The Iraqi State Organization for Marketing Oil (SOMO) announced Nov. 2 that it is arranging with Turkey to allow SOMO to sell Iraqi crude from the disputed territories through the pipeline from Kirkuk to the Ceyhan Turkish port. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) used to export about 500,000 barrels per day independently through Ceyhan before the Baghdad operation to ret
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For decades, Washington has been content to indulge Kurdish dreams of independence. Why was Erbil willing to play along? In a televised address on october 29, the president of the Iraqi Kurdish region, Masoud Barzani, declared that he would step down from his post. It remains unclear whether Barzani, son of the legendary founder of the Kurdish national movement, Mustafa Barz
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What happened? On 16 October 2017, the Iraqi federal government launched an operation to restore Iraqi sovereignty over the disputed territories, including Kirkuk and its oil fields. This reversed the situation in place since the Iraqi army collapsed in the face of an onslaught by the Islamic State in June 2014. Why did it happen? The action was triggered by the indep
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To keep Iraq united and help minimize the divisive sectarianism that has characterized past elections, Washington and the UN need to push for dialogue on the KRG crisis. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi published an op-ed in the New York Times on Wednesday, denouncing the "illegal" referendum held by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq last month, but more im
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BAGHDAD — In June 2014, the cover of Time magazine echoed a sentiment common among pundits and outsiders: “The End of Iraq,” it read. I am proud to say that three years later, thanks to the Iraqi armed forces and the Iraqi people, these predictions were wrong. Since then, Iraq has steadily dealt defeats to the Islamic State, also known as Daesh, a vicious enemy that has threa
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