IRBIL, Iraq: Vice President Mike Pence worked to reassure the United States’ Kurdish allies in an unannounced trip to Iraq on Saturday, the highest-level American trip since President Donald Trump ordered a pullback of US forces in Syria two months ago.
Flying in a C-17 military cargo jet to preserve the secrecy of the visit, Pence landed in Irbil to meet with Iraqi Kurdistan President Nechirvan Barzani. The visit was meant to hearten the United States’ regional partners in the fight against the Daesh group after the US pulled troops from northern Syria, leaving the Kurdish allies in neighboring Syria to face a bloody Turkish assault last month following the Trump-ordered withdrawal.
Earlier, Pence received a classified briefing at Iraq’s Al-Asad Air Base, from which US forces are believed to have launched the operation in Syria last month that resulted in the death of Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. Pence also spoke by phone with Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi.
It was Pence’s second trip to the region in five weeks. Trump deployed him on a whirlwind trip to Ankara, Turkey, last month to negotiate a cease-fire after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seized on the US withdrawal to launch the offensive on US-allied Kurdish fighters in northern Syria. Trump’s move had sparked some of the most unified criticism of his administration to date, as lawmakers in both parties accused Trump of forsaking longtime Kurdish allies and inviting Russia and Iran to hold even greater sway in the volatile region.
Pence said he welcomes “the opportunity on behalf of President Donald Trump to reiterate the strong bonds forged in the fires of war between the people of the United States and the Kurdish people across this region.”
Asked if the United States was facing a sense of betrayal from Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish allies over Trump’s actions in Syria, Pence said both groups, including Syrian Kurdish forces “who fought alongside us,” had no doubts about the US commitment to them. “It’s unchanging,” Pence said.
A senior US official said Pence’s visit was also meant to reassure the many Americans who have long supported the region’s Kurds that the Trump administration remained committed to the alliance. The visit was also designed to show Pence’s focus on foreign policy as Washington is gripped by the drama of impeachment.
When the US forces withdrew, Syria’s Kurds — seeking protection from their No. 1 enemy, Turkey — invited Syrian government and Russian forces into parts of northeastern Syria where they had not set foot in years. More are now deploying along large parts of the border region under a Russian-Turkish deal, including to at least one former US garrison in northern Syria.
The Ankara agreement required Syrian Kurds to vacate a swath of territory in Syria along the Turkish border in an arrangement that largely solidified Turkey’s position and aims.
Pence hailed the cease-fire as the way to end the bloodshed caused by Turkey’s invasion. The deal includes a halt to American economic sanctions and no apparent long-term consequences for Turkey for its actions.
The Syrian-led Kurdish forces say the cease-fire is persistently violated and fighting raged Saturday between them and Turkey-backed forces outside the Syrian town of Ein Issa, once home to US bases and the Kurdish administration.
A senior Syrian Kurdish official agreed on Saturday that the relationship remains unchanged, but was critical of Washington’s lack of response to Turkey’s violations of the cease-fire.
Limiting the US partnership to military cooperation over a limited area with the Syrian Kurdish fighters, “while condoning the killing of civilians, is not a very honest relationship and cooperation,” the official, Ilham Ahmed, said.
On Nov. 13, Trump feted Erdogan with a White House visit over the objection of a bipartisan group of lawmakers who argued Erdogan should be denied the honor of a West Wing visit in the aftermath of the invasion and because of his decision to purchase Russian-made surface-to-air missiles over the objection of NATO allies.
Barzani thanked Pence for the US military support in the fight against the Daesh group, adding that his “visit at this particular time is an important indication of your continued support to Kurdistan and Iraq.”
The US collaboration with the Iraqi Kurds has not changed in the wake of US withdrawal from northern Syria. In neighboring Syria, after declaring the near-complete withdrawal of US forces from Syria, Trump decided that roughly 800 would stay to keep eastern Syria’s oil fields from falling back into the hands of Daesh.
Just years ago, the militant group seized control of vast stretches of Syria and Iraq, with its extremist ideology spreading from its self-declared “caliphate” across the globe. In March, American troops and Syrian Kurdish forces routed the last Daesh territorial holdings. But the militant group, which arose from the remnants of Al-Qaeda in Iraq after that group’s defeat by US-led forces in 2008, has ambitions to regenerate again. And it remains a dangerous threat in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and beyond.
Trump also agreed to keep about 150 US troops at a base in southern Syria as a check on Iranian influence in the region.
While Trump has claimed that the US was now “keeping” the oil in Syria, Pentagon officials indicated the US presence is not intended to improve the oil infrastructure but to keep it in the hands of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
Pence, joined on the trip by his wife, Karen Pence, also greeted US troops ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, serving turkey and accompaniments to hundreds of troops at the two locations.
“While you come from the rest of us, you’re the best of us,” Pence told service members in a dusty hangar at Al-Asad. He said the Trump administration is working to secure another pay increase for the armed services and suggested the ongoing impeachment inquiry in Washington was slowing the way.
“Partisan politics and endless investigations have slowed things down in D.C.,” Pence said.
Pence’s visit to Iraq comes as the country has been plagued by widespread anti-corruption protests. At least 320 protesters have been killed and thousands have been wounded since the unrest began on Oct. 1, when demonstrators took to the streets in Baghdad and across Iraq’s mainly Shiite south to decry rampant government malfeasance and a lack of basic services despite Iraq’s oil wealth. The protests have exposed long-simmering resentment at Iran’s influence in the country, with protesters targeting Shiite political parties and militias with close ties to Tehran.
Pence spoke by phone with Abdul Mahdi after the Iraqi leader declined an invitation to meet with Pence at the air base after security concerns prevented Pence from traveling into Baghdad. US Ambassador to Iraq Matthew Tueller said Pence expressed support for a free, sovereign and independent Iraq — a subtle warning against Iranian influence in the country, which has weakened cooperation between the US and Iraq.
Pence also encouraged the Iraqi government to show restraint with the protesters. According to one official, Abdul Mahdi expressed regret for the violence and cast it as growing pains for the country and its security services, more used to war than democratic protest.
The leaderless, mass protests aim to sweep aside Iraq’s sectarian system imposed after the 2003 US invasion and its political elite, including Abdul Mahdi, blamed for massive corruption.
US officials assess that the protests won’t subside unless Abdul Mahdi’s government makes substantial concessions, potentially up to the resignation of the government and the calling of early elections.
Pence’s visit comes days after the release of hundreds of pages of purported Iranian intelligence documents detailing Iran’s extensive influence in Iraq.
The revelation came after dozens of demonstrators attacked the Iranian consulate in Karbala earlier in November, scaling concrete barriers and saying they rejected the influence of the neighboring country in Iraqi affairs.
“We want to see an Iraq that is free from the malign influence of Iran, and is also respecting the rights and voices of all its people,” Pence said.
On Iraq visit, US VP Pence reassures Kurds and discusses protests with premier
On Iraq visit, US VP Pence reassures Kurds and discusses protests with premier
- The visit was previously unannounced due to for security reasons
- This is Pence’s first visit to Iraq and comes nearly one year since Trump’s surprise visit to the country
Aid groups warn of mounting challenges to Gaza operations
- The latest fighting, more than seven months into the war, has cut off access to some areas and left aid crossings either closed or operating at a limited capacity
“There are enormous needs” which are bound to grow, while there is “less and less access”, said the head of a European charity, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity.
Aid groups say the humanitarian crisis in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory, where the UN has warned of looming famine, has significantly deteriorated since Israeli troops entered eastern Rafah last week.
The Israeli military has launched what it called a “limited” operation, seizing on May 7 the Rafah crossing on the Egyptian border — a key aid conduit that is now shut — and sparking an exodus of Palestinians seeking safety further north in Gaza.
The latest fighting, more than seven months into the war, has cut off access to some areas and left aid crossings either closed or operating at a limited capacity.
A worker for the Paris-based non-governmental organization Humanity & Inclusion (HI) in the Palestinian territories, also requesting anonymity, said: “We can’t get our teams out, the security conditions are too unstable.”
Israel has vowed to defeat remaining Hamas forces in the southern city of Rafah, which it says is the last bastion of the group whose October 7 attack triggered the war.
The attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has since killed at least 35,303 people, also mostly civilians, according to data provided by the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
Aid workers told AFP their organizations had regularly been denied access by Israeli authorities to certain areas or routes.
The Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and southern Gaza has reopened following a brief closure, but humanitarian groups say Israeli tanks amassing there and repeated Hamas rocket fire have hindered operations.
A trickle of aid has entered via Kerem Shalom in recent days under “great risk, through an area of active hostilities,” said a UN employee in Jerusalem.
Human Rights Watch charged this week that Israeli forces had repeatedly targeted known aid worker locations, even when their organizations had provided the coordinates to Israeli authorities to ensure their protection.
On Monday a UN employee was killed and another wounded when their vehicle was hit in Rafah.
Shaina Low, communications adviser for the Norwegian Refugee Council, said the organization had subsequently “canceled all of our movements for the rest of the day to mitigate risk to our staff.”
The Israeli army said it was looking into the incident which occurred “in an area declared an active combat zone.”
Since the war began, more than 250 humanitarian workers have been killed in Gaza, according to UN figures.
Aid workers complain of lengthy and convoluted procedures to coordinate their movements with the Israeli military via the United Nations and several Israeli agencies.
“We are seeing mishaps” even after COGAT, the Israeli defense ministry body overseeing civilian affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories, informs organizations they have clearance, said Tania Hary, head of Israeli rights group Gisha.
“It does point to something that’s going wrong in the communication” between COGAT and the army, she said.
To avoid having to go through a series of mediators — UN agencies, Israel’s Coordination and Liaison Administration and then its parent agency COGAT — some aid groups have opted for direct contact with Israeli military authorities.
But workers and officials told AFP this has mostly created further confusion. Some also fear NGOs would accept conditions in direct communication with the military, which could set precedents other groups may not be willing to abide by.
The HI employee said: “Notifying them of our movements, which they’re not supposed to hinder, is a way of reminding them of their accountability if anything goes wrong.”
Humanitarian workers stress that Israel, as an occupying power, is required under international law to ensure aid reaches civilians in Gaza.
A military spokesperson said Thursday the army was in contact with international organizations “in real time” and ensuring “the best way possible to communicate as fast as possible.”
Even if a full-scale invasion of Rafah is averted, humanitarian agencies say conditions are unsustainable.
Debris and destruction have rendered main routes and many other roads impassable, and a severe fuel shortage — worsened since the Rafah crossing takeover — has limited the use of vehicles.
“We’re only going to places we can walk to,” said the head of one aid group with about 50 workers in Gaza.
A Jerusalem-based humanitarian official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said he recognized that “military imperatives” arise in conflicts and may limit aid operations.
But in the Gaza war, movement requests are denied too often and “we can hardly bring anything,” he said.
“We can’t work like this.”
Western nations urge Israel to comply with international law in Gaza
- Israel denies blocking humanitarian aid and says it needs to eliminate Hamas for its own protection
- The Western nations said they were opposed to “a full-scale military operation in Rafah” and called on Israel to let humanitarian aid reach the population
ROME: Israel must comply with international law in Gaza and address the devastating humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian enclave, a group of Western nations wrote in a letter to the Israeli government seen by Reuters on Friday.
All countries belonging to the Group of Seven (G7) major democracies, apart from the United States, signed the letter, along with Australia, South Korea, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Finland.
The five-page letter comes as Israeli forces bear down on the southern Gaza city of Rafah as part of its drive to eradicate Hamas, despite warnings this could result in mass casualties in an area where displaced civilians have found shelter.
“In exerting its right to defend itself, Israel must fully comply with international law, including international humanitarian law,” the letter said, reiterating “outrage” for the Oct. 7 Hamas raid into Israel which triggered the conflict.
Israel denies blocking humanitarian aid and says it needs to eliminate Hamas for its own protection.
The Western nations said they were opposed to “a full-scale military operation in Rafah” and called on Israel to let humanitarian aid reach the population “through all relevant crossing points, including the one in Rafah.”
“According to UN estimates, an intensified military offensive would affect approximately 1.4 million people,” the letter said, underscoring the need “for specific, concrete and measurable steps” to significantly boost the flow of aid.
The letter recognizes Israel made progress in addressing a number of issues, including letting more aid trucks into the Gaza Strip, the reopening of the Erez crossing into northern Gaza and the temporary use of Ashdod port in southern Israel.
But it called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to do more, including working toward a “sustainable ceasefire,” facilitating further evacuations and resuming “electricity, water and telecommunication services.”
Since Oct. 7 Israel’s Gaza offensive has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, local health officials say.
Gaza fighting rages after Israel vows to intensify Rafah offensive
- Fierce battles overnight in and around the Jabalia refugee camp in the north of the war-ravaged Gaza Strip
- Israeli warships launched strikes on Rafah, on the border with Egypt
RAFAH: Fighting raged Friday in Gaza after Israel vowed to intensify its ground offensive in Rafah despite international concerns for the hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians in the southern city.
With Gazans facing hunger, the US military said “trucks carrying humanitarian assistance began moving ashore via a temporary pier” it set up to aid Palestinians in the besieged territory.
Witnesses reported fierce battles overnight in and around the Jabalia refugee camp in the north of the war-ravaged Gaza Strip.
Israeli helicopters carried out heavy strikes around Jabalia while army artillery hit homes near Kamal Adwan hospital in the camp, they said.
The bodies of six people were retrieved and several wounded people were evacuated after an air strike targeted a house in Jabalia, Gaza’s Civil Defense agency said.
Rescue teams were trying to recover people from under the rubble of the Shaaban family home on Al-Faluja Street in the camp, it added.
Witnesses said Israeli warships launched strikes on Rafah, on the border with Egypt, where more than 1.4 million Palestinian civilians have been sheltering.
Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, said in a statement that it “targeted enemy forces stationed inside the Rafah border crossing... with mortar shells.”
The war broke out after the October 7 attack on southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Out of 252 people taken hostage that day, 128 are still being held inside Gaza, including 38 who the army says are dead.
Israel vowed in response to crush Hamas and launched a military offensive on Gaza, where at least 35,303 people have been killed since the war erupted, according to data provided by the health ministry of Hamas-run territory.
Intensified ground operations
Israel has vowed to “intensify” its ground offensive in Rafah, in defiance of global warnings over the fate of Palestinians sheltering there.
Israel’s top ally the United States has joined other major powers in appealing for it to hold back from a full ground offensive in Rafah.
But Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Thursday said “additional forces will enter” the Rafah area and “this activity will intensify.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted Thursday that the ground assault on Rafah was a “critical” part of the army’s mission to destroy Hamas and prevent any repetition of the October 7 attack.
“The battle in Rafah is critical... It’s not just the rest of their battalions, it’s also like an oxygen line for them for escape and resupply,” he said.
The Israeli siege of Gaza has brought dire shortages of food as well as safe water, medicines and fuel for its 2.4 million people.
The arrival of occasional aid convoys has slowed to a trickle since Israeli forces took control last week of the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing.
UN denounces ‘intimidation and harassment’ of lawyers in Tunisia
- Civil society in the North African country condemned the arrests as a crackdown on dissent in the country
- The European Union expressed concern this week over the arrests
GENEVA: The United Nations on Friday denounced recent arrests of lawyers in Tunisia, saying the detentions, which have also included journalists and political commentators, undermined the rule of law in the North Africa country.
“Reported raids in the past week on the Tunisia Bar Association undermine the rule of law and violate international standards on the protection of the independence and function of lawyers,” Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told reporters in Geneva.
“Such actions constitute forms of intimidation and harassment.”
The arrests have sparked condemnations by Tunisia’s civil society and have sparked an international backlash, which Tunisia’s President Kais Saied has slammed as foreign “interference.”
Civil society in the North African country condemned the arrests as a crackdown on dissent in the country that saw the onset of the Arab Spring.
The European Union expressed concern this week over the arrests, while the United States said they contradicted the universal rights guaranteed by the country’s constitution.
Saied, who seized sweeping powers in 2021, on Thursday ordered the foreign ministry to summon ambassadors of several countries and inform them that “Tunisia is an independent state,” in a video released by his office.
Israel strikes on Lebanon kill three, says source close to Hezbollah
- Israeli strikes targeted Najjariyeh and Addousiyeh
- The NNA reported “victims” without elaborating
BEIRUT: Israeli air strikes on Friday hit an area of southern Lebanon far from the border, Lebanese official media said, with a source close to Hezbollah reporting three dead including two Syrian nationals.
The Iran-backed armed group, a Hamas ally, has traded cross-border fire with Israeli forces almost daily since the Palestinian group’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza, now in its eighth month.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said “Israeli strikes targeted Najjariyeh and Addousiyeh,” two adjacent villages about 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the Israeli border just south of the coastal city of Sidon.
The NNA reported “victims” without elaborating.
A source close to Hezbollah told AFP that three people were killed in Najjariyeh — two Syrians and a Lebanese man.
An AFP photographer saw ambulances heading to the targeted sites, saying the strikes hit a pickup truck in Najjariyeh and an orchard.
Hezbollah — which has escalated its cross-border attacks in recent days, prompting Israeli strikes deeper into Lebanese territory — announced Friday it had launched “attack drones” on Israeli military positions.
It came a day after the powerful Lebanese group said it had attacked an army position in Metula, a border town in northern Israel, wounding three soldiers.
Hezbollah said the attack was carried out with an “attack drone carrying two S5 rockets,” which are normally launched from jets.
Also on Thursday the group announced the deaths of two of its fighters in Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon. The NNA said they were killed when their car was targeted.
Hezbollah earlier on Thursday said it had launched dozens of Katyusha rockets at Israeli positions in the annexed Golan Heights.
Israel retaliated with overnight air raids on Lebanon’s eastern Baalbek region, a Hezbollah stronghold near the Syrian border.
Earlier this week Hezbollah said it had targeted an Israeli base near Tiberias, about 30 kilometers from the Lebanese border — one of the group’s deepest attacks into Israeli territory since clashes began on October 8.
The Wednesday strike came a day after the death of a Hezbollah member, which Israel said was a field commander, in an attack on southern Lebanon.
The cross-border fighting has killed at least 418 people in Lebanon, mostly militants but also including 80 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
Israel says 14 soldiers and 10 civilians have been killed on its side of the border.
