1. Syrian Kurds continue to blame Turkey for backing ISIS militants
10 June 2014 / al-monitorDjvar Osman is a commander for the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Kurdish militia that controls a band of mainly Kurdish-populated territory in northeastern Syria they call Rojava. We are in al-Tleiliye, a tiny village close to the Turkish border that was raided May 29 by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). […]
The YPG accuses Turkey of fanning the flames of the conflict, providing arms and sanctuary to ISIS and sealing its borders in an effort to quash the Kurds’ march toward self-rule. Turkey denies the accusations, describing ISIS as a terrorist group and a threat.
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/06/zaman-syria-kurds-rojava-ypg-muslim-pyd-pkk-turkey-isis.html
2. How an arrest in Iraq revealed ISIS’s $2bn jihadist network
15 June / The Guardian Two days before Mosul fell to the Islamic insurgent group Isis <http://www.theguardian.com/world/isis> (the Islamic State in Iraq<http://www.theguardian.com/world/iraq> and the Levant), Iraqi commanders stood eyeballing its most trusted messenger. The man, known within the extremist group as Abu Hajjar, had finally cracked after a fortnight of interrogation and given up the head of Isis's military council.[…] Several hours later, the man he had served as a courier and been attempting to protect, Abdulrahman al-Bilawi, lay dead in his hideout near Mosul. From the home of the dead man and the captive, Iraqi forces hoovered up more than 160 computer flash sticks which contained the most detailed information yet known about the terror group.
It soon became clear that in less than three years, Isis had grown from a ragtag band of extremists to perhaps the most cash-rich and capable terror group in the world.http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/15/iraq-isis-arrest-jihadists-wealth-power
3. ISIS captures Tal Afar: Thousands of Turkmens take refuge in Sinjar
16 June / Kurdish QuestionThe town of Tal Afar near Mosul has been captured by ISIS. Tens of thousands of Shia Turkmens who live in the town have begun to leave, taking refuge in the Yezidi Kurds' holy place of Jebel (mountain) Sinjar.
http://www.kurdishquestion.com/west-kurdistan/news/isis-captures-tal-afar-thousands-of-turkmens-take-refuge-in-sinjar.html
COMMENT, OPINION AND ANALYIS
4. Turkey: Iraq crisis impacts Ankara’s Kurdish policies
13 June / Eurasianet Turkey's recent approach to regional Kurdish issues has been highly contradictory. In northern Iraq, in an effort to diversify its energy supplies and further establish itself as an oil and gas hub, Ankara has entered <http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/22/energy-turkey-iraq-idUSL6N0O840O20140522> into energy deals with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), something which has infuriated the central Iraqi government in Baghdad but which has helped the Kurds further build <http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/amid-turmoil-iraqs-kurdish-region-is-laying-foundation-for-independent-state/2014/06/12/c1f22d7c-f26a-11e3-bf76-447a5df6411f_story.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzEmail&utm_content=23327&utm_campaign=0> a foundation for their independence.
In northern Syria, on the other hand, Ankara has been so alarmed by the growing Kurdish autonomy there that it reportedly has provided support <http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/06/zaman-syria-kurds-rojava-ypg-muslim-pyd-pkk-turkey-isis.html> for radical Islamist groups (including the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)) in their fight against the the Kurdish militia that controls the region, which is affiliated with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). […]
As it turns its focus to dealing with the ISIS threat with the help of the Kurds, Ankara might find that it has to make reignite its talks with Ocalan and the PKK and take serious steps towards meeting the Kurds' demands for greater local autonomy in order to take another potential source of trouble off its already full plate of security woes.
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/68586
5. Kurds key to current Turkish politics; domestic and foreign
17 June / Hurriyet Daily NewsDevelopments in Turkish foreign and domestic politics have entered a dangerous collision course, less than two months before the first round of presidential elections on Aug. 10.
The common denominator of developments in current Turkish foreign and domestic politics is the Kurdish issue. In domestic politics, the role of the Kurdish issue in the presidential elections is becoming more visible every day. There are a number of scenarios in the Ankara corridors regarding the possible role of Kurds in the presidentials.http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/kurds-key-to-current-turkish-politics-domestic-and-foreign.aspx?pageID=238&nID=67838&NewsCatID=409
6. Turkey should close its borders to ISIS
14 June 2014 / al-monitorThe prospects are daunting for Iraq, now split in three, to be put back together. The potential for a political dialogue among Iraq’s political factions, also urged by Obama, seems distant. […]
While there is now the expected "who lost Iraq" arguments, perhaps a more prosaic and practical recommendation at the top of the "coulda, shoulda" list should be demanding that Turkey finally crack down on terrorist traffic across its borders, as this column has advocated.
http://tinyurl.com/n5ky5sx
7. Turkey hostage to crisis in Iraq
12 June 2014 / al-monitorThe Turkish government faces a major dilemma in Iraq after the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) raided its Mosul consulate and took 49 of its personnel hostage, including its consul general, in addition to 31 others. The hostages are just one element of the crisis facing Turkey: The sweep by ISIS that netted it Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city with a population of 1.8 million, as well as Saddam Hussein’s birthplace, Tikrit, threaten to plunge Iraq into a civil war from which the ramifications will be felt in Turkey for years to come. Already, the Syrian civil war has led some 1 million to seek refuge in Turkey.
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/06/turkey-isis-iraq-mosul-hostages-blowback-syria-policy-akp.html
8. Unity with Kurdistan will stave off the threat
15 June 2014 / nytimesThe scale of Iraq’s military collapse is of historic proportions. Of nearly 250 combat battalions in the Iraqi army and federal police, almost 70 cannot be accounted for. Some will reform, but most have lost practically all of their vehicles and equipment. A quarter of Iraq’s forces are now out of the game for months at least. […]
One option may be U.S. military strikes, but a complementary initiative is to bring the Iraqi Kurds fully into the war against ISIS. The Kurds possess the only intact armed forces capable of providing resistance to ISIS in northern Iraq, but they are girding their forces because of a bitter struggle with Baghdad over revenue-sharing and oil exports.
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/06/15/how-to-stabilize-iraq-and-stop-the-march-of-isis/unity-with-kurdistan-will-stave-off-isis-threat-to-iraq
9. The old partition of the Middle East is dead. I dread to think what will follow
13 June 2014 / The Independent “Sykes-Picot is dead,” Walid Jumblatt roared at me last night – and he may well be right.
The Lebanese Druze leader – who fought in a 15-year civil war that redrew the map of Lebanon – believes that the new battles for Sunni Muslim jihadi control of northern and eastern Syria and western Iraq have finally destroyed the post-World War Anglo-French conspiracy, hatched by Mark Sykes and François Picot, which divided up the old Ottoman Middle East into Arab statelets controlled by the West.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/robert-fisk-the-old-partition-of-the-middle-east-is-dead-i-dread-to-think-what-will-follow-9536467.html
10. The U.S. must listen to Iraqi Kurds
15 June / NY timesIraqi Kurdish strategy has paid off. The Kurds spent the past few years working to strengthen the Kurdistan region while keeping a wary distance from the rest of Iraq. They didn’t trust Baghdad, neither to deal with them fairly, nor to survive as a secular, democratic state. The Iraqi Kurds were proved right. Baghdad consistently tried to weaken the Kurdistan Regional Government through fights over oil money and deals – and now the Iraqi state itself is under threat from the radical Islamist ISIS. The Kurds are in a strong position precisely because they ignored United States pressure to accommodate Baghdad.
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/06/15/how-to-stabilize-iraq-and-stop-the-march-of-isis/the-us-must-listen-to-iraqi-kurds
11. Second front opens in the Sunni-Shia war
16 June / Jonathan SpyerRealizing that their Syrian ally was facing defeat because of an absence of reliable manpower, the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps stepped in to effectively create a new, sectarian military for the Assads. In addition, Iran introduced its various regional paramilitary proxies into the Syrian battlefield. […]
It is likely that a similar pattern will now emerge in Iraq. Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani has been in Baghdad since Friday. He is in the process of organizing Iraqi Shia volunteers, who in the months to come are likely to be transformed into a sectarian military force resembling the Syrian National Defense Force. […]
The Kurds, possessors of a strong, largely secular nationalist tradition and identity, may emerge as major winners from this process of fragmentation, in the context both of Syria and Iraq (as witnessed by the rapid gains made by the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces in recent days). http://jonathanspyer.com/2014/06/16/second-front-opens-in-the-sunni-shia-war/
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