Michael Rubin, who writes for the American Enterprise Inistitute (AEI), is a former Pentagon official whose major research areas are the Middle East, Turkey, Iran and diplomacy. Rubin instructs senior military officers deploying to the Middle East and Afghanistan on regional politics, and teaches classes regarding Iran, terrorism, and Arab politics on board deploying U.S. aircraft carriers. Rubin has lived in post-revolution Iran, Yemen, both pre- and post-war Iraq, and spent time with the Taliban before 9/11. His newest book, Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes examines a half century of U.S. diplomacy with rogue regimes and terrorist groups.

On 27 APR 16 AEI posted: On Kurds, Kornets, and criticisms

In the Article Michael Rubin link analysis the relationships between KRG and ISIS:  “Yesterday, I published a blog post highlighting comments by Kurdish official Hiwa Afandi suggesting that it was not in the Kurdish interest to defeat the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) because Shi‘ite volunteers were a greater danger.”

“That is a very dangerous sentiment, and highlights the fact that the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) often operates upon interests that do not coincide with those of the United States and the West as much as those lobbying for Iraqi Kurdistan or its constituent parties suggest.”

“Was it fair to focus on one official? Yes. Neither the KRG nor the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) nor, for that matter, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, embrace an internal culture of democracy. They do not tolerate dissent in their ranks. Mr. Afandi may not have been as diplomatic as he might have been, but he was no outlier. If he was, he probably would not still be in his government post today.”

On 27 APR 16 NEC-SE posted:  Kurdish official calls defeating ISIS ‘a huge mistake’

In the article we posted:  “The Article by the American Enterprise Institute states: “So, an up-and-coming official in Barzani’s political party believes that fighting Shi‘ites should trump defeating the Islamic State? The Obama administration’s response? Give the Kurds an additional $415 million. Sometimes, throwing money at a problem doesn’t resolve the problem, especially when the Kurds seem more intent on collecting aid than fighting corruption, and when the goal of defeating the Islamic State remains secondary to playing intra-Iraqi political games.”

“Iraqi Kurdistan has spent millions of dollars on lobbying to depict itself as a democracy, as an ideological ally of the United States in the region, and as committed to the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh). The reality is far more complex.”

“In the weeks before ISIS seized Mosul, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) apparently supplied some weaponry, like Kornet anti-tank missiles, to ISIS in order to weaken the central government with whom Masoud Barzani was locked in a political dispute.”

http://nec-se.webbar312.net/2016/04/27/kurdish-official-calls-defeating-isis-a-huge-mistake/

On 19 APR 16 NEC-SE posted:  Really, Did Billions of U.S. Taxpayer Dollars and 4,497 U.S. Combat Deaths Bring Democracy to Iraq?

In the posting we stated:  On 14 APR 16 Muslim Sunni Kurdish security forces (Asayesh), the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) equivalent of the FBI, imposed a blockade on four Assyrian Christian villages in the Nahla district in northern Iraq. This was done in order to prevent Assyrian Christians from traveling to Arbel to participate in an approved civil protest against Muslim Sunni Kurdish attempts to take over their land in the Zoly village. Cars belonging to the KRG security apparatus, driven by those who answer to Masoud Barzani, were parked across the roads leading out of Nahla, preventing more than 100 Assyrian Christians from leaving their villages of Upper and Lower Hezani, Zoly, and Khalilane to participate in the peaceful protest.

http://www.aina.org/news/20160414043235.htm

The problem for the Assyrian Christians, whose historical homeland is being systematically seized by everyone in the region, is that in order to deal with the illegal seizure of their lands, they had to send a protest letter to Masoud Barzani asking him to legally and peacefully remove a fellow Muslim Sunni Kurd named Ibrahim Hajji Yasin from their lands. In response, Barzani sent out his armed forces to block the Assyrian Christians in their own villages in order to keep them from traveling to Arbil to participate in the peaceful civil demonstration against the illegal takeover of their Assyrian Christian village.

We also stated:  Today it’s the system imposed on Assyrian Christians by the Muslim Sunni Kurds and their bankers and supporters that is killing the Assyrian Christians. Unfortunately, with job security on the forefront, the State Department, Pentagon employees, and members of Congress who have tied their names to the support of Muslim Sunni Kurds have hand-cuffed themselves through system processes and misplaced loyalties to others and or at a point that they don’t care if they will be complicit in the eradication of a 7,000-year-old culture from the landscape of the Middle East as long as they can replace that culture with the Muslim Sunni Kurds and 300 heads of cattle.

So what is next for the KRG and the Kurdish lobby in DC given the Assyrians have voiced their displeasure with the Muslim Sunni Kurds administration and operations in the region through a peaceful protest against Assyrian land grab in Zoly?

Yesterday a high-ranking KRG official stated that the Kurds must now concentrate on working with the Christian religious leaders in northern Iraq given the political groups have failed them. This comment simply means that from the KRG official perspective, the Assyrian Christians and others, to include Yazidis, are nothing more than just a religious minority in their concept of a “greater Kurdistan”, and that they no longer deserve a political voice in the region as an ethnicity. For the United States that gives the Muslim Sunni Kurds $450,000 million USD of hard working American tax payer monies a month to execute the war against “ISIS” in both Iraq and Syria it is simple cowardness which forces them to stand by and allow the KRG officials to make such outrageous statements and target the Assyrian and other Christian leaders in Northern Iraq because the Assyrian Christians in Zoly simply believed that they are more important than 300 heads of cattle who have now replaced them in their own ancestral homeland with KRG approval.

http://nec-se.webbar312.net/2016/04/19/really-did-billions-of-u-s-taxpayer-dollars-and-4497-u-s-combat-deaths-bring-democracy-to-iraq/

Related Articles:

America’s Kurdish problem: today’s allies against ISIS are tomorrow’s headache

Kurds Paint Separatist Flag on 2,300-Year-Old Assyrian Art

Assyrian: How an Eight-Letter Word Strikes Fear in the Hearts of Our Congressional Leaders

Is Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako a religious, political or a military leader of the Assyrian Christian community and forces in Iraq and Syria?

Genocide: Christian Population in Iraq Drops by 80% in Just Over a Decade

Obama’s Recognition of Yazidi Genocide Used To Bail Out KRG From Financial Woes

This Easter, Stop the Crucifixion of Assyrian Christians

Sick of ISIS Persecution, Mid-East Christians Form Biblical Brigades

Christian foreign fighters deserting Kurdish YPG in Syria because they’re ‘damn Reds’

Christian Self-Defense Forces Emerge in Iraq & Syria

http://nec-se.webbar312.net/2016/01/24/german-bundeswehr-weapons-reportedly-resold-by-kurdish-peshmerga-fighters/http://nec-se.webbar312.net/2016/04/01/31-mar-16-shalle-mcdonaldjns-org-interview-of-ltc-sangari-on-topics-and-issues-affective-assyrian-christians/

31 MAR 16 Shalle’ McDonald/JNS.ORG interview of LTC Sangari on topics and issues affecting Assyrian Christians

http://www.icasualties.org

https://unitedassyrianappeal.org