Hot Air:
How bad has the situation in Iraq become? The city of Kirkuk has long been a point of contention between the Kurds and the Iraqi government. Saddam Hussein expelled the Kurds from the city, and ever since the Kurds have laid claim to it — and its oil resources. The new government in Iraq similarly refused to cede the territory to the Kurds, and for the same reason.
Now they’ve run away from Kirkuk, and the Kurds have it again by default as the Iraqi army collapses:
Iraqi Kurdish forces say they have taken full control of the northern oil city of Kirkuk as the army flees before an Islamist offensive nearby.
“The whole of Kirkuk has fallen into the hands of peshmerga,” Kurdish spokesman Jabbar Yawar told Reuters. “No Iraq army remains in Kirkuk now.”
Kurdish fighters are seen as a bulwark against Sunni Muslim insurgents. …
Under Saddam Hussein’s programme of “Arabisation”, Kurds were driven from Kirkuk and replaced with settlers from the south, and the Iraqi government continues to assert control over nearby oilfields, with the backing from the local Turkmen community.
That won’t last long now, as the Iraqis still fiddle while Anbar and Nineveh burn. The parliament has postponed a vote on Nouri al-Maliki’s declaration of emergency, which delays any cohesive response. They can’t delay for much longer before ISIS comes knocking on their doors in Baghdad:
Insurgents inspired by al-Qaeda rapidly pressed toward Baghdad on Wednesday, confronting little resistance from Iraq’s collapsing security forces and expanding an arc of control that now includes a wide swath of the country.
By nightfall, the militants had reached the flash-point city of Samarra, just 70 miles outside Baghdad, after having first seized Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s home town, and other cities while pressing southward from Mosul. …
It appeared that the militants were facing more robust resistance as they moved south, where Iraq’s Shiites have a stronger presence. But several experts said it would be wrong to assume that heavily fortified Baghdad, with its large Shiite population and concentration of elite forces, could easily fend off an ISIS attack.
Joe Biden may get his wish:
That Iraq be divided into three parts: Sunni….Shiite….Kurd.
But there’s bound to be a whole lot of blood* all over the place before it settles down into three littler lands.
*Whole lot of blood?
But why?
Because where the Kurds are is where all Iraq’s oil is.
And Iraq can be the 2nd biggest exporter of oil in OPEC if it ever gets enough peace to pump it out without pipelines being blown up.
Of all things!
The Iranian Republican Guards (the Quds Corps) have aligned with Iraq’s governmental forces but only to deny the Kurds from gaining any control over oil-rich parts of Afghanistan.
See, Obama?
You left a vacuum.
It did not remain a vacuum.
@Nanny G: Afghanistan ==== poppies === dope
Iraq === oil