By Aqeel Hussein in Baghdad and Gethin
Chamberlain, Sunday Telegraph
June 10, 2007
Kurdish soldiers brought in to keep apart rival sectarian groups in Baghdad have
been drawn into bitter fighting with Shia militias, who accuse them of siding
with their fellow Sunnis.
Fighting flared last week in some Shia-dominated districts of the Iraqi capital,
when members of a Kurdish brigade refused to allow fighters from radical cleric
Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army to attack Sunni mosques.
The Shia fighters claimed that the mosques were being used by Sunni snipers and
accused the Kurds - most of whom are Sunni Muslims - of siding with their
co-religionists, despite the Kurds' years of persecution by the Sunni Ba'athists
who ran Iraq under Saddam Hussein.
The fighters called in an elite unit of the Mahdi army - known locally as the
"golden team", and blamed for the kidnap of five Britons two weeks ago - to take
on the Kurdish soldiers.
There is no sign so far of the continuing US military "surge" making a
significant impact on the level of sectarian violence. The Iraqi interior
ministry said that nearly 200 had died as a result of sectarian violence in the
first week of June. The monthly civilian death toll was up 30 per cent in May to
1,949.
In the Shuhadaa district of the city, Lt Eiar Qadir, the officer commanding the
Kurdish checkpoint, said his men came under attack from the Mahdi army after
refusing them permission to attack a Sunni mosque.
"They came to the checkpoint and one of them said, 'Hey you, we want to destroy
this mosque, don't get involved'," he said. "But our mission is to keep the
security situation stable and protect the Sunni mosque from the attacks of the
Shia militia. It is orders, and we are soldiers."
According to the Kurdish soldiers, the 16-strong group of Shia fighters detoured
down another street and opened fire on the mosque with rocket-propelled
grenades. The 12 Kurds on the checkpoint responded with machine guns, killing
four men.
Their determination to take on the Shia militia infuriated the Mahdi army. At a
Shia mosque about 800 yards away, its spokesman, Hussein al-Sulatani, said the
Kurds would be driven from the city and the mosque they were defending would be
destroyed.
"They are terrorists because they are protecting the mosques of the terrorists,"
he said.
He claimed that a sniper firing from the tower of the Sunni mosque had been
targeting Shias in the streets below for two months.
"We decided to kill him and destroy the tower. We went to the checkpoint and
asked politely to kill the sniper. They refused because they are spies for al-Qaeda
and the Sunnis, and so we decided to destroy the mosque anyway and fight the
Kurds."
The brother of one of the Mahdi army fighters killed in the exchange vowed to
take revenge on the Kurds. Ali Adil said he would kill 10 Kurds to avenge the
death of 25-year-old Hassan Adil.
The Mahdi army said it had called in its deadliest unit - the so-called "golden
team" - to get rid of the sniper, and by yesterday the Sunni mosque had been
destroyed.
The new escalation coincides with the
withdrawal of Kurdish soldiers, who were stationed in the Amil and Bayaa area as
part of the Baghdad Security Plan. The Kurdish pullback began Wednesday as their
scheduled three-month deployment ended, according to Iraqi and U.S. military
officials.
Hussein Abbas, a Shia, said people believed that the Kurds - to whom he referred
as peshmerga (Kurdish fighters) - had sided with the Sunnis: "We were happy
after the peshmerga left because the Sunnis left. Security is good again and the
shops are open."
But one of the evicted Sunnis denied that the Kurds had taken sides in the
sectarian fighting, and swore that the Shias would not enjoy peace for long.
"The Kurds were just protecting the houses of God," said Abu Muhannad, 44.
"After they left we thought we would get killed by the Mahdi army, so we left
too, and the Shia took our houses. But we will send mortars so they cannot
sleep."
