By Dlsoz Hawrami

Few months ago, the Islamic state in Iraq and Levant (ISIL/ISIS) swept large territories in the northern of Iraq as well as entirely crushed 6 Iraqi army divisions in just few days (5th -13th June, 2014). The ISIL capabilities’ advances in Iraq have, until recently, become a significant topic of discussion among politicians, security intelligences, scholars, writers and even prevalent among ordinary people in almost every-part of the world. Umpteen reasons have been observed behind the growth of the ISIS in Iraq, for instance state security instability, political fragmentations, community discrimination, ideological warfare, regional states contest for power, poverty, luck of enough education, corruption, unemployment etc. In early of its offensives in Iraq, the ISIL only targeted and attacked against the Iraqi government. With this regard, the ISIL’s prime objective was only to defeat the Iraqi Shia government in Sunni territories. But they suddenly started fighting against the other communities such as Kurds. The idea behind the ISIL shifting its strategic military assaults toward Kurdish, in particular the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is a critical issue to be discussed.

Based on the extensive research the above issue holds different political, social, economic and power assessment and in this article an attempt has been made to address this critical issue under the following two fundamental assumptions:

Firstly, if we consider that the ISIL is characterized, run as well as supported by cadres and loyalists of the former Bathies party (Saddam party), then the latter is never – the history examines – allowing Kurds to extend their authorities and power. This is due to the fact that the former Iraqi regime and Arab tribes had very resistance against Kurds, in particular, when it comes to the issue of disputed areas (Kirkuk, Xanaqin, Sinjar etc.). During 5th -13th June, 2014 when the Iraqi army at Sunni territory in northern Iraq was smashed-up by ISIL’s fighters, the disputed areas were entirely vacated; as Massud Barzani the current president of semi-autonomy of Kurdistan called “six Iraqi divisions melted like a snow”. In this regard, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) directly sent its forces (Peshmarga) to these disputed territories. Peshmarga has been settling their military bases and they declared that “we are here to stay”. The primarily objective of Peshmarga is: on one hand, have a deep sympathy to these areas and they strongly consider these territories inherently belong to Kurds in terms of geography and people. Therefore, they feel responsibility to defence them. On the other hand, it is a matter of the security strategy. The Kurdish security intelligences believe that, if ISIL/ISIS captured these territories then the Kurdistan interests and territory would be under a high stage of threats. Therefore, settling and moving Peshmarga to these territories has become essential objective for the KRG. Simultaneously, this KRG military movement has perceived as critical matter to incite the ISIL/ISIS to shift its strategic offensive toward Kurdistan region.

Secondly, maintaining states territory integrity and regional security. There are some political players and analysts – including the US vice president Joe Biding – consider that the regional states such as Turkey, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates had conspiratorially extended unconditional financial, logistical and tens of thousands of weapons support to Sunni fighters including ISIS/ISIL. During the early stage of war the ISIS/ISIL fighters used its operations only against Iraqi army, but when Kurdish leadership (Massud Barzani) called for independence referendum, the ISIL/ISIS shifted its military offensive toward Kurdistan. In this regard, one can conclude that these states, in particular, Turkey does not have any interests with the creation state of Kurdistan due to the fact that Turkey is potentially terrified to lose its own territory integrity as Turkey believes that if the Iraqi Kurdish reach their own statehood then they can incite Kurds in other areas (Turkey, Iran and Syria) to follow the same paths.

Historically, Turkey have had various strategic plans (explicit and implicit) to curb the Kurds movements from reaching their own privileges (statehood). Since, last few years the relationship between the semi-autonomous Kurdistan and Turkey has well escalated in terms of economic relationship. These communications have led the Turkish strategy to be more complicated and more implicit because the Turkish government doesn’t want to lose the massive profit that it has consistently gained from the Kurdistan oil revenues. “The economic traffic is two-ways – the state of Iraq is now the second largest export market for Turkey, much of it to the KRG”. The oil and energy became key to the relationship between Ankara and the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan. Turkey significantly needs the oil produced there, pumping around 120,000-200,000 barrels a day to the southern Turkish port of Ceyhan.

The implicit dangerous Turkish-plans toward the KRG came to perception, in particular when the KRG leadership called for independence referendum. In this regard, the ISIS videos tape – YouTube – is a best evidence that the Turkish government directly supported and incited these fighters in context of logistic and financial assistance to turn their offensive operation toward the semi-autonomy Kurdistan territory. The other assumption is perceived by some Kurdish and the region political analysis that Turkey simplified for foreign fighters to cross the Turkish territory. The potential reason behind Turkish strategy is to curb the KRG movement toward independence.

To sum up, it can be true that the KRG has been: on one hand, halted from reaching its state declaration; and on the other hand, threatened to leave the disputed territories. But we should not neglect the reality that the KRG has been facing significant interest in terms of: the ISIS assaults paved a way for the KRG to advance its diplomatic relations with large number of world states and some of these states have created direct diplomatic contact with the KRG. In some respect, they view the KRG in frame of statehood not just a simple region. However, the KRG is still semi-autonomy region and its part of the state of Iraq and the KRG’s diplomatic relations with the foreign states should be under the umbrella of Iraqi government. The KRG has also benefited in terms of improving the Peshmarga competency through receiving large amount of ammunition and logistic assistance from different states of world.


Dlsoz Hawrami is a Kurdish writer and academic. A Salahaddin University-Kurdistan graduate with a Bachelor’s degree in English Language, and Deakin University-Australia graduate with a Master’s degree in International Relations.