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To the Business School at the University of Edinburgh to be interviewed on the theme of Great Political Disasters. Main criteria for inclusion: decisions, often taken for short-term reasons, whose unforeseen consequences have echoed down the ages. Everyone will have their own little list, but mine included the Balfour declaration, Partition, Suez, Wilsons failure to devalue in 1964 (which haunted subsequent Labour governments), Denis Healeys IMF loan in 1976 (which he later admitted had been unnecessary and which led to the Winter of Discontent and the election of Margaret Thatcher), the poll tax, Iraq and the Brexit referendum (yes, I realise that the jury is still out on that last one). Some (Suez, poll tax, Iraq) will for ever be associated with a single individual. In other cases responsibility is more diffuse. The big villains of Partition were Muhammad Ali Jinnah and his Muslim League, who insisted on the division of the sub-continent regardless of the likely consequences. Mountbatten, a man of staggering complacency, played his part. First, he brought the date forward by eight months, despite the evident lack of preparation. On violence, he had this to say: At least on this question I shall give you a complete assurance. I shall see to it that there is no bloodshed and riot. I am a soldier and not a civilian. Once partition is accepted in principle I shall issue orders to see that there are no communal disturbances anywhere in the country. If there should be the slightest agitation, I shall adopt the sternest measures to nip trouble in the bud. The rest, as they say, is history.

This is an extract from Chris Mullins diary, which appears in this weeks Spectator

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The Brexit referendum joins Iraq and Suez on my list of political disasters - Spectator.co.uk (blog)

The overwhelming majority of Iraqi Kurds want an independent state.

Next month, on September 25, the Kurdistan Regional Government in Erbil will hold a binding referendum on whether or not to secede from Iraq. It will almost certainly pass. More than a decade ago, the Kurds held a non-binding referendum that passed with 99.8 percent of the vote.

No one knows what's going to happen. Iraq is the kind of place where just about anything can happen and eventually does.

Kurdish secession could go as smoothly as a Scottish secession from the United Kingdom (were that to actually happen) or a Quebecois secession from Canada, were that to actually happen. It could unfold like Kosovo's secession from Serbia, where some countries recognize it and others don't while the Serbs are left to stew in their own juices more or less peaceably.

This is a serious business, though, because Iraq is not Britain, and it is not Canada. And there's a potential flashpoint that travelers to the region would be well advised to stay away from for a while.

Shortly after ISIS invaded Iraq from Syria in 2014, the Kurdistan Regional Government effectively annexed the oil-rich governorate of Kirkuk. Ethnic Kurds made up a plurality of the population, with sizeable Arab and Turkmen minorities, before Saddam Hussein's Arabization program in the 1990s temporarily created an artificial Arab majority.

Since then, Kurds have been returning to the city en masse while many Arabs, most of whom had no history in the region before Saddam put them there, have left. No one really knows what the demographics look like now.

It's a tinderbox regardless of the actual headcount. Some of the Arabs who still live there could mount a rebellion at some point, either immediately or down the road. If they do, they might engage in the regional sport of finagling financial and even military backing from neighboring countries.

Then again, Arabs have been trickling north into the Kurdistan region for years because it's peaceful and quiet and civilized. It's the one part of Iraq that, despite the local government's corruption and inability to live up to the democratic norms it claims to espouse, works remarkably well.

I've been to Iraqi Kurdistan a number of times. It's safer than Kansas. My only real complaint is that it gets a bit boring after a while. If you're coming from Baghdad or Mosul, it's practically Switzerland.

Kurdish graffiti on the walls of an Iraqi army base outside Kirkuk reads, "We will not leave Kirkuk."

Kirkuk Governorate, though, isor at least recently wasanother story. The three "core" Kurdish governoratesDohuk, Erbil, and Suleimaniyahhave been free of armed conflict since the toppling of Saddam Hussein, but Kirkuk was down in the war zone. I went there ten years ago from Suleimaniyah and was only willing to do so under the armed protection of Kurdish police officers. Had I wandered around solo as I did farther north, I would have risked being shot, kidnapped or car-bombed. I still could have been shot or car-bombed alongside the police, but at least kidnapping was (mostly) off the table. The very fact that Kirkuk was a war zone at a time when the Kurdish governorates to the north were not suggests that the Kurds may be swallowing more than they can digest.

Kirkuk has oil, though, while the governorates to the north mostly don't, so of course the Kurds want it. Baghdad, of course, wants to keep it for the same reason. Will Iraq's central government go to war over it? Probably not. Saddam Hussein lost his own war against the Kurds in the north, and he had far more formidable forces at his disposal than Baghdad does now. Still, it's more likely than a war between London and Edinburgh, or between Ottawa and Montreal.

The biggest threat to an independent Iraqi Kurdistan comes not from Baghdad but from Turkey.

The biggest threat to an independent Iraqi Kurdistan comes not from Baghdad but from Turkey. The Turks have been fighting a low-grade counter-insurgency against the armed Kurdish separatists of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) since the 1970s that has killed tens of thousands of people, and they're deathly afraid that a free and independent Kurdish state anywhere in the world will both embolden and assist their internal enemies.

While Turkey is no longer likely to invade Iraqi Kurdistan on general principle if it declares independencea going concern shortly after the overthrow of Saddam Husseinthe Turkish government is making it clear that it is supremely unhappy with the KRG including Kirkuk in its referendum. "What really concerned us," a spokesperson for Turkey's president said in June of this year, "was that Kurdish leaders want to include Kirkuk in this process while according to the Iraqi constitution Kirkuk is an Iraqi city and is not within Kurdish boundaries ... If any attempts will be made to forcefully include Kirkuk in the referendum question, problems will be made for Kirkuk and its surrounding areas."

One can sympathize with Turkey's fears. The Marxist-Leninist Kurdistan Workers Party is, without question, a terrorist organization. Even so, nations have a right to exist even if they are inconvenient to Turkeyespecially considering that Iraq's Kurds are not terrorists.

Iraq's Kurds are America's only reliable allies in the entire country.

Rather than terrorists, Iraq's Kurds are America's only reliable allies in the entire country. They're as pro-American as Texans; they're the only ones who didn't take shots at us during and after the overthrow of Saddam; and they were, for a time anyway, the only ones willing and capable of taking on ISIS directly and winning. They do not align themselves with Iranian-backed militias as the central government in Baghdad does, and they certainly aren't on side with Hezbollah and the Kremlin like the Syrian government. They are as allergic to political Islamism as Americans are. They view it, with some justification, as an alien export from the Arab world.

The Trump administration opposes Kurdistan's bid for independence. It could, says the White House, be "significantly destabilizing." Perhaps. But it's a bit rich for Americans, of all people, to say no to people who want to break away from a country that smothered them beneath a totalitarian regime, waged a genocidal extermination campaign against them, and then convulsed in bloody mayhem for more than a decade.

An independent Iraqi Kurdistan is far more likely to be stable with U.S. backing than without it.

We Americans mounted a revolution for our own independence against a government far more liberal and enlightened than Iraq's. And we support at least the notion of a Palestinian state alongside the Israeli state, the only properly functioning democracy in the entire region, despite the fact that the Palestinians have mounted one terrorist campaign after another for their own independence while the Kurds of Iraq never have.

An independent Iraqi Kurdistan is far more likely to be stable with American backing than without it, but the Kurds are going forward regardless. As Jack Nicholson's character Frank Costello said in Martin Scorsese's scorching film, The Departed, "no one gives it to you. You have to take it."

Michael J. Totten is a contributing editor at The Tower, a Middle East Forum writing fellow, and the author of seven books, including Where the West Ends and Tower of the Sun.

Related Topics: Iraq, Kurds, US policy | Michael J. Totten receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free mef mailing list

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The Kurds Are About to Blow up Iraq - Middle East Forum

SOUTHWEST ASIA, Aug. 16, 2017 U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria yesterday, conducting 21 strikes consisting of 41 engagements, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of yesterday's strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

In Syria, coalition military forces conducted 12 strikes consisting of 17 engagements against ISIS targets:

-- Near Dayr Az Zawr, a strike destroyed an ISIS wellhead.

-- Near Raqqa, 11 strikes engaged seven ISIS tactical units and destroyed 30 fighting positions, a logistics node and an ISIS unmanned aerial system.

Strikes in Iraq

In Iraq, coalition military forces conducted nine strikes consisting of 24 engagements against ISIS targets:

-- Near Beiji, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed a vehicle.

-- Near Qaim, three strikes destroyed two ISIS staging areas and an ISIS-held building

-- Near Samarra, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit.

-- Near Tal Afar, four strikes engaged two ISIS tactical units and destroyed 13 fighting positions, three ISIS-held buildings, three supply caches, an ISIS training camp and a mortar system.

Previous Strikes

Additionally, 38 strikes consisting of 44 engagements were conducted in Syria and Iraq on Aug. 9-10 and Aug. 14 that closed within the last 24 hours.

-- On Aug. 9, near Dayr Az Zawr, Syria, two strikes destroyed three ISIS oil stills.

-- On Aug. 10, near Dayr Az Zawr, Syria, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed three tunnel entrances and two ISIS-held buildings.

-- On Aug. 14, near Abu Kamal, Syria, a strike destroyed five ISIS oil equipment items.

-- On Aug. 14, near Raqqa, Syria, 32 strikes engaged 20 ISIS tactical units and destroyed 18 fighting positions, three improvised explosive devices, three heavy machine guns, three command-and-control nodes, a logistics node, an anti-aircraft artillery system and an IED factory.

-- On Aug. 14, near Tal Afar, Iraq, a strike suppressed an ISIS tactical unit.

-- On Aug. 14, near Tuz, Iraq, a strike destroyed two ISIS headquarters, a vehicle storage facility, a vehicle, a staging area and a weapons cache.

Part of Operation Inherent Resolve

These strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to destroy ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The destruction of ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria also further limits the group's ability to project terror and conduct external operations throughout the region and the rest of the world, task force officials said.

The list above contains all strikes conducted by fighter, attack, bomber, rotary-wing or remotely piloted aircraft; rocket-propelled artillery; and some ground-based tactical artillery when fired on planned targets, officials noted.

Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike, they added. A strike, as defined by the coalition, refers to one or more kinetic engagements that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single or cumulative effect.

For example, task force officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIS vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against a group of ISIS-held buildings and weapon systems in a compound, having the cumulative effect of making that facility harder or impossible to use. Strike assessments are based on initial reports and may be refined, officials said.

The task force does not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target.

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Strikes Continue Against ISIS Terrorists in Syria, Iraq > U.S. ... - Department of Defense

Iraq and Saudi Arabia are negotiating a new alliance that would give Riyadh a leading role in rebuilding Iraqs war-torn towns and cities, while bolstering Baghdads credentials across the region.

Meetings between senior officials on both sides over the past six months have focused on shepherding Iraq away from its powerful neighbour and Saudi Arabias long-time rival, Iran, whose influence over Iraqi affairs has grown sharply since the 2003 ousting of Saddam Hussein.

Iraq and Saudi Arabia have long been considered opponents in the region, but a visit by the Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to Riyadh last week and a follow-up trip to the UAE further thawed relations which had already been much improved by high-profile visits between the two countries.

The arrival in the Saudi capital of Sadr a protagonist in the sectarian war that ravaged Iraq from 2004-08 and who has enduring ties to Iran highlights a new level of engagement which could see Riyadh play a significant role in the reconstruction of the predominantly Sunni cities of Mosul, Fallujah, Ramadi and Tikrit.

This visit was an important step in ensuring that Iraq returns to the Arab fold and is supported in doing so by friendly partners, said the former Saudi minister of state Saad al-Jabri. This necessitates limiting Tehrans continued attempts to dominate Iraq and spread sectarianism. Broader engagement between Riyadh and Baghdad will lead the way for enhanced regional support for Iraq, especially from the Gulf states. This is essential after the capture of Mosul from Isis and as Iraq looks towards national reconstruction.

Sunni areas of Iraq have borne the brunt of the three-year US-led war against Islamic State, which has been largely successful. Isis no longer controls any city; it is confined to a series of towns in the north-west and throughout Anbar province.

But it is thought it will cost more than $100bn (78bn) to rebuild Iraq, and the four Sunni cities, as well as three mainly Sunni provinces, are central to hopes of national reconciliation in a country where more than two-thirds of the population are Shia.

As Iraq moves towards national elections early next year, the prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, and Sadr have both said the re-enfranchisement of Sunnis who lost privileges and status after the fall of Saddam must be central to rebuilding plans.

It is also worth noting that Sadrs visit had a practical aspect and led to some immediate benefits, from the reopening of border crossings and support for internally displaced people, to the potential appointment of a new ambassador and the opening of a consulate in Najaf, said Jabri. These are clear signs that there is a concrete desire to recreate a strategic relationship between the two countries of mutual benefit.

In Baghdad, where attitudes towards Saudi Arabia have been openly hostile throughout the war on Isis, rhetoric blaming Riyadh for the jihadist insurgency has softened recently.

The relationship is growing now more than ever and this is due to the new US administration helping Saudi Arabia and the Gulf rebuild its relationship with the rest of the region, said Abdulbari al-Zebari, the head of the foreign relations committee in the Iraqi parliament. We welcome any foreign or regional funding. This would be a really smart move on behalf of the Arab countries and foreign countries.

Baghdad and Riyadh had not exchanged ambassadors for 25 years until the ill-fated return of a Saudi envoy in 2015, which prompted a vitriolic series of allegations about responsibility for Iraqs insurgency and the broader regional chaos. But over the past year, Abadi and the Iraqi president, Fuad Masum, have visited Riyadh, and the Saudi foreign minister has travelled to Baghdad.

This is a new beginning, a new page of Iraqi Saudi relations, said Ihsan Al Shameri, the head of the Political Thought Centre in Baghdad. It was troubled and on edge in the past, especially during [the former prime minister] al-Malikis rule. Now that the Saudis have found a non-sectarian political figure in Haider al-Abadi, they are willing to work together. They are no longer focused on a Shia-Sunni rift. Moreover, Iraq wants to return to the Arab fold and the window to the Arab world is Saudi Arabia.

This funding now to rebuild the country is an act of goodwill and their way to show solidarity with the Iraqis knowing we are going through tough economic times.

Senior officials in Riyadh, which has set itself an ambitious economic and cultural reform agenda, see opportunity in rebuilding the Sunni areas of Iraq as part of broader moves to curb Iran and assert the kingdom as a post-Isis force.

The situation in Iraq matters to the entire region, in security, economic and political terms, said Jabri. It is therefore natural for the Saudi leadership to seek foreign policy avenues to support Iraq at this critical moment. This visit is a clear step in that direction. Muqtada al-Sadr is a respected leader with significant influence. He understands that Iraqs future lies within the Arab world, and has repeatedly expressed concern about Irans growing influence in Iraq.

Iraq will certainly need significant regional and international support with reconstruction, particularly of cities such as Mosul, Fallujah and Ramadi. Set against the backdrop of a reinvigorated Saudi foreign policy and the importance of the historic Saudi-Iraqi relationship, I would not be surprised to see significant Saudi investment in reconstruction efforts in addition to regional and international leadership on the issue.

Additional reporting: Nadia al-Faour

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Saudis in talks over alliance to rebuild Iraq and 'return it to the Arab fold' - The Guardian

A Snatch Land Rover vehicle on patrol. Photograph: John D Mchugh/AFP/Getty

The defence secretary has apologised to families of British soldiers killed while travelling in Snatch Land Rovers for delays in replacing the lightly armoured vehicles.

In the letter to families seen by the BBC, Michael Fallon said bringing better protected vehicles into service could have saved lives.

Among the recipients of the letter was Sue Smith, whose son, Pte Phillip Hewett, 21, of Tamworth, Staffordshire, died in July 2005 after the Snatch Land Rover he was travelling in was blown up in Amara, south-east Iraq.

Last year the Chilcot inquiry found a string of Ministry of Defence failings in the preparation for the Iraq war, including a delay in replacing the lightly armoured Snatch Land Rovers, which are vulnerable to bombs.

A number of families, including Smiths, have been given the go-ahead to bring compensation claims against the government under legislation covering negligence and human rights.

Fallon wrote to Smith to express his regret at Hewetts death. I am fully aware of the struggle you have had to bring this matter to court over the last decade and I recognise that this has had a significant impact on you and your family, he wrote.

The government entirely accepts the findings of Sir John Chilcot in the Iraq inquiry in relation to Snatch Land Rover.

I would like to express directly to you my deepest sympathies and apologise for the delay, resulting in decisions taken at the time in bringing into service alternative protected vehicles which could have saved lives.

He goes on to say that lessons have been learned, adding: The government must and will ensure that our armed forces are always properly equipped and resourced.

Smith told the BBC the apology was bittersweet, adding: Id like it to be that his death made a difference. Hes not just a casualty of Iraq.

Jocelyn Cockburn, lawyer for the families, said: The Ministry of Defences stance of delay, deny and defend has caused untold suffering to already grief-stricken families over a needlessly long period.

However, I am relieved that their battle is over and genuinely hope that their apology signals a sea change in the way the MoD seeks to deal with bereaved service families.

An MoD spokeswoman said: We offer our deepest sympathies and apologise for the delay in bringing into service alternative protected vehicles which could have saved lives. The government acknowledges and fully accepts the findings of Sir John Chilcots inquiry in relation to Snatch Land Rovers.

Our armed forces now use a number of highly capable and extremely well-protected patrol vehicles, including Mastiff, Ridgback, Husky and Wolfhound.

Gen Sir Mike Jackson, chief of the general staff between 2003 and 2006, told BBC Radio 4s Today programme it was a fair assumption that a more heavily armoured vehicle would have offered much better protection for British troops.

He said he believed replacements for the Snatch Land Rover could have been brought in more quickly, adding: The army at that point did not have its own procurement budget. It does now, and perhaps that is one of the good lessons learned thats come out of this whole rather sorry story: we do have our own procurement budget now.

Yes, better vehicles, better-protected vehicles were eventually procured, but the process was rather byzantine and inevitably, thereby, lengthy.

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Fallon apologises to families of soldiers killed in Land Rovers in Iraq - The Guardian