THE Kurdish Regional Government has deployed thousands of troops around the disputed oil city of Kirkuk for fear of an attack by Iraqi government army and militia, a senior official said.
Tens of thousands of Kurdish soldiers were already stationed there and another 6,000 have arrived since Thursday, Kosrat Rasul said, amid mounting tensions between the autonomous northern territory and Baghdad.
Iraq’s government has taken a series of measures to isolate the region since Kurds held an independence referendum on September 25, including banning international flights from going there and calling for a halt to its crude oil sales.
Iraqi prime minister Haider al-Abadi has repeatedly said he has no plans to go further and actually attack the territory.
But the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)’s Security Council expressed alarm at what it said was a significant Iraqi military build-up south of Kirkuk “including tanks, artillery, Humvees and mortars”.
“Tens of thousands of Kurdish Peshmerga and security forces are already stationed in and around Kirkuk,” Mr Rasul said on Kurdish TV channel Rudaw.
“At least 6,000 additional Peshmerga were deployed since Thursday night to face the Iraqi forces’ threat.”
The Kurds have repeatedly called for negotiations following the referendum in which an overwhelming majority voted for independence.
Kurdish Peshmerga moved into Kirkuk when the army collapsed in the face of Islamic State (IS) in 2014, preventing the region’s oil fields from falling into the hands of the militants.
“Thousands of heavily armed Peshmerga units are now completely in their positions around Kirkuk,” a top aide to Kurdistan regional president Masoud Barzani posted on social media yesterday.
“Their order is to defend at any cost,” Hemin Hawrami wrote on Twitter.
The alert came after the Kurdish authorities accused the Iraqi government of massing forces in readiness for a reported offensive to seize Kurdish-held oil fields around Kirkuk, as tensions soar after the vote for independence.
They accused the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) – paramilitary units dominated by Iran-trained Shia militia – of massing fighters in two mainly Shia Turkmen areas south of Kirkuk in a bid to provoke a confrontation. Sources in Kirkuk also confirmed to media outlet Al Jazeera the movement of Iraqi forces on two fronts in Kirkuk, in the south and west of the city.
In some areas, the Iraqi forces have moved two to three kilometres from Kurdish Peshmerga positions, Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford reported from Erbil.
“Certainly the KRG government is very worried,” he said. “Some Kurds describe Kirkuk as their Jerusalem. They are saying that they are not going to give up this city.”
Mr Hawrami urged the international community to intervene and call on the Iraqi prime minister to “order PMF to pull back if he can or if they listen to him”.
“No escalation from our side. Just defend and roll them back if they attack,” the senior adviser to Barzani said.
The surge in tensions comes two weeks after Kurdish voters overwhelmingly backed independence in a non-binding referendum that the federal government condemned as illegal. Kirkuk’s inclusion in Kurdish independence vote angers Iraq.
Polling was held in the three provinces that have long formed an autonomous Kurdish region as well as neighbouring areas, including Kirkuk, that Kurdish forces seized from IS during the fightback against the armed group’s 2014 offensive through areas north and west of Baghdad.
Kirkuk province is the location of northern Iraq’s main oil fields and, even though far more crude is now pumped from the south, it is bitterly disputed between Baghdad and the Kurds.
While majority of the population in Kirkuk are Kurds, it also has a significant Arab and Turkmen residents, who feel more secure under the protection of the KRG than the Iraqi central government.
He pointed out that many Arabs have voted during the Kurdish referendum and supported the split from Baghdad, but he added that there are also those who are loyal to the central government. Baghdad continues to reject decades-old Kurdish ambitions to incorporate Kirkuk and other historically Kurdish-majority areas in their autonomous region.
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