Tension flares in flashpoint town as Kurdish-Iraqi crisis deepens

BAGHDAD / Reuters

Tension flared on Saturday in the ethnically mixed Iraqi town of Tuz Khurmatu after a clash between Kurdish and Shi’ite Turkmen political parties divided over the independence of the Kurdistan region, security sources said on Saturday. A dozen Kurdish families were displaced from the predominantly Turkmen district of Askari to Kurdish neighbourhoods of the town, after the two-hour clash in the early hours of the morning, the sources said.
The exchange of mainly automatic gunfire left no casualties, they said. It pitted members of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan against Turkmen loyal to Shi’ite political groups ruling Iraq. Tuz is located 75 kms (47 miles) south of the multi-ethnic oil-rich city of Kirkuk, held by the Kurdish Peshmerga forces and claimed by the
central government of Baghdad.
Iranian-backed Shi’ite paramilitary groups known as Turkmen Mobilisation are deployed in the Turkmen neighborhood of Tuz, while Kurdish Asayish police control the Kurdish neighborhoods.
The Baghdad central government has taken a series of steps to isolate the autonomous Kurdish region since its overwhelming vote for independence in a
Sept. 25 referendum, including banning international flights from going there.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has repeatedly denied any plan to go further and actually attack the territory, but the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has repeatedly accused Iraqi forces and Iranian-trained paramilitary groups deployed south and west of Kirkuk of bellicose intentions. Kurdish authorities said they had sent thousands more troops to Kirkuk to confront Iraqi military “threats”, but also slightly pulled back defence lines around the disputed oil-producing area to ease tensions. The area from which the Peshmerga withdrew overnight on Thursday, Bashir and Taza, is populated mainly by Shi’ite Turkmen.
In Washington, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said the situation had the full attention of the United States, which was working to ensure it does not escalate.
Kirkuk, a city of more than one million people, and Tuz, with a population of about 120,000, lie just outside the KRG territory but Peshmerga forces deployed there in 2014 when Iraqi security forces collapsed in the face of an IS onslaught.
The Peshmerga deployment prevented Kirkuk’s oilfields from falling into extremists hands. They also built a defense line that runs across most of the Kurdish-held territory. Kirkuk lies within the Kurdish defence line and Tuz is just on the outside. Shi’ite paramilitary groups are deployed opposite the Kurdish defense line in the region of Tuz. Meanwhile, in Washington, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had
said the situation had the full attention of the United States, which was working to ensure it does not escalate.
“We can’t turn on each other right now. We don’t want this to go to a shooting situation,” Mattis said. “These are issues that are longstanding in some cases … We’re going to have to recalibrate and move these back to a way (in which) we solve them politically and work them out with compromised solutions.”
The KRG’s Security Council expressed alarm late on Thursday at what it called a significant Iraqi military buildup south of Kirkuk, “including tanks, artillery, Humvees and mortars.” “These forces are approximately 3 km (1.9 miles) from Peshmerga forces. Intelligence shows intentions to take over nearby oilfields, airport and military base,” it said in a statement.
Kirkuk, a city of more than one million people, lies just outside KRG territory but Peshmerga forces deployed there in 2014 when Iraqi security forces collapsed in the face of an IS onslaught.
KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani urged the United States, the European Union and the U.N. Security Council “to rapidly intervene to prevent a new war.” Germany, which traditionally has good relations with both Baghdad and the KRG, called for measures to defuse tensions.
“We would like to ask them to meet those responsibilities and not to escalate the conflict,” German government spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters in Berlin. President Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman said on Thursday Ankara would gradually close border crossings with northern Iraq in coordination with the central Iraqi government and Iran. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim is expected in Baghdad on Sunday for talks with Abadi.