Iraqi action in Arbil is logical

In the light of the bloody clashes between the warring Kurdish factions on the one hand and Turkish military interventions on the other, it is only logical for Iraq to try to protect the ties between the region and the rest of Iraqi national soil through direct intervention to support the Kurdish faction whose links with Iraq's hostile countries are the least.

The previous period also witnessed an incursion of Iranian troops with the aim to achieve private goals in this region and to support the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, headed by Jalal Talabani.

Besides, the warplanes of some of the allies cruise over this region all the time under international cover.

If some countries deliberately seek to turn northern Iraq into an area open to anyone, including Iran, while excluding Iraq in particular from exercising its sovereignty over its national soil in that area, the Iraqi government, in turn, has to take into consideration the complicated circumstances surrounding the situation in northern Iraq in order to preserve its strong ties with the Kurdistan Democratic Party, or KDP, and to make the operation of separating northern Iraq meaningless, even if the Iraqi army withdraws from the region, leaving the KDP, which is the party closer to Baghdad, to exercise sovereignty in northern Iraq.

Certainly, stability in northern Iraq requires preventing all foreign countries, particularly Iran and Turkey, from military intervention in that area and at the same time arranging the area's restoration to Iraqi sovereignty.

-- al-Ahram, Cairo