Kurds Angry at Exclusion From Anti-IS Coalition

MOSCOW, January 24 (Sputnik), Ekaterina Blinova — Massoud Barzani, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, has expressed his outrage at the decision of the US-led coalition not to invite a Kurdish delegation to an anti-IS (Islamic State) conference, held in London this week.

"We were expecting everyone to show respect to the sacrifices made by the people of Kurdistan and its peshmerga [fighters] by inviting a representative from Kurdistan to this event and similar such events," Massoud Barzani claimed in an official statement, as quoted by Al Jazeera.

The president of Iraqi Kurdistan stressed that the peshmerga soldiers were "the most effective force countering global terrorism today," and bemoaned the fact that while the people of Kurdistan were fighting Islamists in Iraq and Syria "the credit [went] to others."

Commenting on the world leaders' decision not to invite the Kurdish leader, Al Jazeera suggests that the decision should not be taken as a deliberate snub: Iraqi Kurdistan is not recognized as a sovereign entity and inviting a regional leader would have breached the conference's protocol.

Indeed, the Kurdish peshmerga forces have indeed proved surprisingly effective defending the northern Iraqi region from Islamic State jihadists and expelling the extremists from the outskirts of Mosul, known as IS's most important stronghold. On January 23, Kurdish authorities reported they had cut a strategic supply line used by the Islamic State and had taken control over nearly 300 square miles of land formerly occupied by the Islamists, USA Today reported. The peshmerga forces eliminated at least 200 jihadi fighters, according to the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) statement.

Additionally, it seems that the Western leaders are not yet ready to encourage Barzani's political ambitions. The president of the Iraqi autonomy has repeatedly claimed that the ultimate goal of Kurdistan was sovereignty and independence from Baghdad.

"The Kurds thought this could be their moment, that the rise of IS would be a historic moment for Kurdish independence. There was this idea that the Kurds could be the best alternative to IS because they're secular and pro-Western," noted Gonul Tol, director of the Center for Turkish Studies at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C., as quoted by Al Jazeera.

The expert pointed out that the United States and its allies have offered unprecedented military assistance to Kurdish forces. At the same time, the US State Department's representatives recently attended an oil conference in London together with Kurdish participants, although independent Kurdish oil exports have long been denounced by the US. These gestures could have been interpreted by Iraqi Kurdistan authorities as a sign of growing political support. The expert clarified, however, that such "deviations" from the US political course were most likely dictated by "necessity."

"This doesn't mean there's a new strategy of the U.S. supporting Kurdish independence," she said, adding that the US-coalition is still supporting a unified Iraq and Baghdad is the only legal representative of the region.