Kurdistan risk increases as threats to northern Iraq stability multiply

The withdrawal of US combat troops from Iraq over the next 12 months presents Kurdistan with its greatest political risk since the end of the four-year KDP-PUK civil war in 1998. The prospect of the US military no longer guaranteeing the Kurdish/Iraqi peace heads a long list of negative factors that are competing to undermine the KRG region’s stability and end its enviable recent track record in terms of lack of violence.