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2018 Anadolu Agency KIRKUK, IRAQ - MARCH 20: People gather around the fire during the Newroz celebrations on March 20, 2018 in Kirkuk, Iraq. (Photo by Ali Mukarrem Garip/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

KIRKUK, Iraq A rocket slammed into an Iraqi base where American troops are stationed in the remote province of Kirkuk, Iraq's military and a US security source told AFP on Thursday night.

It was the latest in a string of nearly 20 rocket attacks since late October on US troops stationed across the country as well as on the American embassy in Baghdad.

According to three separate Iraqi security sources, the Katyusha rocket hit an open area on the K1 base at around 8:45pm local time (1745 GMT).

Both US troops and Iraqi federal police forces are stationed there but neither sustained casualties, according to a statement from Iraq's military.

It said security forces found the launch pad from which the rocket was fired, with 11 more rockets still inside, but the perpetrators were on the run.

An Iraqi security source told AFP that the launch pad was found about five kilometres (three miles) from the base, in a multi-ethnic area.

It was the first attack on K1 since December 27, when a volley of around 30 rockets killed a US contractor there and unleashed a dramatic escalation.

Washington blamed the rockets on Kataeb Hezbollah, a hardline Iraqi military faction close to Iran, and conducted retaliatory strikes that killed 25 of the group's fighters.

Supporters of the group then surrounded the US embassy in Baghdad, breaking through its outer perimeter in an unprecedented breach.

Days later, a US drone strike at Baghdad airport killed Iran's pointman on Iraqi affairs Qasem Soleimani and his right-hand man, Kataeb Hezbollah co-founder Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

In outrage, Iraq's parliament voted to oust all foreign forces from the country, including around 5,200 US troops deployed to help local forces beat back remnants of the Islamic State group.

Iran carried out in own strikes in response to Soleimani's killing, firing a barrage of ballistic missiles at the sprawling Ain al-Asad base in western Iraq on January 8.

The troops had prior warning and none were killed, but more than 100 have since been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries.

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Rocket attack hits north Iraq base hosting US troops ...

Multiple rockets hit near the US embassy in Iraqs capital early on Sunday, an American military source said, the latest in a flurry of attacks against US assets in the country.

The assault sent warning sirens blaring across the diplomatic compound but it was unclear what was hit and how many rockets made impact, the US source and a western diplomat based nearby said. There were no casualties and only minor damage, a US military spokesman said.

Agence France-Presses correspondents heard multiple strong explosions followed by aircraft circling near the green zone, the high-security enclave where the US mission is located.

It was the 19th attack since October to target either the embassy or the roughly 5,200 US troops stationed alongside local forces across Iraq. The attacks are never claimed but the US has pointed the finger at Iran-backed groups within the Hashed al-Shaabi, a military network officially incorporated into Iraqs state security forces.

In late December, a rocket attack on the northern Iraqi base of K1 left one US contractor dead and unleashed a dramatic series of events. Washington responded with retaliatory strikes against a hardline Hashed faction in western Iraq, and days later an American drone strike in Baghdad killed the top Iranian general Qassem Suleimani and his right-hand man, Hashed, deputy chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

Hashed factions have vowed revenge for the pairs death, insisting US troops should immediately leave Iraq.

Sundays attack came just hours after one of the Hasheds Iran-backed factions, Harakat al-Nujaba, announced a countdown to ousting American forces from the country. He tweeted a photograph of what he claimed was an American military vehicle, adding: We are closer than you think.

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Baghdad explosions: rockets strike near US embassy in Iraq - The Guardian

Joe Biden has an issue that hasnt played out yet in this election: his role in the launch of the Iraq war.

The Iraq war has been a prominent, even decisive issue, in some recent US presidential elections. It played a significant role in the surprise presidential primary victory won by a freshman senator from Illinois named Barack Obama in 2008. His heavily favored Democratic primary opponent, Hillary Clinton, had voted in the US Senate to authorize the war, and Obama didnt let her forget it during that contest.

In 2016, Donald Trump invoked the Iraq war against opponents in his own surprise victory in the Republican primary. And then he used it against Clinton, most likely with significant effect, in the general election that followed.

Biden did vastly more than just vote for the war. Yet his role in bringing about that war remains mostly unknown or misunderstood by the public. When the war was debated and then authorized by the US Congress in 2002, Democrats controlled the Senate and Biden was chair of the Senate committee on foreign relations. Biden himself had enormous influence as chair and argued strongly in favor of the 2002 resolution granting President Bush the authority to invade Iraq.

I do not believe this is a rush to war, Biden said a few days before the vote. I believe it is a march to peace and security. I believe that failure to overwhelmingly support this resolution is likely to enhance the prospects that war will occur

But he had a power much greater than his own words. He was able to choose all 18 witnesses in the main Senate hearings on Iraq. And he mainly chose people who supported a pro-war position. They argued in favor of regime change as the stated US policy and warned of a nuclear-armed Saddam sometime in this decade. That Iraqis would welcome the United States as liberators And that Iraq permits known al-Qaida members to live and move freely about in Iraq and that they are being supported.

The lies about al-Qaida were perhaps the most transparently obvious of the falsehoods created to justify the Iraq war. As anyone familiar with the subject matter could testify, Saddam Hussein ran a secular government and had a hatred, which was mutual, for religious extremists like al-Qaida. But Biden did not choose from among the many expert witnesses who would have explained that to the Senate, and to the media.

Bidens selling points as a candidate often lead with his reputation for foreign policy experience and knowledge. But Iraq in 2002 was devastated by economic sanctions, had no weapons of mass destruction, and was known by even the most pro-war experts to have no missiles that could come close to the United States. The idea that this country on the other side of the world posed a security threat to America was more than far-fetched. The idea that the US could simply invade, topple the government, and take over the country without provoking enormous violence was also implausible. Its not clear how anyone with foreign policy experience and expertise could have believed these ideas.

Senator Dick Durbin, who sat on the Senate intelligence committee at the time, was astounded by the difference between what he was hearing there and what was being fed to the public. The American people were deceived into this war, he said.

Regardless of Bidens intentions which I make no claim to know or understand the resolution granting President Bush the authority to start that war, which Biden pushed through the Senate, was a major part of that deception. So, too, was the restricted testimony that Biden allowed. The resolution itself contained deceptive language about a number of pretexts for the war, including al-Qaida and weapons of mass destruction that Iraq did not have.

The Iraq war has generally been seen as one of the worst US foreign policy blunders in decades. It fueled the spread of terrorism and destabilized the Middle East and parts of north Africa. Isil is a direct outgrowth of al-Qaida in Iraq, that grew out of our invasion, noted President Obama.

More than 4,500 US soldiers, and nearly as many US military contractors, lost their lives; tens of thousands were wounded, with hundreds of thousands more suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Estimates of Iraqi deaths run as high as 1 million.

At the very least, Biden should explain why he played such a major role in winning the authorization from Congress for President Bush to wage this disastrous war.

Excerpt from:
Joe Biden championed the Iraq war. Will that come back to haunt him now? - The Guardian

Key point: Hindsight is 20/20, but Washington should have known that the invasion was a mistake. The conflict would (and still does) claim many lives.

Every player of the popular video game Civilization knows to hit the save button before engaging in the risky, stupid invasion of foreign country. In the case of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, it became apparent after the first few months that the war was not working out as its framers had envisioned. The failure to find weapons of mass destruction was only the icing, so to speak, on the disaster of failed reconciliation, state collapse, and executive incompetence.

What if we had saved game before we invaded Iraq? What would Americas strategic options look like today?

The Middle East

In 2003, we spoke of the policy of dual containment as a problem that needed a solution. How could the United States manage a pair of hostile countries right next to one another? Today, the wiser among us recognize that dual containment was, in large part, a solution to its own problem. The animosity of the Hussein regime and the Islamic Republic of Iran meant that neither could achieve overarching influence in the Gulf.

In the wake of the Iraq War, dual containment has become basket case management, as Iraq has ceased to exist as a relevant strategic actor, and Iranian influence has grown in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. While the U.S. no longer has to worry about Hussein, it has been forced to devote its military and political attention not only to the maintenance of the shaky Baghdad government, but also to the resistance of Iranian power in the region.

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The impact of the Iraq War on the Arab Spring is more difficult to sort out. The framers of the war hoped that the establishment of a democratic Iraq would spur anti-authoritarian reactions around the region, although they also hoped that U.S. clients (including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf states) would be spared. Something along these lines did indeed happen in 2011, but only well after most in the region had concluded that the invasion of Iraq was a disastrous failure.

And indeed, the fruits of the Arab Spring have been limited at best. Tunisia represents the clearest case of success, while Libya has fallen into chaos, authoritarian forces have reasserted themselves in Egypt, and Syria has become an unending cauldron of violence and brutality. In Iraq itself, the legacy of the invasion of 2003 seems to be an inability to escape obligations to the new Iraqi government; the United States continues to act as the Iraqi air force, and continues to struggle to train reliable Iraqi army forces.

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Was dual containment manageable in the long run? The U.S. has spent far more in blood and treasure since 2003 than it did between 1991 and 2003, so from a purely military and financial standpoint the answer is clearly yes. And while dual containment would have left the dreadful Hussein regime in power, it likely would have avoided the worst of the several civil wars that Iraq has endured in the past twelve years.

Russia and China:

Did Russia or China take advantage of the U.S. invasion of Iraq to advance their interests? This question demands the follow up How would Russian or Chinese behavior have changed if the U.S. had avoided the Iraqi quagmire? The answer, probably, is not much.

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The Iraqi campaign surely occupied U.S. attention and used up American capabilities, but the likelihood of U.S. military intervention in a campaign involving either Russia or China was vanishingly small in any case. The only conflict of note that the U.S. might have played a part in was the 2008 South Ossetia War. Although the Georgians desperately sought American intervention, the Bush administration wisely limited its support to rhetoric.

The rise of China and the increased belligerence of Russia owe more to geopolitical factors than to anything specifically associated with the Iraq War. At best, we might find some association between the rise of oil prices in the wake of the invasion of Iraq and the strength of the Russian state (China did not benefit from higher oil prices. However, the increase in oil prices after 2003 owes at least as much to the growth of the Chinese and Indian economies as it does to the decision to invade.)

Russia and China have surely enjoyed soft power benefits from the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Moscow regularly responds to U.S. criticism of its actions in Ukraine by referring to the 2003 invasion, although it also points to the 1999 Kosovo War and the 2011 Libya intervention. Beijing regularly questions American pretensions to maritime husbandry in the South China Sea, fueled to some extent by lingering unhappiness about the invasion of Iraq. But the long-term impact of this soft power boost is uncertain.

Afghanistan:

The invasion of Iraq affected Afghanistan in two ways. First, it diverted U.S. government resources away from Afghanistan at a time when the Taliban was clearly suffering from a devastating defeat. Second, it undermined the legitimacy of the Afghanistan war by presenting the operation merely as one of (potentially) several invasions of Muslim countries, rather than as a uniquely necessary effort to destroy a uniquely horrible regime.

It goes too far to claim that more attention to Afghanistan in the middle of the last decade would have led to the complete destruction of the Taliban, and an end to the war. The roots of the Talibans survival are more complex, and more difficult to dig out, than a simple diversion of resources would suggest. At the same time, it is equally hard to argue that additional attention would not have made Afghanistan at least somewhat more secure. In particular, a strong U.S. commitment to Afghanistan (made impossible by the Iraq War) could have limited the degree to which Pakistan sought to make mischief in the region.

Domestic:

The biggest effects of the Iraq War, and the most enduring limitations, may have come in how the conflict affected the U.S. military, and changed the attitudes of Americans toward the use of force.

With respect to the former, the Iraq War undoubtedly slowed research and development of advanced weapon systems within the U.S. Department of Defense. Without Iraq, the United States might have a much larger fleet of F-22s, for example. The U.S. Navy might expect additional Zumwalt class destroyers, and the Armys Future Combat Systems might never have died an ignominious death. In addition to specific platforms, DoD might have taken advantage of the 2000s to pursue a variety of disruptive technologies that would have left it farther ahead of Russia and China than it now sits. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld certainly made pursuit of such technologies a priority, at least before Iraq derailed his plans.

But available technology rarely dominates strategic decision-making. Extra Raptors and Zumwalts could enhance American freedom of action at the margins, but would hardly have changed the trend lines of relative power in East Asia. Similarly, Future Combat Systems would not have given the United States much more in the way of political options for resisting Russian encroachment into Ukraine. And it is clearly wrong to believe that the money and attention devoted to Iraq would unproblematically have shifted over to research and development if the Bush administration had decided against intervention.

Moreover, the demands of the Iraq War (as well as the Afghanistan conflict) undoubtedly drove some technological development. The Iraq War revealed significant problems with how the Army and Air Force, in particular, viewed the future of warfare, leading to technological and doctrinal innovations that have improved U.S. warfighting capabilities.

The bigger domestic change may have come in terms of the publics attitude towards war. In the fifteen years after the end of the Cold War, the U.S. public became more tolerant towards the use of force than it had been in the post-Vietnam era. The Iraq War changed that, dramatically; today, few serious candidates for President support even a limited land war against ISIS.

President Obama won the 2008 Democratic primary because of his opposition to the Iraq War in 2003, and whatever ones attitude towards the drone war, the Obama administration clearly favors a less interventionist policy than its predecessors. This preference seems to accord with public and elite opinion about the use of force.

Does this reticence limit U.S. strategic options? America assisted France, the United Kingdom, and Libyan rebel forces with the deposition of the Gaddafi regime in 2011, notwithstanding any reluctance to use force. The U.S. continues to carry out a drone-and-special-forces war against Al Qaeda, across the Middle East. However, the reluctance to use force has surely played some role in the Obama administrations reaction to the Syria conflict, which has raged with minimal American intervention for the last four years.

Continued here:
What If the Iraq War Had Never Happened and America's Military Stayed Home? - The National Interest Online

The joint study by the UN Assistance Mission forIraq (UNAMI) and the UN human rights office, OHCHR, is based on interviews and group consultations with 237 children, young people and teachers at six camps for displaced persons (IDPs) in Ninewa governorate and in the cities of Mosul and Erbil.

Several interviewees reported thatrestrictions on their movementmeant they could not move freely in and out of the camps, thus preventing them from attending school and other daily activities.

Many children who were in school when living under ISIL control are now young adults, making them too old to attend mainstream schools and are left with no alternative options.

These challenges are creating a marginalized generation of children and young adults, many of whom are or will be entering adulthood without any post-primary schooling, according to the report titled The Right to Education in Iraq: Part One - The legacy of ISIL territorial control on access to education.

As one boy told the authors: There is no future in the camp anyway, what am I going to do here? Why do I need an education for this life? It has been so long since we were at school, our minds feel closed to learning, some of us can no longer even read and write. We have no support to overcome these things. Even if I could take the exams, I would not pass them. I dont see a future for myself.

The activities of ISIL, also known as Daesh, have been well-documented.

Since 2014, fighters carried out a campaign of violence, oppression and systematic human rights violations, leaving behind death, destruction and displacement.

Of the approximately 1.4 million people uprooted by the crisis, 658,000 are children, almost half of whom are not in school.

Although ISIL sustained military defeat in Iraq in 2017, some counter-insurgency operations continue. Additionally, families perceived as having affiliations with the group have had wider restrictions imposed on them.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said the importance of the right to education for children and young people cannot be overstated.

Inclusive, quality education is not just a right in itself but it is essential for the full realization of a range of other human rights. Education literally has the power to transform lives and make dreams come true, she said.

IOM/Muse Mohammed

Mohammed, 10, sits on the staircase of the former house he used to hide with his family in Mosul.

Education can also protect young people when they are at a particularly vulnerable age, the authors added.

Children and young adults who are unable to attend school are especially at risk, leaving them on the margins of society and open to radicalization or other criminal activity, they said.

The loss of childhood during the ISIL years, including the lack of educational opportunities and the limited access to mental health and psychosocial support, can result in cycles of violence, both in public and private sphere, that directly prevent youth from reaching their full potential.

The report concludes with recommendations for the Iraqi authorities.

While acknowledging Government efforts to ensure access to education, measures should be implemented to allow people to obtain civil documentation.

The Government should also provide accessible primary and secondary education to all Iraqis, including those in IDP camps.

Measures can include increasing the number of schools and teaching hours, and expanding alternative education programmes. Teachers can also be trained in how to teach students who have suffered trauma.

The report was shared with the Government and integrates comments received from the Ministry of Education.

Read more:
Iraq: Education access still a challenge in former ISIL-controlled areas - UN News