KRG Rep. to US: ‘Americans emphasized partnership’

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (K24) – Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Representative to the United States, announced that the US officials are partners with the Kurdistan Region in the waves of economic and security crises facing the region. 

A senior KRG delegation led by Fuad Hussein, Chief of Staff to Kurdistan Region President, Falah Mustafa Bakir, Head of the KRG Department of Foreign Relations (DFR), and Abdul Rahman visited Washington, D.C. last week. The delegation updated the U.S. presidential administration, senators, congressmen, and media on the multiple crises currently engulfing the Kurdistan Region.

Abdul Rahman told K24 that the Kurdish delegation mainly focused on the economic crisis in the meeting with the US officials. She highlighted that refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the Kurdistan Region currently make up thirty percent of the entire population. She added the region’s infrastructure was not capable of serving such sudden population increase.

“It is about two years that we [the Kurdistan Region] have not received our budget share (seventeen percent) from Baghdad [Federal Government]. In addition, we are in a war against IS (Islamic State)…war is costly all over the world. Lastly, many refugees and IDPs live in [the] Kurdistan [Region]. This is like a chain [of financial problems],” she stated.

Abdul Rahman elaborated that the high costs of the war against the Islamic State (IS) — including logistics, ammunition, and Peshmerga salaries — on top of the noticeable drop in the oil prices, have amounted to a state of economic upheaval in Kurdistan Region.

She explained that the American officials emphasized their partnership with the Kurdistan Region in the war against IS and in supporting the region’s economic issues.

Abdul Rahman revealed that in the coming weeks, two brigades of the Peshmerga forces will be directly armed by the US. “These two brigades will receive the same training and armament as the ones that the American soldiers receive…in addition to heavy weapons, they will receive ammunition, clothes, and chemical warfare defense equipment.”

The KRG representative to the US said they also discussed Peshmerga’s participation in retaking Mosul. “Mosul liberation has a humanitarian aspect in addition to its military side… Retaking Mosul will displace nearly half a million people, and many of them will seek shelter in the Kurdistan Region, something that the KRG, with the current economic situation, cannot undertake.” 

Speaking about the coexistence and the rights of the religious and ethnic minorities in the Kurdistan Region, Abdul Rahman said, “The openness that we have in Kurdistan, that we are not against the Christians or other minorities, is extremely important for the Americans.”

She also told K24 that the Kurdish delegation and US officials discussed recognizing genocide of the Yezidis in Sinjar. 

(Reporting by Ehsan Mamakani; Editing by Ava Homa)