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The overwhelming majority of Iraqi Kurds want an independent state.

Next month, on September 25, the Kurdistan Regional Government in Erbil will hold a binding referendum on whether or not to secede from Iraq. It will almost certainly pass. More than a decade ago, the Kurds held a non-binding referendum that passed with 99.8 percent of the vote.

No one knows what's going to happen. Iraq is the kind of place where just about anything can happen and eventually does.

Kurdish secession could go as smoothly as a Scottish secession from the United Kingdom (were that to actually happen) or a Quebecois secession from Canada, were that to actually happen. It could unfold like Kosovo's secession from Serbia, where some countries recognize it and others don't while the Serbs are left to stew in their own juices more or less peaceably.

This is a serious business, though, because Iraq is not Britain, and it is not Canada. And there's a potential flashpoint that travelers to the region would be well advised to stay away from for a while.

Shortly after ISIS invaded Iraq from Syria in 2014, the Kurdistan Regional Government effectively annexed the oil-rich governorate of Kirkuk. Ethnic Kurds made up a plurality of the population, with sizeable Arab and Turkmen minorities, before Saddam Hussein's Arabization program in the 1990s temporarily created an artificial Arab majority.

Since then, Kurds have been returning to the city en masse while many Arabs, most of whom had no history in the region before Saddam put them there, have left. No one really knows what the demographics look like now.

It's a tinderbox regardless of the actual headcount. Some of the Arabs who still live there could mount a rebellion at some point, either immediately or down the road. If they do, they might engage in the regional sport of finagling financial and even military backing from neighboring countries.

Then again, Arabs have been trickling north into the Kurdistan region for years because it's peaceful and quiet and civilized. It's the one part of Iraq that, despite the local government's corruption and inability to live up to the democratic norms it claims to espouse, works remarkably well.

I've been to Iraqi Kurdistan a number of times. It's safer than Kansas. My only real complaint is that it gets a bit boring after a while. If you're coming from Baghdad or Mosul, it's practically Switzerland.

Kurdish graffiti on the walls of an Iraqi army base outside Kirkuk reads, "We will not leave Kirkuk."

Kirkuk Governorate, though, isor at least recently wasanother story. The three "core" Kurdish governoratesDohuk, Erbil, and Suleimaniyahhave been free of armed conflict since the toppling of Saddam Hussein, but Kirkuk was down in the war zone. I went there ten years ago from Suleimaniyah and was only willing to do so under the armed protection of Kurdish police officers. Had I wandered around solo as I did farther north, I would have risked being shot, kidnapped or car-bombed. I still could have been shot or car-bombed alongside the police, but at least kidnapping was (mostly) off the table. The very fact that Kirkuk was a war zone at a time when the Kurdish governorates to the north were not suggests that the Kurds may be swallowing more than they can digest.

Kirkuk has oil, though, while the governorates to the north mostly don't, so of course the Kurds want it. Baghdad, of course, wants to keep it for the same reason. Will Iraq's central government go to war over it? Probably not. Saddam Hussein lost his own war against the Kurds in the north, and he had far more formidable forces at his disposal than Baghdad does now. Still, it's more likely than a war between London and Edinburgh, or between Ottawa and Montreal.

The biggest threat to an independent Iraqi Kurdistan comes not from Baghdad but from Turkey.

The biggest threat to an independent Iraqi Kurdistan comes not from Baghdad but from Turkey. The Turks have been fighting a low-grade counter-insurgency against the armed Kurdish separatists of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) since the 1970s that has killed tens of thousands of people, and they're deathly afraid that a free and independent Kurdish state anywhere in the world will both embolden and assist their internal enemies.

While Turkey is no longer likely to invade Iraqi Kurdistan on general principle if it declares independencea going concern shortly after the overthrow of Saddam Husseinthe Turkish government is making it clear that it is supremely unhappy with the KRG including Kirkuk in its referendum. "What really concerned us," a spokesperson for Turkey's president said in June of this year, "was that Kurdish leaders want to include Kirkuk in this process while according to the Iraqi constitution Kirkuk is an Iraqi city and is not within Kurdish boundaries ... If any attempts will be made to forcefully include Kirkuk in the referendum question, problems will be made for Kirkuk and its surrounding areas."

One can sympathize with Turkey's fears. The Marxist-Leninist Kurdistan Workers Party is, without question, a terrorist organization. Even so, nations have a right to exist even if they are inconvenient to Turkeyespecially considering that Iraq's Kurds are not terrorists.

Iraq's Kurds are America's only reliable allies in the entire country.

Rather than terrorists, Iraq's Kurds are America's only reliable allies in the entire country. They're as pro-American as Texans; they're the only ones who didn't take shots at us during and after the overthrow of Saddam; and they were, for a time anyway, the only ones willing and capable of taking on ISIS directly and winning. They do not align themselves with Iranian-backed militias as the central government in Baghdad does, and they certainly aren't on side with Hezbollah and the Kremlin like the Syrian government. They are as allergic to political Islamism as Americans are. They view it, with some justification, as an alien export from the Arab world.

The Trump administration opposes Kurdistan's bid for independence. It could, says the White House, be "significantly destabilizing." Perhaps. But it's a bit rich for Americans, of all people, to say no to people who want to break away from a country that smothered them beneath a totalitarian regime, waged a genocidal extermination campaign against them, and then convulsed in bloody mayhem for more than a decade.

An independent Iraqi Kurdistan is far more likely to be stable with U.S. backing than without it.

We Americans mounted a revolution for our own independence against a government far more liberal and enlightened than Iraq's. And we support at least the notion of a Palestinian state alongside the Israeli state, the only properly functioning democracy in the entire region, despite the fact that the Palestinians have mounted one terrorist campaign after another for their own independence while the Kurds of Iraq never have.

An independent Iraqi Kurdistan is far more likely to be stable with American backing than without it, but the Kurds are going forward regardless. As Jack Nicholson's character Frank Costello said in Martin Scorsese's scorching film, The Departed, "no one gives it to you. You have to take it."

Michael J. Totten is a contributing editor at The Tower, a Middle East Forum writing fellow, and the author of seven books, including Where the West Ends and Tower of the Sun.

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The Kurds Are About to Blow up Iraq - Middle East Forum

SOUTHWEST ASIA, Aug. 16, 2017 U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria yesterday, conducting 21 strikes consisting of 41 engagements, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of yesterday's strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

In Syria, coalition military forces conducted 12 strikes consisting of 17 engagements against ISIS targets:

-- Near Dayr Az Zawr, a strike destroyed an ISIS wellhead.

-- Near Raqqa, 11 strikes engaged seven ISIS tactical units and destroyed 30 fighting positions, a logistics node and an ISIS unmanned aerial system.

Strikes in Iraq

In Iraq, coalition military forces conducted nine strikes consisting of 24 engagements against ISIS targets:

-- Near Beiji, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed a vehicle.

-- Near Qaim, three strikes destroyed two ISIS staging areas and an ISIS-held building

-- Near Samarra, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit.

-- Near Tal Afar, four strikes engaged two ISIS tactical units and destroyed 13 fighting positions, three ISIS-held buildings, three supply caches, an ISIS training camp and a mortar system.

Previous Strikes

Additionally, 38 strikes consisting of 44 engagements were conducted in Syria and Iraq on Aug. 9-10 and Aug. 14 that closed within the last 24 hours.

-- On Aug. 9, near Dayr Az Zawr, Syria, two strikes destroyed three ISIS oil stills.

-- On Aug. 10, near Dayr Az Zawr, Syria, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed three tunnel entrances and two ISIS-held buildings.

-- On Aug. 14, near Abu Kamal, Syria, a strike destroyed five ISIS oil equipment items.

-- On Aug. 14, near Raqqa, Syria, 32 strikes engaged 20 ISIS tactical units and destroyed 18 fighting positions, three improvised explosive devices, three heavy machine guns, three command-and-control nodes, a logistics node, an anti-aircraft artillery system and an IED factory.

-- On Aug. 14, near Tal Afar, Iraq, a strike suppressed an ISIS tactical unit.

-- On Aug. 14, near Tuz, Iraq, a strike destroyed two ISIS headquarters, a vehicle storage facility, a vehicle, a staging area and a weapons cache.

Part of Operation Inherent Resolve

These strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to destroy ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The destruction of ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria also further limits the group's ability to project terror and conduct external operations throughout the region and the rest of the world, task force officials said.

The list above contains all strikes conducted by fighter, attack, bomber, rotary-wing or remotely piloted aircraft; rocket-propelled artillery; and some ground-based tactical artillery when fired on planned targets, officials noted.

Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike, they added. A strike, as defined by the coalition, refers to one or more kinetic engagements that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single or cumulative effect.

For example, task force officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIS vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against a group of ISIS-held buildings and weapon systems in a compound, having the cumulative effect of making that facility harder or impossible to use. Strike assessments are based on initial reports and may be refined, officials said.

The task force does not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target.

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Strikes Continue Against ISIS Terrorists in Syria, Iraq > U.S. ... - Department of Defense

But that flow stalled suddenly and unexpectedly several weeks ago. At the height of summer, when the weather is generally better, Libyan smugglers typically send waves of migrants to sea every week or so. But since 15 July, there have been no such spikes and migration experts say they do not properly understand why.

Im still trying to explain it, said Mark Micallef, senior research fellow at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, a research organization that documents human trafficking in Libya. If you look at arrival statistics historically, they should be hitting a peak now in July and August, he said. But instead were seeing a dramatic drop.

The dip follows prolonged attempts by Italy to improve the capability of the Libyan Coast Guard and to discourage several nongovernmental organizations from operating migrant rescue boats off the Libyan coast.

Over the past year, Italy and its allies in the European Union have trained over a hundred Libyan Coast Guard officials and supplied them with more boats and resources.

In recent days, the coast guards leadership threatened to attack boats operated by charities like Doctors Without Borders, prompting several of those groups to suspend rescue operations. Italy has also sent naval ships to assist the coast guard in Libyan waters and has made it harder for boats from nongovernmental organizations to operate freely in Italian waters.

There is some speculation that the drop in departures is a result of those measures, but specialists say the truth is more complicated. For instance, the lull began before the rescue boats were forced to suspend operations and before the arrival of the Italian naval ships.

The rate of interceptions of migrant boats by the Libyan Coast Guard has actually fallen since May undermining suggestions that increased activity at sea by the service has caused the slowdown in departures.

A lot has been said about the coast guards, Mr. Micallef said. But, he continued, from where Im standing, something is happening onshore rather than offshore.

Several analysts suggested that the main smuggling networks in Libyan coastal towns such as Sabratha, the main springboard for migrants heading to Italy, may have been persuaded or coerced into suspending their operations.

Mohamed al-Muntasser, a Libyan political analyst, said a new armed group in Sabratha calling itself National Guard, Sabratha Branch, and with links to Libyas internationally recognized government had played a central role in persuading smugglers to stand down.

Some of our forces and our officials have decided that they will tighten the screw a bit either by doing their job or by telling their friends and relatives in the criminal fraternity that they should stop, at least for a little while, Mr. Muntasser said.

One Sabratha-based smuggler, who goes by the name Mourad Zuwara, confirmed in a phone call that local forces had recently forced him to abandon operations in the town, but he did not elaborate.

Other partial explanations include a drop in migrant arrivals to Libya from Niger and a marginal increase in departures from Morocco, which some migrants use as part of an alternative route to Europe.

Whatever the cause, the drop in Libyan departures will probably hearten officials in Rome, who have been trying to find solutions to the migration crisis. But the change alarms rights activists, who fear for the welfare of the thousands of migrants now stuck in Libya, where they are often kept in conditions akin to slavery.

Analysts also cautioned that the lull was unlikely to be permanent, because Libyas many competing militias and smugglers make so much money from the crossings that they will be unwilling to abandon the trade for long.

My biggest question, said Mattia Toaldo, a Libya researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations, is for how long is this going to last?

Follow Patrick Kingsley on Twitter @patrickkingsley.

Elisabetta Povoledo and Jason Horowitz contributed reporting from Rome, and Karam Shoumali from Istanbul.

A version of this article appears in print on August 19, 2017, on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Migrant Flow to Italy Slows, But No One Can Say Why.

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Flow of Migrants to Italy Slows, but Nobody Knows Why - New York Times

The Trump Justice Department is ending an Obama-era program that had attempted to cut off credit to shady businesses but came under fire from Republicans for unfairly targeting gun dealers and other legitimate operations.

Just days after top House Republicans had pressed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to shutter Operation Choke Point, the department confirmed in a response letter that the program is dead.

All of the Departments bank investigations conducted as part of Operation Chokepoint are now over, the initiative is no longer in effect, and it will not be undertaken again, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd said in the Aug. 16-dated letter, calling it a misguided initiative from the prior administration.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and the other GOP lawmakers had written to the DOJ last week asking the administration to formally repudiate the programs guidelines.

Goodlatte and others behind the letter applauded the reversal Friday, saying in a statement: The Obama Administration created this ill-advised program to suffocate legitimate businesses to which it was ideologically opposed by intimidating financial institutions into denying banking services to those businesses. By ending Operation Choke Point, the Trump Justice Department has restored the Departments responsibility to pursue lawbreakers, not legitimate businesses.

The program, launched when Eric Holder was attorney general, attempted to discourage banks from offering financial services tohigh risk customers a list that included short-term lenders and firearms dealers but was accused of hurting legal businesses in those categories.

REPUBLICANS PRESS DOJ TO END OBAMA-ERA PROGRAM

"Operation Choke Point was an Obama Administration initiative that destroyed legitimate businesses to which that Administration was ideologically opposed (e.g., firearms dealers) by intimidating financial institutions into denying banking services to those businesses," the GOP lawmakers wrote last week.

The lawmakers called for formal policy statements from several agencies to end such practices.

Boyds letter to Goodlatte and other lawmakers, obtained by Fox News, seemed to answer their call.

We share your view that law abiding businesses should not be targeted simply for operating in an industry that a particular administration might disfavor, Boyd wrote.

Boyd noted that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation earlier had rescinded its list of supposedly high-risk merchants, and said the Justice Department strongly agrees with that withdrawal.

The letter from Republican members of Congress last week said that list had hurt the ability of some businesses to borrow.

The letter also said Obama administration attorneys, over the course of six months in 2013, issued as many as 60 administrative subpoenas to banks doing business with gun-related entities including payday lenders.

Fox News' Judson Berger contributed to this report.

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Trump DOJ ends Holder-era 'Operation Choke Point' | Fox News - Fox News

By Jason Hancock and Bryan Lowry The Kansas City Star (TNS)

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal was adamant Friday that she isnt resigning over a Facebook post calling for President Donald Trumps assassination.

Chappelle-Nadal, a University City Democrat, has faced calls by Missouris top Democrats and Republicans demanding she resign from the legislature over a comment she posted on her personal Facebook Thursday: I hope Trump is assassinated.

Among those calling for her resignation were the chairman of the Missouri Democratic Party and U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill.

Chappelle-Nadal deleted the comment and said posting it was a mistake. She said she posted the comment out of frustration with Trumps statements about recent events in Charlottesville, Va., where an alleged white supremacist drove his car into a crowd near the citys downtown mall, killing a 32-year-old woman.

But in a series of tweets following the calls from her fellow Democrats to resign, she struck a defiant tone.

I am not resigning, she said. When (people of color) are respected by this (White House) & they are willing to do real work, Ill sit down with them. People are traumatized!

She then retweeted statements of support along with racist comments she began receiving after news broke about her Facebook post. One person sent her a message on Twitter that was just the N-word over and over again from a Twitter account called KillMaria69.

She also tweeted a link to I Stand With Maria website.

Out of anger and frustration, I said something that could have been reframed, she said on the website. And I refuse to shy away from the hypocrisy and chaos our country is enduring under Trump.

But the calls for her resignation grew louder Friday. Joining the chorus late Thursday was House Minority Leader Gail McCann Beatty, a Kansas City Democrat and the highest-ranking black lawmaker in Missouri.

Suggestions of violence have no place in our political discourse, and an elected official who expresses hope for someones murder has forfeited the right to hold office, McCann Beatty said. Given state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadals repugnant social media post suggesting the president should be assassinated, she must resign.

Both Senate President Ron Richard, a Joplin Republican, and Senate Majority Leader Mike Kehoe, a Jefferson City Republican, echoed the call for resignation.

In a time when we should be calling for peace, promoting violence of any kind is unacceptable, and Im asking her to resign from her position, Kehoe said.

Talking with reporters Friday, McCaskill said leaders of the Democratic Party have spoken in one voice against Chappelle-Nadals comments.

Theres nothing we can do to force her to resign, but we can continue to reject that kind of advocation of violence, McCaskill said. Thats the problem we have now.

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Democrat won't resign over assassination post - Asheboro Courier Tribune