Update on this blog

As the U.S. withdraws its combat forces from Afghanistan, I may post here from time to time to update the situation. I have deleted the previous post because due to my neglect, it had accumulated an avalanche of spam. I have also turned on comment moderation; if that proves too troublesome, I may eliminate commenting entirely. 

 

I stopped blogging here essentially because there was, unfortunately, so little interest in the U.S. in the lands the country invaded early in this century. That is regrettable. We have an obligation to be concerned about them, although not, certainly, any obligation to continue a military presence. I suspect, however, that the withdrawal from Afghanistan will leave behind some  covert special forces and, of course, armed drones will likely continue to strike targets there. We may never hear about this, however. 

Today, a three day truce to mark Eid-al-Fitr ended, and fighting between government and Taliban forces resumed in Helmand province. However, attacks on civilians continued during the purported cease fire, perhaps committed by other, unknown, militant groups.

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken spoke with president Ghani on the telephone:

Secretary Blinken conveyed Eid greetings and expressed his deepest condolences to the families of those lost in recent violence in Afghanistan, including in the horrific attack on a girls’ school in Kabul last week, the US Department of State said in a statement.

The Secretary conveyed America’s steadfast support for the U.S.-Afghan partnership and for Afghanistan’s security forces, the statement added.

The two leaders discussed the importance of national unity in Afghanistan at this time as well as regional efforts to advance the peace process, according to the statement.

Not sure what any of that means concretely.

News of the Day for Friday, January 24, 2020

The U.S. president first announced that there were no casualties from the January 28 Iranian missile attack on U.S. facilities in Iraq. The Pentagon later said that 11 service members had suffered concussions. Now the Pentagon says that 34 soldiers have been diagnosed with concussion or Traumatic Brain Injuries, including 7 who have been transported to the U.S. The president had previously said "I heard that they had headaches. And a couple of other things. But I would say, and I can report, it is not very serious.”

This report is somewhat unclear. We don't know how many had mild concussions from which they have presumably recovered, and how many actually had TBIs and how severe they are. However, a TBI can be extremely serious, resulting in profound life-long disability. Presumably we'll eventually learn more of the truth but the lies and minimization are profoundly insulting to members of the armed forces and their families.

There are varying reports of the number of Iraqis who participated in a demonstration in Baghdad demanding the removal of U.S. forces from the country. UPI puts the number at "millions" but the more common estimate is 200,000. The event was organized by Muqtada al-Sadr, who has also criticized excessive Iranian influence in Iraq but who held this demonstration to focus solely on the presence of U.S. and allied forces.  While Sadr's own militia is independent of Iran, the rally was joined by Iran-backed Hashed al-Shaabi. The event ended peacefully.

It happened against the backdrop of continuing demonstrations against government incompetence and corruption. In protests in Basra and Iraq, a reported 12 people were killed by security forces earlier this week. Two more were reported killed today in Baghdad.

Four employees of a French Christian NGO are missing in Baghdad.

News of the Day for Monday, January 12, 2020

Steven Cook, writing for Foreign Policy, says there is nothing left for the U.S. to do in Iraq. It's worth reading the whole thing but here's a good pull quote.

Iraq is not a state in the sense that it has a monopoly over violence or can enforce property rights. The system of political and economic spoils set up after the 2003 invasion has led to rapacious thievery and corruption, robbing Iraq of its natural wealth and impoverishing its people. As a result, Iraqis have lost faith in virtually every institution and have poured onto the streets across much of the country to demand a new political order. They have been met with violence at the hands of people allied to and supported by the now-dead Suleimani, whose mission was to ensure that post-invasion Iraq remained so weak and unstable it could never threaten Iran again. This was an entirely predictable result, but the George W. Bush administration, 296 members of the House of Representatives, 77 Senators, and legions of pundits chose to believe fantasies about weapons of mass destruction and democracy delivered at the end of an M1A1 tank.

Muqtada al-Sadr meets with representatives of Iran-backed militias to discuss expelling U.S. forces from Iraq.

Katyusha attack on Balad air base injures four Iraqi soldiers. (Katyushas are inaccurate, clearly the attack was meant to target the U.S. presence.)

King Abdullah of Jordan warns that IS is regrouping, in southeast Syria and western Iraq, and that many fighters have made their way to Libya.

Some fifty protesters are injured in clashes with security forces in Wasit. The protesters are demanding removal of the police chief.

U.S. identifies soldiers killed in Kandahar, Afghanistan as Staff Sgt. Ian P. McLaughlin, 29, of Newport News, Va., and Pfc. Miguel A. Villalon, 21, of Joliet, Ill. Both were assigned to 307th Brigade Engineer Battalion, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C.

News of the Day for Saturday, January 11, 2020

U.S. drone attack targeting a Taliban faction in Herat also kills and injures many civilians. Although the attack happened on Wednesday details are still disputed. This report say 60 civilians were killed or injured but does not distinguish. According to TOLO, local officials say the attack was undertaken in error.

Update: Tribal elders say that the faction that was attacked was in fact allied with the government.

A U.S. military vehicle hits an IED in Kandahar. As of now, we do not know if there were casualties. However this Russian source reports that a Romanian military vehicle was struck. It is unclear whether these are different versions of the same incident, or different incidents.

Update: The U.S. military in Afghanistan now says that two U.S. service members were killed and two injured in the incident. More details when they become available.

In the Middle East, Iranian government says it downed Ukranian civilian jetliner in error. Many question why Tehran airport remained open at a time when air defenses were on high alert.

Iraqi government formally asks U.S. to present a plan to withdraw its troops from the country but the U.S. refuses.  The U.S. military presence in Iraq is, ipso facto, an illegal occupation.

The U.S. imposes new sanctions on Iran.

Caretaker Iraqi PM Adil Abdul Mahdi travels to Erbil to meet with Kurdistan PM Masrour Barzan.

A TV reporter and camera operator are murdered in Basra by unidentified assailants.

Mass protests in Iraq resume against corruption, failure of government to provide services, and foreign interference from both the U.S. and its coalition partners, and Iran.

News of the Day for Wednesday, January 8, 2020

In what appears to have been essentially a symbolic action, Iran fires some dozen ballistic missiles from its own territory toward bases in Iraq where U.S. troops are housed.

There were no reported casualties, and these weapons are sufficiently accurate that it is likely the avoidance of casualties was intentional.  Iraqi acting PM Abdul-Mahdi says he received advance notice of the action. Furthermore, as the Iranians no doubt anticipated, Abdul-Mahdi tipped off the U.S. to the expected attack.

Nevertheless the tension has prompted the Philippines to evacuate its citizens from Iraq and Iran, Poland has evacuated its ambassador and Slovenia is relocating its forces to an undisclosed safer location. Many airlines are re-routing flights from the region, including these additional carriers.

The FAA has barred all U.S. civilian flights over the entire region.

India and Pakistan advise their citizens not to travel to Iraq.

Amid anxiety  among the Gulf states, both Kuwait and Qatar deny that the drone that killed Qassem Suleimani originated from their territory. However, news reports from Iraq say it did originate in Kuwait.

Kurdish leaders call for continued support from the U.S.-led coalition, as Kurdish MPs boycotted the vote calling on U.S. forces to leave Iraq.

William Saletan runs down U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo's lies about the killing of Soleimani. They are multifarious and preposterous.

In a bizarre incident, the U.S. commander in Iraq, Marine Brigadier General William H. Seely III, sent a letter to Abdul-Mahdi, in both English and Arabic, saying "Sir, in due deference to the sovereignty of the Republic of Iraq, and as requested by the Iraqi Parliament and the Prime Minister, CJTF-OIR will be repositioning forces over the course of the coming days and weeks to prepare for onward movement. We respect your sovereign decision to order our departure.”However, after first saying that the letter was a fake perpetrated by Iranian intelligence, the Pentagon said it was a "mistake." Okay, these people know what they're doing.

In what so far appears to be a bizarre, tragic coincidence, a Ukraine International Airlines flight crashed shortly after take-off from Tehran, killing all aboard. The Ukrainian embassy says the cause was engine failure, although the plane was a fairly new Boeing 737 which had recently undergone scheduled maintenance. The conflict between Iran and the U.S. does hamper the investigation, as Iran will not cooperate with Boeing.

In Afghanistan, two Afghan military died in a helicopter crash in Farah. Officials attribute the crash to mechanical failure.

A UK official apologizes for "unacceptable" actions by British forces in Afghanistan following an investigation by the Sunday Times and BBC. The accusations include a cover-up of the murder of four civilians by a British soldier.

In 2019, more than 12,500 Afghans were killed in and 9,800 injured in the conflict. This report breaks casualties down by mechanism of violence and location.

Update for Sunday, January 5, 2020

So events have mandated that I restart this blog. As you will notice, I also had to change the title. It no longer makes sense to label the U.S.'s endless war by specific countries.

As predicted, the Iraqi Parliament has voted to expel U.S. troops from the country. In fact the resolution calls for the entire U.S. led coalition to exit the country. PM Mahdi has indicated that he will sign the measure. [I should note that it does not seem feasible for U.S. troops to remain in Syria if they do not have support bases in Iraq. The U.S. has no other access to Syrian territory. -- C] Mahdi also says that Soleimani was in Baghdad at his invitation, as he was mediating a dialogue between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Accordingly, the coalition has suspended operations against IS to focus on force protection:

A statement on Sunday from Operation Inherent Resolvesaid the US-led coalition was “fully committed” to protecting its bases in the light of “repeated rocket attacks” from pro-Iranian militias over the past two months. “This has limited our capacity to conduct training with partners and to support their operations against Daesh [Isis], and we have therefore paused these activities, subject to continuous review,” the coalition said.

The UN special envoy for Afghanistan says that events in Iraq will hinder peace negotiations in Afghanistan.

Keep in mind that the militia leaders killed along with Soleimani were in fact Iraqi military officers.

The European Union has invited the Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to Brussels to discuss the situation.

Iraq's Foreign Ministry has summoned the U.S. ambassador, saying the drone attacks that killed General Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muahndis, and other militia members, were "a flagrant breach of Iraq’s sovereignty and of all international laws and norms that regulate relations between countries and prohibit the use of their lands to carry out attacks on neighbouring countries."

Iran will shortly announce further renunciation of elements of the nuclear agreement.

Pentagon officials were reportedly astonished by the decision to assassinate Soleimani. They had not expected the president to take the option seriously.

I will provide another update soon, and will try to resume daily posting if events warrant. 

Update for Monday, May 20, 2019

The hostile and threatening rhetoric from the U.S. administration toward Iran has escalated to a threat of national extermination from the president.

“If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran,” Trump tweeted. “Never threaten the United States again!

He did not state what this is in response to, as Iran has not threatened the United States and in fact the Iranian regime has stated clearly that it is not threatening the U.S. and does not want war.

It is possible that this was in response to a rocket exploding in the Green Zone about half a kilometer from the U.S. embassy, which caused no damage or casualties. No-one has taken responsibility. In fact the Iranian-backed Hezbollah brigades has denounced the attack, as have other pro-Iranian factions.

In the midst of this war of words, Exxon-Mobil has withdrawn foreign staff from an oil field in southern Iraq, angering the Iraqi oil minister who denounces the move as "political" and unrelated to real security concerns. "For us, this withdrawal is unacceptable and unjustified because other international companies are working freely and safely in developing oil fields," Ghadhban added.

Iraqi Shiite political leader Muqtada al-Sadr warns that Iraq could not surive a war between the U.S. and Iran  and urges Iraqis to unite against such a possibility.

Cheryl Rofer asks what could be the objectives of a U.S. war against Iran. The U.S. administration has not articulated any.

Iraq's president makes it clear that he is talking with Iranian and U.S. officials and making it clear that Iraq wants no part of a war between the two, while U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned Iraqi leaders that if they are not going to stand with the US against Iran, then they should stand aside.

I will just note that as disastrous as the 2003 invasion of Iraq was for Iraqis and for the United States, Iran has more than twice the population of Iraq (81 million vs.  38 million), a vastly more capable military, and a more unified populace. The U.S. would have no real allies in such a conflict -- Israel and the Saudis would cheerlead but that's about all. And of course the idea that Iran is somehow a threat to the United States is completely preposterous. John Bolton, for reasons he has never really articulated, has wanted to go to war with Iran for more than a decade. As far as I can tell, that it is the basic reason for what is going on now. --- C