‘Obama policy will lead region to war,’ warns ex-Iraqi MP who’s paid heavy price for dissent

End Of Days News

“Obama has handed Iraq over to Iran and said ‘do what you like’,” Alusi, a former Iraqi member of parliament who hails from the tribal Sunni province of al-Anbar in western Iraq, told the Times of Israel in a telephone interview from his home in Erbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdistan region in northern Iraq.

Ten years after freeing Iraq from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, the Obama administration has allowed a no less dictatorial regime to emerge, and then handed it over to its avowed enemy Iran, Alusi said.

Hugging the current Iraqi regime, Alusi holds, is the last thing the Obama administration should be doing right now

On March 24, US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Iraq during a tour of the region, expressing “the strong US commitment to Iraq,” a state department message read. The US completed its military withdrawal from Iraq at the end of 2011, but continues to closely cooperate with the predominantly Shiite coalition led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. As part of the Strategic Framework Agreement, the US will provide nearly $300 million in aid to Iraq in 2013.      

Read more: http://www.timesofisrael.com/obama-policy-will-lead-region-to-war-warns-ex-iraqi-mp-whos-paid-heavy-price-for-dissent/

In first, Syrian rebels set to take control of major city

End Of Days News

Fighting still continues in Raqqa following capture of local governor; incident follows locals toppling statue of Hafez Assad

 

 

Syrian rebels battled pockets of regime loyalists in the northern city of Raqqa on Tuesday after capturing the governor of the northern province in fierce clashes overnight, activists said.

 

Rebel fighters pushed government troops from most of Raqqa, a city of some 500,000 people on the Euphrates River, on Monday. If the opposition manages to wrest all of Raqqa from the government, it would mark the first time an entire city has fallen into opposition hands, dealing both a strategic and a symbolic blow to President Bashar Assad’s regime.

 

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said opposition fighters captured the governor of Raqqa province, Hassan Jalili, after clashes overnight near the governor’s office in the provincial capital, also named Raqqa. The Observatory said the head of Assad’s ruling Baath party in the province was also in rebel custody.

 

Observatory director Rami Abdul-Rahman said Jalili is one of the highest-ranking officials to fall into rebel hands since the Syrian crisis began nearly two years ago.

 

Righting was still raging on Tuesday near an intelligence building in the city as well as several other places, he said, adding that “some of Raqqa is still under regime control.”

 

http://www.timesofisrael.com/syrian-rebels-capture-governor-of-liberated-raqqa-province/