Kurdistan Region denies sending forces to Syria

MESOP – 22.10.2013 – The head of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) Department of Foreign Relations, Falah Mustafa, denied the Iraqi northern self-ruling enclave has sent any armed groups to Syria to fight along with the Kuyrds in the country.

In an interview with BBC Arabic, Mustafa firmly denied sending any such forces and stressed the region has not ever intervened in Syria war, though the crisis in the country is no longer an internal one but an international issue as many lines are active in the civil war. Answering a question whether the region’s President Massoud Barzani, has announced Erbil government will sent troops to Syria to support the Kurds, Mustafa said Barzani meant financial, political and economic support. “Not a single Kurd from the Kurdistan Region has gone into Syria,” he went on to say. Mustafa believes the Kurds of Iraq should use their own experience to help in the development of the Kurdish region in Syria. Thousands of Syrian Kurdish refugees have crossed the border into the Kurdistan Region since the start of the conflict.