The continuing unrest in Iraq has claimed another casualty: the deal reached between the Kurds and Baghdad last December, which led the Kurdish Regional Government to suspend unilateral oil sales. The Financial Times reports that “the federal government withheld payments to Erbil soon after the deal began due to its own budget crisis while accusing the Kurds of not transferring the agreed volumes.”
As a result, the KRG has once again started selling its oil abroad without going through Baghdad’s State Oil Marketing Organization. “Since May,” the FT reports, “the Kurds have sold almost 40m barrels of oil to traders via the Turkish port of Ceyhan.” (Interestingly, much of the crude seems to be winding up in Israel, which is now said to be getting as much as three-quarters of its oil from the pro-Israeli Kurds.)
Meanwhile in northern Syria, the Kurdish militia known as the People’s Protection Units (YPG) — an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Turkish terrorist group — has been making inroads into ISIS control. In fact, with some 35,000 fighters under arms, it is the only armed group that has had any success in rolling back ISIS gains, doing so with the aid of American airpower.
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