what mischief the kurds are up to in iraq
- From: "valdemort" <sylviapatis@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 29 Dec 2005 13:01:11 -0800
Kurds in Iraq prepare to form state in northBy Tom LasseterKnight
RidderKIRKUK,
Iraq - Kurdish leaders, by filling regular Iraqi army units with
thousands of loyal militia members, have laid the groundwork to seize a
large swath of northern Iraq and establish an independent Kurdistan, if
-- as they expect -- the fragile threads now holding the nation
together disintegrate.
With 10,000 former militia members in army divisions in the north,
those leaders are prepared to send them south to take the oil-rich city
of Kirkuk and possibly half of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city.
Five days of interviews with Kurdish leaders and troops in the region
-- arranged independently and without a customary U.S. military escort
-- suggest that U.S. plans to bring unity to Iraq by training and
equipping a national army aren't working. Instead, some troops formally
under U.S. and Iraqi national command are preparing to protect
territory and ethnic and religious interests in the event of Iraq's
fragmentation, which many of them think is inevitable.
Their strategy mirrors that of Shiite Muslim parties in southern Iraq,
which have stocked Iraqi army and police units with members of their
own militias and have maintained a separate militia presence throughout
Iraq's central and southern provinces. The militias now are illegal
under Iraqi law but operate openly in many areas. Kurdish militia
leaders say they expect the Shiites to eventually create an independent
state in the south, as they would do in the north.
The Kurdish soldiers in the north said that while they wore Iraqi army
uniforms they still considered themselves members of the peshmerga --
the Kurdish militia -- and were awaiting orders from Kurdish leaders to
break ranks. Many said they wouldn't hesitate to kill their Iraqi army
comrades, especially Arabs, if a fight for an independent Kurdistan
erupted.
``It doesn't matter if we have to fight the Arabs in our own
battalion,'' said Gabriel Mohammed, a Kurdish soldier in the Iraqi army
who was escorting a Knight Ridder reporter through Kirkuk. ``Kirkuk
will be ours.''
The Kurds have readied their troops not only because they have long
yearned to establish an independent state but also because their
leaders expect Iraq to disintegrate, senior leaders in the peshmerga --
literally, ``those who face death'' -- told Knight Ridder. The Kurds
are mostly secular Sunni Muslims, and are ethnically distinct from
Arabs.
The Bush administration -- and Iraq's neighbors -- oppose the nation's
fragmentation, fearing that it could lead to regional collapse. To keep
Iraq together, U.S. plans to withdraw significant numbers of U.S.
soldiers in 2006 will depend on turning U.S.-trained Kurdish and Shiite
militia members into a national army.
The interviews with Kurdish troops, however, suggested that as the U.S.
military transfers more bases and areas of control to Iraqi units, it
may be handing the nation to militias that are bent more on advancing
ethnic and religious interests than on defeating the insurgency and
preserving national unity.
A U.S. military officer in Baghdad with knowledge of Iraqi army
operations said he was frustrated to hear of the Iraqi soldiers'
comments, but that he had seen no reports suggesting that they had
acted improperly in the field.
``There's talk and there's acts, and their actions are that they follow
the orders of the Iraqi chain of command and they secure their sectors
well,'' said the officer, who refused to be identified because he was
not authorized to speak on the subject.
U.S. military officials have said they are trying to get a broader mix
of sects in the Iraqi units.
However, Col. Talib Naji, a Kurd serving in the Iraqi army on the edge
of Kirkuk, said he would resist any attempts to dilute the Kurdish
presence in his brigade.
``The Ministry of Defense recently sent me 150 Arab soldiers from the
south,'' Naji said. ``After two weeks of service, we sent them away. We
did not accept them. We will not let them carry through with their
plans to bring more Arab soldiers here.''
One key to the Kurds' plan for independence is securing control of
Kirkuk, the seat of a province that holds some of Iraq's largest oil
fields. Should the Kurds push for independence, Kirkuk and its oil
would be a key economic engine.
The city's Kurdish population was driven out by former Sunni Arab
dictator Saddam Hussein, whose ``Arabization'' program paid thousands
of Arab families to move there and replace recently deported or
murdered Kurds.
``Kirkuk is Kurdistan; it does not belong to the Arabs,'' Hamid Afandi,
the minister of peshmerga for the Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of
the two major Kurdish groups, said in an interview at his office in the
Kurdish city of Irbil. ``If we can resolve this by talking, fine, but
if not, then we will resolve it by fighting.''
In addition to putting former peshmerga in the Iraqi army, the Kurds
have deployed small peshmerga units in buildings and compounds
throughout northern Iraq, according to militia leaders. While it's hard
to calculate the number of these active peshmerga fighters, interviews
with militia members suggest that it's well in excess of 10,000.
Afandi said his group had sent at least 10,000 peshmerga to the Iraqi
army in northern Iraq, a figure substantiated in interviews with
officers in two Iraqi army divisions in the region.
``All of them belong to the central government, but inside they are
Kurds. . . . All peshmerga are under the orders of our leadership,''
Afandi said.
Jafar Mustafir, a close adviser to Iraq's Kurdish interim president,
Jalal Talabani, and the deputy head of peshmerga for the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan, a longtime rival of the Kurdistan Democratic Party,
echoed that.
``We will do our best diplomatically, and if that fails we will use
force'' to secure borders for an independent Kurdistan, Mustafir said.
``The government in Baghdad
.
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