Tag: Iraq

What would happen to Iraq as US forces complete their withdrawal from the country? Will Shi'ite-oriented Baghdad be able to control the country's Sunni-dominated regions? What will be the role of Iran and how this will affect the region? Our podcast provides some room for thoughts and poses questions.

The Iranians are racing against time to build and fortify the Imam-Ali military compound near Albukamal, on the Syrian-Iraqi border. In recent months, Iran is constructing a civilian border passage at Albukamal-Al Qiam. Nearby, a short distance from the commercial gateway, a different compound is being built - designed to store and temporarily accommodate shipments of military hardware, missiles, and ammunition shipped from Iran, to support the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds force, through Iraq to Iran's Shi'ite proxies in Syria and Lebanon.

Few days after Fox News reported about extensive construction of a new military base near the Syrian border crossing at Albukamal-Al-Qaim, the site suffered an airstrike that destroyed some of the site's protected structures, allegedly providing forward storage for Iranian ballistic missiles. The new site, like others, that recently struck in Iraq and Syria, was manned by the Iranian sponsored Popular Mobilization Force (PMF). 

Recent reports from Iraq and Syria indicate that Jihadis are increasing the use of drone attacks after exploring the use of drone weapons for several years. A recent attack employed a small surveillance drone, rigged with a bomb to become a booby trap. The attack killed two Kurdish fighters and badly wounded two French special forces.

A video recently aired on YouTube shows an alarming situation happening in Iraq, where heavy equipment delivered by the U.S. To the Iraqi Army...

Washington plans to equip the Iraqi Army with 175 M-1A1 Main Battle Tanks to equip an armoured brigade. The package also includes a thousand up-armored HMMWVs The new arms transfer package is worth US$3 billion.

With the situation in Iraq and Syria changed, energy become key to the improving relationship between Ankara and the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan. Working together, they could also halt, or even defeat their common enemy - ISIS - from becoming a regional power.

in order to fight ISIS effectively the Iraqi kurd Peshmerga militia urgently needs modern weapons, which only the Americans can deliver. Others may help, but may not be enough to maintain a long term war fighting, which looks inevitable as western nations hesitate to get actively involved in this strange but highly dangerous conflict.

With as many as 30 million people spread across the Middle East, the Kurds claim to be the world’s largest ethnic group without a country. The recent incursion of the Islamic State in Iraq and el-Sham (ISIS - aka Da'ish) now presents the Kurds with both an opportunity but also great risk. The Kurds as a nationality have now re-appeared on the world stage. If anything good should come out of the present Islamic turmoil in Iraq and Syria, it could perhaps improve the traditionally suspicious ties between Turkey and the region’s Kurds.

Busy day in Syria - US Air Force stealth fighters, bombers and drones, along with Navy Super Hornets and cruise missiles pound the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in East Syria; Israel shoot down a Syrian Su-24 that penetrates its airspace over the Golan Heights; Syrian launch air strikes target at rebels in the northwest Syria and in Damascus suburbs

French Rafale jet fighters struck a suspected Islamic State target in Iraq for the first time yesterday, (Friday, Sept. 19) expanding a U.S.-led military campaign against ISIS. The French Rafales hit "a logistics depot of the terrorists" near the city of Mosul.

While its forces are facing growing pressure in the North, ISIS has increased its attacks on Baghdad last week, rippling mortar fires and suicide bombings at several targets in the Iraqi capital, in a move to relieve the pressure it is facing as a result of the recent U.S. air campaign targeting its positions, comments Ahmed Ali, the Iraq Team Lead at ISW.

analysts at the Institute for the Studies of War say, "perhaps as many as 25,000 ground troops in all in Iraq and Syria”. Although in roles very different from those they played in Iraq between 2003 and 2011, the decisive effort will require primarily teams of Special Forces and special mission units, deployed in a dispersed footprint throughout the Sunni lands, as well as advising the Iraqi Security Forces and the moderate Syrian opposition.

Jordanian military warplanes struck a convoy of vehicles as they were trying to enter Jordan from Syria, the Jordanian army said in a statement...