VP offers Kurds reassurances in Iraq

Surprise visit by Pence on day of anti-IS effort

IRBIL, Iraq — Vice President Mike Pence worked to reassure the United States’ Kurdish allies in an unannounced trip to Iraq on Saturday, the highest-level American trip since President Donald Trump ordered a pullback of U.S. forces in Syria two months ago.

Flying in a C-17 military cargo aircraft, Pence landed in Irbil, capital of Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region, to meet with Iraqi Kurdistan President Nechirvan Barzani.

The visit was meant to hearten regional partners in the fight against the Islamic State group after the U.S. pulled troops from northern Syria, leaving Kurdish allies there to face a bloody cross-border Turkish assault last month.

Asked by reporters whether the U.S. was facing a sense of betrayal from Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish allies, Pence said both groups, including Syrian Kurdish forces “who fought alongside us,” had no doubts about the U.S. commitment to them.

“It’s unchanging,” Pence said.

Earlier, Pence received a classified briefing at Iraq’s Al Asad Air Base, from which U.S. forces are believed to have launched the operation in Syria last month that resulted in the death of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Also Saturday, the U.S.-led coalition said its forces, along with hundreds of Syrian Kurdish commandos, had jointly carried out the largest operation against IS in eastern Syria since the U.S. pullback began in early October. The operation captured dozens of IS militants, cleared enemy compounds and seized weapons and explosives, the coalition said.

Andrew Harnik The Associated Press Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen Pence, serve turkey Saturday to troops at Al Asad Air Base, Iraq. The visit is Pence’s first to Iraq and comes nearly one year after President Donald Trump’s surprise visit to the country.