Lobbying 2015: Iraqi Kurds to US: Don't forget, we were your friends first
The Kurdistan Regional Government has emerged as one of America’s best allies, but will its lobbying operation help it from falling prey to politics now that Iraq and Turkey are more fully engaged in the fight against IS?
As Iraq and Turkey finally take on the Islamic State (IS), America’s Kurdish friends are determined not to get sold out.
As the first bastion of resistance to last year’s IS onslaught, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and its peshmerga fighters have a special claim to US support. However, recent battlefield gains by central Iraqi forces and Ankara’s entry into the fray are putting a damper on their dreams of independence.
Tensions erupted late last month when Turkey, after months of US pressure, finally opened its air bases to the anti-IS coalition and began bombing the self-proclaimed caliphate. Ankara, however, unleashed most of its wrath on the outlawed Kurdish activists of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), bombing its bases in northern Iraq amid growing concerns that the PKK’s Syrian affiliate is creating a de facto state along Turkey’s southern border.
The PKK isn’t part of the KRG and its Peshmerga militia in northern Iraq, but the two have joined forces to combat IS.
