The Associated Press reported Wednesday that the Kurds are expanding and fortifying their semi-autonomous area in northern Iraq.

According to the AP, the Kurds are creating barriers as both a defensive measure and as “a bid for greater autonomy or outright independence.”

The emerging frontier of sand berms, trenches and roadblocks is being built to take in areas Kurdish fighters seized as Sunni militants led by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant swept across northern Iraq last month, routing the armed forces of the Shiite-led government in Baghdad and raising fears the country could be torn in three.

Kurdish forces say they assumed control of the disputed territory in and around Kirkuk — a major oil hub — to prevent it from being taken over by the Sunni insurgents as Iraqi troops melted away. They say the defense of the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) frontier is necessary to prevent the militants, who have declared a transnational Islamic state straddling the Syrian-Iraqi border, from advancing further.

AP quotes a Kurdish official, Falah Bakir, as saying, “We are neighbors to a terrorist state — the Islamic State — and we have to take measures to ensure our safety.”

Earlier this week Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced his support for Kurdish independence as a means of combating extremists in the Middle East.

In Say it Again. Kurdish Independence Now, which appeared in the September 2013 issue of The Tower Magazine, Jonathan Spyer wrote, “Kurdish sovereignty would mean the establishment of a strong, pro-Western state in Middle East that is likely to be characterized by pragmatism, stable governance, and a pro-Western strategic outlook.”

[Photo: AFP news agency / YouTube ]