- SULAIMANIYA -- Kurdish leaders
in the northern autonomous area are refusing to disband their military
forces, the peshmerga, and are pushing for a veto over any deployment of
the Iraqi army in their region.
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- Kurdish officials are proposing that the 50,000-60,000
fighters controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan
Democratic party, both of which have a seat on the Iraqi governing council,
should be transformed into a regional self-defence force similar to the
US national guard.
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- The proposal comes amid alarm in the Kurdish areas at
the suicide bombings in Irbil, and the violence in neighbouring Sunni Arab
areas. It also highlights the problems faced by US and British administrators
trying to find common ground among the country's ethnic and sectarian groups.
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- Mustafa Sayid Qadir, the deputy commander of the PUK's
peshmerga, said: "After the Irbil attacks, security has become our
number one concern. Our history has taught us the risks of leaving ourselves
defenceless."
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- The new force would be recruited, trained and commanded
locally. It would not be deployed outside the Kurdistan federal region,
the boundary of which still has to be decided, without the approval of
the Kurdish parliament.
-
- Kurds want a provision for the new force in the interim
constitution which must be finalised by the end of the month. They are
also insisting on the inclusion of a federal state under which they will
retain many of the powers of self-rule they have had for the past 13 years.
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- Their plans for more autonomy are opposed by Sunni and
Shia Arab leaders as well as by Turkey, Iran and Syria, which believe any
advance by Iraq's Kurds will agitate their own Kurdish populations.
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- The Kurds' stance has also unsettled US and British officials,
who have said they want to dismantle Iraq's various militias. Paul Bremer,
the American chief administrator, and Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Tony Blair's
special envoy to Iraq, flew to the town of Salaheddin on Sunday to persuade
Kurdish leaders to tone down their demands.
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- Iraq's major militias are attached to Kurdish and Shia
parties. Both were excluded from power by the Sunni Arab elite, who now
fear retribution. Kurds say that the new force, and their desired federal
state, would be multi-ethnic and multireligious.
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- "The national guard would be representative of all
the peoples of the Kurdistan region including Kurds, Turkomans, Christians,
and Arabs," said Barham Salih, the Kurdish prime minister.
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- If the Kurds are allowed to retain the peshmerga, it
could cause other armed groups, few of them as pro-American, to demand
the same treatment.
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- The Shia Badr brigade, thought to number about 10,000,
is the best organised after the Kurds. Though opposed to US forces, it
has not confronted them. More worrying for the US and Britain is the Al
Mahdi army, led by Muqtada al-Sadr, a Shia cleric and vehement opponent
of the western presence in Iraq.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1150364,00.html
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