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Kirkuk Under Curfew, Surrounded By Thousands of Kurdish Troops
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Kurdish peshmarga forces being trucked in to surrounding areas of Kirkuk city.
ERBIL, Iraqi Kurdistan: An indefinite curfew imposed by the government in Kirkuk on Tuesday has so far prevented the occurrence of a planned Arab-led demonstration in the disputed city, which is surrounded by thousands of newly stationed Kurdish peshmerga forces.
Kirkuk’s Arab political parties said one of the key demands of Tuesday’s protest would be to call for the expulsion of Kurdish security and armed forces from the oil-rich province of Kirkuk.
Iraqi Kurdistan’s minister of peshmarga, Jaafar Sheikh Mustafa, said the Iraqi Arabs posed a threat to Kurds in the disputed regions, and that the newly-stationed Kurdish troops would remain in the surrounding areas of Kirkuk and other disputed areas.
Friday, February 25th, was nominated by Iraqis throughout the country as the “Day of Rage,” on which thousands of Iraqis staged anti-government demonstrations, calling for more accountability and better services from their elected leaders and government.
However, in Kirkuk, the Kurds had not only refused to protest on political grounds, but because they also feared that the main aim of the Arabs’ protest would be to attack the Kurds and the headquarters of their political parties and security forces. Kurds in other disputed areas had the same fears.
“There was a great danger to the Kurdish inhabitants,” said Mustafa by telephone from Kirkuk, where he and other high-ranking Kurdish officials had been for nearly a week.
Referring to the Arabs who issued an anti-Kurdish statement before the Day of Rage, Mustafa said that “the Ba’athists had intended to attack institutions run by Kurds and Turcomans on the [Day of Rage],” adding that “when the security forces are able to ensure the security of Kirkuk, the peshmarga forces will be withdrawn.”
In another statement on Saturday, Kirkuk’s Arab parties demanded an immediate and “unconditional” expulsion of the Kurdish security and peshmarga forces from Kirkuk by Tuesday.
“Their headquarters must be closed without any discussion,” read the statement.
However, Mustafa said the issuers of Saturday’s statement did not represent the views of the “genuine” Arabs from Kirkuk.
“We will never leave Kirkuk,” he added.
General Aziz Waisi, commander of the Zeravani – an armed force affiliated with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which is headed by Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani – said the aim of stationing the forces in the areas surrounding Kirkuk was to guarantee the security of Kirkuk’s population, particularly the Kurds, who had often been targets of radical Islamic Arab militias.
“We went to Kirkuk because of a request from Kirkuk’s [Kurdish] governor,” said Waisi. “We will not withdraw our forces until he requests it.”
Kurdish political experts say they believe the thousands of Kurdish peshmarga forces around Kirkuk could be used to forcefully incorporate Kirkuk into the Kurdistan region, rather than waiting for the implementation of the Iraqi Constitution’s long-delayed Article 140, which requires a referendum to determine the fate of the disputed areas.
“Sending Kurdish troops to the disputed areas is a very good thing and a great victory,” said Amjad Shakali, a Kurdish nationalist author, who regularly writes on Kirkuk. “That step should have been taken in 2003. Back then, the Kurds should have not pulled their forces out.”
Arif Qurbani, editor-in-chief of Kurdistani Nwe, a Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) newspaper, said the forces would speed up the “return” of Kirkuk to Kurdistan.
“The presence of peshmarga forces will be a factor in the return of these areas to the Kurdistan region,” he said.
Rizgar Ali, a Kurdish member of the Kirkuk Provincial Council, said the United States had agreed to the Kurds deploying their forces to the areas surrounding Kirkuk.
“This has happened after an agreement between [Kurdistan’s] minister of peshmarga and the American forces,” he said “The divisions deployed in Kirkuk province will…not go back.”
Peshmarga forces have also been deployed to Dyala province and other disputed areas.
In Dyala’s Jalawla district, for instance, from where 600 Kurdish families fled to the official region of Iraqi Kurdistan after they had received threats from Arab militants, Mahmoud Sangawi, a PUK military commander of peshmarga forces in Sulaimani, said a sizeable number of Peshmarga forces had now been stationed in the district.
“Under the name of demonstration, terrorists wanted to attack Kurds and massacre them,” said Sangawi. “Now the situation is stable and peshmarga forces are in Jalawla.”
More than 400 Kurdish civilians have reportedly been killed by insurgent groups in the past three years in Jalawla. More than a 100 of them have been from one tribe alone, the Zargwshen, whose members are mostly based in Sa’adya town.
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Ayub Nuri
is an Iraqi Kurdish journalist. He has covered the Iraq war for European and American news organizations, including BBC radio and Public Radio International in Boston. His opinion pieces have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Toronto Star. He has taught journalism at Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) in Iraq and managed War News Radio project at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, USA. Nuri was awarded first prize by The Foreign Press Association in New York for “outstanding academic and professional achievement” in the field of international reporting. He is currently editor-in-chief of Rudaw English.
is an Iraqi Kurdish journalist. He has covered the Iraq war for European and American news organizations, including BBC radio and Public Radio International in Boston. His opinion pieces have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Toronto Star. He has taught journalism at Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) in Iraq and managed War News Radio project at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, USA. Nuri was awarded first prize by The Foreign Press Association in New York for “outstanding academic and professional achievement” in the field of international reporting. He is currently editor-in-chief of Rudaw English.
Force them out of kerkuk after all they are Not Kerkuki or Kurdistani !
Long live The Kurdish Nation and Kurdistan!
Kirkuk was kurdish is kurdish and will be Kurdish
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