A lot of the fighting in northeastern Syria has centered on al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) fighting against the local Kurdish militias. Al-Qaeda has 200 Kurdish recruits of its own, and they have many in Iraqi Kurdistan concerned.
A video and a flurry of posts on social media have made it apparent that al-Qaeda’s Kurds still have Kurdistan very much on the mind, vowing to remove the “infidel rulers” of the region and take Iraqi Kurdistan for part of AQI’s territory.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has backed Kurdish militias in Syria in their fight against AQI, and has repeatedly hinted at openness to deploy the Peshmearga into Syria to fight them.
The real threat of AQI comes not from them really being able to invade Iraqi Kurdistan and defeat the Peshmearga, of course, but from Kurdish recruits infiltrating back into Kurdistan and launching terror attacks.
This is a problem region-wide and world-wide, as foreign recruits flock to AQI, and everyone waits to see how they are used when the Syrian War ends and those foreign fighters, with passports all over the world, start returning home with new orders.