Kurds drawn into Iraq's firing
line By Ali al-Fadhily
BAGHDAD - A massacre by members of Shi'ite
cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army on Sunni
worshippers this month sparked clashes between
patrolling Kurdish militiamen in southwest Baghdad
and the Mahdi Army, raising tensions that fighting
between the groups could spread.
Muqtada,
who emerged from hiding last Friday, delivered a
fiery anti-occupation sermon at a mosque in the
city of Kufa, south of Baghdad and near Najaf. On
the same day, Iraqi police told
reporters that the leader of
the Mahdi Army in the southern city of Basra, Abu
Qadir, had been killed in a gun battle with
British soldiers.
These recent
developments could have far-reaching implications,
even into the volatile city of Kirkuk in the
Kurdish-controlled north, where tensions run high
between Arab Shi'ites and Kurds. Kurdish groups
are intent on controlling the city and forcing
other groups out, so as to control the oil-rich
surrounding area to facilitate the creation of an
independent Kurdish state.
Dressed in
official police uniforms to gain access through a
checkpoint to detain Sunni worshippers at a mosque
in the area, Mahdi Army members told Kurdish
members of the Iraqi Army who were participating
in the crackdown in the southwestern areas of
Baghdad that they were following orders from the
Ministry of Interior.
A member of the
local council in the area of Baghdad where the
incident took place spoke with Inter Press Service
(IPS) at his office on condition of strict
anonymity: "The dispute started when the Mahdi
Army members raided the Bayaa and Amil area to
arrest 14 worshippers at a Sunni mosque while
broadcasting a message through loudspeakers that
they were conducting the raid by orders from
Brigadier-General Nizar, the Kurdish platoon
leader."
The Kurdish unit was placed in
the Amil and Bayaa areas of southwest Baghdad in
March as part of the security crackdown there led
by the US military.
"The detainees were
found executed later, so we understood that the
force was in fact a death squad working for the
Ministry of Interior," he said. "Brigadier Nizar
later revealed that fact to the media, saying the
attacking force had an official warrant from the
Ministry of Interior and that was why he allowed
them to go through his checkpoints."
Local
police believe that the Shi'ite militia, operating
out of the Ministry of Interior as they have been
for more than two years, also attempted to provoke
a fight between the Kurdish unit in Baghdad and
the local community in the area they were
deployed, which is heavily Sunni.
Two
weeks ago Mahdi Army members attacked the Kurdish
unit. It is unknown whether anyone was killed or
wounded from either side, since orders from the
leaders of the Kurds and the Mahdi Army blocked
media coverage of the event.
Sources from
inside the Kurdish unit involved in the incident,
who spoke with IPS on condition of anonymity since
they were instructed not to speak with the media,
explained that Kurdish soldiers and officers
remain angry about the attack on their unit, but
they had received strict orders from their command
in northern Iraq not to fight back against the
Mahdi Army at the moment, but "to deal firmly with
any further attacks in the future".
As a
result, tensions are high and the urge to blame
someone for the instability in the area has
increased.
A witness to the 14 Sunni men
being detained by the Mahdi Army spoke with IPS,
also requesting that his name withheld. He said he
believes the US military has taken sides between
the militias and is pitting them against one
another.
"This area was peaceful and the
mixture of Shi'ite and Sunni had no dispute
whatsoever," he said. "It's the militias who
started all the killing in order to divide people
and rule them."
The situation in southwest
Baghdad is so tense that daily gun battles are
heard and people cannot leave their houses for
work or shopping for food. As of Sunday, US forces
in the area are applying a curfew to control the
situation.
During his speech on Friday,
Muqtada announced, "I say to our Sunni brothers in
Iraq that we are brothers and the occupier shall
not divide us. They are welcome and we are ready
to cooperate with them in all fields. This is my
hand I stretch out to them."
This followed
a move a few days prior where Shi'ite leaders from
Sadr City in eastern Baghdad met with Sunni tribal
heads from western Iraq. Both sides promised to
work together for national reconciliation and
against extremism.
However, most Sunnis do
not believe reconciliation is part of Muqtada's
agenda. "The Americans will arrest the Sunni young
men only and clear the way for the Mahdi Army to
work their electric drills on people's bodies,"
Khalid Aziz, 35, told IPS. Aziz claimed he is a
member of the Iraqi resistance.
"It is all
planned by the Americans, who now want the Kurds
to be involved in the sectarian fighting they
engineered," he said.
Many analysts in
Baghdad believe the US military is attempting to
involve the Kurds in the escalating conflict by
sending armed groups and death squads of other
sects or ethnicities to engage the Kurdish forces
in Baghdad in order to drag them into the
conflict.
However, the Kurds are
reportedly trying not to take sides and to remain
neutral in the sectarian conflict, although most
of them are Sunnis.
IPS sources in Baghdad
believe that bringing the Kurds into Baghdad in
itself is the beginning of their participation in
the sectarian violence, especially when they are
attacked by Shi'ite militias.
Others
believe that the "divide and conquer" strategy by
the US military and US-backed Iraqi politicians is
being implemented across much of Baghdad.
"The western half of Baghdad that holds
the name of al-Karkh is inhabited by a majority of
Sunni Arabs," said Mohammad Shakir, a historian
from the Dora region of Baghdad. "But there are
also a variety of Kurds and Shi'ite Arabs there,
as is the case in most parts of Iraq where sects
lived together in relative peace for centuries.
This sectarian fighting was ignited by Iraqi
politicians who came with the US occupation to
dominate power in Iraq."
Kassim Awadi, an
Iraqi political analyst in Baghdad, said:
"Although not likely to take place in the near
future, the conflict between Kurds and the Shi'ite
fighters who are conducting an Iranian agenda
could spread.
"It seems to me that no sect
will keep away from the civil war and it is not in
the interest of either the US occupation or Iran
that any part of Iraq would stay stable," Awadi
explained in an interview at his office. "The
story of the fighting between Kurdish units and
[Mahdi Army] police units is not a strange one, as
the agendas for each party are completely
different and the conflicts are definitely going
to take place sooner or later if [Prime Minister
Nuri] al-Maliki's government is to stay in power."
A former general in the Iraqi Army, Ahmed
Khidir, said he believes the violence in Baghdad
is now permanent because occupation forces lost
control long ago and are now completely reliant on
various militias.
"The US Army and the US
media are full of lies concerning being impartial,
and the truth is that the Americans are working
together with many armed groups who conduct
massive killings," Khidir said. "One can clearly
see the mass-destruction policy towards Sunni
areas while military operations against Shi'ite
death squads are [restrained] and largely
impotent."
Ali al-Fadhily, Inter
Press Service's correspondent in Baghdad, works in
close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, IPS's
US-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels
extensively in the region.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
