South Kurdistan (Iraq) President Masud Barzani today asked the Kurdish Regional Parliament to form an electoral commission for the referendum on Kurdish independence from Iraq, which Barzani says he wants to hold in the coming months. Barzani further said that South Kurdish soldiers (the Peshmerga) will not withdraw from Kirkuk or other cities and towns that went under their effective control in June. Barzani argued that South Kurdistan "has international support for independence", and that countries not supporting the move now "will not be against [...] either."

While the US had asked South Kurdistan not to begin the path towards secession, Prime Minister of Israel Binyamin Netanyahu last week said the Kurds deserve their own state. Netanyahu quoted the Kurds as an example of "a politically moderate, committed nation" which could be part of an regional axis for cooperation in the Middle East.

Al-Maliki rejects move

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki yesterday said the Kurds have no right neither to hold a referendum on independence, nor to annex the cities and towns -Kirkuk among them- under Kurdish control after the withdrawal of the Iraqi army from much of northern Iraq: "No one has the right to exploit the events that took place to impose a fait accompli," he said.

But Al-Maliki is in an extremely weak situation. Sunni Arab and Kurdish MPs in the Iraqi Parliament walked out a plenary session on Tuesday after the Arab Shia majority was not able to propose a candidate to replace Al-Maliki as new Prime Minister.

Iraq is de facto divided

The country which Al-Maliki talks about no longer exists on the ground. South Kurdistan is behaving almost for all purposes as a de facto independent country, while northern and southern Iraq are in the hands of several Sunni Arab-majority armed groups. The Islamic State -which has declared the birth of a caliphate there- is currently the most powerful among them.