KURDISTAN NEWS DESK – SHORT CUTS
How, when and whether to end the war in Syria
The Washington Post – “The beginning of wisdom,” a Chinese saying goes, “is to call things by their right names.” And the right name for what is happening in Syria — and has been for more than a year — is an all-out civil war. Syria is Lebanon of the 1970s and ’80s. It is Afghanistan, Congo or the Balkans of the 1990s. It is Iraq of 2005-2007. It is not an insurgency. It is not a rebellion. It is not Yemen. It is certainly not Egypt or Tunisia…
Kurdistan: The Next Flashpoint Between Turkey, Iraq, and the Syrian Revolt
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs – In the wake of the steady disintegration of the Assad regime, Syrian opposition activists reported that several towns, such as Amouda and Qabani in Syria’s Kurdish northeast, had passed in mid-July 2012 without a fight into the local hands of a group called the Free Kurdish Army…
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – Prospects for Syria look bleak with conflict continuing to intensify in Damascus, Aleppo, and other parts of the country. The resignation of Kofi Annan as UN special envoy and interlocutor with the Assad regime highlights the difficulty of effective international engagement…
Iraq’s Kurds seek greater clout through oil policy
Associated Press – Iraq’s minority Kurds are upping the ante with their go-it-alone oil policy, luring some of Big Oil’s biggest players and again challenging Iraq’s central government to a showdown over a shared export route…
The Kurdish Dilemma: An Open Letter to Turkey
Rudaw – Violence breeds violence. It may be a cliché, but it’s true, and this ideology will never eliminate the very real Kurdish problem — either within Turkey or externally…
Kurdish drive for independence
Al Arabiya News – Does the move by the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad to hand over control of six Kurdish-dominated towns in the north to the Kurds set the ground for the eventual creation of an independent Kurdish state in the region?…