By Simon Kent. Finland is set to increase its training and assistance mission to Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces, sending an extra 50 commandos to help the Kurds counter improvised explosive devices and other ISIS tactics. The move came amid some debate in the Finnish parliament, but MPs' concerns were assuaged by the fact that the […]
By Simon Kent. US Defense Secretary Ash Carter has met with Gulf Cooperation Council Secretary-General Abdullatif al-Zayani and six of his counterparts from the GCC, to discuss the war against the so called Islamic State in Iraq. The meeting comes ahead of a planned GCC summit this week, which Barack Obama will attend. But underlying the […]
By Simon Kent. As of today, personnel from the German army will be training fighters from the Yazidi ethnic minority in northern Iraq. The Yazidi's (pictured: Yazidi religious symbol) are an ancient religion from Northern Iraq and shot to global attention in June last year, when they became the target of a genocidal attack by the "Islamic State." […]
By Simon Kent. NATO have announced that they are in talks with Iraqi officials to revive a coordinated training mission for Iraqi officers. Previously, NATO was in Iraq during the war against the ISIS predecessor, ISI, the Islamic State of Iraq. At that time, NATO was generally involved with training the Iraqi army in Jordan and […]
By Patrick Schmidt. The British government announced Sunday the dispatch of an official special military envoy to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). General Sir Simon Mayall will assume the title of “Government Security Envoy.” “He will travel to Iraq next week to meet with political leaders in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government in Erbil […]
By John Lee. The New York Times has reported that French President Francois Hollande has endorsed the appointment of Haider al-Abadi as Iraq's new PM, and with Baghdad's approval France is now ready to send arms to Kurdish forces. The move comes after the Kurdish President Massoud Barzani remarked that the Peshmerga were not sufficiently […]
By Hassan al Najm for Al-Monitor. Any opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Iraq Business News. Lt. Gen. Michael Bednarek, chief of the US Office of Security Cooperation-Iraq, said that the Iraqi government and armed forces are working on countering terrorism in cooperation with the United […]
