Monday, 14 September 2009, 09:38 EDT
Iraq's Kurds 'caught in sectarian warfare'
A U.S. soldier stands guard at the entrance of the Makhmour local council building in Nineveh Province, north of Baghdad, September 2, 2009. REUTERS/Azad Lashkari
By Alice Fordham
Telegraph
Kurdish villagers in northern Iraq have made plans for a violent insurrection to resist an al-Qaeda campaign that has killed hundreds of people.
Residents of a swathe of territory governed by the Iraqi province of Nineveh, but claimed by the Kurdistan region next door, believe that a sectarian war is being master-minded by political rivals.
Gunmen on Sunday killed a Kurdish policeman's wife and three children in a disputed area of Kirkuk and a truck bomb last week killed 25 in the Kurdish-populated village of Wardek.
Mayors of 17 Kurdish towns in Nineveh have declared that the security forces are incapable of protecting the area and want to join the Kurdish region.
Barzan Said Kaka, the mayor of Makhmour, one of the biggest settlements, accused the Sunni Arab Hadba party, which dominates the provincial council based in the capital, Mosul *, of using al-Qaeda to further its political goals.
"People in Mosul are sympathetic to the former Iraqi government, there is sympathy with the Islamic groups," he said.
It is a view supported by General Ray Odierno, America's top commander in Iraq who last week proposed the US army undertake patrols jointly with Iraqi and Kurdish units to impose the peace. "We have al-Qaeda exploiting this fissure between Arabs and Kurds in Nineveh," he said.
Dr Reidar Vissar, an Iraqi political analyst, said tripartite patrols could diffuse tensions but were no "silver bullet".
"Joint patrols," he said, "would give the Kurdish land grabs that have happened since 2003 an unprecedented degree of legitimacy." Major Farad Osman Wsu, of the Iraqi Army battalion stationed in Makhmour, conceded that the political leadership had not done enough to stop attacks but said a further escalation was unlikely.
Maysoon al-Damluji, MP for Mosul in the central Iraqi parliament, said that politicians must determine if "Iraq is a single country, or if it is Kurdish state and an Arab one".
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* Mosul, capital city of Ninewa province in Iraq, near the border with Kurdistan region, lies 405 km north of Baghdad. The Yazidis are primarily ethnic Kurds located near Mosul. A Kurdish Yazidis are primarily ethnic Kurds located near Mosul. Some 350,000 Yazidis live in villages around Mosul near Kurdistan autonomous region border.
Source: Kurdish Globe
