User:Geraldshields11/sandbox/KurdsDecember-3-2012

Iraq abstained from the Arab League vote in 2011 to suspend Syria’s membership and has opposed overthrowing the Syrian regime by force.

The Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad has been a source of support for the Assad regime. Iraq has opened its airspace for use by Iranian planes ferrying support to the Assad regime, and has granted trucks bound for Syria carrying supplies from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards passage through Iraqi territory. Iraqi government has signed a deal to provide Syria with diesel fuel.

Syrian civil war is further increasing along Kurdish-Arab and Sunni-Shiite lines inside of Iraq. Nouri al-Maliki is concerned that Iran "will intensify its efforts to dominate Iraq, which would undermine his domestic political position" and "the rise of a Sunni-dominated government in Damascus will strengthen the Sunnis in Iraq’s western provinces."

In the western Sunni-majority provinces of Iraq, soldiers and war supplies have been crossing from Anbar Province into Syria. Armed groups inside Iraq have formed a Free Iraqi Army and have been supportive of the Syrian uprising against the Assad regime.

Iraqi Kurds and the Kurds in Syria have established control over their own regions with the help of the Turkish Kurdistan Workers’ Party as well as with support from the Kurdistan Regional Government in Irbil, under President Massoud Barzani. The Syrian Kurdish enclave has been fighting westward to secure an outlet to the Mediterranean Sea between the northern part of the Alawi region and the Syrian border with Turkey.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has fostered very strong economic and political relations with Irbil, and Turkey is beginning to consider the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq as an ally against Maliki’s government.

On November 26, 2012, combat between Baghdad and Kurdish-Irbil military units broke out into open clashes and required an urgent security agreement between federal and Kurdish military officials to avert further fighting.