While the Iraqi army along with the Shiite paramilitary force Hashed al-Shaabi — or Popular Mobilization Units — and Iranian fighters under the command of Gen. Qasem Soleimani were routing the Islamic State (IS) at Saddam Hussein’s birthplace of Tikrit in the heartland of Sunni Iraq, it was indeed an interesting experience to watch, from a distance of three hours away, the evolving military and political situation.
Sulaimaniyah is known as Kurdistan’s cultural capital and has been the bastion for Kurdish national sentiment for nearly a century. It has long been the power base of Iraq’s first Kurdish President Jalal Talabani in the post-Saddam period, and the town itself is where the Kurdish Gorran (Change) movement was born and won two successive electoral victories.
