A tanker containing a million barrels of crude oil is floating around the Mediterranean, and its cargo is available at half-price. Yet if any country seizes the bargain, it may be pushing Iraq closer to disintegration. The oil aboard the tanker is at the center of a fight over its ownership between the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan, which pumped and shipped the crude from its territory in northern Iraq, and the central government in Baghdad, which claims the rights to all oil revenue. Kurdish Peshmerga armed forces seized on the anarchy in northern Iraq, where militant Islamists routed the Baghdad government’s ... (full story)