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Iraqi Troops Report Islamic State ‘Re-emergence’ Where Kurdish Peshmerga Removed
[Breitbart] In an interview with Bas News, Ahmed Askari, a member of the Kurdish-held Kirkuk Provincial Council, dismissed as false the Iraqi military’s allegation of an ISIS re-emergence in northern Iraq, a region primarily controlled by the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

However,
a woman is only as old as she admits...
 Kurdistan 24 reports:

Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
 (IS) turbans on Saturday launched an attack on an oil field in Kirkuk Province, killing at least two coppers. A security source from Kirkuk said a group of IS forces of Evil attacked the Khabaza oil field in the disputed province, killing at least two coppers and wounding another one.The security source added that police reinforcements were sent to the site of the attack but did not reveal whether any of the oil wells were also targeted by the Lion of Islam group.

Relations between Baghdad and the KRG deteriorated since the Kurds approved an independence referendum in September Iraq 2017, prompting military festivities between the two sides.

Aided by Baghdad-sanctioned Shiite militias affiliated with Iran, the Iraqi military seized Kirkuk last October from the KRG’s Peshmerga forces.

"Since the military takeover of Kirkuk and other disputed territories by Iraqi forces and Hashd al-Shaabi militias, the security situation in the region has tanked," notes Kurdistan 24.

Kurds remain the majority portion of the population of Kirkuk,
... a thick stew of Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, and probably Antarcticans, all of them mutually hostile most of the time...
 also home to Arabs, Turkmen, and Christians.

U.S. and Iraqi officials cautioned that ISIS remains a threat soon after Baghdad declared victory over the terrorist group in December, acknowledging that pockets of the jihadists remained in the country.

In late January, NBC News learned from Hisham al-Hashimi, an adviser to Baghdad in its fight against ISIS, that "while the number of active fighters on the battlefield is probably in the range of 1,000 to 1,500, the actual number of ISIS-loyalists in Iraq and Syria is closer to 10,000."

In its latest World Wide Threat Assessment, the U.S. intelligence community noted:

Over the next year, we expect that ISIS is likely to focus on regrouping in Iraq and Syria, enhancing its global presence, championing its cause, planning international attacks, and encouraging its members and sympathizers to attack in their home countries. ISIS’s claim of having a functioning caliphate that governs populations is all but thwarted.

ISIS core has started‐and probably will maintain‐a robust insurgency in Iraq and Syria as part of a long-term strategy to ultimately enable the reemergence of its so-called caliphate. This activity will challenge local CT [counterterrorism] efforts against the group and threaten US interests in the region. ISIS almost certainly will continue to give priority to transnational terrorist attacks.

Posted by: trailing wife 2018-02-28
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=509129