The Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) was on the cusp of secession just weeks ago, but the sudden losses to ISIS have changed that calculation. The latest round of US and French arms shipments are changing it again.
Officials are pumping arms into the Kurdish Peshmerga in hoping that it will change the balance of power between them and ISIS, but it is inevitably changing the balance between them and the Iraqi central government as well.
The reason the US et al. were not selling arms to the Peshmerga in the first place, and indeed the reason the US was previously limiting arms sales to the Maliki government, was to keep the Kurds from securing enough arms to successfully secede, or for the Iraqi military to get strong enough to crush their autonomous region.
With the US now throwing itself headlong into another Iraq war, the fear of upsetting this balance has gone out the window, and they and their allies are now arming everyone with reckless abandon, irrespective of the inevitable consequences.
With Benjamin Netanyahu calling for a independent Kurdistan, I can bet AIPAC is in this neck deep….we wouldn’t want to disrupt the delivery of oil to the Israelis by the Kurds….or a pipeline from Kurdistan to Israel in the near future….now, can we?
Just another wonderful day in Mr. Rodgers neighborhood…everyone playing nice with everyone else.
I think the Kurds are being armed so that they can (will) break away from Iraq. I think the decision by the powers that be (USA and Israel) is to create a separate Kurdistan and break Iraq and Syria into separate countries so that they have total control over these new republics.