BAGHDAD: The flashpoint in the independence stand-off between the Kurdistan Region and the Iraqi government shifted to Kirkuk on Tuesday, as Baghdad moved to take control of the area’s lucrative oil wells.
The Kurdistan Regional Government exports 550,000 barrels of Iraqi oil per day through a pipeline linking Kirkuk to Ceyhan in Turkey, of which 400,000 barrels come from Kirkuk. If Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi’s government took control of the oil it would deprive the KRG of about 75 percent of its daily revenue, and separate the Kurds from the most valuable part of their proposed independent state.
“Baghdad intends to regain its legal and constitutional role in Kirkuk and all the nearby disputed areas, including the oil fields,” Abbas Al-Bayati, an Iraqi politician who is close to Al-Abadi, told Arab News. “We, as legislative and executive authorities, are working to regain control of those areas.”
A senior security official told Arab News: “The situation is very cloudy and anything is possible relating to Kirkuk, but we know that the government wants to secure the oilfields.
“It is an open area. There will be no need for large numbers of troops; actually the operation can be carried out by airborne forces.”
Kirkuk, the fifth Iraqi city in terms of population, is a mixed area. Only Basra has larger oilfields. The KRG seized control of the city and its oil wells in the summer of 2014, when the Iraqi army fled in the face of an onslaught by Daesh militants.
On Tuesday, Iraq stopped selling dollars to leading banks in Kurdistan and banned foreign currency transfers to the autonomous region.
The financial sanctions follow a ban on direct international air travel to the region imposed by the central government on Friday.
Iraq’s central bank informed the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) that it would stop selling dollars to four major Kurdish banks and stop all foreign currency transfers to the region, banking and government sources told Reuters.
“The condition for ending the dollar sale prohibition is to have the Kurdish banks under the central bank’s control,” an Iraqi official told Reuters.
Meanwhile, Kurdistan announced on Tuesday it was calling presidential and parliamentary elections for Nov. 1.
The November polls are for the Parliament and presidency of the region, not for an independent state, said a report by Reuters.
Kurds voted for independence last month in a controversial referendum in the Kurdistan Region and the disputed areas, including Kirkuk, seized by the peshmergas.
The Iraqi Parliament views the referendum as an illegal and unconstitutional threat to Iraq’s unity and integrity, and has approved punitive measures against the Kurdistan Region and Kurdish leaders, including regaining control of the disputed areas and the oil wells in Kirkuk.
Thousands of Iraqi security forces, including Shiite paramilitaries, are taking part in a major military operation to dislodge Daesh militants from Hawija, a town in Kirkuk province 45km west of the city. The campaign was launched only a day before the referendum, and many view it as a pretext by Al-Abadi to deploy more troops near Kirkuk.
Military sources told Arab News said that not all the Iraqi troops near Kirkuk were taking part in the fighting. Asa’ib Ahl Al-Haq, a prominent Shiite armed faction supporting the Iraqi government in the fight against Daesh, was assigned by Al-Abadi to be ready to move to secure the oilfields.
“The decision was made (by the Parliament and the government), (and) the authority of the federal government has to be imposed in all the disputed areas, including Kirkuk,” Asa’ib spokesman Na’aim Al-Abodi told Arab News. “There are large numbers of troops near Kirkuk to participate in the battle to retake Hawija,” he said, and any “childish or reckless act” by Kurdish leaders “will have serious consequences.”
Baghdad wants the referendum to be annulled as the main condition for talks with Irbil. The KRG said on Tuesday it was not authorized to do so.
“Cancelling the results of the referendum would not be as easy as officials in Baghdad think,” a spokesman said. “It related to the people of Kurdistan, and those people have decided what they want pertaining to this issue.”
The KRG has deployed more Kurdish troops in Kirkuk over the past two weeks. On Monday, Al-Abadi warned of the consequences of such “military mobilization procedures,” which he described as “risky and not acceptable.”
Al-Abadi asked Kurdish troops to withdraw beyond the areas where they were deployed before Oct. 18, 2016, before military operations to recapture Nineveh. “Imposing reality by force in the disputed areas is rejected,” he said.
New Kurdish flashpoint as Baghdad eyes Kirkuk’s oil
New Kurdish flashpoint as Baghdad eyes Kirkuk’s oil
Macron says West must be cautious over new Syria rulers
“We must regard the regime change in Syria without naivety,” Macron said in a speech to French ambassadors after Islamist-led forces toppled Assad last month, adding France would not abandon “freedom fighters, like the Kurds” who are fighting extremist groups in Syria.
UN: Over 30 million in need of aid in war-torn Sudan
- Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than eight million internally displaced
- Both the army and the RSF have been accused of using starvation as a weapon of war
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: More than 30 million people, over half of them children, are in need of aid in Sudan after twenty months of war, the United Nations said on Monday.
The UN has launched a $4.2 billion call for funds, targeting 20.9 million people across Sudan from a total of 30.4 million people it said are in need in what it called “an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.”
Sudan has been torn apart and pushed to the brink of famine by the war that erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than eight million internally displaced, which, in addition to 2.7 million displaced before the war, has made Sudan the world’s largest internal displacement crisis.
A further 3.3 million people have fled across Sudan’s borders to escape the war, which means over a quarter of the country’s pre-war population, estimated at around 50 million, are now uprooted.
Famine has already been declared in five areas in Sudan and is expected to take hold of five more areas by May, with 8.1 million people currently on the brink of mass starvation.
Sudan’s army-aligned government has denied there is famine, while aid agencies complain that access is blocked by bureaucratic hurdles and ongoing violence.
Both the army and the RSF have been accused of using starvation as a weapon of war.
For much of the conflict, the UN has struggled to raise even a quarter of the funds it has targeted for its humanitarian response in the impoverished northeast African country.
Sudan has often been called the world’s “forgotten” war, overshadowed by conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine despite the scale of the horrors inflicted upon civilians.
Jordanian FM discusses rebuilding Syria in Turkiye talks
DUBAI: The Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi highlighted on Tuesday the need to help Syria regain its security, stability, and sovereignty during discussions in Turkiye.
Talks also focused on providing support to the Syrian people and addressing the challenge of rebuilding the war-torn country.
He underscored Jordan's firm stance against any aggression on Syria’s sovereignty, rejecting Israeli attacks on Syrian territory.
The minister also expressed solidarity with Turkey, supporting its rights in confronting the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), emphasizing the importance of regional cooperation to ensure peace and stability.
Israel military says three projectiles fired from north Gaza
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said it identified three projectiles fired from the northern Gaza Strip that crossed into Israel on Monday, the latest in a series of launches from the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.
“One projectile was intercepted by the IAF (air force), one fell in Sderot and another projectile fell in an open area. No injuries were reported,” the military said in a statement.
Sudan army air strike kills 10 in southern Khartoum: rescuers
- Strike targeted a market area of the capital’s Southern Belt ‘for the third time in less than a month’
- War between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary forces has killed tens of thousands of people
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: Ten Sudanese civilians were killed and over 30 wounded in an army air strike on southern Khartoum, volunteer rescue workers said.
The strike on Sunday targeted a market area of the capital’s Southern Belt “for the third time in less than a month,” said the local Emergency Response Room (ERR), part of a network of volunteers across the country coordinating frontline aid.
The group said those killed burned to death. The wounded, suffering from burns, were taken to the local Bashair Hospital, with five of them in a critical condition.
Since April 2023, the war between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has killed tens of thousands of people.
In the capital alone, the violence killed 26,000 people between April 2023 and June 2024, according to a report by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Khartoum has experienced some of the war’s worst violence, with entire neighborhoods emptied out and taken over by fighters.
The military, which maintains a monopoly on the skies with its jets, has not managed to wrest back control of the capital from the paramilitary.
Of the 11.5 million people currently displaced within Sudan, nearly a third have fled from the capital, according to United Nations figures.
Both the RSF and the army have been repeatedly accused of targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas.
