Locals in the Kurdistan Region react to Ukraine crisis

Besides calling on the Iraqi government to rescue the 450 Iraqi students stranded in Ukraine, locals in the Kurdistan Region have mixed feelings about the European crisis amid fears it could deteriorate further.

“Because of the oil business in Kurdistan, the markets here will surely be affected in any war in Europe,” said Fakhir Abbas, a local business owner in Erbil. “If markets are down, currencies will be affected. When that happens, locals will be affected too.”

From their experience, people in the Kurdistan Region believe that war ultimately benefits no one. 

“Wars poke our wounds here in Kurdistan,” said Mohammed Younis, a local shop owner in Duhok. “We have always lost in wars, and that is true everywhere in the world.” 

Germany, Britain, the United States, and several other Western powers have stood behind Ukraine by providing military aid, condemning the Kremlin, and slapping stringent economic sanctions on Russia.

Recent statements by US and NATO officials have made clear their common approach to the Ukraine crisis: defend all of NATO territory while supplying Ukraine, which isn’t a member of the alliance, the weapons it needs to protect itself.

“If Kremlin won’t be stopped here, next are Baltic states and Poland,” Lukas Andriukaitis, Associate Director at the American Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), told Kurdistan 24 in an exclusive interview. 

Read More: ‘If Kremlin won’t be stopped here, next are Baltic states and Poland’: Security Expert

“I hope the war will stop as soon as possible,” said Mardin Azad, a college student in Sulaimani. “I have been in Ukraine as a tourist, it is a nice country, and it should not be destroyed.” 

“Civilians lose a lot,” Azad added. “Besides the country getting destroyed, civilians pay the bigger prize, and I hope that it will not get any worse than it is now.”

“To stop Russia, there needs to be more pressure because the punishments so far are not harsh enough,” said Abdulrehman Qadir, a local political observer in Erbil.

“The Western powers are cautious with Russia because they all have interests and a lot are at stake.”