Much has been written about the the 20,000 extra American soldiers "surge" announced by Bush . Not too much has been said about the other ominous strategic development proposed by Bush - the involvement of Kurdish troops in the capital . The quasi-independent state of Kurdistan in northern Iraq has enjoyed relative peace in contrast to the rest of Iraq but instead of leaving sleeping dogs to lie , Bush has followed the exact same tactic of Saddam Hussein of sectarian divide and rule and ethnic divide to maintain American hegemony .
From Yahoo News i read this :-
An Iraqi army brigade based in the northern Kurdish region is undergoing intensive training in urban combat and will be dispatched to Baghdad as part of a new joint U.S.-Iraqi security drive in the sprawling and violence-ridden city, the commander said Saturday...The second Kurdish brigade will come from the northern city of Sulaimaniyah.
"We will head to Baghdad soon. We have 3,000 soldiers who are currently undergoing intensive training especially in urban combat and how the army should act inside a city," said Brig. Gen. Nazir Assem Korran, commander of the 1st Infantry Brigade, 2nd Division of the Iraqi army that is based in the city of Irbil.
Korran said his troops would face a language barrier because 95 percent of the brigade is Kurdish and unable to speak Arabic. Kurds, a separate ethnic group, are largely Sunnis but not Arabs.
"I believe that we will bring translators with our brigade to solve this problem," he said.
The general said his troops were part of the Iraqi army and do not belong to local Kurdish militias, known as peshmergas, as some Iraqi media reports have claimed.
"We do not represent any sect or ethnic group," Korran said...
But when is a Kurdish soldier Pershmerga or Iraqi ?
According to Kurdish sources Kurdistan President Massuad Barzani made it clear to the public, via his speech in the Kurdistan parliament building, that the KRG would not send Peshmerge forces to Baghdad. After a number of conflicting statements by different Kurdish party and government officials, it is clear now, contrary to Barzani’s statement, Peshmerge forces will be sent to Baghdad to become “victims” in the words of Barzani. Barzani also made it clear that Peshmerge forces are not trained to provide security of Baghdad. The Kurdish officials tried to recover from this U-turn by stating: these Peshmerge forces that are sent to provide security of Baghdad are not Peshmerge forces of Kurdistan, but Peshmerge forces working for the Iraqi government.
And according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs UN Relief website , the point is made that :-
Since the fall of the Hussein regime, Kurdish forces have never been deployed in Baghdad and several Kurdish officials have indicated that this move would be dangerous and risk inflaming ethnic divisions.
It could also draw the Kurds into the sectarian conflict, which has been almost exclusively fought between the Shi'a and Sunni Arabs. Kurdish leaders have voiced concern over the perception that Iraqi Kurds, a majority of whom are Sunnis, would be fighting against their Sunni Arab brothers.
Mahmud Uthman, a prominent leader in the Iraqi Kurdish Coalition, has come out against sending Kurdish forces to fight Arabs anywhere in Iraq, "Al-Zaman" reported on January 8. "There are fears that a fight like this, pitting Kurds against the Arabs, is bound to add an ethnic touch to the conflict," he said. "The deployment of Kurdish forces in Arab areas is wrong and will create sensitivities and accusations that the Kurds are killing the Arabs."
Drawing the Kurds into the Iraqi civil war . Betraying the Kurdish people once more .
No comments:
Post a Comment