organization:kurdistan regional government

DEBUNKING MYTHS ABOUT THE KURDS, IRAQ, AND IRAN
▻https://warontherocks.com/2017/10/debunking-myths-about-the-kurds-iraq-and-iran

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The Kurdish referendum in Iraq has failed spectacularly, despite predictions of beckoning independence. Many who relied on the trope that “statehood was not a matter of if but when” were shocked and unprepared for the referendum’s outcomes. Erroneous assumptions and policy prescriptions are now driving post-referendum analyses. Pundits, analysts, and the media are depicting the rapid re-taking of Kirkuk by Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) and other “disputed territories” as “a cataclysmic betrayal,” an “assault on the Kurds,” and another “victory for Iran.” While the U.S. policy response has thus far been measured – seeking to diffuse tensions and remain focused on defeating ISIL – some officials are calling to re-assess military support to Iraqi forces if attacks against Kurds continue. Others are pressing for more direct support to the Kurdistan Regional Government as a means of preventing further conflict and countering Iranian influence.

These voices ostensibly have the right priority – stabilization – but suffer from faulty assumptions about the actual sources of instability. Tensions between Baghdad and Erbil may have flared after the referendum, but they are rooted in the unresolved territorial and political issues of post-2003 Iraq. While it is certainly true that Iran and its militias have gained influence in Iraq, this influence is the result of a weak Iraqi state and was emboldened by the referendum, not by Baghdad’s effort to exercise its federal authority. As I discussed in this week’s episode of the War on the Rocks podcast, the solution is to reinforce Iraqi state sovereignty, Iraq’s regional relations, and recent trends toward a civil state. This includes negotiating disputed territories and filling political, economic, and security gaps that are enabling Iran and undisciplined militias to thrive.

Kurdish leaders have themselves to blame for their current predicament, not the United States. Despite statements by the U.S. government expressing concern about the potential destabilizing effects of the referendum and advising the Kurdistan Regional Government to postpone it, Masoud Barzani refused. Instead, his Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) stepped up its lobbying efforts in Washington and other capitals. Kurdish media outlets also selectively published statements from U.S. congressmen and former U.S. officials indicating their support for the Kurds, leading local populations to believe the referendum had U.S. backing. In my conversations with various Kurdish groups in Erbil and Suleymaniya the week before the referendum, many stated that Washington “would eventually support the referendum given the strong U.S. and Israeli ties.” Another common sentiment was that the KRG was “too important to fail” and that the United States would eventually defend the Kurds against any post-referendum threat.

Kurds stick with independence vote, ’never going back to Baghdad’: Barzani
▻https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-kurd-referendum-barzan/kurds-stick-with-independence-vote-never-going-back-to-baghdad-barzani-idUS
▻https://s3.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20170924&t=2&i=1202732369&w=&fh=545px&fw=&ll=&pl=&sq=&r=LYN

“The vote, expected to result in a comfortable “yes” to independence, is not binding and is meant to give the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) a mandate to negotiate secession with Baghdad and the neighboring countries.

Barzani said Iraq’s Kurds would seek talks with the Shi‘ite-led central government to implement the expected “yes” outcome, even if they take two years or more, to settle land and oil sharing disputes ahead of independence.

#Kurdes #Irak

Iranian Kurdish fighters step up clashes ahead of KRG independence vote - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East
▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/en/originals/2017/08/iran-kdpi-attacks-krg-independence-referendum-hijri.html

Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in Iraqi Kurdistan appear to have stepped up their armed activities inside Iran in recent weeks, undermining the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) efforts to promote its upcoming independence referendum as a peaceful development. 

Iranian Kurdish fighters based in Iraq have repeatedly crossed the border into Iran and engaged in numerous clashes with Iranian security forces, leading to casualties on both sides. Iran has responded by shelling border areas with heavy artillery, causing huge fires, destroying wildlife and forcing many civilians to flee.

The recent clashes contradict claims by Iraqi Kurdish officials that the Sept. 25 independence referendum will not lead to instability. It also refutes their insistence that Erbil wishes to enjoy cordial relations with its neighbors, including Baghdad, Tehran and Ankara.

#Kurdes #irak #Iran

Iraq/KRG: Displaced people can’t move freely

(Beirut, October 21, 2016) – Iraqi and Kurdistan Regional Government security authorities are unlawfully restricting the freedom of movement of displaced people in camps near #Kirkuk, Human Rights Watch said today. Despite the lack of hostilities in the area, people are not allowed to leave the camps freely.

▻http://reliefweb.int/report/iraq/iraqkrg-displaced-people-can-t-move-freely?platform=hootsuite
#Irak #Iraq #IDPs #liberté_de_mouvement #liberté_de_circulation #déplacés_internes #asile #migrations #réfugiés #camps_de_réfugiés

After 20-year break, these Iranian Kurds are taking up arms again
▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/07/turkey-iran-kurds-resumed-clashes-against-tehran-regime.html#ixzz4DBVCzi

What prompted the KDPI’s sudden change in course? Most people believe that regional countries or global powers are behind the resurgence of the Kurdish activity. Iranian-Kurdish political activist Hadi Azizi believes the KDPI is engaged in legitimate self-defense against Iran. He told Al-Monitor that he does not believe that external elements were instigating these attacks, saying, “No doubt Iran doesn’t have a major say in Middle East politics. They don’t always have the support of international powers. Iranian Kurds are ready to rise."

How will this conflict affect the autonomous Kurdish Region of Iraq, which just signed new economic deals with Iran? Azizi believes the clashes will not affect the Kurdish government in the region. He said, “South Kurdistan [the Kurdistan Regional Government] is not like it was before. They have relations now with world powers. The peshmerga fought [the Islamic State] and served humanity. They have good support. They can’t forever stand idle to just preserve their interests."

Read more: ▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/07/turkey-iran-kurds-resumed-clashes-against-tehran-regime.html#ixzz4DWFrSo

Des officiels du gouvernement israélien nous font savoir quelles sont leurs préférences politiques concernant les territoires de leur environnement régional et le sort des Etats arabes du Proche-Orient.

Ayelet Shaked, qui suggérait de faire assassiner les mères des « terroristes » palestiniens, ci-devant Ministre israélienne de la Justice, souhaite un Etat kurde indépendant :
▻http://www.todayszaman.com/diplomacy_israel-calls-for-independent-kurdish-state_410092.html

Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked has called for an independent Kurdistan, a move which she says will weaken Israel’s rivals in the region.
“We must openly call for the establishment of a Kurdish state that separates Iran from Turkey, one which will be friendly towards Israel,” Shaked told a conference in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, according to a Times of Israel report.
Her call reflects a growing desire in Israel to foster robust relations with the Kurdish community in Iraq, and even promote the process of founding an independent state by the Kurdish people.
Earlier this month, Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani spoke to diplomats from more than 30 countries in Arbil, Iraq about Kurdish plans to hold a referendum, as part of an effort to seek international backing for a decades-old Kurdish bid for a state of their own. Barzani instructed his party officials in December last year to speed up preparations to hold a referendum on whether to secede from Iraq.

Quant au ministre israélien de la Défense, Moshe Yaalon, à tout prendre il préfère encore Da’ich que l’Iran en Syrie et note que les intérêts de l’Etat d’Israël et des pétromonarchies du Golfe sont convergents :
►https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/19/israeli-defense-minister-if-i-had-to-choose-between-iran-and-isis-id-choose-isis/?tid=sm_tw

Speaking at the Institute for National Security Studies’ (INSS) conference in Tel Aviv on Jan. 19, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon made a bold statement: If he had to choose between Iran and the Islamic State, he told the audience, he’d “choose ISIS.”
Ya’alon reasoned that Iran had greater capabilities than the Islamic State and remained the biggest threat for Israel. He argued that if Syria were to fall to one of the two powers, he would prefer it were the Islamic State rather than Iran or Iran-backed groups. “We believe ISIS will be eventually defeated territorially after the blows it has been suffering, and in light of the attacks on its oil reserves,” he told the conference, according to Ynetnews.
Ya’alon said that current problems in the Middle East showed the region was at the “height of the clash of civilizations.” He also added that Israel shared common interests with the regional Sunni Muslim powers , who were also threatened by the Shia Muslim Iran.

Voilà, mais on est bien d’accord que l’idée que l’accroissement des tensions sectaires dans la région, l’idéologie du clash des civilisations et la fragmentation politique selon une ligne ethnico-confessionnelle des États arabes voisins seraient dans l’intérêt d’Israël, et feraient l’objet d’une action politique et diplomatique en ce sens des sionistes en Israël et dans leurs relais en « Occident », est une abominable théorie du complot antisémite...

#Israel #clash_des_civilisations #EI #Daech #Iran #Grand_Moyen-Orient #Syrie #Irak

Meet the Sultan of Civil War
24.12.2015 | Pepe Escobar
▻http://sputniknews.com/columnists/20151224/1032265320/erdogan-sultan-civil-war.html

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(...) So the question now hinges on how close — politically and militarily – will be Moscow’s support for the YPG-PKK.

Moscow does not exactly favors the birth of a Kurdistan as advocated by Israel and US neocons. The US-Israel axis privileges some very specific Kurds; the vastly corrupt Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq, which also happen to entertain close relations with Ankara (the oil export angle). No one knows how a Syrian Kurdistan controlled by the YPG-PKK would fit into an already complex equation.

Ankara’s red line though is much easier to detect: any Kurdistan qualifies as a red line.

Waiting for Pipelineistan

Erdogan, in desperation, is even flirting with Israel again. In this case, further Sultan burning may also be on the cards.

Israel’s long game is an energy game: make sure it has access to non-stop, cheap Kurdish – as in stolen from Baghdad — oil flowing through the Kirkuk-Haifa pipeline. And in the long run Tel Aviv would love to bypass Ceyhan and replace it with Haifa as the top oil export terminal in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Israel has easily bribed the noxious KRG mafia – and slimy Israeli operators have been involved for years in buying totally undocumented Kurdish oil, which may have been mixed along the way with stolen Iraqi/Syrian Daesh oil. Everyone familiar with the KRG knows how the Israelis on the ground are fronted by US and UK oil companies. The bottom line is startling: bribed-to-death Iraqi Kurds are selling discounted oil virtually stolen from Baghdad — which developed the wells and built the pipelines — to a country Iraq refuses to do business with.

The “Kurdistan” Israel and US neocons really want, much more than a northern Syrian entity, is a northern Iraq colony, a vassal enclave run by the Barzani mob. That would imply no less than a war between Baghdad (supported by Tehran) and the KRG (supported by Washington and Tel Aviv). As apocalyptic scenarios go, this one at least is on hold.

Moscow, for the moment, prefers to focus on stripping Ankara naked in those convoluted Syrian peace negotiations, which, for all practical purposes, boil down to a US-Russia game.

And as much as Erdogan remains a Washington vassal and an “adversary” of Israel only in posture, now he cannot even be sure where the Obama administration stands.

Only a few weeks ago Obama requested him to deploy “30,000 (troops) to seal the border on the Turkish side”. At the time, Team Obama was hopeful that Erdogan’s troops would be able to clear and hold an area 98 km long and 30 km deep inside Syrian territory that would harbor Erdogan’s famous “safe zone”. Ankara would need just a mere pretext to invade — and a little American air cover.

After the downing of the Su-24 and Russia’s deployment of the S-400s, this plan is now six feet under.

From the point of view of the myriad “Assad must go” front, the name of the game now in Syria is “hold on to what you’ve got”. Erdogan, as desperate as he may be, would have to accept his Jihadi Highway to retreat back across the Turkish border, and wait for the next window of wreaking havoc opportunity (which Russia will never open.)

Yet the long game that really matters, for all players involved, is predictably Pipelineistan. Who will control a great deal of the oil and gas across “Syraq”, including the non-exploited wealth in the Kurdish areas; to where will it all flow; who sells it; and for what price.

It’s a waiting game that the Sultan plans to fill with – what else – an anti-Kurdish civil war.

Alors que Bagdad vient de menacer Ankara de s’adresser au Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU si les troupes turques n’étaient pas retirées de Bashiqa (région de Mossoul), le Hürriyet révèle qu’un accord pour y installer une base turque permanente a été signé le 04 novembre entre Ankara et le Gouvernement régional kurde d’Erbil :
▻http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-military-to-have-a-base-in-iraqs-mosul.aspx?pageID=238&nI

Turkey will have a permanent military base in the Bashiqa region of Mosul as the Turkish forces in the region training the Peshmerga forces have been reinforced, Hürriyet reported.
The deal regarding the base was signed between Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani and Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioğlu, during the latter’s visit to northern Iraq on Nov. 4.
At least 150 Turkish soldiers, accompanied by 20-25 tanks, were deployed to the area by land late on Dec. 4, Anadolu Agency reported.
Turkish army sources told Anadolu Agency on Dec. 5 that they had been training fighters across four provinces in northern Iraq to fight ISIL.

La pression des milices chiites sur al-Abadi pour appeler les Russes à la rescousse va se faire plus forte encore...

How Russia is smashing the Turkish game in Syria — RT Op-Edge
Pepe Escobar
Edited time: 3 Dec, 2015
▻https://www.rt.com/op-edge/324563-isis-russia-turkey-syria

https://cdn.rt.com/files/2015.12/article/566015c9c36188775f8b4607.jpg

So why did Washington take virtually forever to not really acknowledge ISIS/ISIL/Daesh is selling stolen Syrian oil that will eventually find its way to Turkey?
Trends
Islamic State

Because the priority all along was to allow the CIA – in the shadows – to run a “rat line” weaponizing a gaggle of invisible “moderate rebels”.

As much as Daesh – at least up to now – Barzani mob in Iraqi Kurdistan was never under Washington’s watch. The oil operation the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) runs to Turkey is virtually illegal; stolen state-owned oil as far as Baghdad is concerned.

Daesh stolen oil can’t flow through Damascus-controlled territory. Can’t flow though Shiite-dominated Iraq. Can’t go east to Iran. It’s Turkey or nothing. Turkey is the easternmost arm of NATO. The US and NATO “support” Turkey. So a case can be made that the US and NATO ultimately support Daesh.

What’s certain is that illegal Daesh oil and illegal KRG oil fit the same pattern; energy interests by the usual suspects playing a very long game. (...)

Taking on ISIS

Economic and Political Weekly
▻http://www.epw.in/editorials/taking-isis.html

Taking on ISIS

Vol - XLIX No. 36, September 06, 2014 Editorials

There is just no easy and clear way to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

Actions by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have contributed to a deterioration of the already catastrophic Syrian civil war and the possible disintegration of Iraq. There is no question that this radical Islamist group, which thrives on medieval methods, primeval ideologies and brutality, has to be militarily defeated. How it is to be done is a difficult issue. The outcome of any event, even if it leads to the defeat of the ISIS, seems to be one that is going to be bloody, chaotic and one of further despair for the long-suffering people of Iraq and Syria.

The rise of the ISIS has been facilitated by a number of forces and circumstances, each having its own set of consequences. The US invasion of Iraq and the post-occupation policy of dismantling the secular state apparatus in the country in the hope that a dependent nation could be created allowed the seeds of Al Qaida to be sowed on the back of Sunni anger against the new establishment. The sectarian attitude of the Shia-dominated governments led by Nouri al-Maliki as prime minister fanned the rising waves of Sunni resistance so much so that former Ba’athist forces sought an alliance with the battle-hardened ISIS which had made significant advances in the Syrian civil war.

The Syrian civil war had provided ISIS the opportunity to utilise the “great game” played by various proxy forces intending to destabilise the Ba’athist regime of Bashar al-Assad. Suffused with finances and weaponry supplied to the Syrian opposition by various groups – financiers from the Gulf Cooperation Council countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar – and helped by Turkish indulgence in allowing foreign recruits to the ISIS cause to get free passes through the Turkish-Syrian border, the group over-ran resistance from the Syrian regime and took control over a large area in northern Syria. The US also played its role in funding the rebellion against the Syrian regime, only to see the ISIS and other allied forces reap most of the largesse.

Presently, the ISIS has control over one-third of Iraq and a significant number of towns, cities, and oil refineries in Syria, and has established a “de facto” state. The ISIS sought to expand its territory into the northern and oil-rich areas controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) beginning with the capture of Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul. In doing so, it subjected Iraqi minorities – for example, the Yazidis – to brutality. The Yazidis were driven into refuge in the Sinjar Mountains, as the Kurdish peshmerga (armed militia of the KRG) withdrew protection when it could not take on the better-armed ISIS. It was left to the Kurdish militias from Syria and Turkey – the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the socialist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) – to rescue a large number of Yazidis, even as the US finally swung into action to protect its KRG allies and assets. The pluralist and feminist YPG, an offshoot of the PKK’s Syrian affiliates, has remained the most effective force against the ISIS advance in Syria.

Despite ideological differences, the Kurdish peshmerga has now formed a tentative alliance with the PKK and the YPG – even as the US has sought to help the alliance to take on the ISIS in northern Iraq. It is an uncomfortable position for the US; it has proscribed and categorised the PKK as a “terrorist” organisation. The PKK, which seeks a loose transborder confederation of Kurdish areas, persists with insurgency in Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member, although the two are also engaged in a tortuous peace process.

The US seems to have a Janus-faced policy towards the ISIS. In Syria, the US prefers the heat to remain on the Assad government and is reluctant to recognise the threat the ISIS (and other Islamist forces such as the Al Qaida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra) poses to Syrian unity. This has meant that the ISIS has used its territorial acquisitions as buffers. With its financial resources and US-sourced weaponry captured from the Iraqi army, it is a formidable opponent to the Syrian government.

Iraq and Syria are in shambles. The inability of the Iraqi government to stem the advance of the ISIS has emboldened the KRG to assert its autonomy even more and has increased the prospects of Kurdish irredentism. The radical Sunni character of the ISIS coupled with its attacks on the Shia community has worsened the already poor relations between the two communities in Iraq. The Iraqi citizenry has no desire for further US involvement, which should rule out US unilateralism. Besides, it is the unstated policy of the US to eventually balkanise Iraq and Syria (Iran’s ally) that has resulted in the rise of the ISIS in the first place, even as this was not intended. The US antipathy towards Syria and differences in the UN Security Council do not guarantee any agreement resulting in a reasonable resolution on intervention. The Gulf monarchies realise the threat that the ISIS poses to their own retrograde monarchies but are unable to look beyond their antipathy towards their geopolitical enemy, Iran. Yet it is clear that the only way ISIS can be militarily defeated is if the Syrian regime, the Iraqi government, the Kurds and Iran (which too sees the rise of ISIS as a threat) are empowered and unitedly take on the new caliphate.

Anti-Arab protest erupts in Erbil
▻http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/video-anti-arab-march-held-kurds-erbil-397174944

#ERBIL - Tensions came to a peak Saturday afternoon, as hundreds of young Kurds weaved in and out of cars, hunting out Arabs in Iraqi Kurdistan’s capital, Erbil.

The young men, marching in anger at the increasing number of Arabs in Iraqi Kurdistan, began their pursuit in Erbil’s Arab Quarter.

Protestors chanted “Arabs are traitors,” and other anti-Arab slogans while they marched, periodically stopping near a known Arab apartment or business and intensifying their chants, some throwing stones at the buildings and windows, until police dispersed the crowd with tazers and batons.

With Islamic State militants making extensive gains to the west of Erbil after Kurdish Peshmerga forces retreated to official Kurdistan Regional Government borders, the Islamic State now virtually controls all of the Nineveh plains, causing tensions to escalate in Erbil. .

Police are now armed, and there is a constant on-patrol Peshmerga presence in the city center. Residents have expressed fears that even if the Islamic State cannot takeover Erbil—which seems highly unlikely considering recent United States involvement—that the usually safe city will become a target of car bombs, a tactic, the Islamic State has used to deadly effect in the cities of Baghdad and Kirkuk where they have been unable to gain control.

Protestors told Middle East Eye that the demonstration, which had a mob atmosphere, was a reaction to the thousands of Arab refugees who had fled into the Kurdish autonomous region recently seeking safety from the sweeping onslaught of Islamic State militants.

“We don’t want the Arabs here because they are all spies,” one protestor told MEE. “They come here to Kurdistan like they are refugees, but we know most of them are working with the Islamic State. If it was the other way, they wouldn’t help us, in the past they have killed us, we don’t want to help them.”

The belief that Iraqi refugees in Erbil were in the Kurdish region as spies for the Islamic State was widespread, with many protestors holding signs in Arabic and Kurdish that read, “You are spies, we are saving you and you are helping Da’ash [Islamic State].”

Barzani gives ’concrete sign Iraq really is breaking up’

▻http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/barzani-gives-concrete-sign-iraq-really-is-breaking-up-.aspx?page

Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), told CNN International that “Iraq is obviously falling apart."

“And it’s obvious that the federal or central government has lost control over everything. Everything is collapsing – the army, the troops, the police,” Barzani said during an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. "We did not cause the collapse of Iraq. It is others who did. And we cannot remain hostages for the unknown," he added.

“Iraq Kurdistan Pres Barzani gives me first concrete sign Iraq really is breaking up + Western policy behind the curve,” Amanpour tweeted late June 23 when announcing the interview.

Barzani had told Sky News Arabia TV on April 8 that an independent Kurdish state is to be established, pointing out that they are moving towards a confederation with Iraq.

Beginning late on June 9, militants led by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) overran most of one Iraqi province and parts of three others north of Baghdad.

Iraqi forces made a “tactical” withdrawal from three western towns on June 22, as Sunni militants widened an offensive that has already overrun swathes of territory.

“The Kurds of Iraq can decide for themselves the name and type of the entity they are living in,” Hüseyin Çelik, a spokesman for Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), reportedly told the Kurdish online news outlet Rudaw last week.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid applauded “Turkey’s move to welcome an independent Kurdistan on its border” on June 19.

Click here to read the rest of the interview on CNN International

Iraqi Kurds maneuver between Maliki and Mosul - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East
▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/06/kurds-isis-mosul-maliki-krg-gains-leverage.html#ixzz34dNTeP9V

The swift attack on Mosul by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and relatively bloodless withdrawal of US-trained Iraqi security forces has further weakened Baghdad’s influence over northern territories. The political vacuum has enabled the Kurds to expand their land claims and leverage Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for concessions on their oil exports. Yet, the role of radical Baathist military officials in the Mosul coup and their links to ISIS also exposes the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to important security and political challenges. The KRG will not only have to secure greater territories and populations from extremist groups on its borders, but also maneuver its nationalist agenda through radicalized Sunni Arab populations that may be even more resistant than Maliki and Shiite groups.

Read more: ▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/06/kurds-isis-mosul-maliki-krg-gains-leverage.html#ixzz34hSi3sfa