As I mentioned yesterday Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki was dumped by his State of Law coalition who nominated Haider al-Abadi as Iraq's next Prime Minister. This nomination was accepted Iraq's President Faud Masum. It has also been partially accepted by the US although on the condition that it leads to an "inclusive government." However the US has yet to provide details of how they will define an "inclusive government."
Unfortunately al-Abadi's nomination appears to have been wholeheartedly rejected by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) who today responded by detonating a large car bomb close to his house in a Baghdad suburb. The only good thing I can say about this is that it should provide further evidence to US President Obama that ISIL are not a group of downtrodden Iraqi civilians yearning to be freed from the yoke of al-Malaki's oppressive government. Instead they are a group of extremely violent extremists who have flocked to the Levant region from across the globe because they see it as their divine mission to kill all Shias and non-Muslims in order to bring about the arrival of Allah's next Prophet and ultimately the end of the World. This is not an ideology that leaves much room for negotiation nor compromise.
Sadly it is not clear that this message will get across to Obama because so far he has seemed unable to pick up on the subtle little hints coming from all across Iraq and the area around the Sinjar mountains in particular. On Mount Sinjar itself there are still some 35-40,000 Yazadi civilians trapped after being ethnically cleansed from the surrounding towns by ISIL. The Iraqi army in conjunction with Kurdish Peshmerga forces have been trying to rescue those people but the best they can offer is to fly two ancient Soviet-era Mi-8 transport helicopters to and from the mountain in near constant rotation. As these essentially unarmed helicopters make those journeys they come under near constant fire from ISIL fighters on the ground and they are far too small to have any real impact in terms of delivering aid or evacuating people. Today one of those two helicopters crashed on its return journey killing the pilot and a number of passengers. At the time of writing it is not yet clear if the helicopter was brought down by enemy fire or whether it wore out from overuse and simply fell from the sky.
Even before today's crash the dire situation on Mount Sinjar - which has attracted a lot of press coverage - prompted the UK to announce that it was sending four much larger Chinook helicopters to Cyprus from where they could possibly be used assist with the evacuation. The main sticking point on whether they will be used or not appears to be the risk of ISIL ground fire. The obvious solution to this would be to dispatch a couple of Apache ground attack helicopter to act as an escort for the Chinooks by attacking any ISIL position that opens fire. Unfortunately the US still seems very opposed to the idea of letting anybody actually shoot at ISIL.
For his part Obama is said to be considering sending further US troops to Iraq to join the 700+ already on the ground. Their mission will be to find a solution to what Obama describes as the "logistical challenge" of evacuating people from Mount Sinjar. Before he commits further US troops to Iraq may I suggest Obama tries to solve the problem by using the US forces that are already in the area to kill the people at the bottom of the mountain who are trying to kill the people at the top of the mountain. That way the people at the top of the mountain can simply walk down the mountain and return to their homes.
Despite Obama's continuing hesitancy the US Navy has carried out further air-strikes. Yesterday they carried out an undisclosed number of strikes against undisclosed targets. However it is believed that this was a maximum of four air-strikes against ISIL checkpoints and vehicles. Today the US carried out a single air-strike against a single ISIL mortar position. The problem is that just after yesterday's air-strikes and just before Obama's 5 minute address on the issue (no questions were taken) the Pentagon admitted that not only are the air-strikes not sufficient to destroy ISIL or even halt their advance but they are not even intended to be.
As such it seems to me that the US air-strikes at this point are purely symbolic intended to convince US voters that Obama is doing something without Obama actually having to do anything.
18:30 on 12/8/14 (UK date)
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