Is the new US airbase in Iraqi Kurdistan all about Iran?
http://www.juancole.com/2014/10/airbase-kurdistan-about.html
Is the new US airbase in Iraqi Kurdistan all about Iran?
By contributors | Oct. 9, 2014
By Hiwa Barznjy | Erbil | via Niqash.org
NIQASH interviewed Safeen Dizayee, the spokesperson for the government of semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan. During a candid and wide ranging conversation, Dizayee spoke about why the US is building a new airbase in the region, where exactly Iraqi Kurdish oil is going and whether refugees in the region are being maltreated.
Over the past few months, Iraqi Kurdistan has come under attack from Sunni Muslim extremists in the group known as the Islamic State, it has become home to over a million refugees and it has also been subject to a financial blockade by the Iraqi government in Baghdad.
NIQASH held a wide-ranging conversation with Safeen Dizayee, the spokesperson for the Iraqi Kurdish government in the semi-autonomous northern region and a member of the regions biggest political party, the Kurdish Democratic Party.
The conversation covered everything from the establishment of a new US air base in Iraqi Kurdistan to whether Iraqi Kurdish authorities were discriminating against Arab refugees. He also discussed whether Iranian and Turkish reactions to Iraqs security crisis were adequate as well as where exactly Iraqi Kurdish oil was being exported to, and how much of it was going there.