Pressure mounts on Iraqi Kurds to cancel vote for independence
ERBIL: In a region where few people concur on anything, adversaries and enemies in the Middle East find themselves agreeing on one goal — to stop Iraq’s Kurds from forging ahead with a vote for independence on Monday.
As the Kurds rush headlong to embrace their region’s first steps toward i ndependence, their neighbours and allies, led by the US, are ratcheting up demands to cancel a referendum on independence from Iraq.
In Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, fireworks streak across night skies and red-whiteand-green Kurdish flags snap in the wind beside posters and ban- ners that implore Kurds — in four languages — to vote “yes” to pursue independence.
The White House has called the vote “provocative and destabilising” and UN secretary-gen- eral António Guterres has warned that the vote would undermine the fight against the Islamic State.
Turkey is conducting tank drills on its border with Iraqi Kurdistan. Iran has vowed to block its border with the landlocked region if the vote proceeds. Both Turkey and Iran worry that an independence vote by Iraqi Kurds will stir unrest among their own Kurdish minorities.
The Iraqi government in Baghdad, faced with the possibility of losing a third of the country or the outbreak of a new civil war, has called the referendum illegal and unconstitutional.