'Kurdish leaders have inserted more than 10,000 of their militia members into Iraqi army divisions in northern Iraq to lay the groundwork to swarm south, seize the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and possibly half of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, and secure the borders of an independent Kurdistan.
Five days of interviews with Kurdish leaders and troops in the region suggest that U.S. plans to bring unity to Iraq before withdrawing American troops by training and equipping a national army aren't gaining traction. Instead, some troops that are formally under U.S. and Iraqi national command are preparing to protect territory and ethnic and religious interests in the event of Iraq's fragmentation, which many of them think is inevitable'.
With most of the attention focused on the struggles between the Sunni and the Shia, the Kurds have steadily 'laid the groundwork' to their long-sought after 'Kurdistan' dream with Kirkuk as its capital.
It's going to get even uglier in Iraq when the Kurds make their move for
independence, which could even possibly drag Turkey into this mess.
Let's just hope our soldiers and Marines aren't asked to referee that one, too.
But unfortunately, don't bet they won't.
Time to leave and time to re-deploy to Afghanistan.
