Iraq: More agony for Kurds after international bond failure

The Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) is caught in a financial trap with few viable exits. The costs of maintaining the autonomous state are high and increasing, thanks both to the expense of hosting approximately 1.7m refugees and also to funding Peshmerga resistance to the Islamic State group along a 1,000km front line. Aside from international aid, the main source of revenue is still the federal budget, but Baghdad is not remitting the agreed amounts. None of the alternatives that an increasingly desperate Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has turned to have proved viable.