Move by Kurdish Peshmerga forces near
Kirkuk boosts Iraq tensions
28.4.2013 |
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Kurdish Peshmerga troops and tanks are deployed on
the outskirts of Kirkuk, some 250km north of
Baghdad, Dec. 3, 2012. The Kurds are seeking to integrate the
Kirkuk province into
the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region clamming it to
be historically a Kurdish city, it lies just south
border of Kurdistan region, the
population is a mix of majority Kurds and minority
of Arabs, Christians and Turkmen, lies 250 km
northeast of Baghdad.
Kurds have a strong cultural and emotional
attachment to Kirkuk, which they call "the Kurdish
Jerusalem." Kurds see it as the rightful and perfect
capital of an autonomous Kurdistan state.
Photo: Reuters
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Iraqi general says Kurdish forces move in Kirkuk
province 'dangerous'
April 28, 2013
KIRKUK, Iraq's border with Kurdistan region,—
Kurdish forces
deployed to new
areas of a disputed north Iraq province in what a
top officer said Saturday was an attempt to move
into oilfields, as five days of unrest killed more
than 215 people.
The deployments increased already high tensions in
Iraq, adding a long-running Arab-Kurd dispute over
territory to a stand-off between Sunni Arab
protesters and the country's Shiite-led government
that has descended into bloody violence.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki pointed to the
civil war in neighbouring Syria as the cause of what
he termed renewed sectarian strife in Iraq, while
the head of the Sahwa anti-Al-Qaeda militia forces
threatened all-out conflict if militants who killed
Iraqi soldiers are not handed over.
"After consultations with the governor of Kirkuk,
there has been a decision for Peshmerga (security)
forces to fill the vacuums in general, and
especially around the city of Kirkuk," Jabbar Yawar,
secretary general of Iraqi Kurdistan region's
Peshmerga ministry, said in a statement.
Oil-rich Kirkuk province and its eponymous capital
are a key part of territory that Kurdistan wants to
incorporate over strong objections from the federal
government in Baghdad, a dispute diplomats and
officials say is a major threat to long-term
stability.
Yawar said the
Peshmerga deployments were aimed at combating
militants and protecting civilians, but Iraqi
army officers ascribed other motives to the
moves.
"They want to reach (Kirkuk's) oil wells and
fields," Staff General Ali Ghaidan Majeed, the
commander of Iraqi ground forces, told AFP.
He said the deployments were a "dangerous
development" and violated an agreement that
Peshmerga forces and Iraqi soldiers would man
joint checkpoints.
Another high-ranking Iraqi officer told AFP that
"after the latest movements of the Peshmerga
forces, the army is on alert."
"The army sees the move of the Peshmerga as a
(political) manoeuvre and not to fill any
vacuum."
The deployments came amid a wave violence that
began on Tuesday when security forces moved
against Sunni anti-government protesters near
the northern Sunni Arab town of Hawijah,www.ekurd.net
sparking clashes that killed 53 people.
Subsequent unrest, much of it apparently linked
to the Hawijah clashes, killed dozens more and
brought the death toll to more than 215 on
Saturday.
The violence is the deadliest so far linked to
demonstrations that broke out in Sunni areas of
Shiite-majority Iraq more than four months ago.
The Sunni protesters have called for Maliki's
resignation and railed against authorities for
allegedly targeting their community, including
what they say are wrongful detentions and
accusations of involvement in terrorism.
Maliki said on Saturday that sectarian strife
"came back to Iraq, because it began in another
place in this region," in an apparent reference
to Syria.
The civil war in neighbouring Syria pitting
mainly Sunni Muslim rebels against the regime of
President Bashar al-Assad, a member of the
Alawite offshoot of Shiite Islam, has killed
more than 70,000 people.
Sunni-Shiite sectarian violence in Iraq, which
peaked in 2006 and 2006, killed tens of
thousands.
"Sectarianism is evil, and the wind of
sectarianism does not need a licence to cross
from a country to another, because if it begins
in a place, it will move to another place,"
Maliki said.
He also called in a statement for
anti-government protesters to "expel the
criminals who targeted Iraqi army and police
forces," after five soldiers were killed near a
protest site.
And Iraqiya state television quoted Sahwa chief
Sheikh Wissam al-Hardan as saying that if those
who have killed soldiers are not handed over,
"the Sahwa will take the requested procedures
and do what it did in 2006."
Sahwa militiamen fought pitched battles against
Sunni militants from 2006, helping to turn the
tide of the Iraq war.
Clashes between gunmen and Iraqi forces left
five soldiers dead and one soldier and a gunman
wounded on Saturday near the site of a
long-running anti-government protest near Ramadi,
west of Baghdad, while a sniper killed a
policeman in the city, sources said.
The killings came after a Sunni cleric, Sheikh
Hamed al-Kubaisi, called in a sermon at the
protest site on Friday for the creation of an
army to defend Sunnis.
Gunmen also shot dead two football players in
Fallujah west of the capital, police and a
doctor said, and an AFP journalist there said
armed men were patrolling the city in cars.
And five Sahwa militiamen were killed when
gunmen attacked a checkpoint south of Tikrit,
police and a doctor said.
The oil-rich province of Kirkuk is one of the most disputed areas by the
regional government and the Iraqi government in Baghdad.
The Kurds are seeking to integrate the province into the semi-autonomous
Kurdistan Region clamming it to be historically a Kurdish city, it lies just
south border of the Kurdistan autonomous region, the population is a mix of
majority Kurds and minority of Arabs, Christians and Turkmen, lies 250 km
northeast of Baghdad.
Kurds have a strong cultural and emotional
attachment to Kirkuk, which they call "the Kurdish
Jerusalem." Kurds see it as the rightful and
perfect capital of an autonomous Kurdistan state.
Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution is related to
the normalization of the situation in Kirkuk city
and other disputed areas through having back its
Kurdish inhabitants and repatriating the Arabs
relocated in the city during the former regime’s
time to their original provinces in central and
southern Iraq.
The article also calls for conducting a census to be
followed by a referendum to let the inhabitants
decide whether they would like Kirkuk to be annexed
to the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region or having
it as an independent province.
The former regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
had forced over 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up
their homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the
city and the region's oil industry.
The last ethnic-breakdown census in Iraq was
conducted in 1957, well before Saddam began his
program to move Arabs to Kirkuk. That count showed
178,000 Kurds, 48,000 Turkomen, 43,000 Arabs and
10,000 Assyrian-Chaldean Christians living in the
city.
Copyright ©, respective
author or news agency,
AFP | Ekurd.net | Agencies
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