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HARI SREENIVASAN: The desire of the Kurds along Iraq’s northern border to govern themselves is receiving more resistance from Iraq’s central government. Iraqi army forces are demanding Kurdish troops withdraw from oil fields and military bases around Kirkuk, a city in the Kurdistan region that voted for independence last month. Kirkuk also has 10% of Iraq’s known oil reserves. Washington Post’s Loveday Morris is in Baghdad covering this standoff joins me now via Skype. First of all the significance of this. Why is it so important?

LOVEDAY MORRIS: There’s been a longtime conflict between Baghdad and Kurdistan over these disputed territories. Most significant of which is Kirkuk because of the oil reserves. But the referendum last month has really sharpened these disputes because you have Baghdad opposing independence and so it feels like they have to restate its territorial claims these areas. So that’s why we’re seeing a lot of tension right now.

HARI SREENIVASAN: And just to give people a little bit of a brief timeline – Iraqi forces control this area for a while and then in June ISIS took over the area and now it’s kind of back in Kurdish hands?

LOVEDAY MORRIS: Right. So in June 2014 Iraq lost control of a lot of the areas and we have this huge collapse in the face of an ISIS offensive. Over 100,000 soldiers fled and Kurdish forces moved in some of these areas – some of them maybe took from ISIS and others just moved into into the vacuum. And so Iraqi forces have been in these areas since June 2014. And that’s their main demand that they return to the areas.

HARI SREENIVASAN: What’s the likelihood that this standoff right now turns violent? Into some sort of a civil war?

LOVEDAY MORRIS:: I think at this point both sides don’t want violence. Al-Abadi, the prime minister, is really trying to defuse the situation by saying there’s going to be no military attack. But at the same time there is this buildup of forces so that I think they are trying to, in a way, intimidate the Kurds to withdraw from some areas but they don’t want to see a fight per say. But in this really tense situation there can be a small spark and things can turn violent quite easily.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Thank you.

The post Iraqi, Kurdish forces in standoff, weeks after Kurdish vote for independence appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Syrian Kurdish refugee families profess faith in Jesus Christ.

The battle between Turkey and Syria may be 13,000 kilometres from Toowoomba, but the effect of the war is being anxiously felt by the Queensland city's new Kurdish community.

The operation comes at a time of recent IS attacks in Syria and Iraq.

Event Announcement The weakening of the Iraqi government, the Syrian Civil War, and the rise of the so-called Islamic State have reopened questions about the future of Kurds in West Asia. To discuss recent developments and questions about the future of Iraq and Syria, Brookings India is organizing a private roundtable with Peter Galbraith. In […]

History is often full of strange ironies. Decades from now, the rise and fall of ISIS will probably be remembered in the same breath as the rise and fall of Kurdish hopes of statehood. That Kurdish aspirations of independence in Syria and Iraq should have suffered the same fate as ISIS is, of course, an irony…

WARNING - GRAPHIC CONTENT: The Turks and a group of Syrian rebels displayed their emblems in Ras al-Ain, a border town where Kurdish fighters have been forced out by Turkey's offensive.

President Donald Trump defended his relationship with Turkey at NATO meetings Tuesday following its invasion of northern Syria,

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said Turkey and its rebel allies had launched a large ground offensive against three villages today and forces thousands of civilians to flee.

Mazlum Abdi, the head of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), phoned Moscow to 'thank Vladimir Putin (pictured yesterday) and Russia for their keenness in defusing the war'.

Pictured today, the female members of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, took part in their turning out among other male recruits near the Iraqi-Kurdish town of Soran, 60 miles northeast of Erbil.

A Kurdish asylum seeker has pleaded guilty to bomb-making and inciting two Iraqi jihadists to commit a planned terror attack in north Germany (pictured, Fatah Mohammed Abdullah).

Dewey Library - HQ1726.7.C34313 2020

Rotch Library - PN1993.5.I846 S548 2017