Kurdish Troops in Control of Key Iraqi Town, Official Says
Source: New York Times
Kurdish Troops in Control of Key Iraqi Town, Official Says
By TIM ARANGO, SUADAD AL-SALHY and ALAN COWELL
June 12, 2014
ERBIL, Iraq Kurdish officials said on Thursday that their forces were in firm control of the strategic oil city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq after government troops had abandoned their posts, introducing a new dimension into the swirling conflict propelled by Sunni militants pressing south toward Baghdad.
The army disappeared, said Najmaldin Karim, the governor of Kirkuk, two days after militants aligned with the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria swept across the porous border from Syria to overrun Mosul, Iraqs second-largest city, and then began a thrust toward Baghdad, capturing the town of Tikrit, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein, on Wednesday.
The apparent involvement of Kurdish pesh merga forces drew new lines in the patchwork of allegiances and alliances, adding disciplined troops whose allegiance to the central government in Baghdad is limited. With its oil riches, Kirkuk has long been at the center of a political and economic dispute between Kurds and successive Arab governments in Baghdad.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/13/world/middleeast/iraq.html
blackspade
(10,056 posts)With very few exceptions.
Johnyawl
(3,205 posts)...we just hastened it.
The only thing that ever held that country together was the brutal dictatorship of Saddam. Bush the Elder understood that, which is why he didn't remove Saddam during operation desert storm. The arrogance of Bush/Cheney was to think they could manage the centuries old ethnic and religious conflicts in Iraq and produce the Switzerland of the mideast. Everybody with any knowledge of that area understood what was going to happen as soon as we left.
Kaleva
(36,299 posts)I don't think this will end until one group brutally decimates the other and the Kurds themselves will become de-facto independent.