Alwaght- Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi says his country does not need foreign ground troops to defeat the ISIS terrorist group, after Washington announced it would deploy Special Forces to fight the Takfiri terrorists.
Abadi did not directly reject the deployment, of which US Secretary of State John Kerry said Baghdad had been informed before the announcement, but he insisted that any operations be coordinated with the Iraqi government.
"There is no need for foreign ground combat forces in Iraqi territory," Abadi said in a statement released late Tuesday in which he praised the performance of Iraqi special forces.
"The Iraqi government stresses that any military operation or presence of any foreign force, special or not, in any place in Iraq cannot be done without its approval and coordination with it," the statement said.
US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said Tuesday that the US was deploying a "specialized expeditionary targeting force" to Iraq to work alongside local forces against IS, which overran large parts of the country last year.
Meanwhile the Iraqi popular defense groups of Kata’ib Hezbollah, the Badr Movement, and Asaib Ahl al-Haq also reacted to the announcement by pledging to combat any US troops deployed to the conflict-hit country.
“We will chase and fight any American force deployed in Iraq. Any such American force will become a primary target for our group. We fought them before and we are ready to resume fighting,” said Kata’ib Hezbollah spokesman, Jafaar Hussaini. Muen al-Kadhimi, a senior aide to the leader of the Badr Organization, Hadi al-Ameri, said, “All Iraqis look to (the Americans) as occupiers who are not trustworthy.”
The rise of ISIS terrorist has been widely attributed, among other things, to the United States’ 2003 invasion of Iraq.