Dispute over raising Kurdish flag as U.S. hands over control of 3 provinces to Kurds

Above: Kurdish Peshmerga forces. Peshmerga is the term used by Kurds to refer to armed Kurdish fighters, and literally translates as "those who face death". Originally a resistance militia formed in the 1920s, the Peshmerga are now Iraqi Kurds 'internal' security forces. There are Kurdish brigades in the Iraqi Army as well, and National Police forces in the area are also largely Kurdish. The provinces 'handed over' to Kurdish security today do not include Mosul or oil-rich Kirkuk, both hotly disputed amongst their mixed Arab, Turkomen and Kurdish populations.

ARBIL, Iraq - In a blaze of pomp showcasing Kurdish military muscle, US forces handed over responsibility for security in Iraq’s three northern provinces to the Kurdish regional government on Wednesday.

Iraq’s Kurds have long cherished separatist ambitions and, while officials said the region will work closely with the national government in Baghdad, the symbolism of the moment was not lost on the former guerrilla fighters.

“It’s a sort of independence,” Colonel Shadman Ali of the peshmerga, the Kurdish security force, told AFP. “We are very glad and proud and have been waiting for this day for so long. It gives us a great source of hope.”

Sulaimaniyah, Arbil and Dohuk provinces are ruled by the Kurdish Regional Government, which has its own executive and ministries and has been spared much of the unrest wracking the rest of Iraq.

“Today is another success in the process of rebuilding Iraq,” Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani said at a ceremony in his capital, Arbil.

The handover was followed by a parade of Kurdish soldiers, including an all-female martial arts display.

“This is the result of the experience of 16 years,” he said referring to Iraqi Kurdistan’s history of de facto independence since the 1991 Gulf War weakened Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s grip on the mountainous north.

Organisers had planned to raise the Iraqi national flag to symbolise the transfer of authority but many Kurds wanted to raise their own regional flag, a horizontal tricolour of orange, white and green with a golden sun motif.

In the end, no flag was raised.

Read the rest at Khaleej Times

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