Kurds Protest Iraqi Forces Sent To Disputed Region on Syrian Border
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki deploys forces to the Sinjar province, near the Syrian border, upsetting local Kurds and signaling an escalation of the Syrian conflict to Iraq, reports Abdel Hamid Zebari.
It appears that a new conflict is brewing on the horizon between Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the central Iraqi government headed by Nouri al-Maliki, following the latter’s announcement of the formation of a military force under the name of the “al-Jazeera and Badiya Force” headquartered in the city of Sinjar, which is part of disputed areas in Nineveh Province bordering Syria.
This new military dispute between Erbil and Baghdad comes a few months after the controversy of the Iraqi “Dijla (Tigris) Force,” which was stationed on the outskirts of Kirkuk and remains there, ready to face off against the Kurdish Peshmerga troops sent to the region.
The military mobilization in Mosul came as a result of the dispute that erupted between Kurdish and Iraqi forces in the Zemar region early last summer, when Iraqi governmental troops tried to take control of the Iraqi-Syrian border area, which falls within the territories of Iraqi Kurdistan in the Fishkhapour region.
Kurdish objection to the Iraqi army’s movements in the northern regions is not new, dating back to 2008, when the Kurds strongly opposed any Iraqi military movement in the “contested” areas between the two parties. Military confrontation nearly ensued in Khanaqin (east of Baghdad), when Maliki sent Iraqi army troops there to confront Kurdish Peshmerga forces.
