Anger Mounts on Decision to
Deploy Kurdish Peshmerga in Baghdad
By Nidhal al-Laithi and Marsi
abu Tareq
Azzaman, January 8, 2007
Kurdish
leaders have decided to deploy Peshmerga in the current fighting in Baghdad
where government troops aided by U.S. forces have launched yet another campaign
to secure the restive city.
The move
comes as U.S. President George W. Bush is set to announce his much-awaited for
new strategy for Iraq in which he is expected to announce a surge in the number
of U.S. troops in the country.
Iraqis
are skeptical about U.S. plans and experience shows that any fresh initiatives
by the U.S. since its 2003 invasion have mostly been counterproductive.
The
latest campaign to secure Baghdad comes following the failure of several others
in which tens of thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops took part.
Criticism
of the current campaign has come mainly from Sunni leaders who say that the
Shiite-dominated government is solely targeting Sunni-dominated quarters in
Baghdad.
The
current campaign has so far avoided the Sadr City, a stronghold of Mahdi Army, a
powerful Shiite militia group said to be behind much of the current sectarian
violence.
As
government troops and U.S. forces were moving to flush out armed groups from
Sunni areas, Madhi Army units were reported to have attacked Sunni villages in
Baghdad outskirts killing 10 people, injuring many others and burning 10 houses.
The
current campaign is certainly doomed like its predecessors despite the
deployment massive forces, including battalions from Kurdish Peshmerga.
Kurdish
forces have not yet arrived in Baghdad but sources said their deployment was
expected to coincide with the stationing of at least 20,000 more U.S. troops in
the city.
It will
be the first time for Kurdish armed groups to fight in Baghdad and specifically
against their co-religionists, Arab Muslim Sunnis. The majority Kurds are Sunni
Muslims.
Many
inside the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, particularly the few
Sunni groups who have opted to take part in the political process have come out
against the move.
In a
sectarian-tainted city like Baghdad it will be hard to see whether the Kurds
will put up a fight amid religious decrees from top Iraqi Sunni clerics, many of
who are Kurds, banning taking arms against the resistance and denouncing U.S.
troops and the Iraqi government.
The Mahdi
Army itself is a sworn enemy of the Kurdish Peshmerga and is currently
spearheading resistance of Kurdish moves to annex the oil-rich city of Kirkuk to
their autonomous region.
To order
Kurdish forces to fight in Baghdad is seen by many a dangerous step that is
bound to further deepen the ethnic divisions and add more fuel to the current
sectarian fire.
Mahmoud
Othman, a prominent member of the Iraqi Kurdish Coalition, grouping the region’s
two main factions of Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, said he was against
sending Kurdish peshmerga to fight against Arabs anywhere in Iraq.
“There
are fears that a fight like this pitting Kurds against the Arabs is bound to add
an ethnic touch to the conflict,” Othman said.
Othman
added,”The deployment of Kurdish forces in Arab areas is wrong and will create
sensitivities and accusations that Kurds are killing the Arabs.
“I am
against the move … and there are many in the Iraqi parliament who are against
it, too.”
