The Middle East’s alphabet soup of Kurds

[Peter1469]

The Middle East’s alphabet soup of Kurds

An interesting article describing the many Kurdish groups in the Middle East.

For decades, millions of Kurds have lived as part of stateless ethnic minorities across a vast expanse of the region, from Iran in the east to Turkey in the west. To varying degrees, they were marginalized, oppressed and under-represented.

Now, they're at the heart of the Middle East's most pressing crises. An autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq has proven to be perhaps the most stable corner of an otherwise imploding nation. Kurdish militias in Syria have battled both the advances of the Islamic State as well as other rebel factions. And a Kurdish separatist insurgency in Turkey has posed the U.S.'s NATO ally a huge strategic conundrum, and sowed deeper unrest in the country.

[waltky]

Kurds bidin' their time for showdown with Shiites...

Kurds Warn of Post-IS Fight With Shi’ite Militias
March 27, 2016 — Kurdish commanders are warning that once the fight against so-called Islamic State group is over, another conflict could begin – this time against the Iraqi government’s paramilitary units known as the Hashd al-Shaabi.

Kurdish Peshmerga counter-terrorism commander Polad Jangi told VOA the Kurds are unlikely to leave areas they have helped to free from Islamic State. “If places like Hawija and Mosul get taken, automatically, straight away after that, I think we are going to start having problems with the Iraqi government and the Hashd. “They are going to want us out straight away. It will be ‘thank you very much, you've helped us, now go back to your places,’” Jangi said. But he warned, “The Kurds are not going to end up going to take a place, shedding blood for that place, and then being kicked out of that place.” At stake are the so-called “disputed areas” of Iraq, areas claimed by both Baghdad and the Kurds, such as oil-rich Kirkuk. “We are not going to give that city back up,” Jangi insisted. “And we know that eventually that's going to be a big problem for us with the Iraqi government.”

Abu Mahdi al-Muhindis, center, Deputy Chairman of al-Hashd al-Shaabi, an Iraqi Shiite militia, attends a ceremony marking Police Day at the police academy in Baghdad, Iraq

Skirmishes between Iraqi Kurds and the Shi’ite militias already have taken place in Tuz Khurmatu, a town with a volatile ethnic mix of Turkmen, Kurds and Arabs that lies on the road from Baghdad to Kirkuk. According to Human Rights Watch, both Kurdish and Shi’ite armed groups have killed and wounded civilians and destroyed scores of homes and shops in the town. “Some of those involved in the conflict in Tuz Khurmatu appear to be targeting civilians on the basis of their ethnicity,” Joe Stork, Human Rights Watch's deputy Middle East director, said in a report released this year.

Michael Pregent, an Iraq analyst with the Hudson Institute, said a future conflict between the Kurdish forces and the Hashd will depend on how hard the militia decide to push into land the Kurdish believe is theirs. “The Hashd is the wild card,” Pregent said. According to Renad Mansour, a fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center, the Hashd has become the “single largest ground force” combating Islamic State fighters in Iraq. The PMF, or Hashd, was formally established in 2014 by Baghdad’s then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and is predominantly Shi’ite. Believed to be backed by Iran, the Hashd is seen as a well trained and determined paramilitary.

A fighter from the pro-government Popular Mobilisation (Hashd al-Shaabi) units covers his ears as he sets off a rocket launcher in the village of Taz Khurmatu, on the southern outskirts of the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, as they try to recpature the nearby village of al-Bashir from Islamic State (IS) group jihadists

They also are seen as brutally sectarian. “Civilians are paying the price for Iraq’s failure to rein in the out-of-control militias,” said Joe Stork. “Countries that support Iraqi security forces and the Popular Mobilization Forces should insist that Baghdad bring an end to this deadly abuse,” Stork wrote in an HRW report earlier this year. But the Peshmerga also have been accused of abuses. In January, Amnesty International’s senior crisis response adviser, Donatella Rovera, said Kurdish forces had destroyed entire villages in areas recaptured from IS in northern Iraq. “The forced displacement of civilians and the deliberate destruction of homes and property without military justification, may amount to war crimes,” Rovera said.

http://www.voanews.com/content/kurds...s/3256998.html

[waltky]

ISIS attacks power plant in Kirkuk...

IS Attacks Iraq City of Kirkuk, Power Plant Amid Mosul Fight
Oct 21, 2016 — Islamic State militants armed with assault rifles and explosives attacked targets in and around the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk early Friday in an assault that appeared aimed at diverting Iraqi security forces from a massive offensive against the IS-held city of Mosul.

At least 11 workers, including two Iranians, were killed when IS militants stormed a power plant north of Kirkuk and then blew themselves up. Multiple explosions meanwhile rocked the city, and gun battles were ongoing, said witnesses in Kirkuk, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were concerned for their safety. Much of the fighting was centered on a government compound in the city. They said the streets were largely deserted out of fear of militant snipers. IS said its fighters targeted the provincial headquarters. The claim was carried by the IS-run Aamaq news agency and could not immediately be verified.

Local Kurdish television channel Rudaw aired footage showing black smoke rising over the city as extended bursts of automatic gunfire rang out. It quoted Kirkuk Gov. Najmadin Karim as saying that the militants have not seized any government buildings. In the power plant attack, which took place in Dibis, a town north of Kirkuk, three IS suicide bombers entered the facility and took 10 workers hostage, said Maj. Ahmed Kader Ali, the Dibis police chief. The attackers asked to be taken to the Iranians who worked at the plant. One of the workers took them to the Iranians before escaping. The militants then killed the Iranians and the other workers, and detonated their explosive vests when police arrived, Ali said.

Smoke rises from a building where two militants are believed to be holed up, according to Rudaw TV, in Kirkuk, Iraq

Kirkuk is some 170 kilometers (100 miles) from the Islamic State-held city of Mosul, where Iraqi forces have been waging a wide-scale offensive since Monday. The oil-rich city is some 290 kilometers (180 miles) north of Baghdad and southeast of Mosul. It is claimed by both Iraq's central government and the country's Kurdish region. Kurdish forces assumed full control of Kirkuk in the summer of 2014, as Iraq's army and police crumbled in the face of a lightning advance by IS. Later Friday, Rudaw TV said all IS militants who took part in the Kirkuk attack had been killed except for two who were holed up in a newly built hotel, which was damaged in the attack and from where they were battling Kurdish forces.

Kirkuk police commander Brig. Gen. Khattab Omer said clashes were still underway, without providing further details. There was no immediate word on casualties among civilians or Kurdish forces in Kirkuk, and the TV report could not immediately be confirmed. Kemal Kerkuki, a senior commander of Kurdish peshmerga forces west of Kirkuk, said the town where his base is located outside the city also came under attack early on Friday. He said the base is now under control. He said IS maintains sleeper cells in Kirkuk and the surrounding villages. "We arrested one recently and he confessed," he said, adding that the attackers may have posed as displaced civilians in order to infiltrate the city.

MORE

[waltky]

Kurds torturin' lil' kids?...

Report: Children held by Kurdish forces allege torture
Jan 29,`17: Children detained by Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government on suspicion that they have connections to the Islamic State group are alleging they were tortured, according to a report from an international human rights group published Sunday.

The children - who have not been formally charged with a crime - recount being held in stress positions, burned with cigarettes, shocked with electricity and beaten with plastic pipes, according to Human Rights Watch, a New York based international watchdog. More than 180 boys under the age of 18 are currently being held, HRW estimates, and government officials have not informed their families where they are, increasing the likelihood the children could be disappeared.

The rights group says they interviewed 19 boys aged 11 to 17 while they were in custody at a children's reformatory in Irbil. The group says the interviews were conducted without a security official or intelligence officer present. As Iraqi security forces have retaken territory from IS over the past year and a half, they have also detained hundreds of men and boys. Many of those detained have likely suffered inhumane treatment or been tortured. Rights groups warn such practices risk sowing resentment of Iraqi security forces in the wake of military victories against IS.

Iraq's Army forces patrol in the eastern side of Mosul, Iraq

"If the authorities and the international coalition really care about combatting ISIS, they need to look beyond the military solution, and at the policies that have empowered it," Belkis Wille, the senior Iraq researcher for HRW told The Associated Press. "Policies like torture, enforced disappearances, destruction of property and displacement are and will continue to (be) drivers for victims' families to join extremist groups," she added.

Iraqi forces have pushed IS out of nearly all the cities and towns the group once held in Iraq. Mosul is the last major urban center IS holds in Iraq and Iraqi forces have retaken half the city since the operation was officially launched in October.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...01-29-01-54-06

[waltky]

Iran's Revolutionary Guard on Sunday claimed responsibility for a missile attack targeting an Iraqi base of a Kurdish separatist group...

Iran Guard claims missile attack on separatist Kurds in Iraq
9 Sept.`18 – Iran's Revolutionary Guard on Sunday claimed responsibility for a missile attack targeting an Iraqi base of a Kurdish separatist group.

Iranian state television aired footage of surface-to-surface missiles launching Saturday toward the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan base in Iraq, as well as drone footage of the base in the aftermath of the strike, which the separatists say killed at least 11 people and wounded 50. The footage's release appeared to be a stark warning by the Guard to the separatist group, known by the acronym PDKI, which has resumed hit-and-run attacks in Iran after some two decades of uneasy peace. A Kurdish attack in July killed at least 10 Iranian border guards, likely sparking the Guard's show of force. "The Iranian armed forces won't allow terrorists to again threaten the country's national security," the Guard said in a statement, warning that its future operations would be even "more crushing."


Video aired by state television showed the short-range missiles being fired from mobile launchers in a field in an undisclosed location. The semi-official Tasnim news agency, believed to be close to the paramilitary Guard, identified the missiles fired as Fateh 110-Bs. Those missiles are believed to have a range of up to 300 kilometers (185 miles), according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. Tasnim said the missiles traveled some 220 kilometers (135 miles) to reach the base in Koya, in northern Iraq. The Kurdish satellite news channel Rudaw reported that the secretary-general of the PDKI, Mustafa Mawludi, and his predecessor, Khalid Azizi, were wounded in the strike.


The Iraqi Foreign Ministry on Sunday issued a statement criticizing Iran's attack, saying it "rejects the violation of Iraqi sovereignty by bombing any target within Iraqi territory without prior coordination with the Iraqi authorities to spare civilians the effects of such operations." Iraq and Iran have close political and military ties, and Tehran provided extensive military support in the war against the Islamic State group. Saturday's attack comes after the PDKI accused Iran on Friday of carrying out "indiscriminate shelling" targeting the border region. Kurds represent about 10 percent of Iran's population of 80 million people, with many living in the mountainous northwest that borders Iraq and Turkey.


A breakaway Kurdish republic backed by the Soviets briefly emerged after World War II and a Kurdish uprising followed in the years after Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution. A guerrilla campaign by PDKI fighters in Iran continued into the mid-1990s. The PDKI declared a unilateral cease-fire with Iran in 1996 after fighting in northern Iraq between warring Kurdish forces backed by Iraq and Iran. Kurdish resentments have grown recently, buoyed by Kurdish control of areas in northern Iraq. The death of a Kurdish maid at a hotel in the northwestern city of Mahabad in May 2015 sparked unrest by local Kurds as opposition groups alleged Iranian security forces had a hand in it. Since 2016, clashes have erupted between Kurdish fighters and Iranian security forces, including the Guard, leading to casualties on both sides. The PDKI, operating out of northern Iraq, claimed many of those attacks, which prompted Iranian forces to shell Kurdish positions just across the Iraqi border in response.


http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/09...s-in-iraq.html