The Iraqi Kurds’ dire warnings of impending financial doom have failed to awaken Congress from its pre-election slumber.
Top officials from the besieged Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) made the rounds in Washington this week to warn that Erbil’s $100 million-a-month operating deficit was harming its ability to take on the Islamic State (IS). Declining oil prices and the burden of caring for perhaps as many as 1.8 million displaced Iraqis and Syrian refugees are taking their toll, they said, with peshmerga fighters going unpaid for the past three months and civil servants for the past four.