Iraqi, Kurdish forces in standoff over Kirkuk
Tensions rise as Baghdad orders peshmerga troops to vacate positions around city
BAGHDAD— Iraqi forces have demanded that Kurdish troops withdraw from oilfields and military bases around the contested city of Kirkuk, Kurdish officials and a senior militia leader said Friday, leading to a tense standoff around the city.
Kurdish peshmerga soldiers rallied to protect Kirkuk on Thursday night, as interior ministry troops and Shiite militias mobilized nearby. Volunteer and retired fighters bolstered the lines. Several positions were taken over by Iraqi forces, however, with Kurdish officers saying they received orders to withdraw.
The Kirkuk area, with about 10 per cent of Iraq’s oil reserves, has long been contested between Baghdad and Irbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, but the province has become even more of a flash point since Kurdistan voted in favour of independence in a referendum last month.
At the centre of the military conflagration are areas that forces loyal to the central government in Baghdad occupied before the advance of Daesh, also known as ISIS or ISIL, in 2014, but lost as Iraqi forces col- lapsed en masse in northern Iraq.
Kurdistan sees Kirkuk — ethnically and religiously mixed and home to Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen, Assyrian Christians, Sunnis and Shiites — as a historically Kurdish city where demographics were shifted by a campaign of “Arabization” under Saddam Hussein.
Relations between Baghdad and Irbil have deteriorated in recent weeks after the semi-autonomous govern- ment in the north defied the vehement opposition of Baghdad, as well as that of the United States and its neighbours, to hold a vote on independence. Baghdad has blocked international flights to Irbil in retaliation and has threatened to take over border crossings.
“I call on our brothers of the peshmerga to hand over these areas and not to drag the country into internal war,” said one Shiite militia com- mander, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider alAbadi took to Twitter on Friday to dismiss reports that Iraqi forces were planning to attack Kurdistan as “fake news” with a “deplorable agenda.” Najmaldin Karim, governor of Kirkuk, said that Baghdad has demanded that the peshmerga retreat from the K-1 military base and the oilfields run by Iraq’s North Oil Co. “They gave us an ultimatum,” he said. “There were troop movements of Shiite militias, some of them were disguised as the federal police.”
But the country’s interior minister, Qassim al-Araji, said that there was a "process of redeployment" underway that would see Iraqi forces return to the positions they held in the area before the Islamic State’s advance in 2014, when the Iraqi army collapsed in huge areas of the country’s north.
Kimberly Kagan, president of the Institute for the Study of War, said Araji’s statement could be viewed by Kurdish authorities as a “statement of intent” designed to signal allied Shiite militias that they should proceed with a military buildup to reclaim lands once held by Iraqi forces.
“I think the Kurds are reading the tea leaves correctly,” Kagan said.
One peshmerga officer in southwest Kirkuk said that his unit withdrew Thursday night. He said he’d received orders to withdraw, but didn’t know why. The unit was not aligned with the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party.
Kurdistan Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani called on the international community, and Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, to intervene and support the peshmerga to prevent the city from becoming “another Mosul.”