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Kurds and Shia Fight for Power
in Baghdad
By Ali al-Fadhily
05/29/07 BAGHDAD, May 29 (IPS)
- A massacre by members of Shia Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's
Mehdi army on Sunni worshippers earlier this month sparked
clashes between patrolling Kurdish militiamen in southwest
Baghdad and the Mehdi army, raising tensions that fighting
between the groups could spread.
Sadr, who emerged from hiding 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 Mehdi army in the southern city
of Basra, Abu Qadir, was killed in a gun battle with British
soldiers.
This recent development could have far reaching implications,
even into the volatile city of Kirkuk in the Kurdish controlled
north, where tensions run high between Arab Shia 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, and in order to gain access
through a checkpoint to detain Sunni worshippers at a mosque in
the area, Mehdi army members told Kurdish members of the Iraqi
army who were participating in the crackdown in the southwest
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 IPS at his office on condition of
strict anonymity: "The dispute started when the Mehdi 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 U.S. 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 added. "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 policemen believe that the Shia militia, operating out of
the Ministry of Interior as they have been for over two years
now, 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 Mehdi army members attacked the Kurdish unit. It
is unknown if anyone was killed or wounded from either side,
since orders from both the leaders of the Kurds and the Mehdi
army ceased 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 Mehdi 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.
An eyewitness to the 14 Sunni men being detained by the Mehdi
army spoke with IPS, requesting his name withheld. He believes
the U.S. military has taken sides between the militias and are
pitting them against one another.
"This area was peaceful and the mixture of Shia 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 at 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, U.S. forces in the area are
applying a curfew in order to control the situation.
During his speech on Friday, al-Sadr 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 Shia 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
al-Sadr's agenda
"The Americans will arrest the Sunni young men only and clear
the way for the Mehdi army to work their electric drills on
people's bodies," 35-year-old Khalid Aziz 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 added.
Many analysts in Baghdad believe the U.S. 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 attempting to not 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 Shiite
militias on occasion.
Others believe that the divide and conquer strategy by the U.S.
military and U.S.-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," Mohammad Shakir, a
historian from the Dora region of Baghdad, told IPS. "But there
are also a variety of Kurds and Shiite 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 U.S. occupation
to dominate power in Iraq."
Kassim Awadi, an Iraqi political analyst in Baghdad, told IPS:
"Although not likely to take place in the near future, the
conflict between Kurds and the Shia 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 U.S. 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 [Mehdi 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 Nouri] al-Maliki's government
is to stay in power."
Former Iraqi Army General Ahmed Khidir told IPS that 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 U.S. army and the U.S. 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 Shiite
death squads are [restrained] and largely impotent."
Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close
collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer
on Iraq who travels extensively in the region
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