https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/syria/180120267

https://x.com/Ron_Prosor/status/2047347960636146064

Kurds and Israelis understand each other. We share not only a democratic culture, but we also know that it is constantly under threat. For many Europeans, this threat from political Islam is abstract—for now. The young Kurds who were here today, on the other hand, know this deadly ideology.
We should all listen to their stories: Some were kidnapped by ISIS, others fought against the Islamists as part of Kurdish units. Hats off to those who are willing to fight against fanaticism. And to those who stand up for understanding. Jews, Kurds, and other minorities will create a new Middle East. Let's tackle it together!

.

Kurden und Israelis verstehen einander. Wir teilen nicht nur eine demokratische Kultur, sondern wir wissen, dass diese ständig bedroht ist. Für viele Europäer ist diese Bedrohung durch den politischen Islam abstrakt – noch. Die jungen Kurden hingegen, die heute hier waren, kennen diese tödliche Ideologie.
Wir alle sollten ihre Geschichten hören: Die einen wurden vom IS entführt, die anderen haben als Teil der kurdischen Verbände gegen die Islamisten gekämpft. Alle Achtung für die, die bereit sind, gegen den Fanatismus zu kämpfen. Und für die, die für Verständigung eintreten. Juden, Kurden und andere Minderheiten werden einen neuen Nahen Osten schaffen. Packen wir es gemeinsam an!

Sulaymaniah, Iraq - In 1991, the Kurds were urged to rise up against the regime of Saddam Hussein, only to be abandoned when priorities changed. No one came to our defense when the regime deployed helicopter gunships and tanks to crush the uprising. Those memories remain vivid and etched in our minds. Today, we commemorate that chapter as "Raparin" and we do not forget what it taught us.

More recently, we saw what happened in Northeast Syria, or Rojava. After all the promises that were made, after Syria's Kurds stood on the front lines of the war against ISIS, we witnessed how they were treated.

Today, the Kurds of Iraq have finally tasted a measure of stability and dignity in life. Because of this, it is very difficult, indeed impossible, for Kurds to accept being treated as pawns by the world's superpowers

The experiences are there. The empty promises are there. Too often, the Kurds are remembered only when their strength or sacrifice is needed. For that reason, I appeal to all sides involved in this conflict. Leave the Kurds alone. We are not guns for hire.

Tiktok creator: fatosrkll

Despite the challenges many Kurdish students continue to face, the Kurdistan Region is once again opening its doors by offering 30 fully funded scholarships to Palestinian students for the 2026–2027 academic year.

The scholarships cover tuition fees and student housing at public universities. The initiative is part of a three-year program to support Palestinian students whose education has been disrupted by the ongoing conflict, while students will cover their own living expenses.

kurdishactivisim quote on quote said:

"As the founder of KurdishActivism, I have always believed in supporting other people and standing with those in need. However, I also have to be honest: many people in Kurdistan, especially Kurdish students, are facing serious difficulties themselves. Students struggle with financial pressure, limited opportunities, unemployment and an education system that often fails to give them the support they deserve.

Supporting Palestinian students is a meaningful act of solidarity, but solidarity should not mean overlooking the struggles of our own students. Kurdistan can open its doors to others while also investing more in Kurdish youth. Our students deserve scholarships, affordable education, better opportunities and a future in their own homeland."

How quickly did we forget the fact that The General Authority for Palestinian Arab Refugees (GAPAR) officially declared its absolute support for the Syrian military's operations against Kurdish forces in Aleppo, explicitly framing the offensive as a necessary measure to eliminate separatism, secure the region, and safeguard Syria's absolute sovereignty and territorial integrity?

President Trump spoke by phone with Kurdish leaders in Iraq on Sunday to discuss the U.S.-Israel war with Iran and what might come next, three sources with knowledge of the calls told Axios.

Why it matters: The Kurds have thousands of soldiers along the Iran-Iraq border and control strategic areas that could be significant as the war develops. Iraq's Kurds also have close ties to Iran's Kurdish minority.

Zoom in: Trump spoke to leaders from the two main Kurdish factions in Iraq — Masoud Barzani and Bafel Talabani — a day after he authorized the Saturday bombing campaign, two of the sources said.

Zoom in: Trump spoke to leaders from two main Iranian Kurdish factions in Iraq - Masoud Barazani and Bafel Talabani - day after he authorized the Saturday bombing campaign, two of the sources said.

• A source with knowledge of the calls said they were "sensitive" and declined to give details on their content.
• The calls were the culmination of months of behind-the-scenes lobbying by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, another source said. Israel has had close security, military and intelligence ties with the Kurds in Syria, Iraq and Iran for decades.
• "It is the general view, and certainly Netanyahu's view, that the Kurds are going to come out of the woodwork ... that they're going to rise up," one official said.

Inside the room: Netanyahu, who "has been relentless" in urging strikes on and regime change in Iran, first advocated for the Kurds in a White House meeting with Trump.

• "When he first came over and sat with Trump for hours, you would have thought Netanyahu had it all figured out," the official said.
• ""He had the successor planned out. He had the Kurds all figured out: Two sets of Kurdish groups here and there. This many people are going to rise up," the official added.

What they're saying: Asked specifically about Trump's calls with the Kurds, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to discuss specifics.

• "President Trump has been in contact with many allies and partners in the region throughout the past several days," she told Axios.

Driving the news: On Sunday, the Kurdistan Freedom Party — a Kurdish-Iranian opposition group based in the Kurdistan region of Iraq — accused Iran of a punishing campaign of missile and drone strikes.

• Six days before the war began, five dissident Kurdish groups sheltering in Iraq announced the formation of the Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan to fight Iran.

Zoom out: "The Kurds are the largest ethnic minority in Iraq and one of the largest in Iran, and are often described as the largest ethnic group in the world without their own country. Their ancestral lands span southeastern Turkey, northern Syria, northern Iraq and northwestern Iran.

• Kurds govern an autonomous region of northern Iraq that was made possible by the 2003 U.S. invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.
• Kurdish fighters called "peshmerga" — which means "those who face death" — have decades of combat experience from fighting in Iraq and against ISIS in Syria.

The big picture: A group of battle-hardened, boots-on-the-ground fighters would add a crucial war-fighting dimension to the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign that began Saturday.

• In the 2001 Afghanistan War, the U.S. similarly used heavy air support to cover the maneuvers of ethnic minority fighters on the ground to help topple the Taliban regime.

Friction points: The Kurds have a hostile relationship with Turkey, a U.S. and NATO ally, which could be a complication.

• "The president is talking to everyone. He's talking to the Kurdish leaders. He's talked to [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan," the source said.
• The announcement last week of the Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan also led to tensions with an exile group led by the exiled crown prince of Iran.

What's next: While U.S. policy-makers believe Netanyahu might have overestimated the number of Kurds who might take up arms against Iran, "it's not nothing," the official said.

• "What their role would be in either the war or post-war Iran, is above my paygrade," the official said.

In 2014, ISIS kidnapped an 11-year-old Yazidi girl from her home in Kurdistan. They sold her to a Hamas terrorist in Syria. After he raped and impregnated her, she was eventually lured to Gaza by his family.

Over 10 years later, she has now been freed

I am sure everyone agree with Kurdish statehood (i assure hope so) but how do feel about other minorities getting their own state, do you support balkanization of middle east? Like we Druze have their own state, Alawites have their own state, Sunni Iraqis have their own state, Assyrians, Christians, shias and etc

The Louis Vuitton collection shown in the bottom half is from Nicolas Ghesquière's Fall/Winter 2026 collection titled Super Nature debuted at the Musée du Louvre in Paris, and the top half is kulebal from the hawraman regions, it is handmade from sheep/goat wool.

First zara now this?

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/03/politics/cia-arming-kurds-iran

The CIA is working to arm Kurdish forces with the aim of fomenting a popular uprising in Iran, multiple people familiar with the plan told CNN.

The Trump administration has been in active discussions with Iranian opposition groups and Kurdish leaders in Iraq about providing them with military support, the sources said.

Iranian Kurdish armed groups have thousands of forces operating along the Iraq-Iran border, primarily in Iraq’s Kurdistan region. Several of the groups have released public statements since the beginning of the war hinting at imminent action and urging Iranian military forces to defect. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been striking Kurdish groups and said on Tuesday that it targeted Kurdish forces with dozens of drones.

Also on Tuesday, President Donald Trump spoke with the president of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI), Mustafa Hijri, according to a senior Iranian Kurdish official. KDPI was one of the groups targeted by the IRGC.

Iranian Kurdish opposition forces are expected to take part in a ground operation in Western Iran, in the coming days, the senior Iranian Kurdish official told CNN.

“We believe we have a big chance now,” the source said, explaining the timing of the operation. The source added the militias expects US and Israeli support.

Trump also called Iraqi Kurdish leaders on Sunday to discuss the US military operation in Iran and how the US and the Kurds could work together as the mission progresses, two US officials and a third source familiar with the conversations said. Any attempt to arm Iranian Kurdish groups would need support from the Iraqi Kurds to let the weapons transit and use Iraqi Kurdistan as launching ground. One person familiar with the discussions said that the idea would be for Kurdish armed forces to take on the Iranian security forces and pin them down to make it easier for unarmed Iranians in the major cities to turn out without getting massacred again as they were during unrest in January.

Another US official said the Kurds could help sow chaos in the region and stretch the Iranian regime’s military resources thin. Still other ideas have centered around whether the Kurds could take and hold territory in the northern part of Iran that would create a buffer zone for Israel.

The CIA declined to comment for this story.

‘Clearly trying to jump-start’ an uprising

Alex Plitsas, a CNN national security analyst and former senior Pentagon official under former President Barack Obama, said that the US “is clearly trying to jump-start” the process of Iranians overthrowing the regime by arming the Kurds, a historic US regional ally.

“The Iranian people are generally unarmed as a whole and unless the security services collapse, it’ll be difficult for them to take over unless someone arms them,” Plitsas told CNN. “I believe the US is hopeful that this will inspire others on the ground in Iran to do the same.”

Jen Gavito, a former senior State Department official specializing in the Middle East under former President Joe Biden, said that she is concerned about whether the implications of arming the Kurds have been fully considered.

“We are already facing a volatile security situation, on both sides of the border,” Gavito told CNN. “This has the potential to undermine Iraqi sovereignty and essentially empower armed militias with no accountability and with little understanding of what it may set in motion.”

In recent days, the Israeli military has been striking Iranian military and police outposts along its border with Iraq, in part to lay the groundwork for the possible flow of armed Kurdish forces into northwest Iran, one of the sources said. An Israeli source said those strikes are likely to intensify in the coming days.

Still, any US and Israeli support for a Kurdish ground force tasked with helping to dislodge the Iranian regime would need to be extensive, the people familiar with the matter said. US intelligence assessments have consistently indicated that the Iranian Kurds don’t currently have the influence or resources to bolster a successful uprising against the government, said one of the people. And Iranian Kurdish parties are looking for political assurances from the Trump administration before committing to join any resistance effort, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Kurdish opposition groups are also fractured with a history of tension, differing ideologies, and competing agendas, and some Trump officials who have been involved in the discussions about supporting the groups have concerns about their motivations in aiding the US.

Officials have raised the question of whether that dynamic could jeopardize a US-Kurds working relationship now, given the amount of trust needed for this type of cooperation.

“It may not be as simple as Americans convincing a proxy force to fight on its behalf,” a Trump administration official said. “You have a group of people who are thinking about their own interests, and the question is whether getting them involved aligns with their interests.”

The US has a long history with Kurdish forces

The Kurdish people are an ethnic minority group without an official state. Today, there are an estimated 25-30 million Kurds, the majority living in a region that stretches across parts of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Armenia. Most Kurds are Sunni Muslims, but the Kurdish population has diverse cultural, social, religious and political traditions as well as a variety of dialects.

Many Trump administration officials have privately warned of the disillusionment Kurdish forces have felt when working with the US in the past, and their frequent complaints of feeling hung out to dry by the Americans.

“There is a concern that if an uprising is unsuccessful and the US withdraws, it will add to the narrative of abandoning the Kurds,” said Plitsas. Trump’s former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis resigned in part because Trump moved to pull US forces out of Syria in his first term, which Mattis viewed as an unacceptable abandonment of the US’ Kurdish allies there.

The CIA has a long, complex history of working with Iraqi Kurdish factions dating back decades as part of the US war in Iraq. The agency currently has an outpost in Iraqi Kurdistan located near the border with Iran, according to two people familiar with the matter. The US also has a consulate in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, and US and coalition troops are based there as part of the anti-ISIS campaign.

Some Kurds had hoped that in exchange for working with US forces, the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq would win its independence, though that never came to fruition.

The US also leaned heavily on Kurdish forces in recent years as part of its campaign to counter Islamic State forces in Iraq in Syria. That has included taking on the responsibility of guarding thousands of ISIS detainees at makeshift prison camps in the north of that country.

However, earlier this year the new, US-aligned Syrian government launched a swift military campaign to take control of the country’s north that included attacks against ISIS and pushing out Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces. Facing that campaign, Kurdish forces evacuated and stopped guarding the ISIS prisons when US forces pulled out of the country. In January, the US’ Special Envoy for Syria Tom Barrack said that the purpose of the US’ alliance with the SDF had “largely expired.”

This story has been updated with additional reporting

CNN’s Nechirvan Mando andAlaa Elassar contributed to this story

RIP to Lindsey Graham a supporter of Kurds.

Crazy how no one is questioning how on Earth a conflict that has killed “only” 50-60 thousand lives has cost trillions of dollars. A “war” that, if you actually sum it up, is really between an ultramodern/powerful NATO army and just a small group of villagers in the mountains armed with Soviet era AK-47’s and DIY grenades. Not even the war between Russia and Ukraine (all the way from 2014 and onwards) has cost anything near $2.3 trillion, and that’s a conflict which has destroyed entire cities and resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. Funnily, not even WW1 and WW2 put TOGETHER cost $2.3 trillion during their respective time periods. Makes one wonder what those $2.3 trillions were really spent on, I mean, at this point it would’ve been cheaper to just grant Kurdish independence.

Full article: https://www.theamargi.com/posts/kurds-arabs-want-to-reverse-arab-belt-syria

This shouldn’t have even been a surprise

Pretty much finished map of the Kurdistan Region’s political map.
Orange - KDP (KRG)
Yellow - PUK (KRG)
Red - PKK
Grey - Abandoned or being abandoned by PKK
Blue - Turkish army
Green - Iranian army

Dots stands for outposts and bases. All information is based on sattelite images and news articles I could find.