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Iraqi forces 'launch major Kirkuk operation'

According to Iraqi constitution, Iraq federal forces must control borders, airports, oil wells. Ibadi also said that and he said that they will gonna control all the borders, but lets assume they couldn't control all borders. Iraqi Army or PMU should at least control this zone, for gods sake;

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Come on now. This will eliminate most of the PKK activities in southeast Turkey. Trade between Iraqi nation and Turkish nation would be doubled in short amount of time. Border should not be owned by PKK or KDP in Iraqi side, but must be owned by Iraqi Army or at least Turkmen PMU units.
Erdogan promise Abadi to secure his end and tight up the security or mobilize within border to avoid any regrouping by Kurds. Turkey is looking for reason to have strike and destroy Kurd heavy weapons and they will find the reason eventually ..... Erdogan is itching for brutal strike ...
 
funny how Barzani inadvertently stalled and rolled back the aspirations of an independent Kurdistan. oh well...
 
funny how Barzani inadvertently stalled and rolled back the aspirations of an independent Kurdistan. oh well...
He played the bluff and see if he successful or not. But, he called in separatist movement when central govt busy fighting ISIS and for them that was best time. But, they did miscalculation somewhere ...
 
How Iran helped Baghdad seize back Kirkuk

Around 8 p.m. on Oct. 15, an Iranian general from the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) accompanied by Iraqi Commanders Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and Hadi al-Ameri sat down with the Kurdish commanders in Kirkuk. The IRGC commander, known only by his surname, Eqbalpour, who works closely with Quds Force chief Qasem Soleimani, told the Kurds to give up the city peacefully. “If you resist, we will crush you and you will lose everything,” the general warned the peshmerga commanders, a source with intimate knowledge of the meeting told Al-Monitor.

The Kurdish leadership had turned down repeated requests by Soleimani to cancel the Sept. 25 independence referendum, to his indignation. The peshmerga commanders who had fought Saddam Hussein’s army alongside Soleimani and other IRGC commanders in the 1980s knew that the Quds Force commander would take his revenge. After consulting with the top Kurdish leadership, the peshmerga commanders told Eqbalpour that they would not give up Kirkuk.

The Iranian commander took out a map of the area and spread it out in front of his Kurdish counterparts. “This is our military plan. We will hit you tonight from three points — here, here and here,” the Quds Force officer stated, and then left the meeting with his entourage.

Not far from the main Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) building in Kirkuk, where the meeting took place, a group of American military advisers sat at the sprawling K1 air base. The soldiers would keep their silence as Soleimani and the Iraqis orchestrated the attacks on Kirkuk. One Kurdish official even suggested that there must have been an international agreement to launch such a coordinated strike. The Kurds were in for a big surprise.

Just after midnight, in the early hours of Oct. 16, the Iraqis attacked from the points that the Iranian general had identified, and by 8 p.m. — despite fierce resistance by some of the peshmerga — the Iraqis were taking over the city as Kurdish officials and commanders fled. Three peshmerga sources, including two majors, were adamant that they had seen Persian-speaking soldiers wearing the uniforms of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) alongside the Iraqis.

How the Kurdish peshmerga were defeated so fast is disputed, but lack of ammunition and the longstanding rivalry between the PUK and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) played an important part. "I fought for four hours and we did not allow the [PMU] to come forward,” said Maj. Nihad, a peshmerga commander in his mid 30s who fought south of the city near the Shiite town of Taza. “We could not continue simply because we had no more ammunition.”

As the Iraqis took control of the city, thousands of Kurdish civilians and peshmerga fled to Erbil and Sulaimaniyah. "They sold us, the [Kurdish] officials sold us,” one peshmerga told Al-Monitor in Qarahanjir, just to the east of Kirkuk, as thousands of desperate and bewildered Kurdish civilians drove their vehicles toward Sulaimaniyah. Kurdish officials could be seen fleeing through the hills in their four-wheel-drive vehicles. Angry crowds along the road near Sulaimaniyah jeered at the officials.

Immediately after their collapse in Kirkuk, KDP and PUK officials accused each other of treason and traded barbs. The KDP accused one wing of the PUK of reaching a secret agreement with Baghdad to sell out the Kurds, while PUK officials said Massoud Barzani, the de facto president of the Kurdistan Region, is reaping what he sowed for his obstinacy in going ahead with the independence referendum against the advice of the Kurds’ closest allies. The two sides also accused each other of looting Kirkuk’s oil and siphoning off millions of dollars in the process.

It appears that Iran succeeded in helping Baghdad squeeze the Kurds and retake all the disputed territories from them. US President Donald Trump said his administration would not side with any party in an internal matter.

While Iran may be buoyant about its success, the Kurdish public is angry and feels betrayed by both Soleimani and the Kurdish leadership. But as the Kurds try to make sense of losing so much after the referendum, Iran may come to regret its decision to humiliate the Kurdish public in the long run. The sense of humiliation is palpable across to the Kurdistan Region. “I have picked up my father’s Kalashnikov to defend my town,” said a young man on Oct. 16, sitting on a hill just outside Kirkuk and clinging to his rusty gun. With tears in his eyes, Garmiyan,18, said that he would not run away and would rather die defending his hometown as he looked down on the road jammed with vehicles fleeing the city.

Anti-Iran sentiment is now growing in the Kurdistan Region, despite how the Kurds have generally seen Iran, a country that they have often turned to in times of need. When Saddam’s regime launched chemical attacks in 1988, the Kurds turned to Iran; again, in 1991, as Saddam’s army attacked Kurdish areas in the aftermath of the Gulf War, many were housed by Iran. By and large, the Kurds see themselves as ethnically closer to Iranians than to Arabs and Turks because of their thousands of years of shared history.

Tehran’s assistance to Baghdad in this episode of Iraq's tumultuous history may thus ultimately hurt Tehran's influence in the Kurdistan Region, while for Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi the Shiite commanders may have already become too powerful to contain.

There is no doubt that the Kurdish leadership is guilty of monumental miscalculations by pushing ahead with an ill-timed referendum. But given the reactions to their policies, both Washington and Tehran are likely to come to regret humiliating the Kurdish public in years to come.

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/en/...pture-soleimani-quds-force-eqbalpour.amp.html


Why do they have anti-Iran sentiment while Kirkuk doesn't belong to them? it is not a war to destroy Kurdistan region but simply to push them back from areas that they captured illegally ...

We are Iranians, Iraq is a district of Iran

What you mean? what is this grudge all about?
 
Unlike Rohingyas (I am not sure what is going on there as I have not followed the conflict), ordinary Kurds are not attacked in Iraq for being Kurds. Thus your example makes no sense. In fact Kurds have many more rights in Iraq than in Syria, Turkey and Iran. They even have autonomy which is not the case in the other 3 countries. A Kurd by default is the president of Iraq too. There are quotas for Kurds in the political system etc. You are speaking complete and utter nonsense by talking about Rohingyas out of nowhere but I am not surprised.

Similar unless they are Arab.

Iraq is an Arab country which the entire world knows about and recognizes. 85% of the population are Arabs. Once KRG leaves that percentage will reach 95%.

That is only political (which can be argued now after KSA-Iraq ties have returned to what they were for most of modern-day history) and only since 2003. On all other fronts KSA is many times closer which is evident for every informed person.

So what? Pilgrims who can't speak Arabic and who only travel by road, visit Najaf and Karbala and return home through the same road.

Did you forget that many Shia Saudi Arabians are visiting Iraq as well? That is not an argument on its own.

For instance you might have visited Iraq (Najaf and Karbala) but judging from your post you seem to be completely ignorant about the ground realities in Iraq and what the opinions of the people are.

I said that Kurds in KRG do not consider themselves as Iraqis which there have been amble proof of ever since Iraq emerged as a country.

Such kind of sentiments (the ones that I described which you seem to have ignored) are not found among other minorities (Assyrians, Afro-Arabs, Turkmens) or even Feyli Kurds (Kurds or Lurs based in and around Baghdad mostly).

Anyway you can keep trying to sell us all that Kurds in KRG/Barzanistan consider themselves as Iraqis and act like ones despite the opposite being the case and despite obvious hostile acts towards Baghdad. I think that every country would love to have such loyal citizens among them who clearly love Iraq.

They love Iraq and Iraqis so much that they are stealing Iraqi land and now when the Iraqi army are reconquering what is theirs they are crying and starting an entire coordinated propaganda campaign against the Iraqi state and the people.

What a joke. A little advice, stop wasting my time with such nonsense. If you love Kurds so much give Iranian Kurdistan or whatever it is called autonomy as well and make it mandatory for the Mullah's to appoint an Kurdish president and give them political quotas too. Not only that let them conquer land belonging to the country of Iran. Go ahead.
You call them foreigner and then they'll be attacked.
And no matter what you like it or not . they are Iraqi unless they get independence.

funny how Barzani inadvertently stalled and rolled back the aspirations of an independent Kurdistan. oh well...
barezanni show that he is not wise enough to know the time for any action . guess its time for Kurds to seek out a new leader who is more level headed and know the situation in the world and region better .
Guess losing Talebani was a far severe blow to Kurds than this battle around Kirkuk .
 
FOX news reporting of Peshmerga in Iraq City of Kirkuk: we will prevent filthy Shia from entering Kirkuk
 
Why do they have anti-Iran sentiment while Kirkuk doesn't belong to them? it is not a war to destroy Kurdistan region but simply to push them back from areas that they captured illegally ...



What you mean? what is this grudge all about?

I've no grudge/problem with Iran. But given so many call us a client state of Iran, might as well admit we're actually Iranian
 
I've no grudge/problem with Iran. But given so many call us a client state of Iran, might as well admit we're actually Iranian

First of all idiots are everywhere and secondly who called you that? you need to listen to the Iranian and Iraqi official position on this issue. For example in the last visit of chief of staff of the Iraqi armed forces the Major General Ghanmi, his Iranian counterpart major general Mohammad Baqeri said:

“We are so pleased that the Iraqi nation and army have made great gains in the battle against terrorists and have crushed the Takfiris,”
And:
Ghanmi also praised Iran’s full support for Iraq, particularly in hard times.
Actually whatever Iran does in Iraq is in coordination with Iraqi government and the reason of the Iran presence in Iraq is due to Iraqi Gov request not only now but from the begging. That's mean whenever you ask Iran to leave we would not be there any longer.
 

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