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Kurds raise oil funds for refugees

The Kurdish government of Iraq said it’s expanding a humanitarian initiative tied to oil operations to address the influx of refugees fleeing the Islamic State. The Sunni-led Islamic State, a terrorist group known also as the Islamic State of Iraqi and Syria, has squared off against Kurdish forces as it tries to expand its claims to territory in the region. The semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government said Friday it was broadening its Kurdistan Oil and Gas Humanitarian Initiative to extend to new refugees and internally displaced persons. "The Kurdish Ministry of Natural Resources is pleased that a number of oil companies in the Kurdistan region have already asked how they can support humanitarian efforts for the massive new influx of refugees and IDPs," it said in a statement. "With the expansion of KOGHI, companies have an already established framework for providing funds." The Kurdish government says it launched the initiative […]

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Iraqi Kurds Expand Autonomy as ISIS Reorders the Landscape

WASHINGTON — The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has thrown Iraq into crisis, precipitated the ouster of Nuri Kamal al-Maliki as prime minister and brought the American military back to the country it left more than two years ago. But now Obama administration officials are quietly acknowledging another important consequence: a far more autonomous Kurdistan. The United States still officially opposes Kurdish independence, a decades-old policy that seeks to avoid further inflaming the region and provoking Turkey, Iraq and Iran, three countries with large and restive Kurdish minorities. But the ISIS invasion has fundamentally changed the political geography of Iraq, senior American and Kurdish officials said, physically cutting off most of Iraqi Kurdistan from the rest of Shiite-dominated Iraq and encouraging the Iraqi Kurds in their drive for expanded autonomy. Masrour Barzani, the chief of intelligence for the Kurdish region of Iraq, said that the Obama administration, which […]

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Oil field burns after ISIS retreat

A Kurdish tank faces toward ISIS lines on Aug. 26, 2014, a few kilometers away from the Khazir refugee camp, half way between Erbil and Mosul. (VIANNEY LE CAER/Pacific Press/LightRocket/Getty Images) A Kurdish tank faces toward ISIS lines on Aug. 26, 2014, a few kilometers away from the Khazir refugee camp, half way between Erbil and Mosul. (VIANNEY LE CAER/Pacific Press/LightRocket/Getty Images) Flames have engulfed oil facilities at the Ain Zalah field, in Iraq’s Ninewa province, after extremist militants fled the area following an offensive by Kurdish Peshmerga forces backed by ongoing U.S. air strikes.The Peshmerga also captured the nearby town of Zummar, just west of the Mosul Dam, which sits along a main road between Ain Zalah and Mosul, according to a Peshmerga officer, local residents, and a senior official from Iraq’s state-run North Oil Company (NOC).Militants have co… This content is for registered users. Please login to […]

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Besieged City Faces Destruction by the Islamic State

Forgotten in Iraq The world took notice when the Yazidis needed help. But since June, a Turkmen city in northern Iraq has been under siege by the Islamic State. The death toll continues to mount but, thus far, the people of Amirli have been left to fight the IS on their own. "Every day I receive about 100 patients. Every day there is shelling. Some of the injuries are very complicated, legs amputated, head wounds. But I don’t have the materials to provide serious treatment. There are cases where I have put patients on the helicopter alive and they die when they get to Baghdad." Dr. Khaldoun Mahmoud speaks extremely rapidly, and with good reason. There is only a single place remaining in the northern Iraqi town of Amirli where he still has a modicum of mobile phone reception: at the helicopter landing pad above the village. And with […]

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Iraqi Kurds say their fight is against more than just the Islamic State

Kurdish Peshmerga fighter keeps watch at Omar Khaled village near Tal Afar, west of Mosul August 24, 2014. Old hostilities between Arabs and Kurds exacerbate fighting with the Islamic State. (Youssef Boudlal/Reuters) GWER, Iraq — Kurdish fighters are struggling to hold on to recent gains against Islamic State militants in Iraq in the face of constant shelling and sniper fire. But Kurds say the jihadists have another weapon: local Arab sympathizers. The Kurds suspect area Arabs have backed the militants in battles that have raged in Iraq’s north over the past month, including a stunning advance by the jihadists. The fighting has displaced thousands of families in a region long known as a flash point for Arab-Kurdish violence. Now many Sunni Arab residents are barred from coming home. “The Arabs here stabbed us in the back, and now they are threatening us” from the villages nearby, a Kurdish intelligence […]

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Violence not affecting key Iraqi oil field, says Gulf Keystone Petroleum

Operations at a key oil field in the Kurdish north of Iraq are "essentially uninterrupted" by violence, the top executive of Gulf Keystone Petroleum said. Peshmerga, a Kurdish military force, has fought against the Islamic State, the Sunni-led insurgency group that’s taken control over parts of northwestern Iraq and Syria. Some energy companies operating in the region have suspended operations as a security precaution . John Gerstenlauer, chief executive officer at Gulf Keystone, said operations in the region are still in service . "Our operations in the Kurdistan region … are progressing well with the two existing Shaikan production facilities producing in the range of 20,000 – 25,000 barrels of oil per day and crude oil export deliveries continuing essentially uninterrupted since late November 2013 to date," he said. The company said it sold around 100,000 barrels of oil to the domestic market during the first half of the […]

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Kurds claim win in latest oil row

A Texas court ruling to dismiss an order to seize Kurdish oil parked off the U.S. coast should give potential buyers confidence, the Kurdish government said. A Texas judge had ordered U.S. Marshals to seize Kurdish oil loaded onto the United Kalavrvta tanker, parked off the coast of Galveston, Texas, in international waters. The semiautonomous Kurdish government and the federal government in Baghdad filed competing claims in Texas, though the court eventually sided with the Kurdish claims that its oil could reach U.S. ports. "The ruling of the Texas court should give confidence to buyers of Kurdistan crude oil in the United States and elsewhere," Kurdish Minister of Natural Resources Ashti Hawrami said in a statement Tuesday. The minister said all Kurdish crude oil exports and sales are legal according to the terms spelled out in the Iraqi constitution, a claim countered by Baghdad. The U.S. government in the […]

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Backing the Kurds will stabilise Iraq

Since US airstrikes began on Islamic State targets in Iraq’s Kurdistan region,  a number of Western countries  have finally decided to empower and arm Iraq’s Kurds in the ever-expanding battle against the radical group. The West has finally made the right decision, as the Islamic State group can only be confronted and defeated with the help of a reliable regional ally such as the Kurds. Western support for the Kurds should be part of a long-term strategy aimed at stabilising Iraq as a whole. In other words, help the Kurds help Iraq. Iraq’s problems are the Kurds’ problems Iraq’s Kurds and Arabs can work together. The retaking of the Mosul dam through a joint Kurdish-Arab force – a dam that the Islamic State could have used to flood cities like Baghdad – proves that not only is intervention in Iraq working but also that these are reliable and organised […]

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Analysis: Kurdistan’s export quest remains unfinished

Analysis: Kurdistan’s export quest remains unfinished In Dohuk province, a pipe-laying machine stands beside sections of 36-inch diameter steel pipe, which await welding. (PATRICK OSGOOD/Iraq Oil Report/Metrography) Nine months after inaugurating its oil pipeline to Turkey, Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is still striving to build a track record of reliable international oil sales.The KRG has scored some notable victories recently, including a U.S. court decision Monday that cleared the way for a Kurdish-chartered ship, the United Kalavryta, to offload more than 1 million barrels of Kurdish exports onto American shores. But even that progress has been equivocal: Monday’s narrow ru… This content is for registered users. Please login to continue. If you are not a registered user, you may purchase a subscription or sign up for a free trial .

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Military Skill and Terrorist Technique Fuel Success of ISIS

BAGHDAD — As fighters for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria continue to seize territory, the group has quietly built an effective management structure of mostly middle-aged Iraqis overseeing departments of finance, arms, local governance, military operations and recruitment. At the top the organization is the self-declared leader of all Muslims, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi , a radical chief executive officer of sorts, who handpicked many of his deputies from among the men he met while a prisoner in American custody at the Camp Bucca detention center a decade ago. He had a preference for military men, and so his leadership team includes many officers from Saddam Hussein’s long-disbanded army. They include former Iraqi officers like Fadel al-Hayali, the top deputy for Iraq, who once served Mr. Hussein as a lieutenant colonel, and Adnan al-Sweidawi, a former lieutenant colonel who now heads the group’s military council. The pedigree of […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple