Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

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Barzani attends a news conference in Erbil. Reuters

Kirkuk Joins Independence Referendum… ‘Kurdish Brexit’ Won’t Be Easy

by Ghassan Charbel | Sep 7, 2017 | Middle East

Kirkuk- Iraq’s oil-producing region of Kirkuk is cursed for having both wealth and diversity. It lies on oil wells and on the spines of frightened identities. Its fate has been poisoned by Arab-Kurdish relations for decades and was the first cause behind costly wars....

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File Photo, President of the Kurdistan Region Masoud Barzani (L) and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan meet in Ankara. (Photo: Reuters/Archive)

Iran, Turkey Escalate Against Kurdistan’s Referendum

by Said Abdul Razzak | Aug 25, 2017 | Middle East

Ankara, Erbil, Tehran- Turkey and Iran escalated on Thursday their attacks against the Kurdistan Region’s upcoming referendum on independence, scheduled for Sept. 25. While Ankara alluded that a similar step could lead to a civil war in Iraq and would shaken regional...

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President of the Iraqi Kurdistan region Masoud Barzani. (AFP)

Why a Referendum Won’t Solve Iraqi Kurdistan’s Problems

by Jackson Diehl | Aug 1, 2017 | Opinion

There’s a lingering impression in Washington that Iraqi Kurdistan is what it was five years ago, before the rise of ISIS: a peaceful, prospering, emerging pro-Western democracy whose aspirations for full independence from Iraq are increasingly hard to ignore....

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Members of Council of Northern Syria Federal System vote on dividing the region into three federal administrative provinces, in Rmelan, Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan), Syria, July 27, 2017. (Photo: HAWAR/SDF)

Kurds Annex Arab Areas to ‘Federal System’

by Ibrahim Hamidi | Jul 31, 2017 | Middle East

London- The electoral and administrative division laws of the “Democratic Federal System of Northern Syria” established during meetings held by Kurdish groups in the country’s northwestern town of Rmelan, reveal an expansion of the self-administrative system to three...

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Kurdish Regional Government President Massoud Barzani speaks during an interview with Reuters in Erbil, about 350 km (220 miles) north of Baghdad November 30, 2011. (photo by REUTERS/Azad Lashkari

Barzani Stresses ‘Referendum is for Independence’

by Saeed Abdelrazek | Jun 17, 2017 | Middle East

Ankara, Arbil – The president of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, Massoud Barzani, has stressed that he informed Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi that the independence referendum which he has called for “is a normal, legal right of our people.” “Afterwards we want...