never got there. The central government of Iraq, despite recent military setbacks, dispatched its American lawyers to do battle in the federal court in southern Texas, where a judge ruled that the tanker’s cargo, worth about $100 million, should be seized if it came within Texas state waters. […]

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Peshmerga in Ceasefire with IS South of Kirkuk at Tribal Behest

Kurdish Peshmerga forces have declared a three-day unilateral ceasefire south of Kirkuk after a demand by Arab tribal chiefs in the area. Peshmerga military officials in the town of Daquq told Rudaw that Arab tribes had asked for the ceasefire – that started Saturday evening —  to give them a chance to try and persuade Islamic State (IS/ISIS) militants to leave the area. The tribes fear that a resumption of fighting between the Peshmerga and IS would cut off the Kirkuk-Tuz Khurmatu highway and affect many ethnically-mixed villages that lie in the frontlines. Meanwhile, Kurdish commanders said they fear that the Islamic militants might use the truce to regroup and bring in reinforcements from elsewhere. Until now the Sunni militants, who have declared an Islamic State straddling large parts of Iraq and portions of Syria, had locked in sporadic clashes with […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Sunni Extremists in Iraq Seize 3 Towns From Kurds and Threaten Major Dam

Sunni extremists seized control of three towns in northern Iraq on Sunday after fierce battles with Kurdish security forces, sending thousands of people fleeing to the nearby mountains and threatening the country’s largest dam. In the darkness of Sunday morning, the Sunni fighters swept in to take one of the towns, Sinjar, and set about their method of conquest, which is as familiar as it is brutal: They destroyed a Shiite shrine, executed resisters, overran local security forces and hoisted the black flag of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, above government buildings. Hours later, as the militants demanded that the city’s residents swear allegiance to ISIS or be killed, the group’s social media campaign was underway, with photos posted online showing militants patrolling the city. The United Nations representative in Baghdad, Nickolay Mladenov, issued a statement on Sunday, citing reports he had that […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Iraq’s Yazidi minority flees militant threat

Tens of thousands from Iraq’s minority Yazidi community have fled their homes after Sunni militants captured their towns in the latest offensive to expand the territory of their self-styled caliphate. As Kurdish fighters struggled to hold back the onslaught of the Islamic State militants on Iraq’s north, some 40,000 Yazidis, a minority religious sect, fled the northern towns of Sinjar and Zumar, said Jawhar Ali Begg, a spokesman for the community. "Thousands of Yazidi people have been killed," he said. The militant group gave the Yazidis, who follow an ancient religion with links to Zoroastrianism, an ultimatum to convert to Islam, pay a tax or face death, Begg added. Iraq is facing its worst crisis since the 2006 civil war when the Islamic State group, an al-Qaida breakaway faction with a strong presence in Syria, captured large swaths of land in the country’s west and […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Iraq's Yazidi minority flees militant threat

Tens of thousands from Iraq’s minority Yazidi community have fled their homes after Sunni militants captured their towns in the latest offensive to expand the territory of their self-styled caliphate. As Kurdish fighters struggled to hold back the onslaught of the Islamic State militants on Iraq’s north, some 40,000 Yazidis, a minority religious sect, fled the northern towns of Sinjar and Zumar, said Jawhar Ali Begg, a spokesman for the community. "Thousands of Yazidi people have been killed," he said. The militant group gave the Yazidis, who follow an ancient religion with links to Zoroastrianism, an ultimatum to convert to Islam, pay a tax or face death, Begg added. Iraq is facing its worst crisis since the 2006 civil war when the Islamic State group, an al-Qaida breakaway faction with a strong presence in Syria, captured large swaths of land in the country’s west and […]

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Iraqi Militants Capture Two Oil Fields in North, Kurdish Towns

Militants from Islamic State, a breakaway al-Qaeda group, took control of two oil fields and some predominantly Kurdish towns in northern Iraq following clashes, according to the Northern Oil Co. The Ain Zala and Batma oil fields, which together have an output of 30,000 barrels per day, are under full control of the group, according to a statement by the state-run Northern Oil Co. The Sunni Islamist militants last month occupied the Qayyara oil field north of Baghdad. Islamic State, which was previously known as Islamic State in Iraq and Levant, has seized territory in northern and western Iraq, taking over oil wells and fighting for control of refineries. Islamic State fighters continued their advance yesterday, taking over the village of Wana, south of the Mosul dam, according to Hisham al-Brefkani, a member of the provincial council of Nineveh. A retreat by Kurdish fighters from the village was a […]

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Special Report : The doubt at the heart of Iraq's Sunni 'revolution'

Sheikh Ali Hatem Suleiman, one of the leaders of the Sunni revolt against the Shi’ite-led government of Iraq, sat cross-legged on a couch last month, lit another Marlboro Red, and discussed the struggle with visitors from his home city of Ramadi, where the uprising began late last year. Instead of taking delight in the rebellion’s progress, though, the 43-year-old crown prince began lamenting the fact that Iraq’s patchwork quilt of ethnicities and religions was being torn apart. "How do we guard what we still have?" he asked his visitors. The revolutionary sheikh’s doubts may seem surprising. Over the past seven months the Sunni armed factions which Suleiman helps lead, and their allies in the far more extreme al Qaeda offshoot known as Islamic State, have captured most of the north’s largest Sunni cities. The battle against Prime Minister Noori al-Maliki in Baghdad has spread north […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Special Report : The doubt at the heart of Iraq’s Sunni ‘revolution’

Sheikh Ali Hatem Suleiman, one of the leaders of the Sunni revolt against the Shi’ite-led government of Iraq, sat cross-legged on a couch last month, lit another Marlboro Red, and discussed the struggle with visitors from his home city of Ramadi, where the uprising began late last year. Instead of taking delight in the rebellion’s progress, though, the 43-year-old crown prince began lamenting the fact that Iraq’s patchwork quilt of ethnicities and religions was being torn apart. "How do we guard what we still have?" he asked his visitors. The revolutionary sheikh’s doubts may seem surprising. Over the past seven months the Sunni armed factions which Suleiman helps lead, and their allies in the far more extreme al Qaeda offshoot known as Islamic State, have captured most of the north’s largest Sunni cities. The battle against Prime Minister Noori al-Maliki in Baghdad has spread north […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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German Business Looks to Renew Iran Contacts

German businesses are cooling on Russian investments amid anger over Russia’s role in the Ukrainian conflict while simultaneously warming on another big country hit by Western sanctions: Iran. Companies across Germany have quietly rekindled once-strong commercial ties with Iran, industry officials said. The shift, also occurring in other European countries, is possible because Western governments—working to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons—in November granted it some relief from sanctions. Talks on a broader deal continue, sparking hope among some businesses that Iran’s market of 77 million potential consumers could soon open to them. "The market will explode when the embargo gets lifted," predicted Stephanie Spinner-König, managing director of high-tech component maker Spinner GmbH and a participant in one of two German business delegations that visited Iran this year. While German companies see opportunities in Iran, few want to discuss it publicly. Many fear talking up the pariah country could […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple