Kurdistan President set to visit Damascus for Kurdish-Syrian talks: Iranian report
Shafaq News/ Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani is expected tovisit Damascus soon to mediate talks between Syrian Kurds and the new Syrianadministration, according to a report by Iran’s Mehr News Agency onMonday.
The report said Masoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party(KDP), is spearheading efforts to bring Syrian Kurds and the Syrian governmentunder President Ahmad al-Sharaa to the negotiation table. The initiative aimsto facilitate discussions and agreements between the two sides as soon aspossible.
Neither the Kurdish Presidency nor the office of Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani has commented on the Iranian report.
The Kurdistan Region has long sought to preserve the demographic andpolitical presence of Kurds in Syria, viewing them as a crucial cultural,political, and security ally. Efforts to unify the political demands of SyrianKurds and mitigate internal divisions have been ongoing for years.
Political parties and institutions in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region haveintensified their diplomatic activities to shield Syrian Kurds from furtherarmed conflict. Syrian Kurds, who form the second-largest ethnic group in thecountry after Arabs, are estimated to number around three million in a nationof over 23 million. Precise figures are unavailable due to the lack of officialcensus data.
Iraq is currently hosting around 280,000 Syrian refugees, with themajority living in the Kurdistan region. An estimated 122,000 refugees residein Erbil Governorate, including both the city and nearby camps.
With over 100 kilometers of shared borders, the region fears anotherwave of mass displacement similar to 2013, when hundreds of thousands of SyrianKurds fled to Iraqi Kurdistan.
