Kurds 'Willing to Negotiate Disputed Territories'

All of which would appear to confirm a popular Kurdish saying: “What the Kurdish win in war, the politicians will lose at the negotiating table”. Many of the locals in Iraqi Kurdistan do seem to believe that the disputed areas should belong to their region. But now many seem to be becoming more aware that some of the earlier statements made by their representatives about this issue, could just have been media grandstanding.

“Iraqi Kurdistan hasn't taken any steps regarding the disputed territories,” Nasreddin Saeed, the Minister for Affairs Of the Disputed Territories, told NIQASH. “The regional government is waiting to negotiate with Baghdad about this. While it is true that Iraqi Kurdistan is now dominating in these areas militarily, there are still legal and constitutional problems that need to be addressed. We are waiting for the Committee on Article 140 to be reformed in Parliament.”

“It is true that Kurdish blood was spilled to liberate these areas from the IS group,” Saeed admitted. “But the problem is a legal one and should be resolved legally,” he noted, more or less admitting that the Iraqi Kurdish were not about to hang onto the disputed territories through force.

Even if negotiations are being planned behind the scenes, not everyone agrees that this is the right thing to do. “Most of the areas that are in the Kurdish region have now been liberated from the extremists and there are plans to liberate the remaining areas too,” Jamal Eminki, chief of staff of the Peshmerga forces, told NIQASH. “The Iraqi Kurdish military will not withdraw from those areas because they were liberated by blood. And anyway, there were Iraqi Kurdish military in these areas even before the Islamic State group arrived.”