(By Globalpost)
As sectarian violence in Iraq reaches new heights and threatens to return the country to civil war, the semi-autonomous Kurdish north could be set to capitalize on the instability. An estimated 6,818 people were killed in Iraq’s violence…
As Iraq spirals, the Kurds take advantage (via GlobalPost)
ERBIL, Iraq — As sectarian violence in Iraq reaches new heights and threatens to return the country to civil war, the semi-autonomous Kurdish north could be set to capitalize on the instability. An estimated 6,818 people were killed in Iraq’s violence…
This post was republished using Repost. Please read it on Informed Comment directly: https://www.juancole.com/2014/01/increase-autonomy-chaos.html
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Euronews reports, “Kurdistan oil flow to Turkey begins, exports await Iraqi consent”
Sincere question: Haven’t all the Sykes-Picot “nations” been torn apart? Every last one, now that Syria is carrion?
Yep.
Kurdistan is the only silver lining among the dark clouds gathering on the horizon for the fictitious country known as Iraq. Iraq’s clearly devolved into a civil war.
By the way the ISIS are definitely hardcore, and they are on a roll having decisively beaten and kicked PM Nouri al-Malaki’s government troops out of Fallujah. Despite all their military hardware such as abandoning tanks and armored personnel carriers in the battles, Malaki’s troops have either lost the will to fight for their own regime. Or they never really had it. Think the ARVN forces of another fictitious country our fearless leaders inside the beltway bubble called The Republic of South Vietnam.
And Secretary of State John Kerry promising Malaki more war materiel such as Hellfire missiles and drones just won’t cut the mustard. Wars are won or lost by boots on the ground. But those boots have to be marching toward the enemy to engage them in combat rather advancing toward the rear out of the city’s limits. Being a fellow Vietnam veteran, I wonder what Secretary Kerry really thinks now having been one of the prominent “liberal hawks,” who voted for the war in Iraq, as one of the senators from Massachusetts. He’s witnessing another foreign policy debacle just as he did when he served in Vietnam and became a virtual rock star of returning veterans against the Vietnam War. (By the way, a recent U.N. Report I read yesterday stated there were 8, 868 Iraqis killed last year in sectarian violence rather than the statistic of 6, 818 reported by Agence-France Presse and cited in this article.)