Tag Archives: Iraq

Obama could decide on increase of U.S. Forces in Iraq

President Obama Salutes Military

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama will have the chance to decide on whether to increase the number of U.S. forces in Iraq in the “coming weeks,” the top U.S. general said on Wednesday.

The extra troops would bolster the capabilities of Iraqi forces preparing for a major offensive against the Islamic State militant group in Mosul, U.S. Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a news briefing.

U.S. and Iraqi military officials have been discussing a plan to retake Mosul, which fell to Islamic State in June 2014, and how U.S. forces could support their efforts, Dunford said.

“Those recommendations are being made and the president will have an opportunity to make some decisions here in the coming weeks,” Dunford said. “I brought it to the secretary (Defense Secretary Ash Carter). The secretary will engage with the president.”

Dunford said last week he expected an increase in the level of U.S. forces in Iraq from the current 3,800, but that those decisions had not been finalized.

U.S. officials have said they hope to capitalize on recent battlefield successes against Islamic State, such as the retaking of Ramadi by Iraqi forces late last year.

“The timing really now is focused on the next phase of the campaign, which is towards Mosul, and maintaining the kind of momentum that we had in Ramadi,” Dunford said.

(Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Islamic State claims central Baghdad bombing

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The hardline Sunni militant group Islamic State claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing on Tuesday morning in central Baghdad that police said killed three people and wounded 27.

The blast occurred near a gathering of workers in Tayaran Square, about a kilometer from a sit-in held by supporters of influential Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to demand political reforms.

Islamic State, which claimed responsibility in an online statement, also claimed a suicide bombing last Friday that killed 26 people at an amateur soccer game in Iskandariya, south of Baghdad.

At least 60 people were killed earlier this month in an attack further south, in Hilla, when an explosives-laden fuel tanker slammed into an Iraqi security checkpoint.

An apparent escalation of bombings targeting areas outside Islamic State’s primary control in northern and western Iraq suggests that Iraqi government forces may be stretched thin after recent gains against the group.

Analysts in Europe have interpreted recent attacks there, such as last week’s bombings in Brussels or the killings in Paris last November, as a sign that Islamic State was expanding its field of action in response to setbacks in Iraq and Syria.

But Baghdad analysts say the group has long staged indiscriminate suicide bombings and see these attacks as a continuation of that tactic.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Obama intervened over crumbling Mosul dam as U.S. concern grew

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – On Jan. 21, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Iraq’s prime minister in Davos, Switzerland, and handed him a personal note from President Barack Obama pleading for urgent action.

Obama’s confidential message to Haider al-Abadi, which was confirmed to Reuters by two U.S. officials and has not been previously reported, was not about Islamic State or Iraq’s sectarian divide. It was about a potential catastrophe posed by the dire state of the country’s largest dam, whose collapse could unleash a flood killing tens of thousands of people and trigger an environmental disaster.

The president’s personal intervention indicates how the fragile Mosul Dam has moved to the forefront of U.S. concerns over Iraq, reflecting fears its failure would also undermine U.S. efforts to stabilize Abadi’s government and complicate the war against Islamic State.

It also reflected growing frustration. The U.S. government felt Baghdad was failing to take the threat seriously enough, according to interviews with officials at the State Department, Pentagon, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and other agencies.

“They dragged their feet on this,” said a U.S. official, who like the other sources declined to be identified.

The Iraqi government declined official comment on those assertions and on the Obama letter.

A U.S. government briefing paper released in late February says that the 500,000 to 1.47 million Iraqis living in the highest-risk areas along the Tigris River “probably would not survive” the flood’s impact unless they evacuated. Swept hundreds of miles along in the waters would be unexploded ordnance, chemicals, bodies and buildings.

“Governance and rule of law (would be) disrupted by widespread human, material, economic, and environmental losses,” says the paper.

U.S. officials would not disclose the precise contents of Obama’s letter.

Its impact on Iraq’s government could not be confirmed. But 11 days after it was delivered, Iraqi Minister of Water Resources Muhsin al-Shammari’s own political party removed him from responsibility over the dam, according to public statements. The water minister has publicly downplayed the threat posed by the dam.

U.S. relations with al-Shammari, an ally of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, had become so bad that when U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Stuart Jones came to meetings, the minister would walk out, said an Iraqi government source briefed on Mosul Dam planning.

A U.S. embassy official in Baghdad confirmed that al-Shammari would not attend meetings with Jones. In one instance, U.S. officials were told that al-Shammari sat in an adjoining room and listened to a meeting via an audio feed. But cooperation with Abadi has been smooth, the official said.

Al-Shammari has not commented publicly on those meetings. He has suggested that predictions about the dam are an excuse to send more foreign troops to the country.

On March 2, Iraq signed a $296 million contract with Italy’s Trevi Group to reinforce the dam in northern Iraq, which has needed that work since it was built in the early 1980s on veins of water-soluble gypsum. Italy has said it will send 450 troops to help protect the dam.

ALARMING STUDY

Obama’s decision to send the note was prompted in part by alarming U.S. intelligence reports and a new U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study that found that the dam is even more unstable than believed, U.S. officials said.

Paul Salem, vice president of the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank, said that if the dam fails, the ensuing chaos and damage could trigger the collapse of U.S. ally Abadi’s government and tarnish Obama’s international legacy.

Efforts to repair the dam — which lies about 30 miles northwest of the city of Mosul — have been handicapped by Iraq’s chaotic security situation; political divisions in Baghdad; years of previous warnings that did not come true; and a cultural divide, U.S. and Iraqi officials and analysts said.

U.S. officials said Abadi, who is also grappling with the war against Islamic State, political infighting and budget shortfalls caused by low oil prices, is now focused on the dam and overseeing efforts to repair it.

“We’ve gotten to a point where there’s no question (the Iraqis) are on board,” said a senior USAID official.

However, Trevi says it will take four months to prepare the work site. And the 2.2 mile-long hydroelectric dam faces its highest risk between April and June from rising water levels due to melting snow.

Grout to reinforce the dam must be trucked in from Turkey, officials said, because the previous factory is in Mosul, now controlled by Islamic State militants.

“SWISS CHEESE”

Some Iraqi officials said Washington is sounding loud alarms over the dam to absolve itself of responsibility. The United States, which invaded Iraq in 2003, could have sought a more permanent solution before its 2011 pullout of combat troops but merely kept the dam operating at minimum cost, they contend.

There is no sign that a breach of Mosul Dam is imminent.

But the structure was built on what the senior USAID official called “the geologic equivalent of Swiss cheese.”

The 45-foot high wall of water that would swamp Mosul city within four hours of a dam breach would be “roughly what hit Japan during the height of the tsunami” in 2011, he said.

Maintenance was suspended after Islamic State seized the dam for two weeks in August 2014, scattering workers and destroying equipment. Work has resumed in recent months but officials have said international expertise is needed to prevent collapse.

While the full U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report hasn’t been released, slides summarizing its conclusions and dated Jan. 30, were posted on the Iraqi parliament’s website last month.

“All information gathered in the last year indicates Mosul Dam is at a significantly higher risk of failure than originally understood and is at a higher risk of failure today than it was a year ago,” says one slide.

A senior Iraqi official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said this U.S. assessment helped drive the decision to finalize the contract with Trevi group after months of talks.

Richard Coffman, a University of Arkansas assistant professor of civil engineering, studied satellite radar imagery and found the dam was sinking by eight millimeters a year.

Resuming grout-pumping operations is only a temporary solution, he said. “There is a need for a long-term fix.”

(Additional reporting by Stephen Kalin and Maher CHmaytelli in Baghdad and Steve Scherer in Rome. Editing by Don Durfee and Stuart Grudgings)

Joel Richardson: Christians have a duty during global refugee crisis

Last December, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated there were likely far more than 60 million displaced people living in the world. That record total included 20.2 million refugees, many of whom had fled violent conflicts and persecution in the Middle East.

The resulting crisis has become not just a humanitarian issue, but a political one as well. Countries, particularly in Europe, have been forced to decide how to handle the massive number of people looking to resettle within their borders, and any potential solution is often criticized.

Best-selling author and filmmaker Joel Richardson does not deny the situation is complex, or politically divisive, but he believes there are certain aspects of the crisis that should not be up for debate. Namely, he said Christians currently have “an endless opportunity to share the Gospel” with thousands of people searching for God — and they must capitalize on that opportunity.

“Whether we like the refugee crisis or not, it’s a crisis,” Richardson said. “The point is: Even if we’re opposed to it politically, that doesn’t excuse us from sharing the Gospel with them.”

Richardson visited Morningside this week to speak at the 2016 Prophetic Conference. Before giving his sermon, he sat down with The Jim Bakker Show news team to discuss his ministry work in the Middle East and Europe, the role of Christians in the refugee crisis and faith in the end times.

The first part of his Q&A appears below.

Q: Have you been to the Middle East recently, taken any trips over there? Or, do you have friends over there? What kind of things are you seeing on the ground?

A: The last time I was in Iraq was a year ago in Iraqi Kurdistan. I’ll be going back this year, but I’ve got very close friends and a few different ministries that we work with. One is called Frontier Alliance International, the other one is called The Refuge Project. They’re both up there in Kurdistan, northern Iraq, working with the refugees. I also have friends in the Balkans.

Q: Can you talk about that last ministry, antecessor.org, and its work in the Balkans?

A: You have as many as 10,000 migrants and refugees flowing through a day. They are doing the ministry of charging their cell phones and then asking them if they would like a free micro SD card that’s preloaded with the Bible in any potential language that they could need, as well as different Christian literature. They stick this little micro SD card in their phones, and we’ve just gotten the Bible into thousands of Muslims’ hands.

Q: What makes that kind of outreach important, particularly in today’s world?

A: What we’re primarily seeing in the news is all of the bad stuff with the refugees, and all of that is legitimate, but the truth is there is a chaotic nightmare of human catastrophe over there and as a result you have literally millions of people whose lives are in crisis, whose hearts are incredibly open, many of whom are actually quite turned off to Islam. What we’re kind of saying is we have to get them before they reject God entirely. They’re turning away from Islam, that’s good, but we want them to maintain a hunger for God. It’s just they’ve been brainwashed to think there are no other alternatives.

Q: There are millions of refugees in the world today. Not just in Europe, but in the Middle East as well. Many more are displaced. How can we help them?

A: There’s just an absolute, wide-open door, endless opportunity to share the Gospel. And in the midst of all of this preparing for all of the difficult times that are coming here, we have to be focused on saving as many as we can. Because it’s an opportunity. It’s like a wide-open opportunity. That’s a thing I always try to emphasize, because we can become a bit self-focused.

I kind of made the joke when I was here a couple times ago. I said ‘Look, I’m all for getting food and preparing, but I’m making a new rule.’ I hope I didn’t offend Jim or anybody, but I said ‘The new rule is this: For every hour that you spend preparing, for every dollar you spend on dehydrated food, make it a rule that you spend two dollars on evangelism and missions. For every hour you spend prepping, spend two hours sharing the Gospel.’ If you do that, you’ll be very balanced. But if you’re spending all of your time prepping, you can get into this sort of anxious, frenetic mode of panic and anxiety. We want to prepare out of wisdom, not out of fear.

Q: So what can the church here in America do for not just Christians, but people who possibly want to become Christians, overseas?

A: We have to empower the ministries that are there. Whether it’s the missionaries that are there or the native churches, the largest Arabic church in Northern Iraq is in Erbil, and to empower them and give them the resources so that they can become this hub for all of the need over there. Because, like I said, it’s a bottomless pit. People are searching, they’re looking for something. If there’s a church that has resources, literally by giving them money, food, whatever, that church becomes a resource hub and then it just opens the door for the Gospel in the process. It’s really just a matter of — and this is basically what I’m trying to do because I’m going over there — identifying and then networking the resources with those that are already there on the ground. I’m only in touch with a handful, but they know everybody that’s on the ground.

Q: Like you were talking about, sometimes something negative happens with migrants and that’s what gets covered. The New Year’s Eve assaults in Germany, for example. Now, Europe has been shutting down borders. Critics say some of the new proposals are immoral and possibly illegal. What’s your take on all of these new developments?

A: Here’s the thing. It’s a complete conundrum, because it doesn’t matter what your answer is. There are problems with it.

I think the Lord has sort of allowed this conundrum. There are literally hundreds of thousands of little kids, women who are in genuine crisis. People going over there with their families, fleeing the Taliban all the over way over to Afghanistan because radical Islam is exploding. And they’re fleeing. … We need to minister to them, period.

On the other hand, we need to be wise of serpents. What that means is up for debate. On the left, we get everybody saying ‘Welcome, look how wonderful we are.’ And then on the right, everyone’s saying ‘Shut the door. We have enough of our own poor to take care of.’ Every kind of self-righteous sort of excuse. Somewhere in the middle is we need to be actively trying to do our best to help, but also prioritizing the Gospel.

This is another issue that I’ll just say. A lot of church ministries now, what they do is it’s real hip and trendy to get into humanitarian stuff. And so if you’re ministering to the orphan or the widow, if you’re doing sustainable agriculture, digging wells, any of these things, everyone will give you money. But if you’re like ‘We’re planting churches, making disciples, winning the lost,’ you actually struggle to get funds. I hear this from every missionary I talk to. They’re like ‘The church doesn’t have a high priority on the Gospel, they have a high priority on humanitarianism.’ Why? Because we’re infected with the spirit of the world. You’re putting a Band Aid on temporal needs. And it’s important. It’s part of the Gospel. Part of being a disciple of Christ is ministering to the poor and the needy, but if you’re not prioritizing the Gospel then you’re failing in our most basic need to invite them and make them a priority.

It’s worth highlighting that on the right, we only hear the negative. We only hear the bad. And if we were to believe the picture painted by the right, we would think like 95 percent of them are terrorists or are about to be terrorists or are right on the edge. It’s not even close to that. There’s enough that it’s a big problem, but the problem is I have yet to hear anybody offer a solution that is legitimate. Most people say ‘We need to wipe out ISIS.’ I go, ‘Oh, cool, wipe out ISIS.’ 85 percent of the refugees aren’t fleeing ISIS, they’re fleeing (Syrian president) Bashar al-Assad.

Q: And there’s still al Qaeda, the Taliban, all those other organizations.

A: Exactly, and they’re all Sunni. Most of them that are fleeing are the more moderate Sunnis.

The point is: The Lord is allowing this divine conundrum. We’re trying to wrestle through what we need to do. No matter what we do, if we’re following Christ, we’re going to get attacked by the left and the right. The right are saying ‘How dare you love them when they’re coming to kill us?’ And you go, ‘No, I’m sure there are some that are in there to kill us.’ But the point is this: When has the Lord ever said ‘If there’s risk involved, don’t do it.’ He never says anything like that. He says ‘Do it, and it’s going to be filled with risk, lay down your life for your enemies.’

This is the thing. We have to be, as a church, wrestling through what it means to be a disciple of Christ in the midst of the chaos that is beginning to engulf the world. And it’s only going to become more chaotic. … I go to all these conferences, everyone goes ‘What’s the prophetic word, what’s the secret code?’ And we need to have discernment and understand what’s unfolding, that’s important. But the biggest warning in the midst of it all is Jesus said ‘At that time, because of the increase of lawlessness, the love of most will grow cold.’ We’re spending all this time trying to figure out what’s going to happen and we’re spending very little time guarding and preparing our hearts for the chaos.

Q: So it’s important to resist that and find a balance somewhere in the middle?

A: The point is: We need to resist the carnal spirit on the right — and there is a carnal spirit on the right — and we need to resist the naivety of the left and make laying down our lives for our enemies for the sake of seeing the lost get saved our highest priority. I don’t have all the answers.

Q: Right, there really is no easy solution. Like you’re saying, it’s not necessarily an unsolvable problem, but the Gospel is always a good answer.

A: Yeah, and this is the whole point. What do we focus on? The only weapon that the Lord has given us is change people from the inside out, one heart at a time. And maybe we won’t win. In fact, the scriptures say of the antichrist, multiple times, he will prosper in all he does. He’s going to win for a little bit. We as men and as conservatives, we’re like ‘Why won’t anyone listen to my answer?’ We want to fix it and have the answer. We have to come to terms with the fact that we actually lose for a little while. It says he’s given power to break the power of the holy people.

***

Check back for Part 2 of the Q&A in the coming days. It focuses on Syria and the Middle East.

Richardson’s evening service centered on Biblical prophecies concerning Israel, Jerusalem and the last days. If you missed the event, the 2016 Prophetic Conference DVD Set contains Richardson’s service, as well as those of Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, Michael Snyder and Hubie Synn.

The Jim Bakker Show is also giving our partners a chance to send buckets of our 20-year-shelf-life food to the Middle East, which will support Christian churches at this important time. Click here to learn how you can help these churches become a resource hub for those searching for the Gospel in the midst of these chaotic times.

European cities join hands to stay afloat in migrant crisis

BARCELONA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – As hundreds of asylum seekers from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere make the risky journey across the Aegean Sea each day to reach Europe, the Greek island of Lesbos faces the problem of what to do with the discarded dinghies piling up on its shores.

Help may be at hand, thanks to an agreement signed this week between the Lesbos municipality and Barcelona. Environmental technicians from the Spanish city will advise on how to deal with the waste piling up on the island, which lies just a few miles from the Turkish coast.

Under the deal, Barcelona city council will also share environmental and logistical expertise with the southern Italian island of Lampedusa, which has seen a huge influx of migrants crossing from North Africa.

The agreement is just one example of cooperation between city and town halls across Europe to try to cope with the continent’s worst refugee crisis since World War Two.

These efforts are a response to a lack of support from national governments and the European Union, experts told a conference on resilient cities in Barcelona this week.

“The debate is taking place very remotely from the people who are ultimately going to be charged with the responsibility of housing, servicing, supporting and integrating refugees,” said Dan Lewis, head of UN-Habitat’s urban risk reduction unit. “(Cities) don’t have a voice in this.”

Eighty to 90 percent of refugees coming to Europe are likely to settle in cities, and many will stay for years, Lewis said.

Those cities will have to try and create dignified lives for refugees – yet there are limited resources and policy measures to help them deal with migration pressures, he added.

“The question of resources and the distribution of resources hasn’t been resolved at state level yet,” he said. “The only other option is for the cities to generate their own.”

SOLIDARITY

That is why cities are setting up solidarity networks, such as that launched by Barcelona this week. Some are also committing their own financial resources to tackle the crisis.

Barcelona city council said on Tuesday it would triple financial aid for refugees in transit to $340,000, responding to the “humanitarian consequences of the decision by European states to close the Balkans route”.

The one thing Barcelona cannot do for now is take in more refugees, as it is blocked by bureaucracy at national level.

On Wednesday, Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau sent a letter to the Spanish prime minister asking for official permission for the Catalan capital to accept 100 refugees now in Athens.

“Barcelona could be hosting and welcoming some of these people – why couldn’t we have an agreement between two cities to relocate (refugees)?” Colau asked, sitting beside Athens Mayor Giorgos Kaminis.

Colau told the Thomson Reuters Foundation she could not say how many asylum seekers Barcelona could resettle, nor when they might arrive, as Spain struggles to form a new government.

“(Madrid) has not responded to the cities and autonomous communities that have said we want to help and are prepared to help,” she told the conference.

INTEGRATION

Kaminis said the Greek capital – through which some 80 percent of the more than 900,000 refugees to arrive from Turkey since the start of 2015 have passed – is receiving support from the United Nations to house 50,000 people in apartments and camps.

“Many of these people are going to stay in Greece – some for the coming years, and many forever – and we need to be ready for the challenge of integrating them into our society,” he said.

The mayors said it was important to find ways to ease tensions between newcomers and city locals, such as making clear that rules to protect people’s rights apply to all.

Colau called for European countries to allow asylum seekers to work, so they can integrate into society and start a regular life.

A well-considered, inclusive approach to migration would help overcome fears about its potential negative impacts – which are generally unfounded, experts told the Barcelona conference.

Immigration has always helped meet demand for labor and spurred economic and scientific development, innovation and culture, said Josep Roig, head of United Cities and Local Governments, a global network.

“Migration and mobility are often portrayed and perceived as a threat, and a burden for local communities rather than an opportunity and benefit – this is a contradiction of reality,” he said.

(Reporting by Megan Rowling; editing by Ros Russell.)

U.S. says Islamic State committed genocide against Christians

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Islamic State has committed genocide against Christians, Yazidis and Shi’ite Muslims, the United States said on Thursday, a finding U.S. officials hope will bring more resources to help the groups even though it does not change U.S. military strategy or legal obligations.

“In my judgment, Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yazidis, Christians and Shi’ite Muslims,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters, referring to the group by an Arabic acronym. “Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions.”

Republicans, who control the U.S. Congress, had pressured the Democratic White House to call the militants’ atrocities in Iraq and Syria genocide and the House of Representatives on Monday passed a nonbinding resolution 393-0 labeling them as such.

U.S. officials hope the determination will help them win political and budget support from Congress and other nations to help the targeted groups return home if and when Islamic State-controlled areas such as the Iraqi city of Mosul are liberated.

While the genocide finding may make it easier for Washington to argue for greater action against the group, U.S. officials said it does not create a U.S. legal obligation to do more, and would not change U.S. military strategy toward the militants.

On Wednesday, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said: “Acknowledging that genocide or crimes against humanity have taken place in another country would not necessarily result in any particular legal obligation for the United States.”

U.S. President Barack Obama ordered air strikes against the group starting in 2014 but has made clear he wishes to avoid any large commitment of U.S. ground troops.

Unlike in Rwanda in 1994 and Darfur in 2004, where the United States found that genocide had taken place but did not use military force to stop it, U.S. officials noted they began air strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq in August 2014 in part to save the Yazidi minority group from targeted attack.

“We didn’t act in Rwanda. We looked back and regretted it. We didn’t act militarily in Darfur. In this case within … days of the Yazidis being targeted by Daesh in Iraq, American planes were in the air trying to help them,” said a senior U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

‘WE’VE DONE AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT’

Islamic State militants have swept through Iraq and Syria in recent years, seizing swathes of territory with an eye toward establishing jihadism in the heart of the Arab world.

The group’s videos depict the violent deaths of people who stand in its way. Opponents have been beheaded, shot dead, blown up with fuses attached to their necks and drowned in cages in swimming pools, with underwater cameras capturing their agony.

Kerry argued the United States has done much to fight the group since 2014, but did not directly answer a question on why it had not done more to prevent genocide.

“We’re very confident we’ve done an enormous amount,” he told reporters as he walked down a hall at the State Department.

“The fact is that Daesh kills Christians because they are Christians. Yazidis because they are Yazidis. Shi’ites because they are Shi’ites,” Kerry said earlier, and accused Islamic State of crimes against humanity and of ethnic cleansing.

Islamic State militants have exploited the five-year civil war in Syria to seize areas in that country and in neighboring Iraq, though U.S. officials say their air strikes have markedly reduced the territory the group controls.

On-again, off-again peace talks got under way this week in Geneva in an effort to end the civil war, in which at least 250,000 people have died and millions have fled their homes. A fragile “cessation of hostilities” has reduced, but not ended, the violence over the last two weeks.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Kerry to miss deadline for decision on whether ISIS atrocities are genocide

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will not have a decision on whether atrocities committed by Islamic State constitute genocide by a March 17 deadline set by Congress, but he should have a decision soon, the State Department said on Wednesday.

“We are informing Congress today that we’re not going to make that deadline,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner told a news briefing.

“We certainly respect the deadlines that Congress lays down on specific reports, or in this case decisions about genocide,” he said. “However, we also take the process very seriously. And so if we need additional time … in order to reach a more fact-based, evidence-based decision, we’re going to … ask for extra time.”

(Reporting by Arshad Mohammed and David Alexander; Editing by Eric Beech)

Iraqi commander sees Islamic State retrenching before Mosul battle

MAKHMOUR, Iraq (Reuters) – Islamic State is retrenching as Iraqi forces build up for an operation to retake the northern city of Mosul and some local militants desert the group, the commander in charge of the highly anticipated offensive said.

Thousands of Iraqi troops have deployed to the north with heavy weapons in recent weeks, setting up base alongside U.S. forces and troops from Iraq’s Kurdish autonomous region in Makhmour — a launchpad around 60 kilometers south of Mosul.

Although he described Islamic State as depleted, Nineveh Operations Commander Major General Najm al-Jubbouri said jockeying between the various forces preparing to take part in the battle for Mosul benefited the militants.

“The operation to liberate Nineveh will be done in stages,” Jubbouri said, referring to the province of which Mosul is capital. “Now we are more or less just waiting for the order of the commander in chief to begin the first step.”

Mosul, home to around two million people before it fell to Islamic State during a lightning offensive in 2014, is by far the biggest city ruled by the jihadist group in either Iraq or Syria. An Iraqi offensive to recapture it, backed by air strikes and advisors from a U.S.-led coalition, would be the biggest counterattack ever mounted against the group.

Kurdish and Iraqi military sources say the initial move will be westwards from Makhmour to the town of Qayyara on the Tigris River, which would sever Islamic State’s main artery between Mosul and territory it controls further south and east.

Jubbouri said the timing would hinge on the progress of military operations in the valley of Iraq’s other great river, the Euphrates, where Iraqi forces have been advancing against the militants after routing them from a provincial capital, Ramadi, in December.

The U.S.-led coalition bombing Islamic State hopes Mosul will be recaptured this year, dealing a decisive blow to the militant group. But many question whether the Iraqi army, which partially collapsed when the militants overran a third of the country in June 2014, will be ready in time.

“NO WAY FOR THEM”

As Iraqi forces push up towards Mosul, Jubbouri said he did not expect to encounter much resistance because people in the villages south of the city were fed up with the militants and are likely to rise up against them.

Already, Islamic State has withdrawn from certain villages, he said: “They have begun to abandon some areas and concentrate their presence near Mosul because they know there is no way for them.”

Citing intelligence, Jubbouri said there were 6,000-8,000 militants in Nineveh province, of which the majority were local Iraqis motivated less by belief in Islamic State’s ultra-hardline creed than the material benefits of siding with the militants.

“For that reason, many have begun to leave the organization and the battlefield. We know the foreign fighters are the ones who will fight fiercely, and also the Iraqis whose hands are stained with the blood of other Iraqis.”

In Mosul itself, Jubbouri expected street fighting and said the main challenge was the presence of more than one million people who would be used as human shields by the militants.

When Islamic State conquered Mosul, many residents welcomed them as liberators from a heavy-handed army, but Jubbouri estimated that between 70-75 percent of the population would now support the security forces.

“The rest are either hesitant or scared, and a part are embroiled (with Islamic State) in a big way.”

Rivalry between different factions who want to take part in the offensive and secure influence in Mosul poses another challenge, Jubbouri said.

The involvement of Shi’ite militias is a subject of controversy because they have been accused of abuses against Sunnis in other areas recaptured from the militants.

Turkey has also deployed troops to a base north of Mosul where they are training a militia formed by the former governor of the province, while Kurdish security forces known as peshmerga will play a support role.

“What is necessary is for all efforts now to be combined,” Jubbouri said. “We must put aside our egos and differences and keep our eyes on the goal: to liberate the city.”

(Reporting and writing by Isabel Coles; editing by Peter Graff)

Islamic State fighter from U.S. in custody in Iraq

ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) – An American fighting for Islamic State was taken into custody in northern Iraq after he left territory controlled by the militant group, according to two Kurdish officers, one of whom arrested him.

Both said it appeared the man was intending to escape both Islamic State and Kurdish forces but handed himself in after peshmerga fighters opened fire on him near the frontline in the village of Golat.

Captain Daham Khalaf said they had spotted the fighter hiding in long grass around dawn and waited until the sun rose before surrounding him: “He shouted ‘I am a foreigner’,” Khalaf said, describing him as bearded and dressed in black.

The fighter did not have a passport but was carrying an American driving license and spoke English and broken Arabic, according to General Hashim Sitei who spoke to him.

A copy of what was said to be the license, seen by Reuters, was in the name of Khweis Mohammed Jamal.

“We gave him food and treated him with respect and handed him over to military intelligence,” said Sitei.

The fighter was unarmed but carrying three mobile phones and said his father was Palestinian and his mother was from the Mosul area in Iraq, both officers said.

The State Department said it was aware of the reports that a U.S. citizen said to have been fighting for Islamic State was captured by Kurdish peshmerga forces in northern Iraq.

The address on the driver’s license confiscated by the peshmerga was for a residence in a townhouse complex in the Washington, DC, suburb of Alexandria, Virginia.

As about a dozen reporters and television crewmembers waited outside, a black Lincoln Town Car drove up. Two men stepped out and angrily demanded that the media leave.

The older man – who identified himself as Jamal Khweis – grabbed a photographer’s camera as the younger man pushed at the lenses of several television cameras. At one point, the older man sprayed the reporters with a garden hose.

The man confirmed that he has a son the same age as the American captured by the peshmerga. He said he didn’t know where his son was, but that he would “never go” to Iraq.

“He is my son. He is a good person,” he said.

More than 250 Americans have joined or tried to fight with the extremist group in Syria and Iraq since 2011, according to a September 2015 bipartisan congressional taskforce report.

At least 80 men and women have been charged by federal prosecutors for connections to Islamic State, and 27 have been convicted.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Landay, Kat Jackson, Doina Chiacu and Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Louise Ireland and James Dalgleish)

Italian engineers need two months on Mosul dam before starting repairs

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Italian engineers hired to help prevent a catastrophic collapse of Iraq’s largest hydro-electric dam will need at least two months to assess the structure before starting major maintenance work, a Water Resources Ministry spokesman told Reuters.

Mahdi Rasheed Mahdi said it might be six months before work began on the Mosul dam as Italy’s Trevi Group needed to bring in specialist equipment to plug gaps caused by erosion.

The dam, near the northern city of Mosul, was built in the 1980s on a friable gypsum layer on the Tigris and needs constant repairs to avoid disaster.

Maintenance work was disrupted for two weeks in August 2014 when the dam was captured by Islamic State militants seeking to carve a caliphate in captured territory in Iraq and Syria.

The dam’s seizure prompted concerns that irreparable damage to the structure’s foundations may have been caused. Collapse would devastate Mosul and other cities along the river, including the Iraqi capital Baghdad, and cause hundreds of thousands of casualties.

“They need two to six months and this was a request by the company,” Mahdi said by telephone. “The company needs time to import their equipment and this definitely takes time. We have already anticipated this.”

Mahdi said there was no imminent threat of collapse as some maintenance work was being carried out but more was needed to stabilize the structure. The Trevi contract would not provide a permanent solution, he added.

The dam was retaken by Kurdish Peshmerga fighters with the help of U.S.-led coalition air strikes, and Iraq signed a $300 million, 18-month deal with Trevi to reinforce and maintain the 2.2 miles structure.

Italy has said it planned to send 450 troops to protect the dam, which is close to territory held by Islamic State fighters.

(Reporting by Saif Hameed, writing by Maher Chmaytelli)