Iraqi Kurds vote in favor of independence as crisis escalates

[DonViejo]

Source: The Washington Post




By Tamer El-Ghobashy and Kareem Fahim September 27 at 10:34 AM

IRBIL, Iraq — Kurds voted overwhelmingly to secede from Iraq, with 92.7 percent approving a controversial referendum that was held Monday, according to an official tally released Wednesday.

While Kurds celebrated the result in the streets of their semiautonomous enclave in northern Iraq, the bid for independence continued to roil Iraq’s central government and powerful regional neighbors Turkey and Iran and is shaping up to usher in a period of contentious wrangling over its implementation.

Early Wednesday, Iraqi lawmakers authorized Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi to deploy troops to a disputed city in northern Iraq and urged for legal action against Kurdish leaders as a showdown escalated over the vote. The parliament also called for the government to take control of all oil fields in the Kurdish region, bringing them under control of the ministry of oil.

Several regional airlines said they would suspend flights to airports in the Kurdish region in a sign of Baghdad’s pressure to try to punish and isolate the Kurds.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/iraqi-parliament-authorizes-troops-deployed-to-contested-city-as-kurdish-independence-crisis-escalates-/2017/09/27/845d7220-a381-11e7-8c37-e1d99ad6aa22_story.html

[yallerdawg]

1. Contrary to the Dotard's uninformed opinion...

everyone everywhere has the right to democratic self-determination! Kurds, Catalans - everyone!

THAT is the international basis of American Exceptionalism!

[NobodyHere]

2. Does that include the South?

[yallerdawg]

3. The lesson we learned from the Middle East 'Arab Spring.'

Should have learned.

Democratic self-determination doesn't always yield the results we want.