First Suicide Bombing in 6 Yrs Hits Kurdistan

The al-Qaeda Kurdish Battalions were designated a foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department in January 2012. It was responsible for truck bombing the building housing the Ministries of Interior and Security in Erbil in May 2007 in which 19 people were killed. It also killed seven border guards and one security officer in Penjwin, near the Iranian border, in July 2007, and two police officers were hurt in a failed suicide attack in Sulaimaniyah.

Sources claim the al-Qaeda Kurdistan brigade had pledged allegiance to Abu Umar al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) leader killed by US forces in April 2010 and replaced by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. In April 2013, ISI became the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, operating in Syria and in Iraq. Since mid-July, it has been involved in fighting the secular Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG), affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

In April 2013, President Barzani vowed to assist Syrian Kurds against al-Qaeda, following reports of Kurdish civilians being massacred in the countryside of Aleppo, in Syria. The PKK-affiliated Democratic Union Party (PYD), the main Syrian Kurdish party, has, however, rejected military assistance from Barzani. Nevertheless, it remains possible that the al-Qaeda outfit suspects Barzani of supporting the Syrian Kurds against them.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Barzani reached an agreement in May on forming a security committee to coordinate between the Iraqi government and Kurdish forces. On January 18, 2007, ISIS released a statement threatening Kurdish Peshmerga assigned to participate in the Baghdad security plan. Moreover, Al-Furqan, the media arm of al-Qaeda, released a video in 2010 called "Vanquisher of the Peshmerga" that was translated by the Ansar al-Mujahideen English Forum.

The late ISIS leader Abu Umar al-Baghdadi, said, “Not long ago, their grandfathers [Kurds] were praised with the scale of Sharia; and today things are reversed, and their politicians are the ones who allow the reign of the rejectionists on the Land of the Two Rivers [Iraq].”