Last edited on May-29-2016 at 00:31 AM (UTC3 Nineveh, Assyria)
“Sometimes, throwing money at a problem doesn’t resolve the problem, especially when the Kurds seem more intent on collecting aid than fighting corruption, and when the goal of defeating ISIS remains secondary to playing intra-Iraqi political games.”
Kurdish official calls defeating ISIS ‘a huge mistake’ by Michael Rubin American Enterprise Institute (AEI), April 26, 2016.
Iraqi Kurdistan has spent millions of dollars on lobbying to depict itself as a democracy, as an ideological ally of the United States in the region and as committed to the fight against the Islamic State militant group, also known as ISIS. The reality is far more complex.
In the weeks before ISIS seized Mosul, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) apparently supplied some weaponry, like Kornet anti-tank missiles, to ISIS in order to weaken the central government with whom Masoud Barzani was locked in a political dispute.
A poster of Massoud Barzani president of the Iraqi Kurdistan inside the peshmerga base in Makhmour, after it was freed from control of Islamic State, south of Mosul, April 17, 2016. REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah.
Barzani refused repeated requests by the Yazidi community first to send peshmerga reinforcements to defend them and then to at least provide the Yazidis with weaponry to defend themselves. As ISIS advanced, the peshmerga fled, leaving the Yazidi communities unarmed and undefended. The mass murder of Yazidi men and boys and the enslavement of Yazidi women were direct results.
Last August, shortly before Masoud Barzani’s term in office expired, his security forces convoyed through the streets of the Iraqi Kurdish capital of Erbil weaponry and equipment donated by the international community to fight ISIS. Rather than use the weaponry to fight ISIS, he had apparently stockpiled it to bolster his own political militia relative to rival Kurds.
More recently, Kurdish forces have sold donated German weaponry for personal gain. While the KRG has said it has no money to pay salaries, senior leaders have found millions to buy mega-mansions.
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Now, a KRG official has said that it might not be a Kurdish interest to defeat ISIS. Hiwa Afandi, a managing director in the KRG Department of Information Technology, tweeted, “Strategically, it’s a huge mistake to eliminate ISIS before we are done with Hashd militiamen. They represent a much bigger danger to Iraqis.”
So, an up-and-coming official in Barzani’s political party believes that fighting Shiites should trump defeating ISIS? The Obama administration’s response? Give the Kurds an additional $415 million.
Sometimes, throwing money at a problem doesn’t resolve the problem, especially when the Kurds seem more intent on collecting aid than fighting corruption, and when the goal of defeating ISIS remains secondary to playing intra-Iraqi political games.
Assyria
\ã-'sir-é-ä\ n (1998)
1: an ancient empire of Ashur
2: a democratic state in Bet-Nahren, Assyria (northern
Iraq, northwestern Iran, southeastern Turkey and eastern Syria.)
3:
a democratic state that fosters the social and political rights to all of
its inhabitants irrespective of their religion, race, or gender
4: a democratic state that believes in the freedom of
religion, conscience, language, education and culture in faithfulness to the
principles of the United Nations Charter —
Atour synonym
Ethnicity, Religion, Language
»
Israeli, Jewish, Hebrew
»
Assyrian, Christian, Aramaic
»
Saudi Arabian, Muslim, Arabic
Assyrian
\ã-'sir-é-an\ adj or n (1998)
1: descendants of the ancient empire of Ashur
2: the Assyrians, although representing but one single
nation as the direct heirs of the ancient Assyrian Empire, are now
doctrinally divided, inter sese, into five principle
ecclesiastically designated religious sects with their corresponding
hierarchies and distinct church governments, namely, Church of the
East, Chaldean, Maronite, Syriac Orthodox and Syriac Catholic.
These formal divisions had their origin in the 5th century of the
Christian Era. No one can coherently understand the Assyrians
as a whole until he can distinguish that which is religion or church
from that which is nation -- a matter which is particularly
difficult for the people from the western world to understand; for
in the East, by force of circumstances beyond their control,
religion has been made, from time immemorial, virtually into a
criterion of nationality.
3:
the Assyrians have been referred to as Aramaean, Aramaye, Ashuraya,
Ashureen, Ashuri, Ashuroyo, Assyrio-Chaldean, Aturaya, Chaldean,
Chaldo, ChaldoAssyrian, ChaldoAssyrio, Jacobite, Kaldany, Kaldu,
Kasdu, Malabar, Maronite, Maronaya, Nestorian, Nestornaye, Oromoye,
Suraya, Syriac, Syrian, Syriani, Suryoye, Suryoyo and Telkeffee. —
Assyrianism verb
Aramaic
\ar-é-'máik\
n (1998)
1: a Semitic language which became the lingua franca of
the Middle East during the ancient Assyrian empire.
2: has been referred to as Neo-Aramaic, Neo-Syriac, Classical
Syriac, Syriac, Suryoyo, Swadaya and Turoyo.