IRAQ| Kurds push attack in north as Maliki clings to power

Airport employees unloading humanitarian freight from a French Air Force plane at Erbil airport in Iraqi Kurdistan

Kurdish forces fought to retake positions overrun by Islamic State fighters in northern Iraq last week as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki tried to cling to power with his international backing crumbling.
Kurdish peshmerga troops engaged militants near the town of Sinjar, Nineveh provincial council member Hisham al-Brefkani said by phone from Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish region. The push came as France said it would supply the Kurdish forces and the U.S., which is already carrying out surveillance and attack missions, sent another 130 military advisers to Iraq.
Even as his support vanished, Maliki denounced President Fouad Masoum’s naming of Haidar al-Abadi to replace him as prime minister as unconstitutional. The political standoff between Masoum and Maliki following inconclusive elections has exacerbated a power vacuum and hindered efforts to counter Islamic State militants who in June swept out to seize parts of Syria and Iraq.
“This government will continue and will not be changed until a federal court decision is made,” Maliki said in a television address yesterday. “Things are not that simple.”
The Kurds’ objectives include the strategic Mosul dam, Iraq’s largest, Brefkani said. The European Union, the Arab League, and countries including Egypt and Saudi Arabia have backed Abadi’s nomination.
Almost all of the tens of thousands of people belonging to the Yezidi religious minority who had become trapped in the mountains near Sinjar as they fled the militants’ advance have been evacuated to safety, he said.
In Baghdad, Abadi moved ahead with efforts to form a new cabinet, state-sponsored Al-Iraqiya TV reported, citing a statement from his office.
President Barack Obama has tied expanded U.S. action to the formation of a more inclusive government capable of easing sectarian and ethnic divisions.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said yesterday that 130 U.S. Marine and Special Forces military advisers had arrived in Erbil to help assess conditions.
“This is not a combat, boots-on-the-ground operation,” Hagel said in addressing troops at Camp Pendleton in San Diego. Bloomberg

Gregory Viscusi and
Ladane Nasseri