Kurds Bad Plan

Oxford defines Morality as what ought to do and ought as moral duty or

obligation therefore my Value is Morality. The Standard is maximizing
wellbeing. Prefer this framework because:
1) Util is the most effective way of maintaining equality.
Without Util, arbitrary rulings and laws can be justified as Util provides
a constant value of a human life. Thus Util is moral as it attempts to
maximize the wellbeing of humans in general.
2) Util justifies governmental policy actions, as Util

governments addresses the needs of the citizens and thus

guarantees the best possible outcome.
Goodin 95, Professor of Philosophy at the Research School of the Social
Sciences at the Australian National University(Robert E., Cambridge
University Press, Utilitarianism As a Public Philosophy pg 63)

there is something special about the situation of public

officials that makes util more plausible
Public officials are obliged to make their choices under
uncertainty,
private
individuals
have more complete information
of their
circumstances
Public officials
poorly
informed as to the effects that their choices will have on individuals,
What they do know are
averages and aggregates.
That is enough to allow public policy makers to use util
My larger argument turns on the proposition that

itarianism

for them (or, more precisely, makes them adopt a form of utilitarianism that we would find more acceptable) than

private individuals. Before proceeding with that larger argument, I must therefore say what it is that is so special about public officials and their situations that makes it both more necessary and more desirable for them to adopt a more credible form of utilitarianism.
Consider, first the argument from necessity.

and uncertainty of a very special sort at that. All choices-public and private alike- are made under some degree of uncertainty, of course. But in the nature of things,

will usually

on the peculiarities

and on the ramifications that alternative possible choices might have for them.

own

, in contrast, at relatively

one by one.

typically

of their various possible choices. But that is all.

generalities:

They know what will happen most often to most people as a result

the

itarian

calculus if they want to use it at all to choose general rules of conduct. Knowing aggregates and averages, they can proceed to calculate the utility payoffs from adopting each alternative possible general rule. But they cannot be sure what the payoff will be to any
given individual or on any particular occasion. Their knowledge of generalities, aggregates and averages is just not sufficiently fine-grained for that.

3) Util insures only theories basing on the benefits to the nation as a

whole can be achieved, thus allowing only the best solutions possible.
Util allows for best possible feasible solutions to occur, insuring moral
actions are the ones being evaluated as actions that do not serve the greater
good cannot be valued moral.
4) Util protects equality, making it a prerequisite of all other value
criterions as equality critically is rooted within Util. Util forces debaters
to judge all individual as an equal in order to base any judgements on what

actions to conduct. Without equality, moral actions to decide in which

policies to adopt by calculating effects cannot be done, making essentially
util a prerequisite
Plan Text: The United States federal government should end its provision of
arms to Kurdish forces.
Beauchamp, Zack. "America's Kurdish Problem: Today's Allies against ISIS
Are Tomorrow's Headache." Vox. Vox, 08 Apr. 2016. Web. 27 July 2016.
There's one thing, and maybe one thing only, that American leaders agree on when it comes to the Middle East: The Kurds are our best friends against
ISIS. There's a reason for that: Kurdish forces are dedicated, dependable, and successful. In Iraq, Kurdish forces have cut ISIS supply lines in the
country's north, laying the groundwork for an Iraqi government assault on ISIS-held Mosul. In Syria, Kurdish forces have moved to within 30 miles of

as ISIS recedes, America's alliance with the Kurds

becomes less necessary for either side. And it's coming as American and Kurdish interests increasingly diverge and as the two
ISIS's de facto capital, Raqqa. But

allies push for visions of the Middle East that are more than a little different. The ISIS threat binds the US and the Kurds but it's waning (IHS Jane's
360) ISIS territorial losses in red, gains in green. The United States has had a longstanding relationship with Iraq's quasi-autonomous Kurdish minority,
who benefited from the American-led no-fly zone over Iraq after the 1990s Gulf War and from Saddam Hussein's downfall in 2003. But that relationship
got considerably closer in 2014 when the US partnered with Iraqi and Syrian Kurds to fight their shared enemy, ISIS. For the Americans, the Kurds were
obvious allies. Unlike, say, the Iraqi army, the Kurds are strong and reliable fighters. Unlike with Syrian rebel groups, there is little concern of arms or
money going to extremists. This alliance has worked well. It's helped Syrian and Iraqi Kurds protect their territory from ISIS. And it's helped the US lead
an anti-ISIS effort that has seen the group lose 30 percent of its territory since August 2014, according to a US estimate. But this was always an alliance
of convenience. Whereas the US wants to defeat ISIS as part of a larger effort to return stability to the Middle East, Iraqi and Syrian Kurds are mostly
focused on protecting their own populations and territory. Those two objectives overlap today, but as ISIS recedes, so does the rationale for the US-

Reporters on the ground indicate that ISIS is indeed collapsing

Kurdish alliance.
.
ISIS is "a rapidly diminishing force," the Washington Post's Liz Sly wrote in a late March piece. "Front-line commanders no longer speak of a scarily
formidable foe but of Islamic State defenses that crumble within days and fighters who flee at the first sign they are under attack." This isn't to say that
ISIS is going to collapse tomorrow, or even stop being a real threat to the Kurds anytime soon. Rather, it's to say that ISIS is getting significantly weaker
and the more this continues, the less of a threat it will be, and the less of a priority it will become for Kurds and other regional powers. So what does
that mean for the US and the Kurds? The Iraq flashpoint: Kirkuk Kurdish Peshmerga Keep Fragile Peace In Kirkuk (Spencer Platt/Getty Images) A
peshmerga fighter in Kirkuk. The status of the Kurds in post-Saddam Iraq has never totally been settled. Repressed and slaughtered by Saddam's
government, the Kurds demanded and received a significant degree of autonomy after his fall, including their own regional government and
military. But they also claim some Iraqi territory that is not part of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region including the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which
Kurds consider to be historically Kurdish. As least 13 percent of all Iraqi oil reserves are in the Kirkuk area enough to make or break the Kurdistan
Regional Government's (KRG) financial viability should it ever become an independent state. In June 2014, while the Iraqi government was preoccupied

the Kurds simply seized Kirkuk, along with some other

territories it considered rightfully Kurdish, and has controlled them
ever since. "It's like [Israel] taking East Jerusalem in 1967," Kirk Sowell, an expert on Iraqi politics at the Utica Risk Services consulting
with fighting ISIS,

group, said of the Kirkuk seizure at the time. But the Iraqi government and the Shia militias fighting alongside it see this as an unconstitutional

it looks like a possible prelude to Kurdish secession, taking all the

Kirkuk oil with them. This isn't mere paranoia: The KRG has announced intentions to hold a
referendum in October on whether it should leave Iraq. The stage is set, then, for a major
power grab. Moreover,

political crisis between Iraq's central government and Iraqi Kurdistan. There's already been some actual blood spilled: In November 2015, Shia militias
clashed with Kurdish peshmerga for 10 days in the Kirkuk area. The Guardian's Martin Chulov described it as "the most serious flare-up with the Kurds
anywhere in Iraq in the 12 years since the fall of Baghdad." "We will never accept the Kurds taking Kirkuk," Muen al-Khadimi, a spokesperson for the
Badr Brigades militia group, told Chulov. KRG President Masoud Barzani sounded a similarly strident note in comments to Chulov: "We will fight to the
last person and we will not let anyone else control Kirkuk." A political or even armed conflict between the Iraqi government and Iraqi Kurds would
seriously distract from the fight against ISIS, which Baghdad is already barely equipped to fight, and would risk dividing the Iraqi factions are who
currently united against ISIS. Such a conflict would be good news for ISIS and bad news for everyone else, including the US, whose anti-ISIS strategy
requires Iraqi Arabs and Kurds to work together. The Syria flashpoint: Rojava Tal Abyad, Life After IS (Ahmet Sik/Getty Images) PYD fighters. The
Syrian Kurds operate under completely different political auspices than their Iraqi brethren. But they, too, aspire to autonomy specifically in the
Kurdish-majority territories in Syria's north, which they call Rojava. And, as in Iraq, this could seriously complicate US strategy and interests. Rojava has
essentially functioned as an independent state since late 2012, when Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad withdrew from the region to fight the mostly Arab
rebels. As Syrian Kurds have grown stronger, they've been natural US allies: They fight ISIS, oppose Assad, and aren't mixed up with jihadists. But the
rise of Syria's Kurds has alarmed another American ally: Turkey, which fears that this could aid or embolden the Kurdish insurgency within its own
country, especially the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The PKK is a Kurdish nationalist group founded in 1978 that seeks autonomy for Turkey's ethnic

fighting between the PKK and Turkey has killed

about 40,000 people, with violence peaking in the 1990s. Rojava borders the Turkey's
Kurdish minority. Over the past decades,

Kurdish regions, and Syrian Kurds have close political links with the PKK. In 2012, the Turkey-PKK conflict was cooling off; there was actually an
active and promising peace process. But the PYD's surge in Syria "changed the game, for Turkey and for Kurds," Atlantic Council Turkey expert Aaron
Stein told me last year. Turkey worried that Syrian Kurds would inspire Kurdish nationalism in Turkey and that Turkish Kurds would use this de facto
mini state as a base of operation. In July 2015, as the US was encouraging along Syrian Kurdish advances, PKK-Turkish tensions erupted into low-level
warfare that has gone on since then. Unsurprisingly, this became a source of tension between the US and Turkey, which allows the US to use its military
bases. "Are you on our side or the side of the terrorist PYD and PKK organizations?" Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan asked rhetorically in a
February 2016 speech. "Hey, America. Because you never recognized them as a terrorist group, the region has turned into a sea of blood." Incurring
Turkish anger over supporting Syrian Kurds was almost certainly the right trade-off, given how successful they've been against ISIS. But it was a tradeoff nonetheless, with real costs. This is going to get harder as the US attempts to push a negotiated settlement to end Syria's war. Turkey is deeply hostile
to any independent or autonomous Rojava: One of its principal goals in Syria is preventing that. But a free Rojava is Syrian Kurds' fundamental demand.
Two critical American allies have diametrically opposed interests in Syria. This tension is already causing problems. The Syrian Kurds have been
excluded from the Syrian peace talks. This March, while talks were underway, they declared Rojava an autonomous federal state inside of Syria. "We've
been fighting ISIS for you," the Kurds are saying to America, "and we're not going anywhere." But, as in Iraq, the US only needs Syria's Kurds for as
long as we're fighting ISIS. The weaker ISIS becomes, the less our interests overlap. Indeed, some Kurdish forces have already fought US-backed Syrian
rebels in northwestern Syria in a bid to expand their territory there. The Kurds are not America's cute sidekicks Kurdish Peshmerga Control Sinjar After
Driving Out ISIL With U.S. Airstrikes (John Moore/Getty Images) Kurdish fighters in Iraq. The Kurds are extremely reliable and brave partners in the
war against ISIS, and they have earned every ounce of the admiration they get from American officials and politicians. But that doesn't mean they share
America's goals or vision for the region. Kurdistan is not America East. Their position is eminently reasonable: They've been viciously repressed, on
account of being a weak minority. The only way they can really protect themselves is to control their own territory. But the other parties in Iraq and Syria,
too, have legitimate interests. The Iraqi government, for example, already grants the Kurds significant autonomy. From their point of view, the Kurds are
trying to take oil reserves that all of Iraq should share, depriving Iraqis of resources they desperately need to reconstruct their country after the one-two

America has benefited from working with the Kurds, it has a

responsibility to think about regional interests beyond just those of the
Kurds. That's a necessity if it wants the Middle East to ever become stable again. For
blow of the US invasion and ISIS war. For all that

the past two years, the United States has (understandably!) focused overwhelmingly on defeating the Islamic State. But now that the group is collapsing,

the US needs to start thinking about the day after ISIS falls, whenever
that finally comes. The Kurds are political actors with their own
interests and concerns, which they will pursue even if Washington
doesn't like it. American leaders, especially people who might be president one day, need to understand this, and they need to start thinking
about what to do when the Kurds inevitably begin pursuing interest that are counter to our own how they'll prevent the cycle of zero-sum sectarian
conflict from continuing.

Currently the US is supplying arms to the Kurds and will continue to

without this plan
Rogin, Josh, and Eli Lake. "U.S. Airdrop in Syria Ends Up Arming the
Kurds." Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg, 15 Oct. 2015. Web. 27 July 2016.
the White House announced that the U.S. had dropped 50 tons
of ammunition to Syrian Arabs fighting the Islamic State. Some officials now say that the new Arab
coalition was a front and that Kurdish groups received most of the weapons -- as the
U.S. intended. American and Kurdish officials and Syrian Arab opposition leaders
told us this week that ammunition said to have been for the Syrian Arab
Coalition, a newly announced group of Sunni Arab brigades in northeastern Syria, had largely ended up
arming the Kurdish Democratic Union Party and its associated military
forces, known as the People's Protection Units or YPG. That will aid the Kurds in
Last weekend,

fighting the Islamic State and cementing their control of Kurdish territory. One senior administration official who works on the issue
told us that the White House knew that the coalition was likely to pass on most if not all of the weapons to the Kurds.

The

official, who called the Syrian Arab Coalition a "ploy" to arm the
Kurds, said the White House knew they would receive the shipments
because they controlled the area where the weapons were dropped. The U.S.
did not ask the Arab coalition for any guarantees the weapons would stay in Arab hands, the official said. The Obama administration
has not said that the arms are going to the Kurds. Our successful airdrop provided ammunition to Arab fighters fighting in Northern
Syria against ISIL, Commander Kyle Raines, of U.S. Central Command, told us in a statement. If the U.S. were seen openly arming
the Kurds, that could alienate Turkey and some Syrian Arab groups outside Kurdish territory. A local Kurdish official told the
Associated Press this week that the U.S. had provided 120 tons of weapons and ammunition to the YPG. The Washington Post
reported Thursday that Turkey summoned the U.S. ambassador in Ankara to complain about the weapons drops. (Turkey has long

One Kurdish official close to the YPG

confirmed to us that the weapons and ammunition dropped this week
would be largely going to its fighters. On Thursday, Mutlu Civiroglu, a Kurdish affairs analyst,
been at odds with its own Kurdish population.)

published an interview in which the YPG commander, Sipan Hemo, acknowledged his group had received the airdrops, which he said
were important to its cause. With this new support, the cooperation we have had for a year has reached a new level. And we hope to
increase our work together even more, we hope to work strategically. So what we received was not big. But it is big for a new start,
Hemo said. In addition, the YPG itself has acknowledged that it is participating in a new alliance with Sunni Arab and Syrian
Christian groups known as the Democratic Forces of Syria. That group held its first meeting Thursday in the Syrian city of Al Hasakah
to discuss how to divide up the new U.S.-provided ammunition between Kurdish, Arab and Christian rebel brigades, a representative
of the group said. It was just last week when the Obama administration began referring to the Syrian Arab Coalition, on background to
news outlets. As the New York Times noted, Arab rebel groups fighting in the area freely admitted they had never heard of such an
organization, although they were excited about the prospect of getting the weapons. U.S. officials told us that the leaders of the Arab
groups inside the coalition have been vetted by the U.S., even if the brigades themselves are unknown to the U.S. and its allies. A
senior administration official said the goal of the airdrop was to aid the groups that can fight the Islamic State outside the areas already
controlled by Kurds, including Raqqa. Robert Ford, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria who just returned from a tour of the region,
told us that the Sunni Arab groups in the coalition were either completely unknown or relatively obscure, and certainly not in a
position to mount a major offensive against the Islamic State in big cities like Raqqa, where the Islamic State has tens of thousands of
well-armed fighters. "The Arab groups are either not significant or in the case of the Assyrian Christian group, more or less unknown,
Ford said. That doesnt mean they dont exist. It just means they havent had an impact on the ground heretofore. The Arab groups
may be unproven, but the Kurds are not perfectly in sync with the U.S. agenda. They have no intention of leaving Kurdish territory to
fight the Islamic State, Ford said, which means arming them is just a recipe for medium- and long-term fighting. Turkey has
doubled down on its military campaign against Kurdish groups in northeastern Syria in recent weeks. The Turks believe that the YPG
is closely aligned in Syria with the PKK, another Kurdish fighting force that both the U.S. and Turkish governments consider a

The U.S. has been working with the YPG in Syria for some
time, with varying levels of transparency. For example, U.S. airstrikes cleared the way for Kurdish
terrorist organization.

fighters to retake the Syrian city of Kobani from the Islamic State in January. More recently, the U.S. has been trying to get Turkey to

American officials have played down

cooperation with the YPG. Working with the Kurdish group also
presents a potential legal problem. The U.S. is prohibited from arming groups that commit human rights
increase its involvement in Syria; to that end,

abuses. On Monday, Amnesty International released a report that said fighters from the People's Protection Units had deliberately
displaced Arab and Turkmen residents from the areas it now administers in Syria, burning homes and in some cases razing whole
villages. Evan Barrett, an adviser to the Coalition for a Democratic Syria, an umbrella group resisting the Syrian regime, said the
Obama administration is exaggerating the role of Sunni Arabs in the recent ammunition drops for three reasons: to prove the U.S. still
has a Sunni Arab partner against the Islamic State, to avoid angering the Turks, and to distance the U.S. from the human rights
accusations against the Kurdish group. The Syrian Arab Coalition and the new Syrian Democratic Force are helpful for all three goals,
he said, adding that "both groups seem to have been invented from whole cloth over the last several days." The U.S. airdrop was
presented by the White House as a way to compensate for the failed "train and equip" program, which was meant to give the U.S.

the recipients of the

ammunition are Kurds rather than Sunni Arabs, the result is very different: once again
failing to find and bolster Arab partners, once again relying on Kurds to do the fighting.
reliable Sunni Arab partners on the ground to fight the Islamic State. But if

Thus I affirm that ending the provision of arms to Kurdish forces will
maximize wellbeing.

Contention 1: Anti-Kurdish Sentiment breaks

Coalition
The Kurds are oftentimes in contest with local nations.
"Who Are the Kurds?" BBC News. BBC, 14 Mar. 2016. Web. 26 July 2016.
There is deep-seated hostility between the Turkish state and the country's
Kurds, who constitute 15% to 20% of the population. Kurds received harsh treatment at the hands of the Turkish authorities for generations. In
response to uprisings in the 1920s and 1930s, many Kurds were resettled, Kurdish names and costumes were banned, the use of the Kurdish language was
restricted and even the existence of a Kurdish ethnic identity was denied, with people designated "Mountain Turks". In 1978, Abdullah Ocalan established
the PKK, which called for an independent state within Turkey. Six years later, the group began an armed struggle. Since then, more than 40,000 people
have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced. PKK fighters in parade in northern Iraq (11 August 2005)Image copyrightAFP Image caption
More than 40,000 people have been killed since the PKK launched an armed struggle in 1984 In the 1990s the PKK rolled back on its demand for

independence, calling instead for greater cultural and political autonomy, but continued to fight In 2012, the government and PKK began peace talks
and the following year a ceasefire was agreed, although clashes continued. The ceasefire collapsed in July 2015, days after a suicide bombing blamed on
IS killed 33 young activists in the mainly Kurdish town of Suruc, near the Syrian border. The PKK responded by attacking Turkish soldiers and police,

the Turkish government launched what it called a "synchronised war

on terror" against the PKK and IS. Since then, hundreds of people have been killed in clashes in south-eastern Turkey and
and

in air strikes on PKK camps in northern Iraq. Women carry the coffin of Sirin Oter, one of two women killed during security operations by Turkish
security forces, in Istanbul (23 December 2015)Image copyrightAP Image caption Hundreds of Turkish security personnel, PKK fighters and civilians
have been killed since July The Turkish authorities also blamed the YPG for a suicide bomb attack in Ankara in February 2016 that left dozens of people

Turkey's
government says the YPG and the PYD are affiliates of the PKK, share
its goal of secession through armed struggle, and are all terrorist organizations. Why Turkey prefers
dead and Turkish troops shelled YPG positions in north-western Syria to prevent it capturing the rebel-held town of Azaz.

Iraq's Kurds to its own Turkey's fear of a reignited Kurdish flame PKK fighters face life after Turkey withdrawal Profile: The PKK What do Syria's Kurds
want? Salih Muslim, head of the Democratic Unity Party (PYD) receives condolences from Syrian Kurds after his son Servan was killed in fighting with
jihadist militants (15 October 2013)Image copyrightAFP Image caption The Democratic Unity Party (PYD) is the dominant force in Syria's Kurdish
regions Kurds make up between 7% and 10% of Syria's population. Before the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in 2011 most lived in the
cities of Damascus and Aleppo, and in three, non-contiguous areas around Kobane, the north-western town of Afrin, and the north-eastern city of
Qamishli. Syria's Kurds have long been suppressed and denied basic rights. Some 300,000 have been denied citizenship since the 1960s, and Kurdish
land has been confiscated and redistributed to Arabs in an attempt to "Arabize" Kurdish regions. The state has also sought to limit Kurdish demands for
greater autonomy by cracking down on protests and arresting political leaders. The Kurdish enclaves were relatively unscathed by the first two years of
the Syrian conflict. The main Kurdish parties publicly avoided taking sides. In mid-2012, government forces withdrew to concentrate on fighting the
rebels elsewhere, after which Kurdish groups took control. A Kurdish fighter from the Popular Protection Units (YPG) shows his weapon decorated with

YPG fighters have clashed with

Syrian rebels, but are focused on battling IS. The Democratic Unity Party (PYD) quickly established
itself as the dominant force, straining relations with smaller parties who
formed the Kurdistan National Council (KNC). In January 2014, they united to declare the creation of a democratic autonomous
its flag in Aleppo, Syria (7 June 2014)Image copyrightREUTERS Image caption

government, with branches based in the three Kurdish enclaves. The parties stressed that they were not seeking independence from Syria but "local
democratic administration" within a federal framework. PYD leader Salih Muslim has insisted that any political settlement to end the conflict in Syria
will have to include legal guarantees for Kurdish rights and recognition of Kurdish autonomy. Mr Muslim has also denied that his party is allied to the
Syrian government, even though the YPG has fought against some rebel groups and avoided conflict with the army, stressing that President Assad cannot
remain in power after any transitional period. IS meets its match in Kobane Syria's Kurds fight to keep out jihadists Will Iraq's Kurds gain independence?
Mulla Mustafa Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, holds hands with Saddam Hussein, then deputy chairman of the Revolutionary
Command Council of the Iraqi Baath Party (20 March 1970)Image copyrightHULTON ARCHIVE Image caption A peace deal agreed by the KDP and
Iraq's government in 1970 collapsed four years later Kurds make up an estimated 15% to 20% of Iraq's population. They have historically enjoyed more
national rights than Kurds living in neighbouring states, but also faced brutal repression. Kurds in the north of Iraq revolted against British rule during the

(KDP) to fight for

autonomy in Iraq. After the 1958 revolution, a new constitution
recognised Kurdish nationality. But Barzani's plan for self-rule was
rejected by the Arab-led central government and the KDP launched an
armed struggle in 1961. In 1970, the government offered a deal to end
mandate era, but were crushed. In 1946, Mustafa Barzani formed the Kurdistan Democratic Party

the fighting that gave the Kurds a de facto autonomous region. But it ultimately
collapsed and fighting resumed in 1974. A year later, divisions within the KDP saw Jalal Talabani leave and
form the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Iraqi Kurdish refugees take shelter at a refugee camp in south-eastern Turkey after fleeing fighting between
Iraqi government forces and Peshmerga in May 1991Image copyrightAFP Image caption Some 1.5 million Iraqi Kurds fled into Iran and Turkey after the
1991 rebellion was crushed In the late 1970s, the government began settling Arabs in areas with Kurdish majorities, particularly around the oil-rich city
of Kirkuk, and forcibly relocating Kurds. The policy was accelerated in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War, in which the Kurds backed the Islamic
republic. In 1988, Saddam Hussein unleashed a campaign of vengeance on the Kurds that included the poison-gas attack on Halabja. When Iraq was
defeated in the 1991 Gulf War Barzani's son, Massoud, led a Kurdish rebellion. Its violent suppression prompted the US and its allies to impose a no-fly
zone in the north that allowed Kurds to enjoy self-rule. The KDP and PUK agreed to share power, but tensions rose and a four-year internal conflict
erupted in 1994. The two parties co-operated with the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein and have participated in all national
governments formed since then. They have also governed in coalition in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), created in 2005 to administer the
three provinces of Dohuk, Irbil and Sulaimaniya, and sought to maximise Kurdish autonomy by building a pipeline to Turkey and exporting oil
independently. Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani at a news conference in Dokan (3 May 2009)Image copyrightAFP Image caption Massoud Barzani's
KDP and Jalal Talabani's PUK share power in Iraqi Kurdistan After IS captured large parts of northern Iraq in 2014, the KRG sent the Peshmerga into
disputed areas claimed by the Kurds and the central government, and then asked the Kurdish parliament to plan a referendum on independence. In
February 2016, Massoud Barzani - who became president of Kurdistan in 2005 - reiterated the call for a referendum. However, he stressed that it would
be non-binding and would simply allow Kurdish leaders to "execute the will of the people at the appropriate time and conditions".

Ultimately Kurdish forces have been at odds with all local nations, making
the act of arming them in direct conflict with the interests of these countries.
Thus by funding the Kurds, nations at odds with the Kurds will fall out of
favor with the US.
Larison 15
The problems with backing an independent Kurdistan are well-known. The short version is that
backing the creation of such a state would put the U.S. in the position of
guaranteeing the independence of a new client against its neighbors, all of
whom would be hostile to its existence to some degree. Because of Turkeys fear of a reviving Kurdish Workers Party (PKK),
U.S. support for independent Kurdistan would put the U.S. and Turkey
on a collision course and might very well trigger Turkish military action
against the new state. If that seems unlikely, remember that Turkey is already launching airstrikes on Kurdish targets in Iraq and joined the war on
ISIS mostly because it was alarmed about Kurdish gains in Syria. Imagine how much more alarmed it would by the formal creation of a new Kurdish state. The Iraqi
and Syrian governments arent likely to accept a new state carved out
of their territory, and it is doubtful that Iran would be indifferent to
something that undermines these governments. If the U.S. were seen as instrumental in the creation of an
independent Kurdistan, that could also make it an attractive target for terrorists hostile to the U.S. Depending on the terms of the relationship with Washington, the U.S. might find
itself obliged to defend the new state, and that would be yet another security commitment for the U.S. to fulfill. In exchange for all that, creating an independent Kurdistan would
probably not yield that many benefits, at least not for the U.S. or the war on ISIS. Weber presents it as providing the U.S. with a base of operations in a country that has invited its
help, but once an independent Kurdistan is established the new state would probably be concerned with securing itself and would be less inclined to join itself to the U.S. war
effort. The new Kurdistan would probably not be recognized by that many other states, since its creation will almost certainly have come over the objections of the governments in

All the states that are wary of encouraging their own

separatist and nationalist movements would likely be against
recognizing the new state, which would leave the new state as a sort of semi-pariah on the international stage. Once independence has been
Baghdad and Damascus.

achieved, it is also possible that internal rivalries between different Kurdish factions would lead to a conflict over control of the new state, and that would leave the U.S. with the
task of trying to resolve a new civil war. Carving out a new state creates a number of new problems for U.S. policy and doesnt do much to solve existing ones. It would leave the
U.S. with a long-term commitment to sustain the new state that it helped create for the hope for a short-term fix for a war the U.S. shouldnt even be fighting. Even if doing this
provided a rare moment of positive feeling about its mideast policy (which is not a good reason to do anything of this magnitude), that feeling would likely evaporate soon
thereafter because of the many headaches that it would cause.

Destabilizing key coalition members fighting ISIS, like Turkey and Iraq, is
detrimental to the war effort and humanitarian crisis.

Marcus, Jonathan. "US-Turkey: The Strained Alliance." BBC News. BBC,

29 Mar. 2016. Web. 27 July 2016.
The differences between Washington and Ankara are various, not least reflecting US disappointment at the current drift in Turkish

it is the Syrian crisis, and in particular the role of Kurdish

militias in the fight against so-called Islamic State (IS) that has
crystallized US-Turkish tensions. US and Turkish disagreements over Syria reflect fundamental
domestic affairs. But

differences on both strategy and goals. From the outset Turkey backed rebel groups in Syria opposed to the Assad regime. Indeed his

Turkey
has been directly hit by the crisis - not just by the spill-over of terrorism
across its own borders. It has also been forced to contend with a huge
wave of Syrian refugees. That is one of the reasons why the Turks have backed the idea of establishing "safe
removal became a strategic necessity for the Turkish government; the only way they believed stability could be restored.

zones" inside Syria; areas that could be protected by US and allied air power as well as forces on the ground. That idea has been
consistently opposed by the Obama administration. The US was no friend of President Assad but its focus was elsewhere - the struggle
against IS in both Syria and Iraq. Given the absence of any clear alternative governing arrangements in Syria, Iraq appeared to be

it helped arm rebel groups in Syria its efforts initially

had little impact. Strategic importance Turkey, with its long land border
with both Syria and Iraq was clearly of huge strategic importance in
Washington's anti-IS campaign. The Kurds have emerged as a key ally of the US-led coalition in its battle
against IS The US pressed to use Turkish air bases though for a long period the
Turks were reluctant. When they did finally approve their use it appeared to represent to many observers something
of a quid pro quo for the US turning a blind eye to Turkish strikes against the Kurds. For it is Kurdish dynamics,
rather more than IS, that has dominated thinking in Ankara .
Washington's priority, while

Thus providing arms to the Kurds will not only detriment the United States
ability to fly airstrikes at ISIS territory from Turkey but also Turkeys
cooperation in efforts to resolve the migrant crisis, hurting the ability to
guarantee the wellbeing of refugees and also stopping the Islamic State, an
organization threatening the wellbeing of the world.

Contention 2: Supporting Kurds

will destabilize the region
The ultimate goal of Kurdish fighters is independence
NPR. "Autonomy, Oil Money Underlie Kurdish Goals in Iraq."
NPR. NPR, 2006. Web. 27 July 2016.
One group crucial to the future of Iraq is the Kurds. They live mainly in the northern part of the country,

For decades, Kurds fought for

independence from Saddam Hussein's government and paid harshly for it. Under Saddam's
known as Iraqi Kurdistan.

rule, a series of military campaigns and ethnic cleansing against the Kurds took place in the 1980s,
including the use of chemical weapons on civilian populations. The two leaders of the Kurds were once
fierce rivals. Jalal Talabani is now the president of Iraq, but he is also the leader of the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan, or PUK, which represents about half of the Kurdish population. The president of Iraqi Kurdistan is
Massoud Barzani, the son of the legendary founder of the Kurdish resistance Mustafa Barzani, who founded
the Kurdish Democratic Party, or KDP, in 1946. The PUK wasn't founded until 1975. The KDP, based in the
northern city of Sulaymaniyah, represents the other half of the Kurdish population. For years, Talabani and
Barzani were fierce rivals. After the 1991 Gulf War, the United States put in place a "no-fly" zone in
Northern Iraq, covering much of Iraqi Kurdistan. As a result, the Kurds were mostly protected from Saddam
but not from each other. In essence, the PUK and KDP fought a civil war during the 1990s which only
ended in 1998, when the United States brokered a peace deal.

The ultimate goal of both

is an independent Kurdistan. But they realize that, for now, they must
work within a federal structure under a central Iraqi government. There are Kurdish
populations in Turkey, Iran and Syria and all of those
governments fear separatist movements of their own
if an independent Kurdistan is formed . Turkey has long fought a brutal
men

campaign against Kurdish separatists of the Kurdish Workers Party, known as the PKK. And on occasion,
Iranian forces shell Kurdish separatists based near the Iraq-Iran border. The two men are working for as
much autonomy from the central government as they can get, which so far has been considerable. Iraqi
Arabs must have passports to travel to Kurdistan; the official language is Kurdish, not Arabic; and the Iraqi
flag has been taken down in many places, replaced with the Kurdish flag. Even as they work within a
federal structure, a crisis may emerge in Kirkuk, a city that has historically been an ethnic mix of Kurds,
Arabs and Turkmen. Saddam attempted to "Arabize" the area during the 1970s and '80s, forcing Kurds
from their homes, and importing Arabs. Talabani and Barzani see Kirkuk as the capital of Kurdistan, for
historic reasons and because the city sits astride the largest proven oil reserves in Iraq. The Kurdish
government is attempting to reverse Saddam's ethnic program with one of its own, forcing Arabs out and
forcing Kurdish families who lived there in the past to abandon their new lives and move to a very
dangerous city. Unlike Kurdistan, which is fairly peaceful, Kirkuk has become a hot spot for attacks by
various Iraqi factions. A referendum on the future of Kirkuk is expected in the next year. In a move that
enraged both Talabani and Barzani, the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan U.S. panel that made
recommendations to the White House and Congress on Iraq strategy, called for the referendum to be
delayed. The study group also recommended a stronger central government which would control oil
revenue; the Kurds desperately want to retain control over that money. The Kurds have worked well with
both the Shiite-led government and the United States so far. Many Shiites want a similar autonomous
region in southern Iraq, where they are the vast majority, and they have supported Kurdish autonomy.

The United States has relied on the Kurds to maintain

peace in their areas, and to supply the Iraqi army
with members of their militia, known as the

Peshmerga.

But the future of Kirkuk and control of oil revenues may become serious crises
among the Kurds, the United States and the central government. And as Iraqi Kurdistan moves ever farther
away from the rest of Iraq, maintaining a federal system may become ever more difficult.

AND
Kurdish Independence will result in a failed state
Frantzman,

Seth. "2016: The Year Kurdistan Finally Breaks from Iraq?" The

National Interest. National Interest, 06 Feb. 2016. Web. 27 July

2016.

In early February
, the autonomous
Kurdish region in northern Iraq, called for a
referendum on Kurdish independence
the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government

. The time has come and the conditions are now suitable for the

people to make a decision through a referendum on their future, wrote Masoud Barzani. He cautioned people that it did would not entail the immediate declaration of statehood but rathe r

judging the will of the people of Kurdistan

to implement this will at the appropriate time and
circumstances

and to create the political landscape

. On February 13, the German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier took to Twitter to express serious concern about plans for a referendum, after

reportedly meeting Barzani at the Munich Security Conference. Serious concern would be diplomatic speak for no. Critics abroad see the independence referendum as a mix of political strategy and long time
policy. Ibrahim al-Marashi, a California-based history professor, wrote at Al Jazeera, Not only does a call for independence appeal to Kurdish constituents, it serves as a tool to empower the KRG vis-a-vis the central
government in Baghdad. Some have suggested that the referendum is merely cover for the Kurdistan Democratic Party to renew its electoral mandate. Elections scheduled for 2013 and 2015 have been postponed
to 2017, an issue that ruffles feathers among the smaller parties in Kurdistan. Currently the KRG is governed by the KDP, the largest party, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). If a referendum was merely a
cynical ploy, then why is the KRGs own government being so hesitant about it? Perhaps because this has happened once before. The last time Kurdistan had a referendum for independence was in 2005, when 1.9
million Kurds voted in Iraqi national and KRG regional elections. 98 percent of those casting ballots said yes to independence. In 2014, Barzani told the BBC he wanted to hold a referendum. The Kurdish parliament

The war against ISIS has

illustrated Kurdistans de facto
. Cut off
from Baghdad, the region functioned independently. It
had to control its own economy and develop its own
oil resources
, and the KRG was plunged
into financial crises,
was supposed to set a date for the decision. Then Kurdistan was attacked by Islamic State on August 3, 2014.

independence better than any referendum could

. Its budget was cut from Baghdad as well due to the war

having to support two hundred thousand Kurdish peshmerga fighters on the frontline against ISIS. Iraqs Baghdad government

condemns any attempt by the KRG to secede. Any unilateral position from any party without coordination or approval will be against the constitution and illegal, Saad al-Hadithi, a spokesman for Iraqi Prime
Minister Haider al-Abadi, told the press in late January.

By helping provide Kurdish forces with arms, the United

States will destabilize the Middle East as the creation of
Kurdistan is detrimental to stability.
Turkish Independence will cause regional war
Jenkins, Philip. "The Case Against a Unified Kurdistan." The American Conservative.
The American Conservative, 15 Sept. 2015. Web. 29 July 2016.
<http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-case-against-a-unifiedkurdistan/>.

Jenkins 14
As Syria and Iraq are already in dissolution, little
additional damage would be caused by tearing off
extra fragments of their territory. In Iran, though, any

attempt at Kurdish secession would of necessity

generate a bloody civil war, but that prospect does not deter Pipes: secession
would helpfully diminish that arch-aggressive mini-empire. Turning relatively
stable Iran into a fragmented failed state would be music
to the ears of U.S. and Israeli hawks, but it is a recipe for escalating carnage
for decades to come. But it is in Turkey that any
Kurdish ambitions meet a massive reality check. The country
has 15 million Kurds, around a fifth of the whole population, spread over the southeastern third of the
country. Turkeys revolutionary PKK, the Kurdish Workers Party, is an extremely active and dangerous
movement, and its decades-long nationalist guerrilla struggle is currently on hiatus. While rightly stressing
that the Kurdish state has rejected the terrorist tactics used by Turkish groups, Pipes specifically notes
schemes by the Kurdish military to ally with the Turkish Kurds, and his imagined mega-state incorporates

. A renewed secessionist movement in

Turkey would be catastrophic. It would cause many
thousands of deaths and cripple one of the regions
most successful societies. Beyond civil conflict and
terrorism, expect a rash of outright wars between the
new and emerging mini-states. Violence would likely spread into Turkish and
huge swathes of present Turkey

Kurdish communities in Western Europe. Why on earth does Pipes think such an outcome is worth risking?
The only seeming benefit is to punish Turkeys President Erdoan, who has shown undemocratic ambitions.
More to the point, though, he has become a harsh critic of Israel and of Western policies in the Middle East.
As Pipes writes, Kurds departing from Turkey would usefully impede the reckless ambitions of nowpresident Recep Tayyip Erdoan. Even if you assume the very worst of Erdoan, he still falls very far short
of the regions dictators and demagogues, making Pipess proposed solutions wildly disproportionate, and,
yes, reckless. A salutary shake-up is one thing. Provoking a regional cataclysm is quite another.

Attempting to fund a Kurdish state would not only detriment

the nations of Iraq and Syria, nations experiencing turmoil
currently, but also throw neighboring nations of Iran and
Turkey into turmoil. Thus it would be only in the interests of
the citizens of the Middle East to maintain a stable
governmental system.

Under view

Isis is currently collapsing

"Inside ISIS: Quietly Preparing for the Loss of the
'caliphate'" Washington Post. The Washington Post, 12
July 2016. Web. 27 July 2016.
Even as it launches waves of terrorist attacks around the globe, the Islamic State
is quietly preparing its followers for the eventual
collapse of the caliphate it proclaimed with great fanfare two years ago. In
public messages and in recent actions in Syria, the groups leaders are
acknowledging the terrorist organizations
declining fortunes on the battlefield while
bracing for the possibility that its remaining
strongholds could fall. At the same time, the group is vowing to press on
with its recent campaign of violence, even if the terrorists themselves are driven underground.
U.S. counterterrorism experts believe the mass-casualty attacks in Istanbul and Baghdad in the
past month were largely a response to military reversals in Iraq and Syria. [Turkey and the Islamic
State appear to be headed toward outright war] Such terrorist acts are likely to continue and even
intensify, at least initially, analysts say, as the group evolves from a quasi-state with territorial
holdings to a shadowy and diffuse network with branches and cells on at least three continents.
Iraqi forces advance into Islamic State territory Play Video0:53 Iraqi forces are advancing towards
Mosul, the largest city held by the militant group. (Reuters) Indeed, while the loss of a physical
sanctuary would constitute a major blow to the Islamic State severely limiting, for example, its
ability to raise money, train recruits or plan complex terrorist operations the groups highly
decentralized nature ensures that it will remain dangerous for some time to come, according to
current and former U.S. officials and terrorism experts. Where al-Qaeda was hierarchical and
somewhat controlled, these guys are not. They have all the energy and unpredictability of a
populist movement, said Michael Hayden, the retired Air Force general who headed the CIA from
2006 to 2009. [ISISs allure increases as its territory shrinks] Islamic State officials, in public
statements and in interviews, insist that the groups caliphate project remains viable while also
acknowledging that military setbacks have forced a change in strategy. While we see our core
structure in Iraq and Syria under attack, we have been able to expand and have shifted some of
our command, media and wealth structure to different countries, a longtime Islamic State
operative, speaking through an Internet-based audio service, said in an interview. We do have,
every day, people reaching out and telling us they want to come to the caliphate, said the
operative, who agreed to speak to a Western journalist on the condition that his name and
physical location not be revealed. But we tell them to stay in their countries and rather wait to do
something there. [ISIS releases a new video of captive British journalist John Cantlie in Iraq]
Libyan forces allied with the U.N.-backed government fire artillery toward ISIS fighters positions in

signs of
desperation are mounting weekly inside the
caliphate, which shrank by another 12 percent in
the first six months of 2016, according to a report last week by IHS
Sirte, Libya, July 12, 2016. (Goran Tomasevic/Reuters) But

Inc., an analysis and consulting firm. A series of communiques issued in the Islamic States Syrian
enclave last month closed down Internet cafes in one province and ordered the destruction of TVs
and satellite dishes in another. The orders, billed as an effort to eliminate a tool for disseminating
infidel beliefs, effectively cut off access to news from the outside world. Without any city or land
More signals of a coming downfall are contained in statements issued by Islamic State officials
over the past six weeks, a period that saw the groups fighters retreating across multiple fronts,

. A remarkable
editorial last month in al-Naba, the Islamic
from Fallujah in central Iraq to the Syrian-Turkish border

States weekly Arabic newsletter, offered a

gloomy assessment of the caliphates prospects,
acknowledging the possibility that all its
territorial holdings could ultimately be lost. Just two
years ago, jihadist leaders heralded the start of a glorious new epoch in the worlds history with
the establishment of their Islamic caliphate, which at the time encompassed most of eastern
Syria and a vast swath of northern and western Iraq, a combined territory roughly the size of
Great Britain. [How ISIS tries to thwart attacks on its oil infrastructure] The editorial, titled, The
Crusaders Illusions in the Age of the Caliphate, sought to rally the groups followers by insisting
that the Islamic State would continue to survive, even if all its cities fell to the advancing
crusaders the separate Western- and Russian-backed forces arrayed against them. The
crusaders and their apostate clients are under the illusion that ... they will be able to eliminate all
of the Islamic States provinces at once, such that it will be completely wiped out and no trace of
it will be left, the article states. In reality, the groups foes will not be able to eliminate it by
destroying one of its cities or besieging another of them, or by killing a soldier, an emir or an
imam, it says. The editorial asserts that the whole world ... has changed with the creation of a
theocratic enclave that has shown all of mankind what the true Islamic state is like. If they
want to achieve true victory they will not, God willing they will have to wait a long time: until
an entire generation of Muslims that was witness to the establishment of the Islamic State and
the return of the caliphate ... is wiped out. The same themes were repeated in an otherwise
upbeat sermon by the Islamic States official spokesman, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, marking the
start of Ramadan observances. Adnanis missive attracted international attention because of its
call for a global terrorism campaign during the Muslim holy month. But Adnani also appeared to
be preparing his followers for heavy losses. [In a deadly Ramadan, ISIS terrorism exposes the
failures of others] At one point he evoked one of the darkest chapters in the Islamic States
history, when the group then known as the Islamic State of Iraq was all but destroyed in
2008 by a combination of forces, including the U.S. troop surge and the Anbar Awakening, a
revolt against the Islamists by Sunni Arab tribes. Were we defeated when we lost the cities in
Iraq and were in the desert without any city or land? And would we be defeated and you be
victorious if you were to take Mosul, Sirte or Raqqa, or even take all the cities? asked Adnani,
referring to the Islamic States primary strongholds in Iraq, Libya and Syria. Certainly not!
Echoes of an inglorious past The groups near-defeat in 2008 also has been cited multiple times in
recent weeks in social-media accounts, suggesting to some analysts that its leaders are trying to
limit the inevitable damage to the Islamic States reputation among jihadists as an unstoppable
military and moral force. [CIA director: ISIS not yet close to being restrained] They dont want to
lose territory, said Cole Bunzel, a doctoral candidate at Princeton Universitys Near Eastern
studies department who provided a translation and commentary on the al-Naba editorial in the
blog Jihadica. But theyre trying to remind people that the group has a long history and theyre
going to persist, just as they did in earlier times. The deadly attacks against Istanbuls Ataturk
Airport and Baghdads Karrada shopping district both relatively easy targets for terrorists
concerned only with massive numbers of civilian casualties were probably also part of the same
effort to reassure followers of the Islamic States vitality, said Will McCants, a Brookings Institution
researcher and author of the 2015 book ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy and Doomsday
Vision of the Islamic State. The successful attacks abroad are an indication of deep worry at
home, McCants said. After years of boasting of the groups invincibility, leaders such as Adnani
are beginning to acknowledge battlefield losses while attempting to depict them in the most
positive light, he said. Absent from the groups statements is any acknowledgment of strategic
and tactical errors that contributed to the Islamic States current predicament, fighting alone
against a broad array of forces that includes the major Western powers, Sunni and Shiite Muslims,
Russians and Kurds, McCants said. Theyre not trying to be clever about it, he said, but theyre
really trying to prepare their followers to cope with a caliphate that is no longer a caliphate.

The Islamic State operative who consented to an

interview acknowledged that some of the groups
followers had become disillusioned because of
mistakes by individual commanders. He said he didnt care
whether the organizations headquarters remained in Raqqa or moved to North Africa or
elsewhere although he added that the loss of Raqqa would certainly be avenged. There is a
message to all members of the coalition against us: We will not forget, and we will come into your

countries and hit you, he said, one way or the other. European intelligence officials fear that
the new phase is already underway. They are ... challenged as we adapt our strategy to their
initial one, in order to start de-sanctuarizing them, said a senior French security official,
speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss counterterrorism strategy. But they will now
expand to other tactics and start executing much more insidious and covert ops, in big cities.
The next step, he said, has begun.

The eventual collapse of ISIS is inevitable, thus any

arguments made about the importance of Kurds to
combat ISIS is irrelevant.

Cards

Kurds want independence

NPR. "Autonomy, Oil Money Underlie Kurdish Goals in Iraq."

NPR. NPR, 2006. Web. 27 July 2016.
One group crucial to the future of Iraq is the Kurds. They live mainly in the northern part of the country,

For decades, Kurds fought for independence

known as Iraqi Kurdistan.

from Saddam Hussein's government and paid harshly for it. Under Saddam's rule, a series of military
campaigns and ethnic cleansing against the Kurds took place in the 1980s, including the use of chemical
weapons on civilian populations. The two leaders of the Kurds were once fierce rivals. Jalal Talabani is now
the president of Iraq, but he is also the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, which represents
about half of the Kurdish population. The president of Iraqi Kurdistan is Massoud Barzani, the son of the
legendary founder of the Kurdish resistance Mustafa Barzani, who founded the Kurdish Democratic Party,
or KDP, in 1946. The PUK wasn't founded until 1975. The KDP, based in the northern city of Sulaymaniyah,
represents the other half of the Kurdish population. For years, Talabani and Barzani were fierce rivals. After
the 1991 Gulf War, the United States put in place a "no-fly" zone in Northern Iraq, covering much of Iraqi
Kurdistan. As a result, the Kurds were mostly protected from Saddam but not from each other. In
essence, the PUK and KDP fought a civil war during the 1990s which only ended in 1998, when the United
States brokered a peace deal.

The ultimate goal of both men is an independent

Kurdistan. But they realize that, for now, they must work within a federal structure under a central
Iraqi government. There are Kurdish populations in Turkey, Iran and
Syria and all of those governments fear separatist
movements of their own if an independent Kurdistan is
formed. Turkey has long fought a brutal campaign against Kurdish separatists of the Kurdish Workers
Party, known as the PKK. And on occasion, Iranian forces shell Kurdish separatists based near the Iraq-Iran
border. The two men are working for as much autonomy from the central government as they can get,
which so far has been considerable. Iraqi Arabs must have passports to travel to Kurdistan; the official
language is Kurdish, not Arabic; and the Iraqi flag has been taken down in many places, replaced with the
Kurdish flag. Even as they work within a federal structure, a crisis may emerge in Kirkuk, a city that has
historically been an ethnic mix of Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen. Saddam attempted to "Arabize" the area
during the 1970s and '80s, forcing Kurds from their homes, and importing Arabs. Talabani and Barzani see
Kirkuk as the capital of Kurdistan, for historic reasons and because the city sits astride the largest proven
oil reserves in Iraq. The Kurdish government is attempting to reverse Saddam's ethnic program with one of
its own, forcing Arabs out and forcing Kurdish families who lived there in the past to abandon their new
lives and move to a very dangerous city. Unlike Kurdistan, which is fairly peaceful, Kirkuk has become a hot
spot for attacks by various Iraqi factions. A referendum on the future of Kirkuk is expected in the next year.
In a move that enraged both Talabani and Barzani, the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan U.S. panel that made
recommendations to the White House and Congress on Iraq strategy, called for the referendum to be
delayed. The study group also recommended a stronger central government which would control oil
revenue; the Kurds desperately want to retain control over that money. The Kurds have worked well with
both the Shiite-led government and the United States so far. Many Shiites want a similar autonomous
region in southern Iraq, where they are the vast majority, and they have supported Kurdish autonomy.

The United States has relied on the Kurds to maintain peace

in their areas, and to supply the Iraqi army with members of
their militia, known as the Peshmerga. But the future of Kirkuk and control of
oil revenues may become serious crises among the Kurds, the United States and the central government.
And as Iraqi Kurdistan moves ever farther away from the rest of Iraq, maintaining a federal system may
become ever more difficult.

Kurdish Independence Movement

Frantzman, Seth. "2016: The Year Kurdistan Finally Breaks
from Iraq?" The National Interest. National Interest, 06 Feb.
2016. Web. 27 July 2016.
/.latest_citation_text
In early February the president of the Kurdistan Regional
Government, the autonomous Kurdish region in northern
Iraq, called for a referendum on Kurdish independence . The time
has come and the conditions are now suitable for the people to make a decision through a referendum on
their future, wrote Masoud Barzani. He cautioned people that it did would not entail the immediate

judging the will of the people of

Kurdistan and to create the political landscape to implement this will at the
appropriate time and circumstances. On February 13, the German foreign
declaration of statehood but rather

minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier took to Twitter to express serious concern about plans for a referendum,
after reportedly meeting Barzani at the Munich Security Conference. Serious concern would be diplomatic
speak for no. Critics abroad see the independence referendum as a mix of political strategy and long
time policy. Ibrahim al-Marashi, a California-based history professor, wrote at Al Jazeera, Not only does a
call for independence appeal to Kurdish constituents, it serves as a tool to empower the KRG vis-a-vis the
central government in Baghdad. Some have suggested that the referendum is merely cover for the
Kurdistan Democratic Party to renew its electoral mandate. Elections scheduled for 2013 and 2015 have
been postponed to 2017, an issue that ruffles feathers among the smaller parties in Kurdistan. Currently
the KRG is governed by the KDP, the largest party, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). If a
referendum was merely a cynical ploy, then why is the KRGs own government being so hesitant about it?
Perhaps because this has happened once before. The last time Kurdistan had a referendum for
independence was in 2005, when 1.9 million Kurds voted in Iraqi national and KRG regional elections. 98
percent of those casting ballots said yes to independence. In 2014, Barzani told the BBC he wanted to hold

Kurdistan
was attacked by Islamic State on August 3, 2014. The war
against ISIS has illustrated Kurdistans de facto
independence better than any referendum could. Cut off
from Baghdad, the region functioned independently. It had to
control its own economy and develop its own oil resources.
Its budget was cut from Baghdad as well due to the war, and
the KRG was plunged into financial crises, having to support
two hundred thousand Kurdish peshmerga fighters on the
frontline against ISIS. Iraqs Baghdad government condemns any attempt by the KRG to
a referendum. The Kurdish parliament was supposed to set a date for the decision. Then

secede. Any unilateral position from any party without coordination or approval will be against the
constitution and illegal, Saad al-Hadithi, a spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, told the
press in late January.

Importance of Turkey
Marcus, Jonathan. "US-Turkey: The Strained Alliance." BBC
News. BBC, 29 Mar. 2016. Web. 27 July 2016.
The differences between Washington and Ankara are various, not least reflecting US disappointment at the

it is the Syrian crisis, and in

particular the role of Kurdish militias in the fight against socalled Islamic State (IS) that has crystallized US-Turkish
tensions. US and Turkish disagreements over Syria reflect fundamental differences on both strategy
current drift in Turkish domestic affairs. But

and goals. From the outset Turkey backed rebel groups in Syria opposed to the Assad regime. Indeed his
removal became a strategic necessity for the Turkish government; the only way they believed stability

Turkey has been directly hit by the crisis - not just

by the spill-over of terrorism across its own borders . It has
also been forced to contend with a huge wave of Syrian
refugees. That is one of the reasons why the Turks have backed the idea of establishing "safe zones"
could be restored.

inside Syria; areas that could be protected by US and allied air power as well as forces on the ground. That
idea has been consistently opposed by the Obama administration. The US was no friend of President Assad
but its focus was elsewhere - the struggle against IS in both Syria and Iraq. Given the absence of any clear

it
helped arm rebel groups in Syria its efforts initially had little
impact. Strategic importance Turkey, with its long land
border with both Syria and Iraq was clearly of huge strategic
importance in Washington's anti-IS campaign . The Kurds have emerged
as a key ally of the US-led coalition in its battle against IS The US pressed to use Turkish
air bases though for a long period the Turks were reluctant .
alternative governing arrangements in Syria, Iraq appeared to be Washington's priority, while

When they did finally approve their use it appeared to represent to many observers something of a quid

it is Kurdish
dynamics, rather more than IS, that has dominated thinking in Ankara.
pro quo for the US turning a blind eye to Turkish strikes against the Kurds. For

Kurdish State Bad

Jenkins 14
As Syria and Iraq are already in dissolution , little additional
damage would be caused by tearing off extra fragments of
their territory. In Iran, though, any attempt at Kurdish
secession would of necessity generate a bloody civil war , but
that prospect does not deter Pipes: secession would helpfully diminish that arch-aggressive mini-empire.

Turning relatively stable Iran into a fragmented failed state

would be music to the ears of U.S. and Israeli hawks, but it is a recipe for escalating
carnage for decades to come. But it is in Turkey that any
Kurdish ambitions meet a massive reality check . The country has 15
million Kurds, around a fifth of the whole population, spread over the southeastern third of the country.
Turkeys revolutionary PKK, the Kurdish Workers Party, is an extremely active and dangerous movement,
and its decades-long nationalist guerrilla struggle is currently on hiatus. While rightly stressing that the
Kurdish state has rejected the terrorist tactics used by Turkish groups, Pipes specifically notes schemes by
the Kurdish military to ally with the Turkish Kurds, and his imagined mega-state incorporates huge swathes

. A renewed secessionist movement in Turkey

would be catastrophic. It would cause many thousands of
deaths and cripple one of the regions most successful
societies. Beyond civil conflict and terrorism, expect a rash
of outright wars between the new and emerging mini-states.
of present Turkey

Violence would likely spread into Turkish and Kurdish communities in Western Europe. Why on earth does
Pipes think such an outcome is worth risking? The only seeming benefit is to punish Turkeys President
Erdoan, who has shown undemocratic ambitions. More to the point, though, he has become a harsh critic
of Israel and of Western policies in the Middle East. As Pipes writes, Kurds departing from Turkey would
usefully impede the reckless ambitions of now-president Recep Tayyip Erdoan. Even if you assume the
very worst of Erdoan, he still falls very far short of the regions dictators and demagogues, making Pipess
proposed solutions wildly disproportionate, and, yes, reckless. A salutary shake-up is one thing. Provoking
a regional cataclysm is quite another.

Dont support the Kurds

Beauchamp, Zack. "America's Kurdish Problem: Today's Allies
against ISIS Are Tomorrow's Headache." Vox. Vox, 08 Apr.
2016. Web. 27 July 2016.
There's one thing, and maybe one thing only, that American leaders agree on when it comes to the Middle
East: The Kurds are our best friends against ISIS. There's a reason for that: Kurdish forces are dedicated,
dependable, and successful. In Iraq, Kurdish forces have cut ISIS supply lines in the country's north, laying
the groundwork for an Iraqi government assault on ISIS-held Mosul. In Syria, Kurdish forces have moved to

as ISIS recedes, America's

alliance with the Kurds becomes less necessary for either side. And it's
within 30 miles of ISIS's de facto capital, Raqqa. But

coming as American and Kurdish interests increasingly diverge and as the two allies push for visions of
the Middle East that are more than a little different. The ISIS threat binds the US and the Kurds but it's
waning (IHS Jane's 360) ISIS territorial losses in red, gains in green. The United States has had a
longstanding relationship with Iraq's quasi-autonomous Kurdish minority, who benefited from the
American-led no-fly zone over Iraq after the 1990s Gulf War and from Saddam Hussein's downfall in 2003.
But that relationship got considerably closer in 2014 when the US partnered with Iraqi and Syrian Kurds to
fight their shared enemy, ISIS. For the Americans, the Kurds were obvious allies. Unlike, say, the Iraqi
army, the Kurds are strong and reliable fighters. Unlike with Syrian rebel groups, there is little concern of
arms or money going to extremists. This alliance has worked well. It's helped Syrian and Iraqi Kurds protect
their territory from ISIS. And it's helped the US lead an anti-ISIS effort that has seen the group lose 30
percent of its territory since August 2014, according to a US estimate. But this was always an alliance of
convenience. Whereas the US wants to defeat ISIS as part of a larger effort to return stability to the Middle
East, Iraqi and Syrian Kurds are mostly focused on protecting their own populations and territory. Those
two objectives overlap today, but as ISIS recedes, so does the rationale for the US-Kurdish alliance.

Reporters on the ground indicate that ISIS is indeed

collapsing. ISIS is "a rapidly diminishing force," the Washington Post's Liz Sly wrote in a late March
piece. "Front-line commanders no longer speak of a scarily formidable foe but of Islamic State defenses
that crumble within days and fighters who flee at the first sign they are under attack." This isn't to say that
ISIS is going to collapse tomorrow, or even stop being a real threat to the Kurds anytime soon. Rather, it's
to say that ISIS is getting significantly weaker and the more this continues, the less of a threat it will be,
and the less of a priority it will become for Kurds and other regional powers. So what does that mean for
the US and the Kurds? The Iraq flashpoint: Kirkuk Kurdish Peshmerga Keep Fragile Peace In Kirkuk (Spencer
Platt/Getty Images) A peshmerga fighter in Kirkuk. The status of the Kurds in post-Saddam Iraq has never
totally been settled. Repressed and slaughtered by Saddam's government, the Kurds demanded and
received a significant degree of autonomy after his fall, including their own regional government and
military. But they also claim some Iraqi territory that is not part of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region
including the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which Kurds consider to be historically Kurdish. As least 13 percent of
all Iraqi oil reserves are in the Kirkuk area enough to make or break the Kurdistan Regional
Government's (KRG) financial viability should it ever become an independent state. In June 2014, while the

the Kurds simply seized

Kirkuk, along with some other territories it considered
rightfully Kurdish, and has controlled them ever since . "It's like
Iraqi government was preoccupied with fighting ISIS,

[Israel] taking East Jerusalem in 1967," Kirk Sowell, an expert on Iraqi politics at the Utica Risk Services
consulting group, said of the Kirkuk seizure at the time. But the Iraqi government and the Shia militias
fighting alongside it see this as an unconstitutional power grab. Moreover,

it looks like a

possible prelude to Kurdish secession, taking all the Kirkuk oil with them. This
isn't mere paranoia: The KRG has announced intentions to hold a
referendum in October on whether it should leave Iraq . The stage
is set, then, for a major political crisis between Iraq's central government and Iraqi Kurdistan. There's
already been some actual blood spilled: In November 2015, Shia militias clashed with Kurdish peshmerga
for 10 days in the Kirkuk area. The Guardian's Martin Chulov described it as "the most serious flare-up with

the Kurds anywhere in Iraq in the 12 years since the fall of Baghdad." "We will never accept the Kurds
taking Kirkuk," Muen al-Khadimi, a spokesperson for the Badr Brigades militia group, told Chulov. KRG
President Masoud Barzani sounded a similarly strident note in comments to Chulov: "We will fight to the
last person and we will not let anyone else control Kirkuk." A political or even armed conflict between the
Iraqi government and Iraqi Kurds would seriously distract from the fight against ISIS, which Baghdad is
already barely equipped to fight, and would risk dividing the Iraqi factions are who currently united against
ISIS. Such a conflict would be good news for ISIS and bad news for everyone else, including the US, whose
anti-ISIS strategy requires Iraqi Arabs and Kurds to work together. The Syria flashpoint: Rojava Tal Abyad,
Life After IS (Ahmet Sik/Getty Images) PYD fighters. The Syrian Kurds operate under completely different
political auspices than their Iraqi brethren. But they, too, aspire to autonomy specifically in the Kurdishmajority territories in Syria's north, which they call Rojava. And, as in Iraq, this could seriously complicate
US strategy and interests. Rojava has essentially functioned as an independent state since late 2012, when
Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad withdrew from the region to fight the mostly Arab rebels. As Syrian Kurds
have grown stronger, they've been natural US allies: They fight ISIS, oppose Assad, and aren't mixed up
with jihadists. But the rise of Syria's Kurds has alarmed another American ally: Turkey, which fears that this
could aid or embolden the Kurdish insurgency within its own country, especially the Kurdistan Workers'
Party (PKK). The PKK is a Kurdish nationalist group founded in 1978 that seeks autonomy for Turkey's

fighting between the PKK and

Turkey has killed about 40,000 people, with violence peaking
in the 1990s. Rojava borders the Turkey's Kurdish regions, and Syrian Kurds have close political
ethnic Kurdish minority. Over the past decades,

links with the PKK. In 2012, the Turkey-PKK conflict was cooling off; there was actually an active and
promising peace process. But the PYD's surge in Syria "changed the game, for Turkey and for Kurds,"
Atlantic Council Turkey expert Aaron Stein told me last year. Turkey worried that Syrian Kurds would inspire
Kurdish nationalism in Turkey and that Turkish Kurds would use this de facto mini state as a base of
operation. In July 2015, as the US was encouraging along Syrian Kurdish advances, PKK-Turkish tensions
erupted into low-level warfare that has gone on since then. Unsurprisingly, this became a source of tension
between the US and Turkey, which allows the US to use its military bases. "Are you on our side or the side
of the terrorist PYD and PKK organizations?" Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan asked rhetorically in a
February 2016 speech. "Hey, America. Because you never recognized them as a terrorist group, the region
has turned into a sea of blood." Incurring Turkish anger over supporting Syrian Kurds was almost certainly
the right trade-off, given how successful they've been against ISIS. But it was a trade-off nonetheless, with
real costs. This is going to get harder as the US attempts to push a negotiated settlement to end Syria's
war. Turkey is deeply hostile to any independent or autonomous Rojava: One of its principal goals in Syria
is preventing that. But a free Rojava is Syrian Kurds' fundamental demand. Two critical American allies
have diametrically opposed interests in Syria. This tension is already causing problems. The Syrian Kurds
have been excluded from the Syrian peace talks. This March, while talks were underway, they declared
Rojava an autonomous federal state inside of Syria. "We've been fighting ISIS for you," the Kurds are
saying to America, "and we're not going anywhere." But, as in Iraq, the US only needs Syria's Kurds for as
long as we're fighting ISIS. The weaker ISIS becomes, the less our interests overlap. Indeed, some Kurdish
forces have already fought US-backed Syrian rebels in northwestern Syria in a bid to expand their territory
there. The Kurds are not America's cute sidekicks Kurdish Peshmerga Control Sinjar After Driving Out ISIL
With U.S. Airstrikes (John Moore/Getty Images) Kurdish fighters in Iraq. The Kurds are extremely reliable
and brave partners in the war against ISIS, and they have earned every ounce of the admiration they get
from American officials and politicians. But that doesn't mean they share America's goals or vision for the
region. Kurdistan is not America East. Their position is eminently reasonable: They've been viciously
repressed, on account of being a weak minority. The only way they can really protect themselves is to
control their own territory. But the other parties in Iraq and Syria, too, have legitimate interests. The Iraqi
government, for example, already grants the Kurds significant autonomy. From their point of view, the
Kurds are trying to take oil reserves that all of Iraq should share, depriving Iraqis of resources they
desperately need to reconstruct their country after the one-two blow of the US invasion and ISIS war. For

America has benefited from working with the Kurds, it has a responsibility to
think about regional interests beyond just those of the Kurds .
That's a necessity if it wants the Middle East to ever become stable
again. For the past two years, the United States has (understandably!) focused overwhelmingly on
defeating the Islamic State. But now that the group is collapsing, the US needs to start
thinking about the day after ISIS falls, whenever that finally
comes. The Kurds are political actors with their own interests
all that

and concerns, which they will pursue even if Washington

doesn't like it. American leaders, especially people who might be president one day, need to
understand this, and they need to start thinking about what to do when the Kurds inevitably begin
pursuing interest that are counter to our own how they'll prevent the cycle of zero-sum sectarian conflict
from continuing.

US Giving Arms to Kurdish Forces

Rogin, Josh, and Eli Lake. "U.S. Airdrop in Syria Ends Up
Arming the Kurds." Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg, 15 Oct.
2015. Web. 27 July 2016.
the White House announced that the U.S. had
dropped 50 tons of ammunition to Syrian Arabs fighting the Islamic State. Some
officials now say that the new Arab coalition was a front and that Kurdish groups
received most of the weapons -- as the U.S. intended .
American and Kurdish officials and Syrian Arab opposition leaders told us
this week that ammunition said to have been for the Syrian
Arab Coalition, a newly announced group of Sunni Arab brigades in northeastern Syria, had
largely ended up arming the Kurdish Democratic Union Party
and its associated military forces, known as the People's
Protection Units or YPG. That will aid the Kurds in fighting the Islamic State and
Last weekend,

cementing their control of Kurdish territory. One senior administration official who works on the issue told
us that the White House knew that the coalition was likely to pass on most if not all of the weapons to the

The official, who called the Syrian Arab Coalition a "ploy"

to arm the Kurds, said the White House knew they would
receive the shipments because they controlled the area
where the weapons were dropped. The U.S. did not ask the Arab coalition for any
Kurds.

guarantees the weapons would stay in Arab hands, the official said. The Obama administration has not
said that the arms are going to the Kurds. Our successful airdrop provided ammunition to Arab fighters
fighting in Northern Syria against ISIL, Commander Kyle Raines, of U.S. Central Command, told us in a
statement. If the U.S. were seen openly arming the Kurds, that could alienate Turkey and some Syrian Arab
groups outside Kurdish territory. A local Kurdish official told the Associated Press this week that the U.S.
had provided 120 tons of weapons and ammunition to the YPG. The Washington Post reported Thursday
that Turkey summoned the U.S. ambassador in Ankara to complain about the weapons drops. (Turkey has

One Kurdish official close to the

YPG confirmed to us that the weapons and ammunition
dropped this week would be largely going to its fighters . On
long been at odds with its own Kurdish population.)

Thursday, Mutlu Civiroglu, a Kurdish affairs analyst, published an interview in which the YPG commander,
Sipan Hemo, acknowledged his group had received the airdrops, which he said were important to its cause.
With this new support, the cooperation we have had for a year has reached a new level. And we hope to
increase our work together even more, we hope to work strategically. So what we received was not big. But
it is big for a new start, Hemo said. In addition, the YPG itself has acknowledged that it is participating in a
new alliance with Sunni Arab and Syrian Christian groups known as the Democratic Forces of Syria. That
group held its first meeting Thursday in the Syrian city of Al Hasakah to discuss how to divide up the new
U.S.-provided ammunition between Kurdish, Arab and Christian rebel brigades, a representative of the
group said. It was just last week when the Obama administration began referring to the Syrian Arab
Coalition, on background to news outlets. As the New York Times noted, Arab rebel groups fighting in the
area freely admitted they had never heard of such an organization, although they were excited about the
prospect of getting the weapons. U.S. officials told us that the leaders of the Arab groups inside the
coalition have been vetted by the U.S., even if the brigades themselves are unknown to the U.S. and its
allies. A senior administration official said the goal of the airdrop was to aid the groups that can fight the
Islamic State outside the areas already controlled by Kurds, including Raqqa. Robert Ford, a former U.S.
ambassador to Syria who just returned from a tour of the region, told us that the Sunni Arab groups in the

coalition were either completely unknown or relatively obscure, and certainly not in a position to mount a
major offensive against the Islamic State in big cities like Raqqa, where the Islamic State has tens of
thousands of well-armed fighters. "The Arab groups are either not significant or in the case of the Assyrian
Christian group, more or less unknown, Ford said. That doesnt mean they dont exist. It just means they
havent had an impact on the ground heretofore. The Arab groups may be unproven, but the Kurds are
not perfectly in sync with the U.S. agenda. They have no intention of leaving Kurdish territory to fight the
Islamic State, Ford said, which means arming them is just a recipe for medium- and long-term fighting.
Turkey has doubled down on its military campaign against Kurdish groups in northeastern Syria in recent
weeks. The Turks believe that the YPG is closely aligned in Syria with the PKK, another Kurdish fighting

The U.S. has

been working with the YPG in Syria for some time, with
varying levels of transparency. For example, U.S. airstrikes cleared the way for
force that both the U.S. and Turkish governments consider a terrorist organization.

Kurdish fighters to retake the Syrian city of Kobani from the Islamic State in January. More recently, the U.S.

American
officials have played down cooperation with the YPG.
Working with the Kurdish group also presents a potential
legal problem. The U.S. is prohibited from arming groups that commit human rights abuses. On
has been trying to get Turkey to increase its involvement in Syria; to that end,

Monday, Amnesty International released a report that said fighters from the People's Protection Units had
deliberately displaced Arab and Turkmen residents from the areas it now administers in Syria, burning
homes and in some cases razing whole villages. Evan Barrett, an adviser to the Coalition for a Democratic
Syria, an umbrella group resisting the Syrian regime, said the Obama administration is exaggerating the
role of Sunni Arabs in the recent ammunition drops for three reasons: to prove the U.S. still has a Sunni
Arab partner against the Islamic State, to avoid angering the Turks, and to distance the U.S. from the
human rights accusations against the Kurdish group. The Syrian Arab Coalition and the new Syrian
Democratic Force are helpful for all three goals, he said, adding that "both groups seem to have been
invented from whole cloth over the last several days." The U.S. airdrop was presented by the White House
as a way to compensate for the failed "train and equip" program, which was meant to give the U.S. reliable

the recipients of the

ammunition are Kurds rather than Sunni Arabs , the result is very
different: once again failing to find and bolster Arab partners, once again relying on
Kurds to do the fighting.
Sunni Arab partners on the ground to fight the Islamic State. But if

Isis Collapse Inevitable

"Inside ISIS: Quietly Preparing for the Loss of the 'caliphate'"
Washington Post. The Washington Post, 12 July 2016. Web.
27 July 2016.
the Islamic State is
quietly preparing its followers for the eventual collapse of
the caliphate it proclaimed with great fanfare two years ago. In public messages and in recent
actions in Syria, the groups leaders are acknowledging the terrorist
organizations declining fortunes on the battlefield while
bracing for the possibility that its remaining strongholds
could fall. At the same time, the group is vowing to press on with its recent campaign of violence,
Even as it launches waves of terrorist attacks around the globe,

even if the terrorists themselves are driven underground. U.S. counterterrorism experts believe the mass-casualty attacks in Istanbul and Baghdad in the past month were largely a response to military reversals in
Iraq and Syria. [Turkey and the Islamic State appear to be headed toward outright war] Such terrorist acts
are likely to continue and even intensify, at least initially, analysts say, as the group evolves from a quasistate with territorial holdings to a shadowy and diffuse network with branches and cells on at least three
continents. Iraqi forces advance into Islamic State territory Play Video0:53 Iraqi forces are advancing
towards Mosul, the largest city held by the militant group. (Reuters) Indeed, while the loss of a physical
sanctuary would constitute a major blow to the Islamic State severely limiting, for example, its ability to
raise money, train recruits or plan complex terrorist operations the groups highly decentralized nature
ensures that it will remain dangerous for some time to come, according to current and former U.S. officials
and terrorism experts. Where al-Qaeda was hierarchical and somewhat controlled, these guys are not.
They have all the energy and unpredictability of a populist movement, said Michael Hayden, the retired
Air Force general who headed the CIA from 2006 to 2009. [ISISs allure increases as its territory shrinks]
Islamic State officials, in public statements and in interviews, insist that the groups caliphate project
remains viable while also acknowledging that military setbacks have forced a change in strategy. While
we see our core structure in Iraq and Syria under attack, we have been able to expand and have shifted
some of our command, media and wealth structure to different countries, a longtime Islamic State
operative, speaking through an Internet-based audio service, said in an interview. We do have, every day,
people reaching out and telling us they want to come to the caliphate, said the operative, who agreed to
speak to a Western journalist on the condition that his name and physical location not be revealed. But we
tell them to stay in their countries and rather wait to do something there. [ISIS releases a new video of
captive British journalist John Cantlie in Iraq] Libyan forces allied with the U.N.-backed government fire
artillery toward ISIS fighters positions in Sirte, Libya, July 12, 2016. (Goran Tomasevic/Reuters) But

signs of desperation are mounting weekly inside the

caliphate, which shrank by another 12 percent in the first six
months of 2016, according to a report last week by IHS Inc., an analysis and consulting firm. A
series of communiques issued in the Islamic States Syrian enclave last month closed down Internet cafes
in one province and ordered the destruction of TVs and satellite dishes in another. The orders, billed as an
effort to eliminate a tool for disseminating infidel beliefs, effectively cut off access to news from the
outside world. Without any city or land More signals of a coming downfall are contained in statements
issued by Islamic State officials over the past six weeks, a period that saw the groups fighters retreating

. A remarkable
editorial last month in al-Naba, the Islamic States weekly
Arabic newsletter, offered a gloomy assessment of the
caliphates prospects, acknowledging the possibility that all
its territorial holdings could ultimately be lost. Just two years ago,
across multiple fronts, from Fallujah in central Iraq to the Syrian-Turkish border

jihadist leaders heralded the start of a glorious new epoch in the worlds history with the establishment of

their Islamic caliphate, which at the time encompassed most of eastern Syria and a vast swath of
northern and western Iraq, a combined territory roughly the size of Great Britain. [How ISIS tries to thwart
attacks on its oil infrastructure] The editorial, titled, The Crusaders Illusions in the Age of the Caliphate,
sought to rally the groups followers by insisting that the Islamic State would continue to survive, even if all
its cities fell to the advancing crusaders the separate Western- and Russian-backed forces arrayed
against them. The crusaders and their apostate clients are under the illusion that ... they will be able to
eliminate all of the Islamic States provinces at once, such that it will be completely wiped out and no trace
of it will be left, the article states. In reality, the groups foes will not be able to eliminate it by destroying
one of its cities or besieging another of them, or by killing a soldier, an emir or an imam, it says. The
editorial asserts that the whole world ... has changed with the creation of a theocratic enclave that has
shown all of mankind what the true Islamic state is like. If they want to achieve true victory they will
not, God willing they will have to wait a long time: until an entire generation of Muslims that was witness
to the establishment of the Islamic State and the return of the caliphate ... is wiped out. The same
themes were repeated in an otherwise upbeat sermon by the Islamic States official spokesman, Abu
Muhammad al-Adnani, marking the start of Ramadan observances. Adnanis missive attracted international
attention because of its call for a global terrorism campaign during the Muslim holy month. But Adnani also
appeared to be preparing his followers for heavy losses. [In a deadly Ramadan, ISIS terrorism exposes the
failures of others] At one point he evoked one of the darkest chapters in the Islamic States history, when
the group then known as the Islamic State of Iraq was all but destroyed in 2008 by a combination of
forces, including the U.S. troop surge and the Anbar Awakening, a revolt against the Islamists by Sunni
Arab tribes. Were we defeated when we lost the cities in Iraq and were in the desert without any city or
land? And would we be defeated and you be victorious if you were to take Mosul, Sirte or Raqqa, or even
take all the cities? asked Adnani, referring to the Islamic States primary strongholds in Iraq, Libya and
Syria. Certainly not! Echoes of an inglorious past The groups near-defeat in 2008 also has been cited
multiple times in recent weeks in social-media accounts, suggesting to some analysts that its leaders are
trying to limit the inevitable damage to the Islamic States reputation among jihadists as an unstoppable
military and moral force. [CIA director: ISIS not yet close to being restrained] They dont want to lose
territory, said Cole Bunzel, a doctoral candidate at Princeton Universitys Near Eastern studies department
who provided a translation and commentary on the al-Naba editorial in the blog Jihadica. But theyre
trying to remind people that the group has a long history and theyre going to persist, just as they did in
earlier times. The deadly attacks against Istanbuls Ataturk Airport and Baghdads Karrada shopping
district both relatively easy targets for terrorists concerned only with massive numbers of civilian
casualties were probably also part of the same effort to reassure followers of the Islamic States vitality,
said Will McCants, a Brookings Institution researcher and author of the 2015 book ISIS Apocalypse: The
History, Strategy and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State. The successful attacks abroad are an
indication of deep worry at home, McCants said. After years of boasting of the groups invincibility,
leaders such as Adnani are beginning to acknowledge battlefield losses while attempting to depict them in
the most positive light, he said. Absent from the groups statements is any acknowledgment of strategic
and tactical errors that contributed to the Islamic States current predicament, fighting alone against a
broad array of forces that includes the major Western powers, Sunni and Shiite Muslims, Russians and
Kurds, McCants said. Theyre not trying to be clever about it, he said, but theyre really trying to prepare

The Islamic State

operative who consented to an interview acknowledged that
some of the groups followers had become disillusioned
because of mistakes by individual commanders. He said he didnt care
their followers to cope with a caliphate that is no longer a caliphate.

whether the organizations headquarters remained in Raqqa or moved to North Africa or elsewhere
although he added that the loss of Raqqa would certainly be avenged. There is a message to all members
of the coalition against us: We will not forget, and we will come into your countries and hit you, he said,
one way or the other. European intelligence officials fear that the new phase is already underway. They
are ... challenged as we adapt our strategy to their initial one, in order to start de-sanctuarizing them,
said a senior French security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss counterterrorism
strategy. But they will now expand to other tactics and start executing much more insidious and covert
ops, in big cities. The next step, he said, has begun.

a time of heightened tensions between

the two regional powers, and this wider picture, along with the recent furor
over Saudi Arabias execution of a leading Shia cleric, followed by the storming of its
embassy in Tehran, risks overshadowing the conflict in
Nonetheless, the accusations come at

Yemen. Yemen is a nation ravaged by war, the latest

manifestation of which has seen the entry of longstanding
rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran. Yet it is a land often forgotten by much of the world
until proxy wars fought by regional powers spill into its rugged mountains and desert plains. The current

Gulf Arab states

brokered a deal to remove longstanding President Ali
Abdullah Saleh and replace him with President Abdo Rabbo
Mansour Hadi. But Mr. Saleh refused to fade away, instead
lending his support to a rebellion by the Iranian-backed
Houthi rebels. By March 2015, Mr. Hadi had fled into exile in Saudi
Arabia and the Houthis had overrun the whole of western
Yemen, including the capital, Sanaa. Fearing an Iranian takeover, Saudi
Arabia and its allies launched a hurricane of airstrikes,
targeting the Houthis and units loyal to Saleh . Expecting their firepower
to overwhelm the Houthis, the Saudis have instead become embroiled in a dirty war. Both sides
in this conflict are accused of inflicting devastating and
indiscriminate assaults on the Yemeni population, with
civilian casualties estimated at over 8,000, according to the
United Nations.
incarnation of Yemens woes dates to the Arab Spring of 2011, when

Kurds commit HR violations

Dettmer, Jaime. "Syrian Kurds Accused of Human Rights Abuses Against Arabs." VOA.
Voice of America, 13 Oct. 2015. Web. 29 July 2016.
<http://www.voanews.com/content/syrian-kurds-accused-of-human-rightsabuses-against-arabs/3003693.html>.

Kurdish forces in northern Syria, one of the few armed groups in the multilayered civil war trusted by the U.S.-led
coalition to battle Islamic State extremists, are said to have carried out forced displacement
of Arabs and Turkmen and mass house demolitions of villages in
territory they have captured. Amnesty International said the Popular Protection Units,
the YPG, an offshoot of Turkeys outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, the PKK, razed entire villages
captured from Islamic State forces in retaliation either for perceived
sympathies with the jihadist group or as punishment for past grievances
and old land disputes. The report, We Had Nowhere Else To Go, comes a day after
American officials said the U.S. had dropped 50 tons of arms and
ammunition to rebels in northern Syria. The YPG is believed to have been
among the beneficiaries of the airdrop. This report uncovers clear evidence
of a deliberate, coordinated campaign of collective punishment of
civilians in villages previously captured by IS or where a small minority
were suspected of supporting the group, said Lama Fakih, an Amnesty adviser. Satellite imagery of
Husseiniya village, in the Tel Hamees countryside, shows 225 buildings standing in June 2014, but only 14 remaining a year later, the

The YPG has admitted to some isolated incidents" of forcing

Arabs out of their homes in villages captured by Syrian Kurdish forces.
Rights violations accusations. This isnt the first time the Kurdish group has been accused of
serious human rights violations, and fears have been mounting since
mid-2014 that it is determined to alter the demographic map to further its aim to enlarge its territory and create an autonomous
state in northern Syria. In June 2014, Human Rights Watch accused the YPG of
recruiting child soldiers, detaining arbitrarily those who oppose its
authority, and failing to address unsolved killings and disappearances . The
rights group said. 'Isolated incidents'

Kurds pledged then not to use children under the age of 18 to fight. But subsequent probes by rights groups have found that
commitment regularly broken. This week, Russia Today broadcast a YPG-assisted documentary focused on women Kurdish fighters
and interviewed at least one 16-year-old recruit. Since mounting a military intervention in Syria, Moscow has been courting the YPG
and PYD and Russia Today has been broadcasting laudatory commentary on the group.