ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Islamic State (IS/ISIS) militants that Peshmerga forces are fighting is a well-armed terrorist state that threatens global security, Kurdish leaders warned.
“The ISIS is a threat to Kurdistan, Iraq and the entire region,” Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barzani said in a meeting with Fouad Massoum, the newly-elected president of Iraq.
“We are not facing a terrorist organization, but a well-armed terrorist state that is against every human principle,” Barzani warned.
Meanwhile the speaker of Kurdistan’s parliament, Yousif Muhammad, echoed Barzani’s warnings and added that the international community must help the Kurds fight the militants.
“This war isn’t a threat only to the Kurdistan Region, but it is a threat to the security of the whole region and the world,” said Muhammad in a meeting with foreign diplomats in Erbil.
“The ISIS is a new form of violence that knows no boundaries,” he said.
Muhammad applauded the United States, Britain and other countries for their response to the IS threat on the Kurdistan Region, and for delivering humanitarian aid to displaced Kurdish-Yezidis.
Before US air strikes that began Friday to push back an IS advance to Erbil, Kurdish Peshmerga forces were locked in daily battles with the group along a 1,050-kilometer border, losing 150 Peshmerga lives and 500 wounded.
Barham Salih, a senior leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), said that the Islamic group was at war with all of Iraq’s different religious and ethnic groups. “The ISIS isn’t only fighting the Kurds,” he said.
“We have to assess the situation carefully,” Salih told Rudaw. “Kurdistan is at war with the so-called Islamic State which is a powerful force and should not be underestimated.”
Salih said the American intervention to fight the Islamist militants “meant that the Kurds were not alone and they have American and international backing.”
Salih, who is deputy PUK leader and the former Kurdish prime minister, reassured that the Kurdistan Region will pass successfully through the current crisis.
Kurdish leaders consider US intervention in Iraq “a diplomatic triumph” for the Kurds, noting Baghdad’s failure in trying to persuade US air strikes against IS.
Muhammad said that Baghdad was not pleased with Erbil’s diplomatic success, and that its economic embargo against Kurdistan remains a burden on the autonomous government’s ability to pay civil servants.
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