Tension grows in Iraqi Kurdistan, partner in U.S. battle against ISIS
ERBIL, Iraq -- There's election fallout in Iraq after Kurds voted overwhelming this week for independence. Iraqi Kurds have been a crucial partner of the U.S. in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS.
They say the Iraqi government is now taking steps against them that could hinder their efforts.
Turkish and Iraqi troops held military drills along Iraqi Kurdistan's northern border this week and in its main airport on Friday, people took the last planes out after Iraq's national government canceled international flights.
Federal Iraqi authorities are ratcheting up the tension, pressuring the leaders of this region to cancel the results of Monday's referendum, in which over 90 percent of voters chose full independence.
Most are members of the Kurdish ethnic minority and they already rule over their own autonomous region. Iraq's national government says the referendum was illegal.
Turkey, which has a restive Kurdish population of its own, condemned the vote and the U.S. also opposed it, worried it could disrupt the fragile cooperation between the Kurds and the Iraqi government in the fight against ISIS. The Kurds of Iraq have battled bravely against ISIS as close American allies who have laid down their lives to defeat the extremists.
Capt. Hazar Nadar Hassan lost both his legs to an ISIS bomb in 2014 and said doctors only gave him a 2 percent chance of survival.
When you realized that he had lost both your legs, he said he was "thinking about my kids -- and whether I'd ever seem them again."
Sgt. Masud Hamad Majeed's body was peppered with shrapnel last November on the frontline with ISIS. He was in a coma for 18 days and has neurological damage.
But he said still wants to go back to being a soldier.
Many people here believe that sacrifice makes Iraqi Kurdistan more deserving of independence, but not even its friends seem to agree.
The Kurdish regional government seems to have miscalculated the anger this referendum would generate and the retaliation it would provoke. Turkey has threatened to cut off oil exports from the region, which would be economically crippling.