From ISIS to Declining Oil Prices: Qubad Talabani on the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Challenges

Long an island of stability in a Middle East marked by conflict, the Kurdish region of Iraq now faces a perfect storm. Its finances have been severely affected by the dramatic decline in the price of oil, its main source of revenue. The KRG also faces a constitutional crisis because President Masoud Barzani's term has ended without the Kurdish political parties finding a definitive way forward or agreement on succession. And the KRG's Peshmerga military force is engaged with the United States and its allies in an extended offensive to rout the self-declared Islamic State extremist group and liberate the nearby city of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest. Amidst all of this, President Barzani also has indicated that the KRG will hold a referendum in 2016 on whether the region should seek independence from Iraq.