CIA ramps up role in Iraq

http://gulfnews.com/news/region/iraq/cia-ramps-up-role-in-iraq-1.1157223

CIA ramps up role in Iraq
Dow Jones
Published: 15:07 March 12, 2013

Washington: The Central Intelligence Agency is ramping up support to elite Iraqi anti-terrorism units to better fight Al Qaida affiliates, amid alarm in Washington about spillover from the civil war in neighbouring Syria, according to US officials.

The stepped-up mission expands a covert US presence on the edges of the two-year-old Syrian conflict, at a time of American concerns about the growing power of extremists in the Syrian rebellion.

Al Qaida in Iraq, the terrorist network’s affiliate in the country, has close ties to Syria-based Jabhat Al Nusra, also known as the Al Nusra Front, an opposition militant group that has attacked government installations and controls territory in northern Syria. The US State Department placed Al Nusra on its list of foreign terror organisations in December, calling the group an alias for Al Qaida in Iraq.

In a series of secret decisions from 2011 to late 2012, the White House directed the CIA to provide support to Iraq’s Counterterrorism Service, or CTS, a force that reports directly to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki, officials said.



unhappycamper comment: Don't you just love all these secret decisions and secret wars? Me neither.