Shoura: An Experiment in Reconciliation - Voice of America Documentary

When you ask children of Islamic State militants what they remember about their fathers, they don’t talk about crimes or extremism. Usually they remember things like outings for ice cream, or when their dads played with them.

Now, their fathers are all in hiding, in jail or dead. Tens of thousands of children in Iraq and Syria are growing up in desolate camps, often stigmatized as the children of terrorists. This isolation could breed radicalism and the next generation of extremist militants. It is also a humanitarian crisis, with women and children who committed no crimes now perpetually homeless, impoverished and entirely dependent on aid organizations and the state for survival.

But in Shoura, they say, it doesn’t have to be this way…

Watch the VOA documentary here.

UPDATE - US Official: 3 Members of Coalition Forces Hurt in Rocket Attack Near Baghdad

Edward Yeranian - Voice of America

A U.S. military spokesman said a fresh round of rockets hit an Iraqi base Saturday where U.S.-led coalition forces were located, wounding three members of the coalition and two Iraqi troops.

The nationalities of the wounded coalition members were not immediately disclosed.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack.

A coalition spokesman said at least 25 Katyusha rockets were fired at the Camp Taji airbase north of Baghdad.

Iraqi media put the figure at 33 rockets from seven launchpads, saying that 23 rockets did not explode.

The attack was the second on U.S. coalition forces at Camp Taji since Wednesday. It followed U.S. retaliation Friday on Iraqi targets, including several Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi (PMF) bases — one mostly a Shiite police base — and a Karbala airbase under construction.

Arab media said Iraqi security forces arrested the owner of the lot from which the rockets were fired into Camp Taji, along with Iraqi forces at a nearby checkpoint, who saw the attack. Iraq's Joint Operations Command said personnel were still searching for the perpetrators.

U.S. withdrawal sought

Iraqi TV reported that the Iraqi army was asking the U.S. to withdraw its forces from the country in line with an Iraqi parliament vote in January. A second, formal vote by parliament, however, was never conducted amid the country's political confusion. Sunni and Kurdish members of parliament reportedly opposed the vote because of Iran's influence on the country's Shiite Hashd militia forces.

Funerals were held Saturday in Baghdad and Karbala for victims of the U.S. retaliatory airstrikes Friday.  Five Iraqi militiamen and soldiers and one civilian were killed in those strikes.

Iraqi President Barham Salih issued a statement condemning Friday's U.S. strikes, calling them an "infringement on Iraqi sovereignty" and blaming the U.S. for "destroying Iraqi infrastructure and killing Iraqi forces."

Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Ali Hakim summoned both the U.S. and British ambassadors Saturday to protest the Friday attack on Iraqi targets.  Iran's Foreign Ministry summoned the Swiss ambassador, who represents U.S. interests, to protest the U.S. attack, in which one Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander reportedly was killed.

Iraqi analyst Oussama Saidi told state TV that relations between Washington and Baghdad "are currently a mess," and he said U.S. President Donald Trump was "not pleased by what's going on in Iraq because of U.S. elections in November."

Proxy Warfare on the Roof of the World: Great Power Competition Lessons from Tibet by Major Steve Ferenzi - InterAgency Journal Vol. 11, No. 1, 2020 

Synopsis: A sponsor may disrupt or coerce an adversary with only a small investment in a proxy force without crossing the threshold to traditional armed conflict. Proxy employment represented a significant component of U.S. policy during the Cold War. As the United States once again relies on this tool to compete with peer state adversaries, it is beneficial to examine past engagements that may inform better ways to outsource national security objectives to proxy forces. Central Intelligence Agency support to anti-Chinese resistance forces in Tibet, the “Roof of the World,” from 1956 to 1974 accomplished the limited objective of disrupting Chinese regional ambitions as part of the global effort to contain Communist expansion. However, success came at the expense of Tibetan casualties and failure to achieve the resistance’s objective of an independent Tibet. This case study offers lessons for future proxy engagements in establishing mechanisms that facilitate proper proxy selection, mitigate deviation from sponsor goals, and optimize proxy capabilities.

Read the full article.