“Hostile actors in Iraq are increasingly using drones to target infrastructure and civilians. Regional instability also creates risks that can spill over into our region. This is why we see such great value in working with American companies … to strengthen our security infrastructures, anti-drone technology, modern security systems, and capacity-building programs,” Minister Reber Ahmed said at a US-Kurdistan Region investment conference in Erbil.
The Kurdistan Region came under nearly 20 rocket and drone attacks in July, including strikes on its oil fields. The Kurdish government blamed Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, or Hashd al-Shaabi) for the attacks - charges strongly denied as “unacceptable” by Baghdad.
The strikes badly damaged the Kurdistan Region’s oil infrastructure, halting production in some fields and cutting total output by about 70 percent at the time. An oil and finance deal later ended the attacks.
“These partnerships will not only help protect Kurdistan, but will also help safeguard your people, your assets, and your investments,” Ahmed told the conference, which included US companies interested in investing in the Kurdistan Region.
Safeen Dizayee, head of the KRG’s foreign relations department, said that Washington’s stance was “very strong” in regards to the drone attacks.
“They [the US] want peace and strong relations between Erbil and Baghdad, and for issues to be resolved, but they also protect their own interests. Two of the four companies that were targeted were American oil companies,” Dizayee told reporters in Erbil, referring to HKN Energy and Hunt Oil.
Erbil asked Washington to provide the Kurdistan Region with defense systems following the drone strikes, Dizayee said during a trip to Washington in late July.
In late July, Human Rights Watch condemned the drone strikes as a “dangerous escalation” that risked fueling disputes between Erbil and Baghdad. The rights group also condemned Baghdad’s suspension of public sector salaries as “leverage to force concessions in negotiations over oil and revenues.”
For more than a decade, the federal government has at times withheld salaries from Kurdistan Region’s public workers, while federal employees elsewhere in Iraq have continued to receive theirs. Kurdish officials accuse Baghdad of politicizing the issue; Iraqi authorities say the KRG has failed to meet financial obligations under the constitution.
Oil exports from the Kurdistan Region through the Iraq-Turkey pipeline have been suspended since March 2023, when a Paris-based arbitration court ruled in favor of Baghdad against Ankara, saying the latter had violated a 1973 pipeline agreement by allowing Erbil to begin exporting oil independently in 2014.
The suspension has incurred $28 billion in lost revenue so far, according to Dizayee.
