01/14/15 – Mitchell Prothero – The Scott Horton Show

Hey, I'm Scott Horton here for the Future of Freedom, the monthly journal of the Future of Freedom Foundation at fff.org slash subscribe.
Since 1989, FFF has been pushing an uncompromising moral and economic case for peace, individual liberty and free markets.
Sign up now for the Future of Freedom, featuring founder and president Jacob Horenberger, as well as Sheldon Richmond, James Bovard, Anthony Gregory, Wendy McElroy and many more.
It's just $25 a year for the print edition, $15 per year to read it online.
That's fff.org slash subscribe.
And tell them Scott sent you.
All right, you guys, welcome back to the thing here.
I'm Scott Horton and it's the show, the Scott Horton Show.
Hey, next up, it's our friend Mitchell Prothero, special correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers reporting out of Erbil, Kurdistan.
Welcome back to the show, Mitch.
How are you doing?
I'm doing okay.
I'm just trying to see if we have a deal.
Okay.
Well, thanks for having me.
Yeah, yeah.
No, I'm very happy to have you back on the show.
So let's talk about the situation up there in Kurdistan.
Please remind me the name of the towns between Erbil and Mosul and what all happened and then explain what all happened with this battle.
What last week now?
Well, it's been, it's been an ongoing situation.
There's two strategic towns that sort of control the approaches to Erbil from Mosul.
You're talking about a pretty small area.
I think Mosul is about a 30, 40 miles away from Erbil.
These are towns stuck in the middle between the two that have basically turned into front lines.
They're called Gwer and Mahmur.
Both of these towns were taken over by the Islamic State in August.
They were quickly retaken with the help of U.S. airstrikes, but it sort of turned into a static front line that on Saturday, the Islamic State pulled a little maneuver where they used basically the fog of a heavy winter storm to smuggle a couple hundred guys across a river in, from what I can tell from my scent compress release, 21 boats because they were later blown up by airstrikes.
And they sort of took the Kurds by surprise from behind.
There was a pretty nasty battle that raged for about a day.
The Kurds lost about 30 guys in two days, which is probably the most in a single fight since August.
And now it's sort of solidified again around a front line where the Kurds are blasting the heck out of them with heavy artillery and new German anti-tank weapons.
Yeah, well, and that's a very important part of the story that you have there is the Kurds.
I guess you quote a Kurdish commander saying, well, thank God at least we've got some weapons now because the what the Americans, the Germans and the Russians have come through for him.
Is that it?
Well, basically, yeah.
I mean, a lot of I don't know that the Russians have actually sent aid, but a lot of the equipment used in Iraq by by everybody is of Soviet origin.
So, you know, just left over from Saddam days.
Right.
I mean, the AK-47 or its variant is, you know, ubiquitous to every battlefield on Earth, it feels like.
So they were able to get a lot of ammunition for those sorts of weapons.
I think the Brits helped transport a bunch from Czechoslovakia and Ukraine.
Maybe there were some factories that were producing, you know, AK ammo, RPGs, things like that.
But the primary stuff that's really helped out for them has been heavier weapons that primarily have been supplied by the Germans.
The Americans are a little reluctant to go around to Baghdad.
It's a complex situation, but essentially because the Kurds are not an independent nation, it's harder to transfer the weapons without them first going through the Iraqi government, which probably steals them.
So the Kurds have always been sort of neglected by what we call rule, you know, designed to prevent illegal arms trafficking.
In this case, it's kind of screwed the bad or the good guys, but the Germans have directly given them some stuff and I was watching them.
They're using it quite effectively.
Now they're able to destroy armored vehicles from as much as three or four miles away if they need to.
Whereas back in August, they really weren't even able to destroy armored vehicles at all.
Yeah.
Well, so now the article ends with you talking with this student, this Kurdish PhD student in the UK who I guess has suspended his education to come home to fight.
And it sounds like they really need him.
That's the way he puts it.
The only reason I'm out here, Mitch, is because they need me out here, he says.
But other than that, he doesn't know how to do anything than fire an AK?
Yeah, he was hilarious and a really good guy.
You know, what it comes down to is the Peshmerga, oftentimes it's referred to as a militia, but it's quite right.
It is a professional paid fighting force.
But at the same time, guys, it'd be closer almost to the National Guard.
So at the same time, with such a martial history of the Kurds, they've fought as a community for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
So what ends up happening is a lot of guys just sort of show up and they're needed and they're put out on the line.
They know how to operate, maybe light weapons, and so they tend to run checkpoints and work as filler.
You know, it's a small community and they're engaged in a really nasty fight.
So what he was saying basically was, you know, I'm here to defend my country.
I'm no soldier.
He was even asking me questions about the weapons the other guys were using.
But you know, he was one guy.
You know, there's there are a number of very professional Peshmerga, you know, guys who are pretty well trained and certainly very tough.
What kind of numbers, though?
They run in there's a couple hundred thousand of them.
You know, you have to you have to remember guys, guys will rotate in and off the front.
They often have jobs.
I remember back in August, I was catching a taxi in Erbil and talking to the guy in my rudimentary Kurdish, and luckily he spoke Arabic.
And you know, I was like, he was like, Oh, yeah, you've been out to the front lines, you know, I'm Peshmerga.
And he's driving a taxi, you know, and he probably told me I ended up using it a little bit for a story.
But, you know, I had a taxi driver laying out how this battle had gone down that he'd been in.
And it was really interesting.
And, you know, he said that he'd spent a couple of weeks out on the front and he comes back, drives a taxi, makes, you know, supplements is pretty meager income.
I think the pressure paid about six hundred dollars a month.
Yeah.
And, you know, so it's it's not it's an it's an official fighting force made up of, you know, kind of like minivan, you know, guys that go on with their ordinary lives.
And then when they're needed, they grab their gun and they run out to the front line.
All right.
So now, Susanna George, I talked with her on the show and she did this report, I guess, for the Global Post, if I'm remembering right, about camp just on the outskirts of Mosul, she said, where there were a few hundred guys and they were claiming about six thousand, I think, and talking real big about how, oh, yeah, here pretty soon, I guess maybe early this summer.
We're marching on Mosul.
We're going to rouse that Islamic state right out of there.
And, you know, I wonder whether, you know, I mean, two hundred thousand.
That's pretty impressive.
But is there anyone who can pay them enough or clap their hands loud enough or whatever to get these guys to line up and march on Mosul under American air cover and special forces command and that kind of thing?
Well, I mean, you're talking about the Peshmerga.
You know, these guys are here to defend Kurdistan.
They don't really care about Mosul.
I mean, it's a threat.
You know, the fact that the Islamic state is, you know, they have the longest border, as they they always point out.
They've got, I think, close to 900 kilometers where they border the area controlled by the Islamic state.
So they're fighting for their lives.
But in their view, that's the Iraqi government's job to retake the Arab city of Mosul.
They defend their territory.
So one of the things we're going to bump into is that, you know, you've got Iraq is so badly divided at this stage.
It's barely an idea.
Shia guys from Basra or Nasseria or even Baghdad, they'll fight to defend their homes from the Islamic state.
But they don't care who controls Ramadi.
Ramadi is a Sunni town that they never go to.
As far as they're concerned, you know, let ISIS have Ramadi, let it, you know, they.
So it's you start getting into a situation where you've got guys who basically don't want to die.
So they'll die to defend their homes if they must.
And certainly the Peshmerga have lost, I think, close to 800 people, maybe more since the fighting started in June.
And they'll fight to the death to protect their deal and to hook in the Mosul Dam and strategic areas.
But if you're asking, you know, 50,000 of those guys to go fight house to house in a city of two million Arabs, Sunni Arabs primarily, they're not really going to be that interested in doing it.
That's the Iraqi government's job.
And they're having a difficult time putting together a professional enough force to go do it.
I was talking to Peshmerga officers earlier yesterday, and I said, you know, the Iraqi government thinks they're going to be able to train up a force to go in and take care of Mosul by about April.
What do you think?
And they laughed me out of the room.
They don't think there's any possible chance.
One guy told me maybe in a year.
But as he pointed out, the Americans trained this Arab Iraqi army for 10 years with billions of dollars, and they ran away.
None of them wanted to die for Maliki in Mosul.
Very few Sunni guys want to die for a Shiite government.
And Shiite guys don't want to die to liberate a Sunni city.
Yeah.
Well, and this is as you've been saying on the show for seven months now or more that that's it.
This is the final declaration of independence of Sunnistan.
And Iraq is over.
There ain't no putting this Humpty Dumpty back together again.
You talk about the Shiite don't want Ramadi.
That's what the Bata Brigade's been saying for 15 years now, man.
No surprise.
We'll be right back, y'all, with Mitchell Prothero in just one sec.
Hey, Al Scott here.
If you're like me, you need coffee.
Lots of it.
And you probably prefer it tastes good, too.
Well, let me tell you about Darren's Coffee, company at darrenscoffee.com.
Darren Merian is a natural entrepreneur who decided to leave his corporate job and strike out on his own, making great coffee.
And Darren's Coffee is now delivering right to your door.
Darren gets his beans direct from farmers around the world, all specialty, premium grade with no filler.
Hey, the man just wants everyone to have a chance to taste this great coffee.
Darrenscoffee.com.
Use promo code Scott and get free shipping.
Darrenscoffee.com.
All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
I'm talking with Mitchell Prothero.
He's reporting on Iraq War III out of Erbil in Kurdistan.
And I guess where we left off at the break was just the division here, how the Iraqi government, a.k.a. the Dawa Party and the Bata Brigade militia of the Supreme Islamic Council, these guys have no interest in ruling Sunnistan, as Mitch was saying.
This is why Muqtada al-Sadr always denounced the Supreme Islamic Council and the Dawa Party back, say, ten years ago for pushing the Iranian goals of splitting Iraq apart.
And America accused Sadr of being the Iranian cat's paw, not the Iranian cat's paws that they were actually backing, and marginalized him and strengthened them.
The same ones who then turned around and said, thanks a lot for giving us Baghdad, now get the hell out, and kicked America out, and told the Sunnis, you guys are screwed.
We don't care about you.
We got the capital city, so rot in the sun, which is what led to them being so desperate that they would turn to create an alliance with Baqir Baghdadi and the Islamic State Faction and got us into this mess in the first place.
But then so we're, I think, beating around the bush here, we're looking for an out, Mitch.
How do we end this war, preferably with as little American involvement as possible?
Or none, if you ask me.
You know, it's, fixing this one's going to be tough.
Already I will say, I've been talking to Peshmerga commanders particularly a lot over the last week.
I was in Kirkuk yesterday and went out to the Gwair front lines a couple of times the days before that.
They say the airstrikes are having an effect.
At this stage, you know, when they first started, they seemed so pinpoint, you know, you'd have four here, five there, hitting a truck, you know, a machine gun emplacement, things like that.
It felt like it really wasn't getting much done.
But fast forward a few months later, and what these guys are telling us is that to a certain extent they are seeing this strategy of degrading the Islamic State's military capability working.
They said that they're less dangerous now.
They've lost a fair amount of equipment and men, that their morale isn't quite as good, and that they're not as capable of offensive operations.
This is around Kurdistan, keep in mind.
Over in Syria, I think it's a little bit less clear cut.
They're definitely losing ground in Kobani.
The Kurds seem to have pretty much broken that siege and should be pretty set, you know, going forward.
But you're still talking about tens of thousands of pretty well-trained men.
And what we can tell, as many as a thousand new volunteers a month are somehow still managing to get over the Turkish border and join them.
So they are able to replenish at least the manpower, although maybe not the experience.
So they're going to remain a formidable force.
My feeling is, at least for Iraq, this doesn't end until the, you know, the government comes up with a deal with the Sunnis, which the new prime minister does seem more inclined to do than Maliki.
And the Pesh actually had some fairly decent things to say about the guy in terms of aid and, you know, not stealing quite as much equipment that was meant to go to the Kurds and things like that.
But until they reconcile with the tribes and then, you know, basically do this fairly bloody offensive that I can't imagine them being able to pull off this spring to actually retake control of the second largest city in the country, this is going to continue.
Once they've managed to do that, once they've brought the Sunnis to the table, start working with the tribes, which is flat out just paying them off, but that's sort of how things politically work here.
I guess it's how things politically work almost anywhere, and reestablish some semblance of central government control over the second largest city.
At that stage, you can start treating the Islamic State, at least in Iraq, as more of an insurgency that you'll end up battling for another 10 years.
But you can then say that you're the central government of Iraq, you know, until they can do that.
This isn't a central government.
This is a band of competing warlords and militias, and in a lot of cases, just outright thieves.
Virtually, you know, I was watching them try to pass the Iraqi budget the other day down in Baghdad, you know, on TV, and I was just laughing because they're just going to steal, you know, the services are not getting out to the people.
Friends of mine I talk to who live in Baghdad say it's a complete mess.
The entire neighborhoods are being taken over by militias.
There's almost no sense of central government control.
They've got to reverse that course before this, you know, project can even be undertaken.
And you know, the new government's taken some steps, but it just doesn't look good.
Now right there, you're referring to the militias taking over neighborhoods.
You're saying they're finishing the sectarian cleansing of Baghdad that was halted at about 85 percent.
She had back in 08 or 09.
Yeah, I think I mean, they pretty much cleaned it back then.
I mean, there are still some Sunni neighborhoods of Baghdad.
And I don't have widespread reports of, like, you know, total massacres or anything like that.
But certainly, you know, people have become, you know, started disappearing again.
But in terms of protecting neighborhoods, you've seen a lot of Shia, you know, and I don't work that much in Baghdad.
So, you know, there's other guys you should talk to about it.
But you know, definitely there's a sense that the areas that go under the control of these militias are being run by the militia leaders.
They're not being run necessarily by the central government.
So just the other day, the commander for the Iraqi government troops in Samarra was killed, I think, about 10 days ago.
He was an Iranian Revolutionary Guard officer, but he was a running guy and he was in charge of the defense of Samarra.
I don't say that Iran has overtly huge numbers of troops here, but they've got officers and advisors all throughout the command and control of these militias.
I mean, I don't think it's hypocritical because, you know, the U.S. is basically trying to do the same thing in three locations where they're trying to train up brigades to retake Anbar and Mosul.
But these guys are actually out on the ground getting their hands dirty, so to speak.
Yeah.
Well, and that's the thing, too.
You have all of Anbar province and I guess I forget now when we last talked whether Bakuba is now under the control of the Islamic State or not, but it's pretty much all of the west and northwest of the country at this point.
So it's not just Mosul they'd have to sack these guys from.
And they could just as easy move to Fallujah and say Fallujah is their capital if America goes to Mosul, right?
Right.
Well, they say at this stage they say Raqqa is their capital.
Oh, right, right.
In Syria, because remember, they don't recognize the border.
It's all one country to them.
But, you know, the you know, this is often missed.
Yeah.
The fall of Mosul in mid-June was a huge deal and it really brought everybody's attention, including mine.
To be honest, I've been completely focusing on Syria for a year and just occasionally reading up reports thinking, wow, Raqqa doesn't look like it's going all that well.
But I had massacres every day in Syria to handle.
But if you remember about a year ago, most of Anbar fell to the tribes and to the Islamic State.
And this started six months before most of us remember.
Right.
You know.
And so at this stage, the Iraqi central government, they do control a few large bases, partially one where the Americans are helping to train them.
They've still got some control over government centers in Ramadi.
But Fallujah is completely gone.
A bunch of different towns.
You know, you might as well say for the most part, Anbar is completely controlled by the Islamic State.
So, yeah, dealing with that is going to be something that you're going to have to deal with just like you will with Mosul.
Yeah.
Hey, speaking of which, when you talk about the Islamic State hoisting the flag up over Fallujah a year ago, six months before the actual declaration of the caliphate and the fall of Mosul, the way I remember it, too, was the tribe said, hey, take that flag down.
And they did.
And they buy their time.
And that brings us back to that question of the relative power between the Sunni tribes and the Islamic State, which is, you know, after all, not the way things are usually done around there.
But so the question is, to me, then, if I can oversimplify, it seems to me, Mitch, like it was pretty damn easy for the tribes to turn on al Qaeda in Iraq and say, thanks, but no thanks for your help anymore, guys.
You're too big for your britches and we're done with you.
Back in 2006 and 2007, obviously, it helped that Petraeus was giving them guns and money, but they were already doing it throughout 06 before they ever struck their deal with Petraeus.
But so the question is now and I know I've asked you this before, but things have changed over the last six months, too.
I wonder how much harder or how much easier you think it'd be for the tribes to do that same kind of thing.
And in fact, take for granted for the sake of argument that they have open access to the U.S. Treasury to to pay these guys off the same way if a body will will stand in the role of Petraeus here and pay these guys to try to do awakening, too.
It'll be harder, but it would be it can be done.
At the end of the day, the Sunni tribes run Anbar.
They run Saladin province and Islamic State couldn't have come in without them.
And they can throw them back out and it will be about money.
But that's the money is not the hard part right now.
The hard part is the reconciliation politically and building trust.
I know it's I hate to sound like an NGO expert, but you need to have a trust building exercise.
Maybe we can send them all on outward bound where, you know, the Shia government and the Sunni guys need to quit seeing each other as flat out enemies because they are going to have to live together even under a partitioned system.
It's going to require cooperation at this stage, both hate and distrust each other so much that simply the Americans won't allow I mean, the central government won't allow a huge transfer of money and weapons to the Sunni tribes because they think it'll turn on Baghdad.
Yeah, well, I guess the next question we don't have time for then would be and barring that and take it for granted, Sunni independence, what can be done to bring peace?
But that I have to wait for next time.
Thanks.
It's Mitch Prothero.
Mitch McClatchy, DC, dot com.
Appreciate it.
No problem.
Always a pleasure.
Hey, I'll start here to tell you about this great new book by Michael Swanson, The War State and The War State.
Swanson examines how Presidents Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy both expanded and fought to limit the rise of the new national security state after World War Two.
This nation is ever to live up to its creed of liberty and prosperity for everyone.
We are going to have to abolish the empire.
Know your enemy.
Get The War State by Michael Swanson.
It's available at your local bookstore or at Amazon dot com in Kindle or in paperback.
Just click the book in the right margin at Scott Horton dot org or the war state dot com.
You hate government.
One of them libertarian types.
Maybe you just can't stand the president, gun grabbers or warmongers.
Me too.
That's why I invented Liberty Stickers dot com.
Well, Rick owns it now and I didn't make up all of them, but still, if you're driving around and want to tell everyone else how wrong their politics are, there's only one place to go.
Liberty Stickers dot com has got your bumper covered.
Left, right, libertarian, empire, police, state, founders, quote, central banking.
Yes, bumper stickers about central banking, lots of them.
And well, everything that matters.
Liberty Stickers dot com.
Everyone else's stickers suck.
Oh, John Kerry's Mideast peace talks have gone nowhere.
Hey, all.
Scott Horton here for the Council for the National Interest at Council for the National Interest dot org.
U.S. military and financial support for Israel's permanent occupations of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is immoral and it threatens national security by helping generate terrorist attacks against our country.
And face it.
It's bad for Israel, too.
Without our unlimited support, they would have much more incentive to reach a lasting peace with their neighbors.
It's past time for us to make our government stop making matters worse.
Help support CNI at Council for the National Interest dot org.
Hey, all.
Scott here.
Ever wanted to help support the show and own silver at the same time?
Well, a friend of mine, libertarian activist Arlo Pignotti, has invented the alternative currency with the most promise of them all.
QR Silver Commodity Discs.
The first ever QR code one ounce silver pieces.
Just scan the back of one with your phone and get the instant spot price.
They're perfect for saving or spending at the market.
And anyone who donates $100 or more to the Scott Horton Show at Scott Horton dot org slash donate gets one.
That's Scott Horton dot org slash donate.
If you'd like to learn and order more, send them a message at Commodity Discs dot com or check them out on Facebook at slash Commodity Discs.
And thanks.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.
Commodity Discs.