Eli Lake, Columnist

As Kirkuk's Governor Is Forced to Flee, Iran Moves In

Baghdad and Washington say the invasion has been no big deal. The Kurds beg to differ.

October 19, 2017 at 4:28 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

A man without a home.
Photographer: Marwan Ibrahim/AFP/Getty Images

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Najmaldin Karim, the Kurdish governor of Kirkuk Province, will not be returning to the city that elected him in 2011 and 2014. It's too dangerous.

In an interview Wednesday, he told me he fled his home on Tuesday in the early evening and has no plans at the moment to return. "If I go back, my life is in danger," he told me. "Even the night when all this happened, I had to maneuver carefully to go to safety."