Kurd Referendum

[Juubi Karakuchi]

The situation may be turning violent.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... rkuk-kurds

Iraqi forces clash with Kurds in operation to 'impose security' on Kirkuk

Forces started moving towards oilfields and airbase amid rising tensions after Kurdish vote for independence

Martin Chulov and agencies

Monday 16 October 2017 05.20 BST
First published on Monday 16 October 2017 00.27 BST

Iraqi forces have reportedly advanced on Kirkuk’s oilfields and an airbase after the prime minister, Haidar al-Abadi, ordered his army to “impose security” on the Kurdish city after a recent vote for independence.

Kurdish and Iraqi officials both reported that forces began moving at midnight on Sunday, with state TV reporting that “vast areas” of the region had been seized, a claim disputed by the Kurds.

Military sources on both sides reported exchanges of Katyusha rocket fire to the south of the provincial capital. Multiple Kurdish peshmerga fighters were injured in the clashes, a local security source told Agence France-Presse.

The governor of Kirkuk, Najmaldin Karim, urged the public to come out on to the streets and said he was confident Peshmerga forces would protect the city.

“We saw some of the young people who expressed their readiness to help their peshmerga brothers to defend the land,” he told Rudaw, a Kurdish media network.

The US Department of Defense urged Iraqi and Kurdish forces “to avoid additional escalatory actions” that would detract from the battle against Islamic State. The US provided weapons to both the Iraqi army and the peshmerga to fight Isis.

Later on Sunday, the US State Department said it was concerned about reports of a confrontation and was monitoring the situation in Kirkuk closely.

World oil prices jumped on Monday amid reports of the clashes.

The Kurdish president, Masoud Barzani, has ordered his forces not to initiate a conflict but to respond if attacked, Hemin Hawrami, a senior assistant to the president, was quoted as saying.

Al-Iraqiya TV said Iraqi troops, anti-terrorist units and federal police had taken control of some areas around the city, having advanced without firing a shot. The objective was to take control of the K1 airbase, west of Kirkuk, Lt Col Salah el-Kinani, of the Iraqi army’s 9th armoured division, said.

A photographer with Agence France-Presse reported seeing columns of Iraqi troops heading north from the town of Taza Khurmatu towards Kirkuk.

Tensions in the area began rising several weeks ago, when the country’s Kurds voted for independence from Baghdad. The referendum was strongly opposed by Iran, Baghdad and Turkey and has since led to a blockade of the region by all three powers.

The Iranian general Qasem Suleimani, one of the most powerful figures in Iraq, had told Kurdish leaders before the poll that he would not stop Shia forces from the Popular Mobilisation Front from attacking Kirkuk if the ballot went ahead.

Baghdad had not accepted the Kurdish claim on the city, which is comprised of Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen, and had been bitterly opposed to Kurdish officials selling oil from the Kirkuk fields through a pipeline to Turkey.

The US – an ally of both Baghdad and Erbil, which is the Kurdish regional government’s (KRG) seat of power – had opposed the ballot, especially the decision to include Kirkuk and other disputed areas, a move that officials described as “dangerous unilateralism” which attempted to redraw the country’s boundaries.

On Friday, the Kurdish and Iraqi governments rushed troops and armour to the city. Peshmerga forces massed about 20 miles from Kirkuk’s southern limits after units loyal to the central government took positions on the city’s approaches.

At the time, the likelihood of a battle for the ethnically diverse city had dissipated, with political leaders on both sides trying to calm nerves. Abadi, who is commander-in-chief of the country’s military, insisted he had no plans to launch an attack.

Following Sunday’s reported advance, the KRG security council said: “Iraqi forces and Popular Mobilisation [a paramilitary group] are now advancing from Taza, south of Kirkuk, in a major operation; their intention is to enter the city and take over K1 base and oilfields.”

A commander of the Kurdish police force said Kurds remained in control of Kirkuk province’s oil wells.

Kurdish fighters seized Kirkuk in mid-2014, after Iraqi forces had fled from the Islamic State extremists advancing towards them after sacking Mosul.

Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

Hard to say how this will turn out.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, if their relative performances against Daesh are any indication, the Kurds can beat the Iraqi military.

I very much doubt if they can beat all of the people who might back up the Iraqi military, or at least oppose them. Turkey, obviously. And possibly the US?

Well, here we go again: another Middle East catastrophe in the making. God damn it.

[Juubi Karakuchi]

Well, if their relative performances against Daesh are any indication, the Kurds can beat the Iraqi military.

I very much doubt if they can beat all of the people who might back up the Iraqi military, or at least oppose them. Turkey, obviously. And possibly the US?

Well, here we go again: another Middle East catastrophe in the making. God damn it.

I'm inclined to agree on the first point. The Iraqi army has run itself into the ground fighting Isis, and while the Kurds might lack heavy weapons, tanks, and aircraft, they've got plenty of infantry gear and they've shown themselves to be tough fighters. At the very least, they can turn their land into a bloody quagmire for anyone trying to take it from them.

For the rest, I don't see Syria or Iran getting directly involved. Syria has its own problems, and Assad's army is reputedly in a pretty bad state itself. As for Iran, invading Kurdistan would offer certain people - notably in the US government and military - a once-in-a-lifetime justification to give them a thorough kicking. Trump seems determined to stir up trouble over Iran's nuclear programme; he'd be bouncing off the walls if they actually invaded another country.

Turkey though...it is just possible that Erdogan is just insane enough to give it a try. I read an article by Robert Fisk a while back claiming that the Turkish military is in no condition to fight a major war because of morale and organization problems following the failed coup; but I can't confirm any of that. Even if that was the case, that might not stop Erdogan from trying.

[Simon_Jester]

I can see the Turks trying to help the Iraqis fight the Kurds. I can't see the US doing so, though.

The real question is, will the Iraqi army be able to fight effectively at all without US advisors? Or will it just lose cohesion and splatter ineffectually against the enemy's defenses?

[Thanas]

It's a good thing the western world has dumped a ton of weapons on the kurds to use then.

As to the Iraqi army it depends, there are some shia brigades that are highly effective (for that region anyway) but they seem to be more busy with getting revenge on Sunnis at the moment.

[Thanas]

In a surprising development, the Kurdish forces have been driven out of Kirkuk by shia Iraqi forces backed and heavily supported by Iran. They exploited internal divisions among the kurdish forces.

The US did nothing to protect its allies from Iranian-backed forces.

[Sea Skimmer]

Why should the US 'protect' a city that's only 33% Kurdish from what the international community is supposed to agree is an integral part of Iraq? Kurdish autonomy never extended to this city for good reason. The US denied the Iraqi government the use of aircraft in the operation to avoid escalation, but fact remains the first unit to enter Kirkuk city was the Iraqi regular Army with US supplied M1 tanks in the lead, not Iranian troops.

Maybe some of you have short memories, but I very much remember the controversy in 2014 when the Kurd's occupied the city in the first place, and the many vows made by various factions that while it would be accepted during the war emergency, barely, it wasn't going to be allowed to stand. And three years later that comes to pass at a time when the Kurd's can't even pay their army, because they never could, the US was doing it until Mosul fell.

As far as military results, the Kurd's might be better then average in the region at the small unit level (even that's....variable) but they never beat ISIL anywhere without serious coalition air support I can think of, while the Iraqi Army and PMU actually did. Kirkuk was faced with with a mechanized army corps with several hundred M1 and T-72 tanks that had jumping off positions already in artillery range of the city center. The lack of fight is a bit surprising but only politically, in military terms retreat is far better for the Kurd's then being encircled in a basically hostile city, which was what was going to happen. The Kurds had never built up real defenses against this sort of operation either, even though they had ample time to do so. People seem to have inflated views of what you can accomplish with armored hummers, the supply of armaments larger then that to the Kurds has never been all that great and as far as I can tell, they have never once been supplied with main battle tanks externally.