ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Incidents in Kirkuk, where bodies of Islamic State (ISIS) fighters were dragged through the streets, have shocked many in Iraqi Kurdistan.
The incidents happened after ISIS attacked oil fields and installations in and around Kirkuk on Friday, making use dense fog that hampered air strikes by the US-led coalition. In surprise attacks on three fronts, dozens of Peshmerga were killed, among them two Kurdish generals.
The situation in the oil-rich city, which has a mixed population under a chosen Kurdish governor, became so dire that armed neighborhood guards joined police and the Kurdish Asayish security forces, while civilians also grabbed their weapons and set out for the front.
The attack, which also involved a car bomb outside the main Kirkuk police station in the town center and ISIS fighters holing up in an abandoned hotel, was repulsed with heavy loss of life, and at least 17 Peshmerga taken captive.
Soon after, photographs appeared on social media of cars dragging bodies of ISIS fighters through the streets of Kirkuk, in some cases accompanied by civilians with Kurdish flags celebrating their victory. There are unconfirmed reports that a vehicle belonging to the Kurdish security police was involved in the incidents.
Kirkuki professor and former Peshmerga Shwan Khurseed witnessed one of these acts and condemned it there and then. “This is very bad for the Kurds,” he sighed, when reached by phone. “These are backward people. At least 80 percent of the Kurds do not agree with this.”
Khursheed said he thinks that personal loss had set people to actions like the stoning by an old woman of an ISIS fighter’s body, a picture of which was also shared through social media. “But that does not make it acceptable,” he said.
Safeen Dezaye, spokesman of Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani’s office, condemned the “inhuman treatment of bodies in spite of whose they are and what they may have done.” He said it was unacceptable that ISIS’ cruelty was copied this way.
While other pictures of decapitated ISIS bodies cannot be confirmed to have been taken in Kirkuk the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), whose armed wing took part in the fighting in Kirkuk, called on sympathizers “to avoid such acts, as it does not serve our cause.”
As the Kurds are fight ISIS with the support of the US-led coalition, the incidents have caused worry among Kurds that this could affect their standing with the Americans and could backfire. The coalition air support has been essential in beating ISIS back from the territories it captured over the past several months. Kurds feel they are fighting a battle for the rest of the world, as no countries have sent in combat troops.
The Kurdish Ministry of Peshmerga only just released an official order to all its units, prohibiting the mistreatment pictures of any ISIS prisoners or their dead bodies, saying they should be treated ethically. Since the beginning of the war, hundreds of pictures of dead ISIS fighters have been posted on social media.
Sam Morris, a research fellow at the Erbil-based Middle East Research Institute (MERI), spoke of “very worrying signs from Kirkuk.”
Since the Peshmerga had no presence inside Kirkuk, they were not involved in the incidents, he said. “There were local people who joined the local Asayish and Federal Police. Some of these would be from the 'groupi pishtiwani,' which are informal local armed groups,” he commented.
He added that, if reports of an Asaiysh vehicle being involved are correct, then it was even more worrisome. Morris called for a condemnation by the Kurdistan Region’s authorities to prevent such acts from happening again.
Morris saw the incidents as a sign of worsening inter-communal dynamics in Kirkuk: the relationship between Kurds and Sunni Arabs in the city is low.
Most Kurds blame Sunni Arabs and internally displaced people (IDPs) who have taken refuge in Kirkuk for the worsening security situation. There is a constant fear of “sleeper cells” in the Arab community that has led to a complete lack of trust of all Sunni Arabs. Conversely, the Sunni residents are now terrified of the Kurds and Asayish, which controls security in the city.
Kurds in Kirkuk are vulnerable because of their past eviction from the city during the Arabization campaigns of Saddam Hussein. Many of them only returned after the fall of the Iraqi dictator in 2003, and now feel threatened by the ISIS offensives, as the group also has many of Saddam’s former officials and fighters in its ranks.
Meanwhile, many were enraged by the proclamations of Mulla Shwan, a local Kurdish Muslim preacher from Erbil who joined ISIS. In videos just before Friday’s attacks, he warned that he and a band of Kurdish converts to the ISIS cause were on their way to Kirkuk to kill all unbelievers and punish the main Kurdish parties there.
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