According to a recent report by Al Jazeera Iraq correspondent Jane Arraf, “The Kurdistan Regional Government KRG in the north of Iraq is training Kurdish-Syrian fighters”. The report points to the existence of a training camp in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Northern Iraq.
The KRG region has been a US proxy state since the 1991 Gulf war. The report also confirms the presence of Iraqi Kurdish fighters which have integrated the ranks of the Free Syrian Army (FSA).
“… Massoud Barzani, the president of Kurdistan region confirmed for the first time the presence of a training camp in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region. … He said they have not yet been sent into Syria but are intended to be deployed there to fill any “security vacuum” as Syrian security forces retreat. Barzani said the fighting force, made up largely of Syrian Kurds who deserted the army and made their way across the border, would take its orders from a new high committee formed two weeks ago when two major Kurdish opposition groups put aside their differences. “They have not been sent to Syria. They are still here – if this high committee requires them to go they still could – if not they will wait for the situation to be sorted out because these people are from these areas and they will go back eventually,” he said. “This was aimed at filling the vacuum that will be created.”
Barzani, the most prominent regional Kurdish leader, oversaw an agreement in Erbil between the Syrian armed opposition and the mainstream Kurdish National Council. “The best and the biggest support that we could provide is to have a united position and in this we were successful,” he said. He said Syrian forces withdrew from several towns in the largely Kurdish al-Hasekah region [Syrian Kurdistan] which are now controlled by Kurdish fighters. At Syria’s border crossing with northern Iraq, Iraqi officials said Syrian security forces on Sunday morning retook the border post from gunmen who had seized it. The Iraqi and Syrian sides of the border post are just metres away. One Iraqi border official told us he had spoken with a lieutenant colonel of the Free Syrian Army who took control of the post along with Kurdish and Arab fighters.
They melted away though when Syrian security forces sent in helicopters to retake the Yarabiya crossing early Monday morning. ….
(Read complete report: Iraqi Kurds train their Syrian brethren Al Jazeera, 07, 23, 2012)
