Iraq Agrees to Help Kurds Battle Sunni Extremists
Source: New York Times
BAGHDAD — Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki on Monday ordered Iraq’s air force to support Kurdish forces fighting Sunni extremists in the north, a move that represented a thaw, out of military necessity, in the fraught relations between the central government and Kurdish leaders.
In a short statement, reported by state television, Gen. Qassim Atta, Iraq’s chief military spokesman, said, “The general commander of the armed forces, Nuri al-Maliki, has issued an order to the Iraqi air forces to provide air support for the pesh merga against ISIS.”
The order was the first overt effort by Iraqis and Kurds, whose security forces are known as the pesh merga, to work together militarily since Iraq was thrust into the crisis in June when militants with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, captured Mosul. But there was no sign that it signaled any broader reconciliation between the Shiite-dominated government and the Kurds, who are pushing for independence from Iraq and have been at odds with Baghdad for some time over distribution of the country’s oil revenue.
Instead, the deployment of the Iraqi Air Force to help the Kurds fight ISIS seemed only to reflect the dire situation on the ground, and came just after Kurdish forces were routed by militants from three towns in northern Iraq over the weekend.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/05/world/middleeast/iraq-agrees-to-help-kurds-battling-sunni-extremists.html?smid=tw-share
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