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After six years of civil war, Syria remains the bloodiest battlefield on the planet. But theres one other conflict zone whose violence in recent years has come to eclipse both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the bloodshed is right on Americas doorstep.

Thanks to the rising tide of cartel violence, Mexico surpassed Iraq and Afghanistan to become the worlds second-deadliest war zone in 2016, according to the annual Armed Conflict Survey by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The reign of terror wrought upon innocent civilians by Mexicos drug cartels accounted for 23,000 fatalities in 2016, according to IISSs study of ongoing conflicts around the world. Thats compared with around 16,000 deaths in Iraq and 17,000 in Afghanistan. (All three pale in comparison to the sixth year of the Syrian civil war, which took more than 50,000 lives last year.)

The rise of cartel violence in Mexico isnt surprising: Bloodied bodies turn up on the local news on a seemingly regular basis, usually as a warning to journalists and law enforcement to keep their distance.

But compared with the conflict zones in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, Mexico is a bit of an outlier in one key respect. Bloomberg reports:

Mexico is a conflict marked by the absence of artillery, tanks or combat aviation, IISS director general John Chipman said in remarks at the surveys launch in London on Tuesday. Virtually all of those deaths were caused by small arms.

The largest number of fatalities occurred in Mexican states that have become key battlegrounds for control between competing, increasingly fragmented cartels, he said, with violence flaring as gangs try to clear areas of rivals so they can monopolize drug trafficking routes.

According to the Department of State, at least 163 Americans were killed in Mexico between December 2014 and December 2016 thats only including deaths that State officially classified as homicides.

Since December, the State Department has maintained a travel warning for travelers to Mexico, stating that gun battles between rival criminal organizations or with Mexican authorities have taken place on streets and in public places during broad daylight, while U.S. citizens have been the victims of violent crimes, including homicide, kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery in various Mexican states.

The irony, of course, is that the conflict raging just below Americas southern border often spills over onto American soil.

And thats not just because of heroin, which killed more Americans than guns in 2015: According to the Drug Enforcement Agencys 2016 National Drug Threat Assessment, Mexican cartels work with smaller local criminal groups and gangs across the United States for retail drug distribution and transportation in major cities like Chicago, Boston, and Washington.

Though the cartels U.S. associates generally refrain from inter-cartel violence that accounts for the high fatality rate in 2016 to avoid police scrutiny, its their ambitions and vendettas that are increasingly accounting for growing gang violence across the U.S., according to the DEA.

Its no surprise that the cartels have turned our southern neighbor into a battlefield on par with Iraq and Afghanistan. But the problem Mexico poses for the U.S. is similar to that posed by our faraway battlefields: What can America do to stop the violence, much less prevent its spread domestically?

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Mexico Surpasses Afghanistan and Iraq As The World's Second-Deadliest Conflict Zone - Task & Purpose

For once I wished a play had been longer Henry Lloyd-Hughes as Rory Stewart in Occupational Hazards. Photograph: Marc Brenner

There have been plays, such as David Hares Stuff Happens, that examined the causes of western intervention in Iraq. Stephen Browns adaptation of Rory Stewarts 2006 memoir of his time as a provincial governor in post-Saddam Iraq is one of the first to look at the actual consequences. The result is instructive, enlightening and very well staged by Simon Godwin but, at 105 minutes, it leaves too little time to pursue the questions that it raises. For once, I wished a play had been much longer.

Stewart currently seeking re-election as a Tory MP is the pivotal figure of the story. Having been a diplomat and foot-slogging explorer of the Middle East, he volunteers his services to the newly created Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad in 2003.He is deputed by its chief, Paul Bremer, to go to the south to Maysan and help create a modern, secular Iraq. The play charts his attempts to impose a democratic structure on the provinces hostile factions.

At one point, Stewart complains of being bombarded with a torrent of information and the audience is in much the same position. To be fair, Brown does a decent job of untangling the complex threads of a chaotic situation. Stewart first has to face the demands for jobs, electricity and wages for the police. His prime task, however, is to create a council that will reconcile the followers of a tribal sheikh, Karim Mahood, and a radical Islamist cleric, Seyyed Hassan. In the short term, he succeeds and even creates elections for the post of a locally appointed governor. What is achieved in the long term is open to debate.

Such is the helter-skelter rush of events, however, that there is no time to air the big issues. Can democracy be created by outside agencies? Do occupying forces inflame an already tense situation? What moral authority does the west have for nation-building? I appreciate that Stewart, in the heat of the moment, had little opportunity for abstract speculation. But, while Browns play effectively recreates the nightmarish conflicts Stewart faced, it would make better drama if it viewed his story in a wider historical perspective. It tells us what happened. It doesnt explore its larger political significance.

Godwins production, however, has a hurtling energy and makes good use of the auditorium to confirm Stewarts point that politics in Iraq is often a form of theatre. Henry Lloyd-Hughes admirably captures Stewarts youthful mix he was only 30 at the time of outward confidence and inner uncertainty. There is strong support from Silas Carson as the lordly Karim and Johndeep More as his clerical antagonist, and from Vincent Ebrahim as a harassed professor and Aiysha Hart as his progressive daughter seeking to improve the lot of Iraqi women. The play heightens our awareness of the hazards of foreign occupation, but drama ultimately depends on the conflict of ideas as much as the recreation of actual events.

Occupational Hazards is at Hampstead theatre, London, until 3 June. Box office: 020-7722 9301.

Link:
Occupational Hazards review headlong rush through Rory ... - The Guardian

Iraqs northern city of Kirkuk becomes a disputed area as the local provincial council decides to conduct a referendum on its status.

Photo by: AFP

The Kurdish Regional Government flag (L) and the Iraqi flag (R) being raised over a government building in Kirkuk, Iraq, March 28, 2017.

The dual flags of Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) wave across Kirkuk, symbolising a larger struggle overcontrol ofthe oil-rich city.

Kirkuk has been a political flashpointin Iraq for decades.

At least four minority groups Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, and Turkmenlive there.

But the KRG has been arguing with Baghdads central government over control of the city. They say they earned that right after the Kurdish Peshmerga pushed Daesh out of the city in 2014.

"We think this flag should wave and stay here, we have shed our blood for Kirkuk for years. We have martyrs, we protected our city from Daesh, we resisted them," said Ahmet Sabir.

Iraqi Turkmen Front Deputy Chairman and MP for KirkukprovinceHasan Turan said, "By waving the flag of northern Iraq, Kurdish parties are trying to give Kirkuk a different identity. We can never accept this."

Human Rights Watch last year accusedthe KRG of forcing Sunni Arab families to leave the city. It is an accusation that the KRG denies.

TRT Worlds Zeina Awad explains tensions in Kirkuk.

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The politics of Kirkuk is a thorny problem for Iraq - TRT World

SOUTHWEST ASIA, May 9, 2017 U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria yesterday, conducting 27 strikes consisting of 84 engagements, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

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

Strikes in Syria

In Syria, coalition military forces conducted 16 strikes consisting of 20 engagements against ISIS targets:

-- Near Abu Kamal, a strike destroyed an ISIS oil rig.

-- Near Dayr Az Zawr, four strikes engaged an ISIS tactical unit; destroyed four ISIS oil tankers and an ISIS wellhead.

-- Near Raqqa, three strikes engaged an ISIS tactical unit; destroyed five weapon storage caches and an ISIS barge.

-- Near Tabqah, eight strikes engaged seven ISIS tactical units and destroyed five fighting positions.

Additionally, two strikes were conducted on May 7 that closed within the last 24 hours:

-- Near Tabqah, two strikes engaged two ISIS tactical units and destroyed a fighting position.

Strikes in Iraq

In Iraq, coalition military forces conducted 11 strikes consisting of 64 engagements against ISIS targets:

-- Near Huwayjah, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed two ISIS-held buildings.

-- Near Mosul, six strikes engaged five ISIS tactical units and a sniper; destroyed 12 fighting positions, seven rocket-propelled grenade systems, four medium machine guns, three mortar systems, two vehicle bomb facilitation areas, two front-end loaders, a sniper position, a weapons cache, an improvised explosive device facility, a roadblock and a vehicle bomb; damaged 13 ISIS supply routes and three fighting positions; and suppressed a mortar position.

-- Near Rutbah, two strikes destroyed a bunker and a vehicle bomb facility.

-- Near Sinjar, a strike destroyed a weapons cache.

-- Near Tal Afar, a strike destroyed a vehicle bomb factory.

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.

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

COLUMBUS, Ga. A pair of doctors from Columbus traveled to Iraq on a medical mission earlier this year. What made it even more special, the doctors are father and son.

Its not often that you get to hear a presentation from a pair of doctors who are father and son. Folks at St. Francis Hospital got such a treat last week.

When Orthopedic Surgeon Lee McCluskey and his son, Dr. Leland McCluskey, Jr. Talked about their recent medical mission trip to Iraq. They left in late January and spent over two weeks in war-torn city of Mosul. Thats where the Christian-based organization Samaritans purse has a field hospital.

Samaritans Purse has been in country in Iraq for several years doing food distribution and other ministries. But the medical ministry came as a result of the fighting in Mosul, says Dr. Leland McCluskey.

The McCluskeys thought they would be treating military patients, but that wasnt the case.

Most of them were women and children, citizens that were in Mosul and were injured either as human shields or were just injured from mortar wounds where ISIS had targeted that group of people, says Dr. Lee McCluskey.

Lee says the experience opened up the door to friendship.

We had some really sweet times just being able to interact with the patients and people we worked with over there. It was just a big opportunity to really show Gods love to people, saysDr. Lee McCluskey.

The McCluskeys have been back now for about three months, and its given them time to reflect.

It changed me in that Im much more grateful for just how safe we are here in the U.S. We dont have to drive down the road and worry about an IED going off or a mortar hitting our house, saysDr. Leland McCluskey.

Leland says the chance to go on this mission trip with his dad was one hell cherish the rest of his life.

Dad has been a better example than I could ever imagine. Hes not to mention a great orthopedic surgeon, but as a father and a Christian hes a great mentor to me as well. So I know I have big shoes to fill. I would like to continue to do the same work that he is doing overseas when Im done with my training, saysDr. Leland McCluskey.

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Columbus doctor and son travel to treat patients in Iraq - WRBL