Kurdish Security Chief Pushes for Western Intervention Against ISIS

Warns Not Intervening Would Cause 'Blowback'

Kurdish National Security Council chief Masrour Barzani, son of the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, today pushed for broad Western intervention in the ongoing regional war against ISIS, saying the nations would regret it if they didn’t get deeply involved in the conflict.

“They have a choice: either they can come and face them here, or they can wait for them to go back to their own countries and face terrorism on their doorsteps,” Barzani insisted, saying the “blowback” for nonintervention would be tremendous.

Unspoken in that is that ISIS itself was essentially a product of blowback, created out of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which itself only became a significant faction because of the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Likewise, Western involvement would doubtless focus on “saving Iraq” as a cohesive state, and would likely turn on the Kurds in pretty short order, aiming to undermine they push for secession.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.