Iraq: NATO Forges New Strategic
Partnership In Persian Gulf
13 June 2012
By Rick Rozoff
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization announced on
June 20 that it has opened what it terms a Transition
Cell in Iraq "to smooth the path towards strengthened
partnership and cooperation."
The decision to do so was reached at the May 20-21
summit of the Western military bloc in Chicago.
The initiative follows eight years of the NATO
Training Mission-Iraq, established in 2004 under the
control of NATO's top political body, the North
Atlantic Council, and in conjunction with the
Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq. The
first commander of both the training mission and the
command was David Petraeus, who set up both operations
and who subsequently was in charge of U.S. Central
Command, then of all U.S. and NATO forces in
Afghanistan and is now director of the Central
Intelligence Agency.
The announcement by NATO that it was continuing and
deepening military cooperation with the government and
military of Iraq came a day after a Saudi deputy
foreign minister visited NATO Headquarters to
strengthen strategic relations with the alliance and
NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen urged the Persian
Gulf military powerhouse join the Istanbul Cooperation
Initiative.
On June 18 NATO announced that Deputy Secretary
General Alexander Vershbow would arrive in Israel for
a two-day visit to meet with senior government
officials and on June 20 leave for Jordan to meet with
Prince Faisal bin Hussein, Prime Minister Al-Tarawnah
and Chief of Defense Staff General Al-Zaben and
deliver a keynote address at a conference titled "NATO
in the new global security era."
Israel and Jordan are members of NATO's Mediterranean
Dialogue military partnership along with Algeria,
Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia, with Libya
slated to be the next addition.
Ahead of the Chicago summit NATO disclosed a new,
geographically unlimited, category of military
cooperation it calls partners across the globe, and
identified its first eight members as Iraq,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mongolia, Australia, New
Zealand, Japan and South Korea.
In March Mongolia, bordering Russia to its north and
China to its south, was the first nation to be granted
another new NATO partnership, the Individual
Partnership and Cooperation Programme.
On June 20 NATO announced that within months Iraq's
Individual Partnership and Cooperation Programme will
be finalized.
Last October, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq
stated American military trainers, as many as 5,000,
might be allowed to remain in his country under the
auspices of the NATO Training Mission-Iraq, but NATO's
insistence on immunity from prosecution for its
personnel led to the mission being terminated on
December 31.
Nevertheless, the U.S.-dominated military organization
trained over 5,000 Iraqi officers and soldiers and
more than 11,000 security personnel, members of the
Iraqi Federal Police and Oil Police.
The NATO Training Mission-Iraq conducted English
language courses in Iraq and training courses for
senior officers at the Iraqi Defence University for
Military Studies and the Iraqi War College as well as
abroad at the NATO Joint Warfare Centre in Stavanger,
Norway.
Two years ago American Lieutenant General Michael
Barbero was quoted on the NATO Training Mission-Iraq
website stating: "NATO advisors and mentors are
shaping the future leadership of the Iraqi Army, at
all levels, from the Basic Officer Commissioning
Course, to the Joint Staff and Command College, the
Iraqi War College, and the Iraqi National Defence
College."
If the West can't control how Iraqis vote and thus
their government, NATO can leave behind a
foreign-trained officer corps as a Trojan horse for
use as needed in a country flanked by Syria in the
west and Iran in the east.
©
EsinIslam.Com
Add Comments