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Iraq Ratchets Up Pressure on Kurds after Independence Vote
[AnNahar] Iraq's central government on Monday unleashed a legal barrage against Kurdish officials and sought to seize key businesses in a fresh bid to tighten the screws over a disputed independence referendum.

The latest moves come exactly two weeks after an overwhelming majority of voters in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region backed independence in a non-binding ballot slammed as illegal by Baghdad.

The central authorities have already severed ties between Kurdistan and the outside world by cutting international air links to the region, while neighboring The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
 and Iran have threatened to close their borders to oil exports.

Now, in a new round of attempts to ratchet up pressure, Baghdad's National Security Council announced that a probe has been launched into Kurdistan's lucrative oil revenues and officials in the region who might have illegally monopolized the market.

"The corrupt will be exposed and the funds recovered," said a statement from the council, headed by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

The council also said that "a list of names" of Kurdish officials who helped organize the referendum had been compiled and "judicial measures have been taken against them," without giving more details.

The central government -- which has already demanded to take over Kurdistan's airports and borders -- is also looking to reclaim control over mobile phone companies in the region, including two of the largest providers in Iraq, the statement said.

Baghdad also once again called on Ankara and Tehran -- which both opposed the referendum over fears of fueling demands from their own Kurdish communities -- to close their border posts with Kurdistan and "stop all trade" with the region.

The angry dispute over the referendum -- also rejected by the U.S. -- is the latest twist in the decades-long movement by Iraq's Kurds to break away from Baghdad.

The referendum spat comes as Kurdish fighters and central government forces have continued to work together in offensives to push back the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
 group, with Washington warning the poll could "increase instability" in the region.

The defense committee in Iraq's parliament demanded Kurdish security forces hand over IS fighters captured in a recent battle to retake the jihadist bastion of Hawija.

The U.S.-led coalition backing up the operations against IS has estimated that some 1,000 jihadists surrendered, mostly to the Kurdish peshmerga forces, during the seizure of the town.
Posted by: trailing wife 2017-10-10
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=499224