In an attempt to regain the Kirkuk oil region, the Iraqis Army has taken back cities it once abandoned to ISIS. The Kurds took it from ISIS and settled in. When the Iraqi Army came back, in what looks like an orchestrated move allowed by the allied forces in the area, it blocked the roads and asked the Kurds to stay. Most did not. Given the history, we can see why. They don’t trust the Iraqi Army nor the Iranian-backed groups that fight with them.
During the wars fought in that area, the Iraqi Army has not been good enough to hold onto the land it had. It fled as fast as those Humvees could take them when ISIS started to roll in. They don’t like causalities. They are perfectly willing to let the Kurds take them in coming back into the region. The reward they get for working so hard is just like the reward they have always gotten from those countries that put troops into that region - they get pushed out, usually violently.
Leave no doubt that this will be about oil. If the Kurds have it, they have a self-sustaining economy that the Iraqi government cannot stop from cementing its hold on territory. They have a home and that home is theirs. Iraq will not have an easy time of taking any more than they have gotten back in the last few days. Nobody likes to fight the Kurds, and soon enough they are going to let Iraq know that they will not retreat any further.
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