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IRAQI FORCES SEIZED a key military base, an airport and an oil field from Kurdish fighters today in disputed Kirkuk province in a major operation sparked by a controversial independence referendum.
The rapid advance, which follows weeks of soaring tensions between two US allies in the battle against the so-called Islamic State (IS) group, aims to retake oil and military sites that Kurdish forces took over during the fightback against the jihadists.
The US-led coalition against IS urged the two sides to “avoid escalatory actions” and focus on fighting the extremists, who are on the verge of losing their last strongholds in Iraq.
Thousands of residents were seen fleeing Kurdish districts of Kirkuk city, heading in buses and cars towards the autonomous Kurdistan region of northern Iraq.
“We’re leaving because we’re scared there will be clashes” in the ethnically mixed city of 850,000 people, 51-year-old Chounem Qader said.
At the same time crowds on the streets of Kirkuk’s southern outskirts welcomed Iraqi forces as they entered the city, where they were seen raising Iraqi flags in place of Kurdish ones.
Iraqi and Kurdish peshmerga forces exchanged artillery fire early today south of the capital of the oil-rich province, after the launch of the operation last night which triggered a spike in oil prices on world markets.
A Kurdish health official said at least 10 peshmerga fighters were killed and 27 wounded during fighting overnight, but there was no confirmation of the toll from the Kurdish government.
The rapid progress of Iraqi forces suggested that Kurdish fighters were withdrawing with little or no resistance in many areas.
Iraq’s Joint Operations Command said its forces had retaken the K1 military base northwest of Kirkuk, the military airport east of the city and the Baba Gargar oil field, one of six in the disputed region.
‘Danger of partition’
The operation follows an armed standoff between Kurdish forces and the Iraqi army prompted by a non-binding referendum on 25 September that produced a resounding ‘Yes’ for Kurdish independence.
Baghdad has declared the vote — held despite international opposition — illegal.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said the operation was necessary to “protect the unity of the country, which was in danger of partition” because of the referendum.
“We call upon all citizens to cooperate with our heroic armed forces, which are committed to our strict directives to protect civilians in the first place, and to impose security and order, and to protect state installations and institutions,” he said.
Peshmerga forces loyal to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), a political party linked to Iraqi President Fuad Masum, who is himself a Kurd, were reported to be withdrawing from areas under their control.
The PUK had supported a UN-backed plan for negotiations with Baghdad in exchange for dropping the referendum.
Pro-PUK forces were deployed south of the city, including at oil fields, while fighters loyal to the rival Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), linked to Iraqi Kurd leader Massud Barzani who initiated the referendum, were deployed to the north.
Two people were killed in artillery exchanges at Tuz Khurmatu, 75km south of Kirkuk, a doctor at a city hospital said.
The US-led coalition against IS called for dialogue between Iraqi and Kurdish authorities.
“All parties must remain focused on the defeat of our common enemy, ISIS, in Iraq,” Major General Robert White, a commanding general in the coalition, said in a statement.
The coalition said it was aware of reports of clashes but they appeared to be the result of a “misunderstanding and not deliberate”.
‘Declaration of war’
Yesterday, Iraq’s National Security Council said it viewed as a “declaration of war” the presence of “fighters not belonging to the regular security forces in Kirkuk”, including fighters from Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Long claimed by the Kurds as part of their historic territory, the province has emerged as the main flashpoint in the dispute.
Polling during the referendum was held not only in the three provinces of the autonomous Kurdish region but also in adjacent Kurdish-held areas, including Kirkuk, that are claimed by both Baghdad and Iraqi Kurdistan.
The Kurds have been in control of six oil fields in the Kirkuk region providing some 340,000 of the 550,000 barrels per day exported by the regional administration.
The fields would provide crucial revenue to Baghdad, which has been left cash-strapped from the global fall in oil prices and three years of battle against IS.
The Kurds have more than earned their own state.
@Honeybadger197: Kirkuk isn’t within the recognised boundaries of Iraqi Kurdistan . Nothing more than a land grab attempt
@Randompersonofthenet: Don’t know enough about Kirkuk or their claims to it. I do know they should have a country to call their own. They’ve fought long and hard against multiple enemies.
@Honeybadger197: They moved into and took over oil rich Kirkuk in 2014 while the Iraqi army were busy fighting an advancing ISIS. That’s their claims to it.
@JimmyMc: When the Iraqi army ran away from ISIS and left them their heavy weapons.
@JimmyMc:
After the first and 2nd world wars, Ottoman and Arab wars the whole region was chopped up and divided into territories by the winning countries. (The state of Israel was also created after the 2nd world war as a homeland for Jewish people on Palestinian land, which had been owned by ordinary Palestinian people, with land, homes, farms, etc. Unfortunately many of the Jewish settlers believed they had been given this land by their ‘god’, that it was promised to them in their ‘bible’. Many of them behaved very badly towards the Palestinians, and this continues, as, for example we see in the illegal settlements on Palestinian land.)
The Kurdish people didn’t get their own region. Unfortunately there was a lot of oil in the region. Various other nations wanted this oil. (America and Europe also wanted access to the oil.)
The territory where Kurdish people live was split into what is now Turkey, Iraq, and Syria.
These artificially created divisions imposed on the people of all these regions, continue to create problems today
(Western governments policies throughout the years of selling weapons to warlike mass murdering and torturing dictators like, for example Saddam Hussein, Gadhafi, Assad, etc, have, of course, aggravated the matter. Swapping oil for modern weapons of mass destruction, fighter planes, bombs, guns, missiles, anti personnel weapons, landmines, white phosphorous, etc.)
Kirkuk is one region where the Kurds had traditionally lived. I believe the majority are, and always have been Kurdish.
They defended their families and homes, and all the people in the region, from ISIS when the Iraqi army ran away.
They have every right to the region, which is traditionally theirs.
They should have a homeland.
America, for one should stand up for them, and also thank them for their very brave fight against ISIS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan
@Ryan Dub: There is an excellent book
“The great war for civilisation: The conquest of the Middle East – Robert Fisk”
https://libcom.org/library/great-war-civilisation-conquest-middle-east-robert-fisk
And what will they do the next time IS raises its ugly head. Without the Kurds IS would have won hands down. The Kurds held IS at bay while the rest of the clowns scratched their heads.
Here is a quote from Robert Fisk’s book, ‘The great war for civilisation’.
“These Kurds were not dying in the mountains because Saddam had suddenly decided to resume his persecution now that Kuwait was liberated. His army had turned viciously against the Kurdish people because they had responded to our demands to rise up against the Baathist regime. Their predicament now was brought about—directly—by our encouragement, our policy, our appeals. We, the West—and our “friendly” Arab dictators in the Gulf— bore responsibility for this catastrophe, yet we dressed it up to our advantage and deleted everything that happened between the liberation of Kuwait and the arrival of these hundreds of thousands of teeming masses in the mountains. Yes, we did have responsibility for them—but as victims of our political immorality as much as of Saddam’s cruelty. Like the daily mission reports, our humanitarian “relief” was the flip-side of war.
It was scarcely surprising that the Kurds, having reached the frozen wastes of their mountains, now refused to leave them. The American and British commanders were anxious to persuade them to return south under Western protection, to live in the vast tent cities that the Americans were erecting around Zakho and the Iraqi towns to the east. The snowline was disappearing, the last frosts a dirty grey stain along the peaks. Soon the heat would be up, the water would grow fouler and there would be widespread disease. But the Kurds wouldn’t budge. We put this down to fear of Saddam—they were frightened that his army would return to kill them all—but we understandably ignored the fact, which every Kurd explained with great eloquence, that they didn’t trust us to protect them if they moved out of the mountains. We promised we wouldn’t allow Saddam’s killers to reach them, but we were the ones who had told them to destroy Saddam and then left them to their fate less than two months earlier.”
The American and allied governments called upon the Kurds to fight against Saddam in the first Gulf war. They then abandoned them when Saddam had been driven from Kuwait, and failed to protect them from Saddam’s army.
The Kurds helped to defeat Saddam, and were betrayed by America.
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