Iraqi forces plan takeover of Kurdish region's borders


READ MORE

Iraq plans to take control of the borders of its autonomous Kurdistan region “in coordination” with Iran and Turkey, the Iraqi defence ministry has said. 



Published on Friday, the ministry’s statement did not give more detail or indicate specifically whether Iraqi forces were planning to move towards the external border posts controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) from the Iranian and Turkish side.


The move to seize the border posts is a response to a Kurdish referendum on Monday that produced a vote in favour of secession from Iraq.


Following the vote, Iraq, Iran and Turkey demanded that the KRG relinquish control over its external border crossings with Turkey, Iran and Syria.


Backed by Ankara and Tehran, the Iraqi government has demanded that the Kurdish leadership cancel the result of the referendum or face the prospect of sanctions, international isolation and possibly a military intervention.


The KRG refused to relinquish control of its border crossings, Erbil-based TV Rudaw said on Friday, citing a Kurdish official.


The Iraqi defence ministry said the implementation of central government decisions to take over management of all the border posts and airports was “going as planned in coordination with the relevant authorities and neighbouring countries, and there is no delay in the procedures”.


OPINION: Iraqi Kurdistan plays the independence game


Iraq’s state television said an Iraqi military delegation had visited the Kurdistan region’s border from the Iranian side. An Iraqi force is also deployed on the Turkish side of the border as part of joint drills with the Turkish army.


International flight embargo


Earlier on Friday, a ban imposed by Iraq’s central government on international flights to Kurdistan went into effect after the KRG rejected a demand to hand over control of its international airports in Erbil and Sulaimaniya.


The ban came into force at 6pm (15:00 GMT) on Friday. Foreign airlines suspended flights to the region’s Erbil and Sulaimaniya, obeying a notice from the government in Baghdad, which controls Iraqi air space.


Domestic flights are still allowed, so travellers are expected to travel to Kurdistan mostly via Baghdad’s airport, which will come under strain from the extra traffic.


READ MORE: Turkey raises oil threat after Iraqi Kurds’ referendum


Erbil airport was busier than usual on Friday as passengers scrambled to catch the last flights out.


Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel-Hamid, reporting from Erbil International Airport, said: “We saw many people throughout the day leaving ahead of schedule simply because they were afraid to be blocked here and not be able to return to their homes, or because they did not want to go through Baghdad to catch an international flight”.


Maintaining the travel curbs is likely to discourage visits by businessmen and Kurdish expatriates and affect a host of industries, including hotels, financial services, transport and real estate.


More than 400 Kurdish travel and tourism companies are directly affected by the flight ban and 7,000 are jobs at risk in the sector, Rudaw TV said. 




Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Canadian expected to be aboard Russia's 1st manned space mission since rocket failure

READ MORE The first manned mission to the International Space Station since a Russian rocket failed to launch successfully earlier this month may take off on Dec. 3, space agency Roscosmos said on Wednesday. And the crew is expected to include Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques, Agence France-Press reported. A Russian cosmonaut and U.S. astronaut were forced to abort their mission on Oct. 11 and perform an emergency landing after a launch accident that Roscomos said was caused by a faulty sensor. The accident was the first serious launch problem experienced by a manned Soyuz space mission since 1983, when a crew narrowly escaped before a launch pad explosion. Sergei Krikalyov, a senior Roscosmos official, was quoted by state news agency Tass as saying the next manned launch had been planned for mid-December, but that Russia was trying to bring the date forward so that the ISS is not briefly left without a crew. “The industry is making significant efforts to move the launch t...
Read more

Getting the dope on pot stocks is becoming easier as media groups invest in content: Don Pittis

Image
READ MORE “What’s the buzz? Tell me what’s happening,” goes the ’70s rock anthem. Part of the catchiness of the lyric — from the rock musical Jesus Christ Superstar  — was that in that era the term “buzz” had developed a second spicy meaning. It described the high that people got from smoking cannabis. In the 1970s, the magazine High Times was a brand new title keeping an eye on the illegal but growing business of marijuana pricing and sales. It ran centrefolds of glistening pot plants and of an apartment filled to the windows with what the magazine insisted was an entire ton of cannabis. Now some of Canada’s most staid media voices are looking for ways to go toe to toe with High Times and its U.S. competitors, hoping to profit from Canada’s global head start in legal recreational cannabis. But when it comes to making a killing from spreading the buzz on the cannabis biz, to q...
Read more

Toronto man denies conspiring with Marvel CEO in alleged hate mail scheme

Image
READ MORE A Toronto man accused of conspiring with the head of Marvel Entertainment in a bizarre hate mail campaign against his wealthy former employer has denied any role in the alleged scheme. David Smith, along with Marvel CEO Isaac (Ike) Perlmutter, is the target of a slander lawsuit launched earlier this year by Canadian businessman Harold Peerenboom. Now Smith — a former employee of Peerenboom’s Toronto-based executive search firm, Mandrake Management — has filed a motion to dismiss the U.S. civil suit. It’s the latest development in the years-long legal battle between Peerenboom and Perlmutter, a notoriously reclusive American billionaire and personal friend of U.S. President Donald Trump. The hate mail campaign, which ran   between 2012 to 2015, saw anonymous letters falsely accusing Peerenboom of being a child molester, murderer and anti-Semite...
Read more