KRG: Cold-shouldered

As Iraq consolidates its control of recaptured land and resources in and around Kirkuk, the KRG is looking increasingly isolated

There's been a lot of diplomatic activity in the Middle East over recent days. But none of it has involved the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, as part of a tour of Gulf states, flew to Baghdad to meet Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. The Kurdish leadership must have hoped that his next stop was Erbil. The involvement of the US in attempts to defuse the crisis between the KRG and the federal government in Baghdad, in the wake of the forced withdrawal of Peshmerga units from land captured in 2014, would have been welcomed in Erbil. It wasn't to be. To rub salt in the wounds, Tillerson, during a stop in Riyadh, attended the inaugural meeti