Kurdistan’s President Massoud Barzani’s rushed plan for the region will only wreak havoc. A fresh Kirkuk conflict which pits Kurdish forces against Iraqi militias may result in a new Kurdistan which could exclude the president from office just as quickly ‘Ethnic cleansing’ is the term a CIA officer coined when writing a report about the…
Except for the State of Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan, there isn’t one state in Western Asia that is viable inside its present borders at a 20-year horizon. All the powers with interests in the region want to kick the problem down the road, and that is why the whole world (excepting Israel) wants…
On 10 April 2003, I was driving on a road west of Kirkuk, waiting for the city to be captured by the Kurdish Peshmerga and worried that we might arrive there before the Iraqi army had withdrawn or broken up. We could see no cars from Kirkuk coming towards us, which might mean that there…
Today, Iraqi Kurds will vote in a long awaited and widely condemned separatism referendum that is being boycotting by Arabs and Turkomen. The referendum which has been condemned by all regional powers except for Israel as well as condemned by the UN, US, China and Russia, has already caused both Iran and Turkey to effectively…
Donald Trump’s address to the UN General Assembly on September 19 was a harangue of swaggering abuse and arrogant belligerence but his first public utterance, the day before, was not as spiteful and malevolent. Indeed it was greeted with relief and surprise by the many people who had expected a tirade against the United Nations…
A little-noticed provision to arm Iraqi Christians in the House version of a must-pass defense bill is inadvertently fueling unrest between rival militias on the Ninevah Plains, an Iraqi melting pot. The nonbinding provision, inserted by Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., a conservative Christian member of the House Armed Services Committee, notes “the important role of the Iraqi Christian…
