Lawmaker
Confirms Kurd-Shia
Clashes In Baghdad
By Ali al-Fadhily
10 June, 2007
Inter Press Service
BAGHDAD, Jun 9 (IPS)
- A May 29 IPS report on clashes between Kurdish Peshmerga troops and
militiamen of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Baghdad has been confirmed
by an Iraqi member of Parliament, representing the Sunni-led Iraqi Accordance
Front (Al-Tawafuq).
Speaking on condition of
strict anonymity inside the heavily-fortified Green Zone of central
Baghdad where the Iraqi government meets, the MP told IPS that Iraqi
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki "sold Kirkuk in exchange for Kurdish
support for his collapsing government, and other matters such as not
being in the way of Shiite militias in Baghdad."
He clarified that he believes
al-Maliki made a pact with Kurdish MPs to relinquish plans for trying
to have the central government in Baghdad control economic and oil issues
in the Kurdish controlled city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, but did not
express confidence that the deal would be honoured.
All political manoeuvrings
these days are "about who is to take over power in the country,"
he added, "while people are getting killed by the hundreds every
day."
Last month the clashes between
the Kurdish and Shia militias occurred in the Amil and Bayaa areas of
southwest Baghdad. The Kurds were manning a checkpoint that was part
of the Baghdad security plan when they were attacked by the Shia militiamen.
The clashes underscore the
tense and extremely volatile political situation, exposing a very real
possibility that Kurdish-Shiite fighting could ignite in the oil-rich
city of Kirkuk, as al-Sadr has many followers in that mostly Kurdish
city.
"Peshmerga Kurdish Forces
withdrew from Bayaa and Amil immediately after Prime Minister al-Maliki's
return from Sulaymaniya and Arbil, cities in northern Iraq," retired
Iraqi army general Mahmood Sultan told IPS.
Sultan, who now works as
a military analyst for various organisations in Baghdad, told IPS, "It
is obvious that Iraqi leaders have started dividing the country and
high posts. They are taking advantage of the U.S. administration's despair
for any possible exit from the deteriorating situation."
The first battalion of the
second Iraqi army division, which is a Kurdish Peshmerga militia unit,
withdrew from the Bayaa and Amil quarters while telling people in the
area that they would be replaced by another Kurdish group.
Residents, however, were
surprised to see forces of the Ministry of Interior taking over the
former Kurdish positions. Ministry of Interior forces are largely comprised
of Shia militias, and have been accused of operating as death squads.
Immediately after the Kurdish
forces withdrew, Shia militias appeared to invade Sunni mosques and
started killing and evicting Sunnis in the area.
A spokesman for the People
of Iraq Assembly, led by Adnan al-Dulaimy, condemned the reappearance
of Shiite militias and their "brutal attacks" against Sunni
mosques.
"Faatah Pasha and other
mosques are now occupied with Shiite militia men under cover of Iraqi
police," read a statement from the group addressing the matter,
"And the government is fully responsible for the current situation
and any future disasters which could take place in the coming days."
Shock waves from the incident
are already shaking up the government.
Islamic party senior member
and deputy chief of the security committee in the Iraqi Parliament,
Abdul Karim al-Samarra'e, said at a news conference that he contacted
Minister of Interior Jawad al-Bolani and National Security Advisor Muaffaq
al-Rubaie about Shiite militias invading southwest Baghdad and the urgent
need to react to the withdrawal of the Kurdish unit.
"I received no response,"
he told reporters, "and this has led me to suspend my post at the
committee until the situation is corrected."
Shia militia activity continues
to be high across Baghdad, but has worsened since the Kurdish unit was
removed from the aforementioned areas.
"Militias attacked our
area in Saydiya near Bayaa on Thursday," a lawyer who lives off
the main commercial street of Saydiya, speaking on condition of anonymity,
told IPS. "They started their usual business of detaining people
in order to execute them later, but the God-blessed resistance fighters
appeared to teach them a lesson and so they escaped like scared rats."
Many Iraqis in the area believe
that the combination of an impotent Iraqi government and ongoing political
deals are only worsening the already catastrophic condition their country
is in.
"It is certainly one
part of the deal between [Kurdish leader Massoud] Barzani, [Iraqi President
Jalal] Talibani and Maliki," Yassir al-Ani, a journalist who lives
in Saydiya, told IPS. "We never trusted the Kurds to be a positive
factor in the equation and we were positive that they were brought to
Baghdad just to support Americans in their effort to defeat the resistance
and to gain more privileges in the new arrangements for dividing the
country," he said.
Some Iraqi analysts believe
the incident and the resulting political machinations are a reflection
of the crisis the U.S. military faces in Baghdad and shows there is
no single group capable of achieving control of the ever-worsening situation
in the capital city.
"All U.S. allies could
not have full control of any part of Iraq and so they have become more
a problem than a solution to the dilemmas the U.S. army is facing in
the disturbed country," Iraqi political analyst Maki al-Nazzal
told IPS.
"The only way out of
all this is to talk to the right people, who certainly are not those
in the Iraqi Parliament, but then again that would mean an obvious sign
of defeat for the American project in Iraq and the area," he added.
(*Ali, our correspondent
in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based
specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region)
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