The United States is quietly rushing dozens of Hellfire missiles and low-tech surveillance drones to Iraq

Thursday, December 26, 2013

The United States is quietly rushing dozens of Hellfire missiles and low-tech surveillance drones to Iraq

Published on Thursday, December 26, 2013 by Common Dreams

Obama's Quiet Gift to Iraq: Hellfire Missiles and Surveillance Drones

Critics warn fresh shipments of weapons will only fuel the country's violence

- Sarah Lazare, staff writer

People stand among debris at the site of a bomb attack at a marketplace in Baghdad's Doura District December 25, 2013. (Photo: Reuters / Ahmed Malik)The U.S. is quietly shipping hellfire missiles and surveillance drones to war-torn Iraq in an alleged bid to help the government fight the country's Al Qaeda affiliate.
The shipments, revealed in a New York Times report released Wednesday, follow early November requests from Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to the Obama administration for an influx of weapons and spying technology.
According to The New York Times, Iraq bought 75 Hellfire missiles, which were delivered last week. "The weapons are strapped beneath the wings of small Cessna turboprop planes, and fired at militant camps with the C.I.A. secretly providing targeting assistance," the report states.
Ten surveillance drones will likely be sent to Iraq by March.
"American intelligence and counterterrorism officials say they have effectively mapped the locations and origins of the Qaeda network in Iraq and are sharing this information with the Iraqis," reads the report.
Critics warn that an influx of weapons to the region is fueling the violence that made 2013 the most deadly year since 2008, with over 8,000 killed, according to the United Nations, including a spate of bombings and attacks on Wednesday.
"First of all, what we are seeing shows the war is a failure," said Robert Naiman, policy director for Just Foreign Policy, in a previous interview with Common Dreams. "Secondly, the upsurge in violence in Iraq is directly tied to the arming of basically the same groups in Syria which the U.S. has been collaborating with. This situation is an indictment of not only U.S. policy in Iraq, but also U.S. policy in Syria."
"If this is heeded, it will add to the crimes committed by the US against Iraqis since the invasion of 2003, as weapons and equipment made available to the regime have, to date, been used only against Iraqi people," wrote Haifa Zangana, a Kurdish-Iraqi novelist and former prisoner of Saddam Hussein's regime, in an early November Guardian op-ed arguing against U.S. weapons shipments to Iraq.
She added that the Maliki regime "is the embodiment of the sectarian divide entrenched by the occupation. Its constitution and political process, nurtured by the US and UK, has spawned a kleptocracy of warlords, charlatans, and merchants of religion. Yes, al-Qaida is a presence. But the sectarian political parties that mushroomed after the invasion are also fighting each other, killing thousands of civilians in the process."

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NY Times

U.S. Sends Arms to Aid Iraq Fight With Extremists

Mahmoud Al-Samarrai/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Iraqis gathered in Tikrit on Tuesday to pray over journalists killed in an attack claimed by a Qaeda-affiliated group.

By MICHAEL R. GORDON and ERIC SCHMITT

Published: December 25, 2013 499 Comments

WASHINGTON — The United States is quietly rushing dozens of Hellfire missiles and low-tech surveillance drones to Iraq to help government forces combat an explosion of violence by a Qaeda-backed insurgency that is gaining territory in both western Iraq and neighboring Syria.

The move follows an appeal for help in battling the extremist group by the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who met with President Obama in Washington last month.

But some military experts question whether the patchwork response will be sufficient to reverse the sharp downturn in security that already led to the deaths of more than 8,000 Iraqis this year, 952 of them Iraqi security force members, according to the United Nations, the highest level of violence since 2008.

Al Qaeda’s regional affiliate, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, has become a potent force in northern and western Iraq. Riding in armed convoys, the group has intimidated towns, assassinated local officials, and in an episode last week, used suicide bombers and hidden explosives to kill the commander of the Iraqi Army’s Seventh Division and more than a dozen of his officers and soldiers as they raided a Qaeda training camp near Rutbah.

Bombings on Christmas in Christian areas of Baghdad, which killed more than two dozen people, bore the hallmarks of a Qaeda operation.

The surge in violence stands in sharp contrast to earlier assurances from senior Obama administration officials that Iraq was on the right path, despite the failure of American and Iraqi officials in 2011 to negotiate an agreement for a limited number of United States forces to remain in Iraq.

In a March 2012 speech, Antony J. Blinken, who is currently Mr. Obama’s deputy national security adviser, asserted that “Iraq today is less violent” than “at any time in recent history.”

In contrast, after a recent spate of especially violent attacks against Iraqi forces, elected officials and civilians, Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, issued a strongly worded statement on Sunday warning that the Qaeda affiliate is “seeking to gain control of territory inside the borders of Iraq.”

Pledging to take steps to strengthen Iraqi forces, Ms. Psaki noted that the Qaeda affiliate was a “common enemy of the United States and the Republic of Iraq, and a threat to the greater Middle East region.”

But the counterterrorism effort the United States is undertaking with Iraq has its limits.

Iraq’s foreign minister has floated the idea of having American-operated, armed Predator or Reaper drones respond to the expanding militant network. But Mr. Maliki, who is positioning himself to run for a third term as prime minister and who is sensitive to nationalist sentiment at home, has not formally requested such intervention.

The idea of carrying out such drone attacks, which might prompt the question of whether the Obama administration succeeded in bringing the Iraq war to what the president has called a “responsible end,” also appears to have no support in the White House.

“We have not received a formal request for U.S.-operated armed drones operating over Iraq, nor are we planning to divert armed I.S.R. over Iraq,” said Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, referring to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions. For now, the new lethal aid from the United States, which Iraq is buying, includes a shipment of 75 Hellfire missiles, delivered to Iraq last week. The weapons are strapped beneath the wings of small Cessna turboprop planes, and fired at militant camps with the C.I.A. secretly providing targeting assistance.

In addition, 10 ScanEagle reconnaissance drones are expected to be delivered to Iraq by March. They are smaller cousins of the larger, more capable Predators that used to fly over Iraq.

American intelligence and counterterrorism officials say they have effectively mapped the locations and origins of the Qaeda network in Iraq and are sharing this information with the Iraqis.

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Thursday, December 26, 2013