Bullet by bullet, cent by cent, K.R.G. President Massoud Barzani continues to trade independence for the approval of the United States, Iran, and the faltering Iraqi government. In exchange for capitulating on an Independence referendum, Kurdistan ‘s Peshmerga will continue to receive a trickle of weapons, with the vast majority still funneled through the self serving Baghdadi government. Barzani’s KDP party has even been specifically, further isolated from military support, with the Iran aligned PUK party receiving the majority of advanced weapons from the US and Iran. If the months of fiery rhetoric regarding Kurdish independence were not merely a political ploy to gain influence in the Iraqi government, the man so commonly described as a lion has seemingly been starved into obedience.
The PUK/ KDP division will continue in any post Islamic State world, with the president of Iraq always being selected from the PUK party. As long as there is a Kurdish figurehead position within the Iraqi government, one that has been specifically selected to endorse the Iranian Shiite agenda, there will be an inorganic power struggle within the KRG: the nationalist, conservative KDP party seeking independence, while the Iranian and Baghdadi proxy party PUK seeks to ensure the economic interests of its chief source of nourishment and empowerment. The PUK large presence in the disputed, oil rich Kirkuk could mean the end of any dream of Kurdish Independent. Faud Masuand, current president of Iraq, has already begun to urge Peshmerga out of portions of the region; there should be no surprise when the figure head president declares Kirkuk’s oil fields as rightfully Baghdadi owned.
The KRG’s deputy Prime Minister Quban Talabani stated that there is still a great imbalance between the weaponry used by the Islamic State and that of the Kurds. While Talabani pleas with the west to support the religiously tolerant, Israel and American friendly Kurdish region, the United States continues to increase funding to assorted groups of Syrian revolutionaries – many of which have traveled to Syria on Jihad. Because of their status as soldiers of a “non-state, ” Kurdish troops are told that American and European countries cant supply with weapons or training unless coordinated through Baghdad – the current status of Libya and Syria would suggest the opposite is true in differencing circumstances. Despite being starved into submission – through military isolation and oil sanctions – president Barzani still cowers from independence, in exchange for his safe, subservient place at the Iraqi table, content with receiving mere scraps from the ruling Iraqi/Iranian government and the myopic,hypocritical western governments that initially propped it up.
The Kurds, despite what president Barzani believes is a positive servant/master relationship with America, wont benefit from attachment to the Sunni/ Shiite civil war that will ever increasingly be waged to Kurdistans’s south.With the Sunni run Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia sponsoring Jihadist groups in a proxy wars against Syria and Iraq, resolution could only be accomplished by an American intervention that wont ever be considered: More than weapons funding and air strikes, if sanctions and legitimate threats are bestowed upon the pan-Arab countries who are currently funding this war, the Islamic State will wither and die. If the United States does not take this action, their policy will reveal its true nature: oil deals, more than basic morality, recent historical responsibility, and the deaths of millions of Middle Easterners, is the paramount issue regarding the United States decision making process. If the Kurds continue to rely on a culturally ignorant, sorted, capitalistically minded American foreign policy to protect and guide them, they will forever lose their chance for independence.
P&G Global Research Initiative 