Marine Gen. Joe Dunford had a few last-minute trouble landing in the city of Irbil on his first trip to Iraq as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Military officials described it as a minor miscommunication between the USA and Iraqi governments over his flight plans.
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But the overall campaign against Islamic State is moving slowly and major objectives, such as retaking the city of Mosul, appear distant.
Washington has been talking to regional governments, including Turkey, about its concerns over the importing of energy infrastructure into IS-run territory in Syria, including equipment for extraction, refinement, transport and energy production, according to a senior US official with firsthand knowledge of the IS oil sector. The USA has mostly limited its role to training and advising Iraqi and Kurdish forces, airdropping humanitarian relief supplies and providing daily airstrikes in IS-held areas of Iraq and Syria.
The move, he said, will allow the Iraqi security forces, the Kurdish government forces known as the Peshmerga, the Sunni tribes and the popular mobilization troops to work better together.
Russia’s military intervention in Syria has radically changed the landscape in the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State, which seized vast tracts of Iraq and Syria previous year.
After several rounds of talks that began more than a week ago, the two sides agreed to a number of air safety protocols including “maintaining professional airmanship” and the use of specific aircraft communications frequencies, Cook said.
United Nations humanitarian officials have warned that 10 million Iraqis, or a quarter of the population, are going to need humanitarian aid by year’s end amid “dramatically” worsening conditions that are forcing many people to leave their homeland because they no longer see a future inside their country.
The US has told Iraq’s leaders they must choose between ongoing American support in the battle against militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and asking the Russians to intervene instead.
The circumstances in which the USA military member was killed were unclear, but one US official said the American had been shot in a firefight at the scene.
Iraq’s ruling coalition and volunteer forces fighting Takfiri Daesh terrorists have called on Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to request Russian Federation to launch airstrikes on the terrorists’ positions in the Arab country. “As you know, we have a common enemy”, the USA general said.
Two of the Iraqi intelligence officials said a senior IS member they identified as Haji Diaa was in charge of the group’s oil operations and is the point man in dealing with Turkish and Kurdish engineers.
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In recent days, U.S. officials have cited progress by Iraqi forces and militia recapturing parts of the Baiji oil refinery and they have noted incremental gains around the city of Ramadi. AP secretly saw the report of IS’s Diwan al-Rakaaez (the equivalent of Finance Ministry) which showed that this April the group earned about $46.7 million.
