Syria's Kurds caution Iranian Kurds against aligning with US
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Donald Trump said on March 7 that he has told Kurdish forces not to enter the Iran war.
Bloomberg reported the US president as outlining his position as he spoke on Air Force One on his way back to Florida after attending a military service for six fallen American soldiers.
“We’re very friendly with the Kurds, as you know, but we don’t want to make the war any more complex than it already is. I have ruled that out. I don’t want the Kurds going in,” Trump was reported as saying.
He added that the Kurds had told him that they were “willing to go into Iran”, “but we really, I’ve told them, I don’t want them to go.”
Iranian Kurdish militia opposed to the Islamic Republic of Iran regime that is under attack from US and Israeli forces, are gathered in Kurdistan, Iraq. A cross-border attack into western Iran, perhaps with US and Israeli air cover, would likely draw an angry response from Iraq and Turkey, concerned that Trump would be stirring a hornet’s nest in the region. Some reports say Israel has been actively pushing for the US to back a Kurdish attack. However, some analysts have cast doubt on whether the various Kurdish groups are united on whether or not such an incursion into Iran would be wise.
Turkey said on March 5 that its state institutions were keeping a close eye on the actions of the Iranian Kurdish Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) militant group.
"The activities of groups that fuel ethnic separatism, such as the terrorist organisation PJAK, negatively affect not only Iran's security but also the overall peace and stability of the region," Turkey's defence ministry told a weekly press briefing in Ankara, Reuters reported on March 5.
PJAK is aligned with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), through the Kurdistan Communirties Union (KCK), an umbrella group of Kurdish political and insurgent groups in Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq. The PKK, based in mountainous northern Iraq, fought a four-decade-long armed insurgency against Turkish forces, prior to the declaration of a ceasefire and a peace negotiation, which remains fragile, a year ago. Both the PKK and PJAK are designated as terrorist groups by Turkey.
On March 4, CNN reported that the CIA has been working to arm Kurdish forces with the aim of fomenting a popular uprising in Iran.
As Iran conflict spills over, Iraq’s Kurds say ‘this war is not mine’
By AFP
March 7, 2026
A week of war has gripped daily life in Iraqi Kurdistan - Copyright AFP Ozan KOSE
Anne Chaon
On a deserted road not too far from the border between Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan, Satar Barsirini looked up at the sky, now streaked with jets and drones.
Iraq’s Kurdish region has found itself caught in the crossfire of a regional war triggered by US and Israeli attacks on the Islamic republic.
Dressed like the Kurdish fighters he once served alongside, Barsirini still wears the khaki shalwar, fitted jacket and scarf wrapped around his waist.
Though recently retired, he refuses to give up his peshmerga uniform as he tills his small plot of land.
The rumble of jets and hum of drones “come from everywhere. Especially at night”, he told AFP in the hamlet of Barsirini, dozens of kilometres from the border.
He described the “shiver in our flesh” as the drones hit the ground outside.
“I feel bad for the people, because we have paid a lot in blood to liberate Kurdistan… We just want to live.”
Erbil, the autonomous region’s capital, and the valleys leading to the border have been targeted by Tehran and the Iraqi armed groups it supports.
American bases there have come under fire, as have positions held by Iranian Kurdish parties — the same ones US President Donald Trump said it would be “wonderful” to see storm Iran.
But Iran warned on Friday it would target facilities in Iraqi Kurdistan if fighters crossed into its territory.
“This isn’t my war,” said 58-year-old Barsirini.
He recalled the brutal repression and flight into the snowy mountains after the 1991 Kurdish uprising that followed the first Gulf War.
– ‘Dangerous people’ –
The uprising was repressed, leading to an exodus of two million Kurds to Iran and Turkey.
“When we fled the cities for our lives, we went to Iran. They helped us, they gave us shelter and food,” he said.
The Kurds would not forget that, Barsirini stressed, adding that they could not just “turn against them” now to support the US and Israel.
“I don’t trust (Americans). They are dangerous people,” he said.
The Kurds, an ethnic minority with a distinct culture and language, are rooted in the mountainous region spread across Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
They have long fought for their own homeland, but for decades suffered defeats on the battlefield and massacres in their hometowns.
They make up one of Iran’s most important non-Persian ethnic minority groups.
A week of war has gripped daily life in Iraqi Kurdistan, residents told AFP.
“People are afraid,” said Nasr al-Din, a 42-year-old policeman who, as a child, lived through the 1991 exodus — “thrown on a donkey’s back with my sister”.
“This generation is different from the older ones” that have seen “seen fighting”.
Now, he said, you could be “sitting down in your home… and all of a sudden a drone hits your house”.
“We may have to go into town or somewhere safer,” said Issa Diayri, 31, a truck driver waiting in a roadside garage, his lorry idle for lack of deliveries from Iran.
– ‘Shouldn’t get involved’ –
Soran, a small town of 3,000 people about 65 kilometres (40 miles) from the border, was hit Thursday by a drone that fell in the middle of a street.
There, baker Yussef Ramazan, 42, and his three apprentices, hurriedly made bread before breaking their fast.
But, living so close to the Iranian border, he said “people are afraid to come and buy it”.
He told AFP he did not think it was a good idea “for the Kurdish region to get involved in this war”.
“We are not even an independent country yet. We would like to become one, but we are nothing for now, so we shouldn’t get involved in these situations.”
Across the street, Hajji watched from his empty dry cleaning shop as the road cleared.
Before the war, the town was crowded as evening fell, he said, declining to give his full name.
“But after the drone explosion, no one was here. In five minutes, everyone left the street and no one was out.”
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