Iraqi forces retake Kirkuk in escalating dispute with Kurds
BAGHDAD — Iraqi forces took control of the contested city of Kirkuk on Monday, as two U.S. allies faced off over territory and oil in the wake of the Kurdish region’s independence vote last month.
Iraqi forces recaptured military bases, an oil field and other infrastructure held by the Kurdish troops, saying their aim was to return to positions around Kirkuk they held before fleeing in the face of an Islamic State push in 2014. But in the end they went further, entering the city itself.
Iraqi officers lowered Kurdistan’s flag and raised Iraq’s flag at the provincial council building in oil-rich Kirkuk, the center of a fierce dispute between the Kurds and Baghdad. Cars packed roads out of the city as some residents rushed to leave. Others who had been unhappy with Kurdish rule took to the streets to celebrate.
The United States, which trained both the Kurdish and Iraqi forces, seemed to be left in a bind as the crisis escalated between two partners in the fight against the Islamic State.
“We’re not taking sides,” President Donald Trump said at a news conference in the Rose Garden, adding that the United States had a “very good relationship” with the central government and Kurds.
“We never should have been there,” he said, referring to the 2003 invasion, “but we’re not taking sides.”
A Kurdish referendum for independence last month intensified a decades-old dispute between the two sides. The Iraqi government, the United States, Turkey and Iran opposed the vote. For Baghdad, it added urgency to a need to reassert its claims to the province, which has around 10 percent of the country’s oil reserves.
Shortly after Trump spoke, the Kurdistan government’s representative in Washington, Sami Adbul Rahman, called the U.S. position “bewildering,” and echoed Irbil’s charges that Iran was already benefiting from the upheaval.
Despite U.S. claims of efforts to set up negotiations — and Trump’s comments Monday — Washington’s position before and after the referendum has been that the Kurds must yield to Baghdad, Rahman said. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi “has decided to impose his will by force. We will counter this. We will push back. The potential for all out war is there.”
“I hope we haven’t reached the point of no return,” Rahman said. “If we do, it will be catastrophic for everyone,” including “the United States and other who have invested so much political capital, as well as treasure and blood” in Iraq.
But as well as highlighting the deep rifts in Iraq, the confrontation has also exposed splits among the Kurds. Kurdish factions were divided on whether to allow in Iraqi troops or stand their ground, with some Kurdish fighters, known as peshmerga, ordered to give up their posts.
Some elements of Kurdistan’s Patriotic Union Party, or PUK, whose forces dominate in the area, agreed to withdraw in coordination with Baghdad. But the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party, or KDP, opposed a deal.
The general command of Kurdistan’s peshmerga slammed PUK officials for a “major historic betrayal of Kurdistan” by handing over positions, and the militia vowed to fight.
A curfew was imposed on the city on Monday night as Iraqi forces announced they had completed their “first phase.”
Still in the hands of Kurds on Monday was the Bai Hassan oil field, which is under the control of the KDP and has a capacity of 200,000 barrels of crude a day, as well as swaths of disputed territories in other provinces.