The Kurds are everything that the Neos love. They do what they are told and when armed with US weapons, attack those we don’t like. We’ve been promising them their own country since WWI. Sadly for them, the country we promise them belongs to three other countries.
Wily clannish capo Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), has announced that “Yes” won Monday’s non-binding independence referendum. Now that index fingers in indelible indigo ink are out of the way, the real battle between the KRG and Baghdad begins. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and the Iraqi Supreme Court have denounced the referendum as “unconstitutional.”
Kurds comprise roughly 22% of an Iraqi population of 32 million. They are mostly Sunni and speak an Indo-European language close to Farsi. Iraqi Kurds have enjoyed significant autonomy since Daddy Bush installed a no-fly zone over northern Iraq, post-Desert Storm, in 1991. They were instrumental in helping Shock and Awe in 2003, and the Peshmerga (Iraqi Kurdistan’s standing force) are de facto US allies, fighting Islamic State – with US air cover – after the collapse of the Iraqi Army and the phony Caliphate’s conquest of Mosul in 2014. Their dreams of secession from Iraq have been paramount for almost three decades. Read more here.