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After Mosul, Will US-Iran Rivalry Undermine Iraq? Wall Street Journal (subscription) MOSUL, IraqIn the battle against Islamic State, the U.S. and Iran have become de facto allies in Iraq, a convergence of interests that permitted both nations to tacitly cooperate and avoid open conflicts. Once Islamic State is defeated, however ...

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After Mosul, Will US-Iran Rivalry Undermine Iraq? - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

LONDON Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair won't face an investigation into whether he misled Parliament before the 2003 Iraq invasion unless new evidence emerges, a committee of lawmakers said Thursday.

A seven-year official inquiry into the war cleared Blair of allegations that he had made a "personal and demonstrable decision to deceive Parliament or the public," Parliament's Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee said.

The committee said that several probes into the divisive war don't "provide a sufficient basis" for a parliamentary investigation.

The decision to enter the U.S.-led war was the most contentious act of Blair's decade as prime minister between 1997 and 2007. By the time British combat forces left Iraq in 2009, the conflict had killed 179 U.K. troops, almost 4,500 U.S. personnel and more than 100,000 Iraqis.

The Iraq War Inquiry led by retired civil servant John Chilcot concluded last year that Blair led Britain into the war through a mix of flawed intelligence, inadequate planning and poor judgment. But it refrained from saying whether the invasion was legal and didn't accuse Blair of deliberately misleading the public or Parliament.

The parliamentary committee said that there still aren't strong measures to prevent a prime minister from sidelining senior Cabinet colleagues when deciding to go to war.

Committee chairman Bernard Jenkin said that before the Iraq invasion, "there was a lack of collective Cabinet decision-making, at a time when clear thinking and a culture of challenge was most needed."

"The failure to engage Cabinet on such decisions cannot be allowed to happen again, but there is no mechanism to ensure that," he said.

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UK lawmakers: Not enough evidence to probe Blair over Iraq - Military Times

Common Dreams

President Blowback: How the Invasion of Iraq Came Home Common Dreams Look someplace far more improbable: Iraq. Donald Trump may have been born in New York City. He may have grown to manhood amid his hometown's real estate wars. He may have gone no further than Atlantic City, New Jersey, to casino-ize the world and ... It's time for a full accounting of the botched Iraq WarDallas News (blog) all 7 news articles »

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President Blowback: How the Invasion of Iraq Came Home - Common Dreams

UPDATE:

Kurdish mediareportedthat startingon March 3,afterclashesin Sinjar began,the PKK-affiliatedDemocratic Union Party's (PYD) security forces in northernSyria begandetaining over 40 members of theKurdish National Council (KNC), a partyaffiliated withthe KRGs President Masoud Barzani.These arrests began oneday before the planned Erbil protest.

(Erbil) Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) security forces and local police detained 32 unarmed protesters in Erbil on March 4, 2017, at a peaceful demonstration against recent clashes in Sinjar. According to three protesters who were arrested, 23 were released that same day, and three more within four days, but six, all foreign nationals, are still being held. A police chief ordered one protester who was released to permanently leave Erbil, where he was living.

A Kurdish Peshmerga soldier on the outskirts of the Kurdish city of Erbil, Iraq on January 2, 2017. 2017 Reuters

2017 Reuters

Local media reported that on March 6, the Director General of Erbil Police, Abdulkhaliq Talaat, stated that the protesters were arrested by a court order, and would be released based on a court decision. He did not elaborate on the reasons for the arrests. No media coverage of the arrests alleged any use of violence or other acts that disrupted the peace.

KRG authorities appear to be detaining protesters for no good reason, said Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. They are also using threats and retaliation to discourage future protests, undermining freedom of expression and assembly in the Kurdish region.

On March 4 at about 2 p.m., several dozen unarmed protesters attempted to gather near Sami Abdulrahman Park in western Erbil to peacefully protest against recent clashes between the Kurdistan Region of Iraq's RojavaPeshmerga and PKK-affiliated Shingal Resistance Units (Yekneyn Berxwedana ingal, or YB) in Sinjar, three protesters told Human Rights Watch. They had posted the event on Facebook.

One protester said he was about 300 meters away, walking to the demonstration site where a handful of people had already gathered, just before 2 p.m., when a group of local police stopped him and said he should not join the demonstration. He said that he ignored them and kept walking but that when he was about 50 meters from the demonstration, they stopped him again, demanded his identity card, and told him to board a nearby bus without telling him why. He said that 10 other protesters whom he recognized and two armed police guards were on the bus.

Swara Hassan, a journalist for the pro-PKK RojNews, said that at 2 p.m. he and two local activists parked their car about 500 meters from the demonstration. They headed to the protest, which Hassan said he was planning to cover for RojNews, when a protester who was leaving the area, warned them that people were being arrested. Hassan said he and the two activists decided to leave but that as they headed for their car, an officer ordered them into the bus.

The police took them to Erbil central police station, and held them with nine others. At about 3:30 p.m., he said, guards moved him and another protester into another room holding eight female detainees. He said that two told him they were children, ages 13 and 15.

Another protester, Muhammad Kiyani, director of the Leadership Committee of the Peoples Democracy Front, a minority political party, and former member of parliament with the Change Movement (Gorran), said that he was one of the first protesters to arrive, at about 1:50 p.m., and that many Asayish officers of the Kurdish security forces and police were already there. He said that he saw a police officer slap and push one woman to the ground after she ignored an order to leave. Then an Asayish officer ordered him to get into one of their vehicles, which held another protester, without giving any reason. Kiyani said he was taken to the central police station, where he was held with the other men.

The three protestors interviewed said that all those they saw at or near the protest were unarmed, including those detained. The police released the 23 protesters, including the eight women and girls, between 10 and 11 p.m. Hassan and Kiyani said they were transferred with seven others to the police pretrial detention facility, where each was placed in a separate cell that was already holding other detainees.

Kiyani said he and another protester were released on March 6 without charge. He was never questioned, brought before a judge, or allowed to contact his family or a lawyer, Kiyani said. Before he left, guards took him before Talaat, who warned that he risked being detained if he participated in further protests.

On March 7, Hassan said police took him and the remaining six other detained protesters to the Bakhtiari neighborhood police station for individual interrogations. Hassan said officers asked him why he wanted to participate in the protest. Then they brought him and the others before an investigative judge in Erbil court, where they were asked the same questions. After the hearings, a police officer told Hassan that the judge had ordered the release of all except one of the protesters, without saying why. The police returned them to the central station, and released him the next day, but not the five others allegedly ordered to be released. The six protestors still being held are Turkish and Syrian nationals.

While in detention, Hassan was not allowed to contact anyone or have access to a lawyer. Before he was released, Hassan, an Iraqi, said a guard took him to see Talaat, who told him that he was no longer allowed to live in Erbil, providing no reason or paperwork. Hassan has left the city.

Erbil authorities have arbitrarily banned workers from nongovernmental groups and even the Kurdistan Regions parliament speaker, Yusuf Mohammed, a member of the Gorran party, from entering Erbil.

Security forces have an obligation to protect the right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, Human Rights Watch said. While the organizers of the protest on March 4 had not sought permission, as local law requires, international law protects the right to peaceful assembly without restrictions, except in very limited circumstances. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association has stated that freedom is to be considered the rule and its restriction the exception. He has also said that protest organizers should not be required to get authorization from the state authorities, but at most be required to give notification in advance, as long as such rules are straightforward and necessary to preserve national security or public safety, public order, the protection of public health or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

Law no.11/2010 For the Organization of Demonstrations in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq states that all protests require advance permission from the Ministry of Interior or in some cases other local authorities. Article 21 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Iraq ratified in 1971, states that the right of peaceful assembly shall be recognized, and that no restrictions may be placed on the exercise of this right other than those imposed in conformity with the law and that are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, public order, the protection of public health or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

Iraqs Criminal Procedural Code (no. 23/1971) states that all detainees must be brought before an investigative judge within 24 hours of their detention.

The three protesters who are closely following the cases of those still detained said they had not been able to obtain any information about them, including whether they had been charged.

If the only crime these men are being charged with is participation in an unregistered protest, authorities should drop all charges and release them immediately, Fakih said.

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Kurdistan Region of Iraq: 32 Arrested at Peaceful Protest - Human Rights Watch

By John Davison | MOSUL AIRPORT, Iraq

MOSUL AIRPORT, Iraq Outside a mosque on the edge of Mosul airport's ripped up runway, Iraqis made homeless by war sit on suitcases, taking a brief rest before beginning their onward journey, on foot or in buses.

Men push wheelchairs carrying elderly relatives or carts loaded with small children over dusty and uneven ground, part of an exodus of people who have escaped from Islamic State's last major Iraqi stronghold.

Some are Mosul residents, displaced for the first time by the battle to drive the ultra-hardline group out of the largest city its has controlled in Iraq and Syria. Many others are from areas outside the city, brought to Mosul against their will, and now trying to get back to their towns and villages.

But the battle to recapture what remains of Islamic State's self-styled caliphate in Iraq has caused such destruction that for now the displaced head for increasingly crowded camps, and not home.

"We're on our way to Hammam al-Alil camp", at a town 20 km (13 miles) south of Mosul, 18-year-old Mohammed Mahmoud said, standing on the roadside near the mosque.

Mahmoud and about 30 other relatives, including small children and elderly men and women, had been taken by Islamic State from their village of Bakhira to Mosul, used as human shields as the militants withdrew last year, they said.

"Bakhira has been freed but we can't go back yet - the (army's) 9th Armoured Division are stationed there, and there's also the danger of booby traps" left by Islamic State, he said.

"Until it's been emptied and cleared, we can't go there."

Many Iraqis from areas around Mosul, such as Bashiqa town to the east, are unable to return because the militants rigged homes with explosives as they withdrew, which have already killed a number of people.

Others simply have no homes to go back to, with countless houses and businesses used by Islamic State as military positions destroyed in air strikes and artillery shelling.

During their time in Mosul, Mahmoud and his family had crammed into a relative's house until the district was recaptured from the militants, allowing the family to start the long journey back to their village, he said.

He said he would shave his wispy beard at the first opportunity. Under Islamic State rule, men are forced to sport beards of a certain length, on pain of fine or punishment.

The family was relieved to be free, but anxious about spending the foreseeable future in tents.

CROWDED CAMPS, NEW TENTS

The exodus has put strain on existing camps, as new ones are opened or built to cope with the influx.

An Iraqi aid worker who had helped set up the government-built Hammam al-Alil camp on Feb. 27, said that within 10 days, 26,000 people had flocked there.

"Supplies are short, and it's been constant work trying to register those coming in," Sajida al-Jabbouri said. "There are toilets, but there's no water".

The United Nations is building another camp outside the town. Labourers work every day setting out breeze blocks that will form the base of tents to house thousands of people.

International aid agencies say more than 200,000 Iraqis have been displaced by the fighting in Mosul, including more than 65,000 since Iraqi forces launched operations in the western half of the city last month.

The U.S.-backed campaign to drive Islamic State out of Mosul has recaptured the eastern half of the city, and around a third of the west. Displacement has quickened recently because the west is densely populated and contains the crowded old city.

Those fleeing the west often transit through the wrecked Mosul airport, whose runway is littered with the rubble of blast walls erected by Islamic State.

The small green mosque at the corner of the runway closest to the city is damaged from exploding shells, and Islamic State supporters have graffitied an Arabic slogan of the group: "The Islamic State remains and is expanding".

But as the caliphate shrinks, it is the number killed or displaced that grows.

(Reporting by John Davison; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Dominic Evans)

MOSUL, Iraq Iraqi government forces battling Islamic State for Mosul took control of a main bridge over the Tigris river on Wednesday and advanced towards the mosque where the group's leader declared a caliphate in 2014, federal police said.

WASHINGTON The top Republican and Democrat on the U.S. Senate Banking Committee both said on Wednesday that sanctions imposed on Russia over its involvement in Ukraine must not be lifted without drastic changes by Russia.

BRUSSELS/VIENNA Turkey has blocked some military training and other work with NATO "partner countries" in an apparent escalation of a diplomatic dispute with EU states, officials and sources said on Wednesday.

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At wrecked Mosul airport, home is still distant for Iraq's displaced - Reuters