Iraq Moves Troops To Syrian Border

As attacks and casualties continue to increase, Iraqi authorities have sent troops to the border with Syria in an effort to slow the flow of jihadist fighters,
An Iraqi border policeman looks through a pair of binoculars near the Iraqi-Syrian borders at the Abu Kamal-qaim border crossing, the main border post between Iraq and Syria, September 8, 2012. Al Qaim, in the Sunni heartland of Anbar province, reflects the tricky balancing act Iraq's Shi'ite leaders face in Syria, whose crisis is testing the Middle East's sectarian divide. Al Qaim and its neighbouring Syrian counterpart Albu Kamal are on a strategic supply route for smugglers, gun-runners and now insurgent
An Iraqi border policeman looks through a pair of binoculars near the Iraqi-Syrian borders at the Abu Kamal-qaim border crossing. Picture taken September 8, 2012. - REUTERS/Thaier al-Sudani
Ali Abel Sadah
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Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, commander-in-chief of the Iraqi armed forces, decided on the night of June 16, to move nearly 8,000 Iraqi troops toward the Iraqi-Syrian and Iraqi-Jordanian borders. This comes a few days before local elections are to be held in the cities of Mosul and Anbar.

A senior military official in Maliki's military office said in a statement to Al-Monitor that “four regiments of the ground forces, each consisting of nearly 2,000 troops and protected by armed helicopters, had arrived to the border with Jordan and Syria.”

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