New KRG Representative to United States

New KRG Representative to United States



Tuesday, 06 January, 2015




Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman yesterday began her mission as the Representative to the United States of America.

Minister Falah Mustafa Bakir, Head of the Department of Foreign Relations, met with Ms Abdul Rahman and the staff of the Kurdistan Regional Government Representation in Washington DC to officially declare her as the new representative and to discuss the team’s plan for 2015.

‎The Minister and Ms Abdul Rahman also met Lukman Faily, Iraq’s Ambassador in Washington, and held a meeting with the KRG’s advisors and consultants.

At the meeting with the Representation staff, Minister ‎Bakir congratulated Ms Abdul Rahman on her new post and reiterated the significance of Kurdistan’s relations with the United States.

He said, ‘This representation is a critical post and our relationship with America is important for many reasons. We will continue to strengthen our long-term, strategic partnership with the United States in all areas and fields.’

‎The Minister thanked the Representation team for its work in maintaining good ties with the US Administration, Congress, the think tank and business communities, as well as the Kurdistani diaspora. He highlighted the role of Qubad Talabani, who was KRG Representative to the United States before taking the post of Deputy Prime Minister.

Ms Abdul Rahman echoed the Minister’s sentiments and said, ‘It is an honour to be appointed to this post. The job is made easier by knowing there is a good team already in place. I look forward to working together to bring the people of Kurdistan and America closer to each other.’

‎At the Iraqi Embassy, Ambassador Faily welcomed Minister Bakir and Ms Abdul Rahman where he expressed his willingness to work and cooperate with the Representative. The Ambassador, Minister and Representative discussed the cooperation between Erbil and Baghdad on issues such as the peshmerga, the budget and oil exports. They also discussed relations with the United States.

The United States has provided critical military and humanitarian assistance to Iraq and Kurdistan. The peshmerga forces, backed by air strikes by the US and its coalition partners, have retaken much of the territory lost to ISIL terrorists in the summer. The Kurdistan Region received 950,000 displaced Yezidis, Christians and other fellow Iraqis in 2014 alone, in addition to the 1million people who have fled Syria and the violence in other parts of Iraq since 2003.

Minister Bakir and Representative Abdul Rahman will meet US Administration officials, members of Congress and the media this week.

Ms Abdul Rahman assumed the role of Representative to the United States as of January 1, after 10 years as the KRG High Representative to the UK. Previously she had worked as a journalist for 17 years at several British newspapers, including the Financial Times.

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U.S. Forces, Returning to Iraq, Unearth the Things Their Brethren Carried





07iraq-articleLarge-v3.jpg
American military personnel, recently deployed to Iraq, found remnants of the previous United States military presence, mostly untouched since their comrades left Camp Taji three years earlier. Credit Ayman Oghanna for The New York Times



CAMP TAJI, Iraq — The calendar on the wall reads November 2011.

On the ground is a half-filled tin of Copenhagen smokeless tobacco. Scattered here and there are bottles of Gatorade, cans of Rip It energy drinks, poker chips, Monopoly money and razor blades.

Stenciled on a wall is a punchy soldier’s slogan: “I will always place the mission first. I will never accept defeat.” Taped on another is a note of encouragement from a Boy Scout troop back home: “You are our hero and your commitment to freedom is honorable.”

There is even a jar of salsa still in the fridge.

When the American troops left Iraq three years ago, they left behind a fragile country that collapsed into civil war. They also left behind the detritus of soldiers’ lives that, in the ensuing years, was left untouched, frozen in time.

Now that American forces, in much smaller numbers, are returning to help the Iraqis confront the extremists of the Islamic State, they have found themselves reoccupying some of their old places. And they are excavating what feels like a slowly decaying time capsule as they discover the things they left behind.

When the Americans left, they turned over their bases to the Iraqis. But here at Taji, aside from some buildings that were clearly ransacked and probably looted of anything valuable, many of the spaces, now covered in a thick coat of dust, were left alone.

One soldier said he found pinups from Maxim, a men’s magazine, still on the walls. And the last copies of Stars and Stripes, the armed forces newspaper, delivered just before the American departure, are still scattered about the floor of one of the bathrooms. The score from an NFL playoff game in 2011, now considered a classic upset, is painted across an awning: Saints 36, Seahawks 41.

At Taji, about 20 miles north of Baghdad and once home to a sprawling American air base, even the street signs the Americans posted are still up. Separating a patch of housing units from the cavernous aircraft hangars is the corner of Longhorn Avenue and 46th Street.

Laith al-Khadi works on the base at a convenience store stocked with the necessities of a soldier’s life: energy drinks, Cuban cigars, DVDs and many other things. He is happy to see the Americans back and, to accommodate them, is trying to find a stock of Copenhagen. “It’s good for us,” he said. “Sales are booming.”

So far, the Americans have taken up residence at two of their old hubs, here and at Al Asad Air Base in Anbar Province. The Army is here, and the Marines are in Anbar. It is a tiny footprint compared with the past — about 180 soldiers here, and an additional 200 or so military personnel in Anbar.

For weeks, before starting their training programs with new Iraqi recruits, Marines and soldiers have had to refurbish their areas of the bases, filling sandbags, fortifying perimeters and getting the electricity working.

One Marine major in Anbar, who has been in Iraq before and had just returned from Afghanistan in September when he was ordered back to Iraq, said it was “eerie” and “spooky” to return. Another said the place looked like “a train wreck.”

First Lt. Nolan Gore, a Marine from Texas who has been busy setting up the camp in Anbar, said that when he arrived, the place looked “apocalyptic.” Then he thought about it and said it actually looked “post-apocalyptic.”

When the Marines are attacked by rockets or mortar rounds — as they are frequently, but so far with no casualties — they often can pinpoint the source of the fire, send the information up the chain and then watch on a screen in their headquarters as the attackers are taken out by airstrikes.

The Marine major, who spoke anonymously because he was worried that identifying him could put his family at risk of an attack by ISIS, said he had been trying to explain to the Iraqis, “We are not going to come in this country and clear it out again.”
Many, but not all, of the troops who have come back to Iraq have been here before, sometimes multiple times. The mission is different this time — not to fight, but to train units of Iraqis to do the fighting themselves.

Many of them feel that for the Iraqis to be most effective against the Islamic State, they should have American advisers accompany them closer to the front lines to at least help pinpoint targets for airstrikes. President Obama has so far resisted that step.

On a tabletop at the headquarters building here at Taji is a copy of a recent issue of Foreign Affairs, its headline, “What Have We Learned? Lessons From Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Inside, highlighted in green ink, are several passages.

“The United States also needs to cultivate better strategic thinkers in both the military and the civilian spheres,” is one.

“Plan for what comes after the overthrow of a regime,” is another. Still another: “Challenge rosy assumptions during the course of a conflict.”

Command Sgt. Maj. Robert Keith of the Army is here for his fifth deployment. Watching the news last year about the gains of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, across Iraq he had a feeling he would wind up back here.

His family had mixed reactions to his deployment orders.

“I don’t think my wife was surprised,” he said. “She’s been with me awhile; she’s a strong woman.”

His father had a different take.

“My dad was just like, F this,” he said.

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U.S. Forces, Returning to Iraq, Unearth the Things Their Brethren Carried





07iraq-articleLarge-v3.jpg
American military personnel, recently deployed to Iraq, found remnants of the previous United States military presence, mostly untouched since their comrades left Camp Taji three years earlier. Credit Ayman Oghanna for The New York Times



CAMP TAJI, Iraq — The calendar on the wall reads November 2011.

On the ground is a half-filled tin of Copenhagen smokeless tobacco. Scattered here and there are bottles of Gatorade, cans of Rip It energy drinks, poker chips, Monopoly money and razor blades.

Stenciled on a wall is a punchy soldier’s slogan: “I will always place the mission first. I will never accept defeat.” Taped on another is a note of encouragement from a Boy Scout troop back home: “You are our hero and your commitment to freedom is honorable.”

There is even a jar of salsa still in the fridge.

When the American troops left Iraq three years ago, they left behind a fragile country that collapsed into civil war. They also left behind the detritus of soldiers’ lives that, in the ensuing years, was left untouched, frozen in time.

Now that American forces, in much smaller numbers, are returning to help the Iraqis confront the extremists of the Islamic State, they have found themselves reoccupying some of their old places. And they are excavating what feels like a slowly decaying time capsule as they discover the things they left behind.

When the Americans left, they turned over their bases to the Iraqis. But here at Taji, aside from some buildings that were clearly ransacked and probably looted of anything valuable, many of the spaces, now covered in a thick coat of dust, were left alone.

One soldier said he found pinups from Maxim, a men’s magazine, still on the walls. And the last copies of Stars and Stripes, the armed forces newspaper, delivered just before the American departure, are still scattered about the floor of one of the bathrooms. The score from an NFL playoff game in 2011, now considered a classic upset, is painted across an awning: Saints 36, Seahawks 41.

At Taji, about 20 miles north of Baghdad and once home to a sprawling American air base, even the street signs the Americans posted are still up. Separating a patch of housing units from the cavernous aircraft hangars is the corner of Longhorn Avenue and 46th Street.

Laith al-Khadi works on the base at a convenience store stocked with the necessities of a soldier’s life: energy drinks, Cuban cigars, DVDs and many other things. He is happy to see the Americans back and, to accommodate them, is trying to find a stock of Copenhagen. “It’s good for us,” he said. “Sales are booming.”

So far, the Americans have taken up residence at two of their old hubs, here and at Al Asad Air Base in Anbar Province. The Army is here, and the Marines are in Anbar. It is a tiny footprint compared with the past — about 180 soldiers here, and an additional 200 or so military personnel in Anbar.

For weeks, before starting their training programs with new Iraqi recruits, Marines and soldiers have had to refurbish their areas of the bases, filling sandbags, fortifying perimeters and getting the electricity working.

One Marine major in Anbar, who has been in Iraq before and had just returned from Afghanistan in September when he was ordered back to Iraq, said it was “eerie” and “spooky” to return. Another said the place looked like “a train wreck.”

First Lt. Nolan Gore, a Marine from Texas who has been busy setting up the camp in Anbar, said that when he arrived, the place looked “apocalyptic.” Then he thought about it and said it actually looked “post-apocalyptic.”

When the Marines are attacked by rockets or mortar rounds — as they are frequently, but so far with no casualties — they often can pinpoint the source of the fire, send the information up the chain and then watch on a screen in their headquarters as the attackers are taken out by airstrikes.

The Marine major, who spoke anonymously because he was worried that identifying him could put his family at risk of an attack by ISIS, said he had been trying to explain to the Iraqis, “We are not going to come in this country and clear it out again.”
Many, but not all, of the troops who have come back to Iraq have been here before, sometimes multiple times. The mission is different this time — not to fight, but to train units of Iraqis to do the fighting themselves.

Many of them feel that for the Iraqis to be most effective against the Islamic State, they should have American advisers accompany them closer to the front lines to at least help pinpoint targets for airstrikes. President Obama has so far resisted that step.

On a tabletop at the headquarters building here at Taji is a copy of a recent issue of Foreign Affairs, its headline, “What Have We Learned? Lessons From Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Inside, highlighted in green ink, are several passages.

“The United States also needs to cultivate better strategic thinkers in both the military and the civilian spheres,” is one.

“Plan for what comes after the overthrow of a regime,” is another. Still another: “Challenge rosy assumptions during the course of a conflict.”

Command Sgt. Maj. Robert Keith of the Army is here for his fifth deployment. Watching the news last year about the gains of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, across Iraq he had a feeling he would wind up back here.

His family had mixed reactions to his deployment orders.

“I don’t think my wife was surprised,” he said. “She’s been with me awhile; she’s a strong woman.”

His father had a different take.

“My dad was just like, F this,” he said.

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