US pledges ‘intense and sustained’ support for Iraq
Kerry pledges ‘intense and sustained’ support
BAGHDAD—Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday promised “intense and sustained” US support for Iraq, as two initial teams of American commandos began to take up advisory posts in the divided country.
Hours before Kerry arrived in Baghdad, Sunni tribes who have joined a militant takeover of northern Iraq seized the only legal crossing point with Jordan, security sources said, leaving troops with no presence along the entire western frontier which includes some of the Middle East’s most important trade routes.
Kerry said “Iraq faces an existential threat and Iraq’s leaders have to beat that threat with the incredible urgency that it demands. The very future of Iraq depends on choices that will be made in the next days and weeks.”
Two teams of special forces are already in Iraq and could begin their assessments later this week. Four more teams are expected to join them soon. Each team, including the green berets or US Army special forces, is made up of about a dozen members.
US forces have begun arriving in Iraq after the United States and Baghdad reached an agreement on legal immunity for American commandos de- ploying into Iraq to assess and advise Iraqi forces.
Rear Adm. John Kirby said on Monday that Iraq outlined acceptable legal assurances for the short-term mission in a diplomatic note ensuring that troops will not be subject to Iraq’s judicial process. Instead, if there are any problems, troops would be adjudicated under the US Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Held off request
US President Barack Obama has offered up to 300 American advisers to Iraq but held off granting a request by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s Shiite Muslim-led government for air strikes to counter the two-week advance by Sunni militants.
Officials have meanwhile called for Iraqis to form an inclusive government. The insurgency has been fueled largely by a sense of marginalization and persecution among Iraq’s Sunnis.
“The support will be intense and sustained and if Iraq’s leaders take the necessary steps to bring the country together, it will be effective,” Kerry told reporters in Baghdad.
He said Maliki had “on multiple occasions affirmed his commitment to July 1” as the date to start the formation of a new government bringing in more Sunnis and Kurds to share power, a move Washington is keen to see.
Iraqi and Jordanian security sources said tribal leaders were negotiating to hand the Turabil desert border post to Sunni Islamists from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant who took two main crossings with Syria in recent days and have pushed Iraqi government forces back toward Baghdad.
Iraq state television said late on Monday that the Army had recaptured both the crossing with Jordan and the al-Waleed crossing with Syria. Reuters could not independently confirm reports due to security restrictions.
Ethnic Kurdish forces control a third border post with Syria in the north, leaving government troops with no presence along Iraq’s 800-kilometer western border.
For the insurgents, capturing the frontier is a dramatic step towards the goal of erasing the modern border altogether and building a caliphate across swaths of Syria and Iraq.