The Kurds in Iraq: A winning hand
They may not frame it quite so bluntly, but the dominant sentiment in the Kurds’ autonomous region of northern Iraq is a gleeful “We told you so”. The Kurds have long accused the central government in Baghdad of shoving them to the margin. More recently they have taken to criticising Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq’s prime minister, […]They may not frame it quite so bluntly, but the dominant sentiment in the Kurds’ autonomous region of northern Iraq is a gleeful “We told you so”. The Kurds have long accused the central government in Baghdad of shoving them to the margin. More recently they have taken to criticising Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq’s prime minister, for excluding Iraq’s Sunni Arabs, too. Senior people in Erbil, the Kurds’ regional capital, say they contacted their counterparts in Baghdad on June 8th, two days before Mosul was conquered, to share concerns about the horrors of an ISIS takeover. To no effect. At crack of dawn on June 10th ministers in Baghdad called to beg for help, say the Kurds. By then it was too late.
