WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden and Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi are expected to announce on Monday that they’ve come to an agreement to end the US military’s combat mission in Iraq by the end of the year, according to a senior Biden administration official.
The plan to shift the American military mission, whose stated purpose is to help Iraq defeat the Daesh group, to a strictly advisory and training role by year’s end — with no US troops in a combat role — will be spelled out in a broader communique to be issued by the two leaders following their White House meeting on Monday afternoon, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the yet to be announced plan.
The official said the Iraqi security forces are “battle tested” and have proved themselves “capable” of protecting their country. Still, the Biden administration recognizes that Daesh remains a considerable threat, the official said.
Indeed, the Daesh terror organization is a shell of its former self since it was largely routed on the battlefield in 2017. Still, it has shown it can still carry out high-casualty attacks. Last week, the group claimed responsibility for a roadside bombing that killed at least 30 people and wounded dozens in a busy suburban Baghdad market.
The US and Iraq agreed in April that the US transition to a train-and-advise mission meant the US combat role would end, but they didn’t settle on a timetable for completing that transition. The announcement comes less than three months before parliamentary elections slated for Oct. 10.
Al-Kadhimi faces no shortage of problems. Iranian-backed militias operating inside Iraq have stepped up attacks against US forces in recent months, and a series of devastating hospital fires that left dozens of people dead and soaring coronavirus infections have added fresh layers of frustration for the nation.
For Al-Kadhimi, the ability to offer the Iraqi public a date for the end of the US combat presence could be a feather in his cap ahead of the election.
Biden administration officials say Al-Kadhimi also deserves credit for improving Iraq’s standing in the Mideast.
Last month, King Abdullah II of Jordan and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi visited Baghdad for joint meetings — the first time an Egyptian president has made an official visit since the 1990s, when ties were severed after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.
In March, Pope Francis made a historic visit to Iraq, praying among ruined churches in Mosul, a former IS stronghold, and meeting with the influential Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani in the holy city of Najaf.
The US and Iraq have been widely expected to use the face-to-face meeting to announce plans for the end of the combat mission, and Al-Kadhimi before his trip to Washington made clear that he believes it’s time for the US to wind down the combat mission.
“There is no need for any foreign combat forces on Iraqi soil,” Al-Kadhimi said.
The US troop presence has stood at about 2,500 since late last year when former President Donald Trump ordered a reduction from 3,000.
The announcement to end the US combat mission in Iraq comes as the US is in the final stages of ending its war in Afghanistan, nearly 20 years after President George W. Bush launched the war in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
The US mission of training and advising Iraqi forces has its most recent origins in former President Barack Obama’s decision in 2014 to send troops back to Iraq. The move was made in response to the Daesh group’s takeover of large portions of western and northern Iraq and a collapse of Iraqi security forces that appeared to threaten Baghdad. Obama had fully withdrawn US forces from Iraq in 2011, eight years after the US invasion.
The distinction between combat troops and those involved in training and advising can be blurry, given that the US troops are under threat of attack. But it is clear that US ground forces have not been on the offensive in Iraq in years, other than largely unpublicized special operations missions aimed at Daesh group militants.
Pentagon officials for years have tried to balance what they see as a necessary military presence to support the Iraqi government’s fight against IS with domestic political sensitivities in Iraq to a foreign troop presence. A major complication for both sides is the periodic attacks on bases housing US and coalition troops by Iraqi militia groups aligned with Iran.
The vulnerability of US troops was demonstrated most dramatically in January 2020 when Iran launched a ballistic missile attack on Al-Asad air base in western Iraq. No Americans were killed, but dozens suffered traumatic brain injury from the blasts. That attack came shortly after a US drone strike killed Iranian military commander Qassim Soleimani and senior Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis at Baghdad International Airport.
The US military mission since 2014 has been largely focused on training and advising Iraqi forces. In April, in a joint statement following a US-Iraqi meeting in Washington, they declared, “the mission of US and coalition forces has now transitioned to one focused on training and advisory tasks, thereby allowing for the redeployment of any remaining combat forces from Iraq” at a time to be determined later.
Monday’s communique is also expected to detail US efforts to assist the Iraqi government’s COVID-19 response, education system and energy sector.
Biden, Iraqi PM to announce end of US combat mission in Iraq
https://arab.news/z56br
Biden, Iraqi PM to announce end of US combat mission in Iraq
- Plan to shift the American military mission will be spelled out in a broader
- The Daesh is a shell of its former self since it was largely routed on the battlefield in 2017
Israeli airstrikes kill 20 in Gaza, Palestinian officials say
- In Deir Al-Balah, a town in central Gaza about 14 km (8.6 miles) south of Gaza City, the sounds of explosions mixed with thunder, and rain added to the miseries of displaced families in tent camps
CAIRO: Twenty Palestinians were killed in the early hours of Tuesday in Israeli air strikes on Rafah and central parts of the Gaza Strip, Gaza health officials said.
In the southern Gaza city of Rafah near the Egyptian border, where over 1 million Palestinians have sought shelter, 14 people were killed and dozens others wounded in strikes that hit several houses and apartments, Gaza medical officials said.
Six more people died in another air strike on a house in Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza Strip, they added.
In Deir Al-Balah, a town in central Gaza about 14 km (8.6 miles) south of Gaza City, the sounds of explosions mixed with thunder, and rain added to the miseries of displaced families in tent camps.
“We are no longer able to distinguish between the sounds of thunder and bombings,” Shaban Abdel-Raouf, a father of five in Deir Al-Balah, said via a chat application.
“We used to await the rain and pray to God if it was late. Today we pray it doesn’t rain. The displaced people have enough miseries,” he added.
The conflict, now in its sixth month, began when Hamas fighters stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and capturing 253 hostages according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel’s assault has killed more than 31,000 Gazans, according to Palestinian health officials.
Negotiations for a ceasefire in the war were due to resume on Monday with an Israeli delegation heading to Qatar.
“We are looking forward to the good news from Qatar. Will it happen this time? Will they seal a deal? Over 2 million people in Gaza are praying they do,” said Abdel-Raouf.
Israeli airstrikes target Damascus countryside, Syria says
- Iran has been a major backer of President Bashar Assad during Syria’s nearly 12-year-old conflict
AMMAN: Israel early on Tuesday launched missiles at several military targets outside the Syrian capital Damascus resulting in some “material damage,” Syria’s defense ministry said.
Syrian air defenses intercepted Israeli “missiles and shot down some of them,” the ministry added in a statement.
Iran has been a major backer of President Bashar Assad during Syria’s nearly 12-year-old conflict. Its support for Damascus and the Lebanese group Hezbollah has drawn regular Israeli air strikes meant to curb Tehran’s extraterritorial military power.
Those strikes have ramped up in line with flaring regional tensions since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, with more than half a dozen Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers killed in suspected Israeli strikes on Syria since December.
As a result, the Guards have scaled back deployment of their senior officers in Syria and have planned to rely more on allied Shiite militia to preserve their sway there, Reuters reported in February.
Doubts over Israel plan to move Gaza civilians out of Rafah
- HRW’s Hardman was categorical: Moving “1.5 million people in an area that is already devastated” is “absolutely impossible,” she said
JERUSALEM: Israel has vowed to let Palestinians crammed into southern Gaza leave before its planned invasion of Rafah, but experts have warned it was practically impossible to get those civilians out of harm’s way.
The roughly 1.5 million Gazans in the territory’s southernmost tip have the Mediterranean Sea to their west and sealed borders to the south and east, while Israeli forces are poised to push in from the north.
“Where will we go if they enter Rafah, and where will we get a tent, mattress and blankets?” said Sabah Al-Astal, 50, already displaced inside Gaza by the Israel-Hamas war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted on sending troops into Rafah to root out Hamas in the area that borders Egypt and Israel.
But Netanyahu has also pledged to enable Gazans to leave, saying Sunday that his troops would not move in “while keeping the population locked in place.”
Israel, though, remains vague regarding how or when this massive evacuation would take place, a challenge that aid experts consider impossible in the devastated territory.
“People don’t know where to go. There’s nowhere safe in Gaza,” said Nadia Hardman, an expert on refugees at Human Rights Watch (HRW).
The bloodiest ever Gaza war broke out after Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on October 7 that resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also seized about 250 hostages, of whom Israel believes 130 remain in Gaza, including 33 who are presumed dead.
Israel has carried out a relentless bombing campaign and ground offensive that Gaza’s health ministry says has killed at least 31,726 people, most of them women and children.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz remained evasive Monday, telling Kan public radio that “before any massive operation, we will evacuate citizens.”
“Not to the north, but to the west. There are Arab countries that can help by setting up tents, or something else” in the tiny area between Rafah and the Mediterranean, he added.
Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, Israel’s military spokesman, told the press last week about the establishment of “humanitarian islands.”
Such tent cities on Gaza’s territory would be spared the fighting and created with the international community, Hagari said.
But UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, Jamie McGoldrick, said: “I honestly don’t know where they are supposedly being established.”
“How will they move people from wherever they are now? Will they be pushed, forced, encouraged?” he asked.
“That’s not something the UN will participate in because we’re not a part of any forced displacement.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, on a visit to Israel on Sunday, voiced concern over the planned Israeli offensive.
“The military logic is one consideration, but there is a humanitarian logic as well,” he said.
“How should more than 1.5 million people be protected? Where should they go?“
Netanyahu has agreed to US President Joe Biden’s request to send a delegation of senior Israeli officials to Washington to discuss Israel’s Rafah plans and a possible “alternative approach,” the White House said Monday.
HRW’s Hardman was categorical: Moving “1.5 million people in an area that is already devastated” is “absolutely impossible,” she said.
Israel has declared certain areas protected humanitarian spaces, notably in Al-Mawasi, a coastal area in the south of the territory between south Gaza’s main city of Khan Yunis and Rafah.
But hundreds of thousands of people are already sheltering in tents there, and the area has been bombed several times since the war began more than five months ago.
Netanyahu has doubled down on plans for a Rafah offensive, announced more than a month ago, despite growing international pressure.
However, according to David Khalfa, Middle East specialist at the Jean-Jaures Foundation, the threat also involves psychological warfare.
“The Israelis maintain a strategic vagueness around their plans because they do not want to devalue their cards in order to keep Hamas in uncertainty,” he said.
Khalfa called the threat of a major offensive in Rafah “a card in a game of liar’s poker” with Hamas, a means to force the militants to soften their positions in ongoing truce negotiations.
Israel ‘deliberately’ blocking aid to Gaza: Oxfam
LONDON: Anti-poverty charity Oxfam on Monday accused Israel of intentionally preventing the delivery of aid into Gaza during its war with Hamas, in violation of international humanitarian law.
The nongovernmental organization said in a report that Israel continued to “systematically and deliberately block and undermine any meaningful international humanitarian response” in the Palestinian territory.
It alleged that Israel was defying an order by the International Court of Justice in January to boost aid in Gaza, and was failing its legal responsibility to protect people in land it occupies.
“The ICJ order should have shocked Israeli leaders to change course, but since then conditions in Gaza have actually worsened,” said Oxfam Middle East and North Africa director Sally Abi Khalil.
“Israeli authorities are not only failing to facilitate the international aid effort but are actively hindering it. We believe that Israel is failing to take all measures within its power to prevent genocide.”
Oxfam said that “unjustifiably inefficient” inspection rules were causing aid trucks trying to get into Gaza to be stuck in queues for 20 days on average.
It said that Israeli authorities arbitrarily reject “dual-use” items — civilian goods that also have potential military use such as backup generators and torches.
“The list of rejected items is overwhelming and ever changing,” Oxfam said.
It recalled that water bags and water testing kits in an Oxfam shipment were rejected with no reason provided, before later being permitted entry.
The group also denounced “attacks on aid workers, humanitarian facilities and aid convoys” and “access restrictions” for relief staff, particularly to northern Gaza.
IAEA to help Iraq develop nuclear program
BAGHDAD: The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Rafael Grossi met Iraq’s prime minister in Baghdad on Monday as part of a visit to help the country develop a peaceful nuclear program.
“We have discussed several projects in Iraq, including building a nuclear reactor for peaceful purposes,” Iraqi Education Minister Naim Al-Aboudi told reporters following a meeting between Grossi and Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani.
Grossi said that a team of Iraqi experts would visit the agency’s headquarters in Vienna in a few days to hold meetings to “set out a road map for the Iraqi peaceful nuclear program” amid growing interest in nuclear energy in the region.
Iraq in the past had three nuclear reactors in Tuwaitha, its main nuclear research site, south of Baghdad. One was destroyed by an Israeli air raid in 1981 and the two others by US warplanes in the 1991 Gulf war that followed Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
“Definitely, turning the page on this complex past is of the essence and we’re doing just that,” Grossi said.