KIRKUK- Kurdish officials in Kirkuk warn they will not support the planned National Guards, provincial forces whose job will be to fight the Islamic State (ISIS) under a single banner.
They claim the new force could stoke smouldering tensions among groups in the volatile oil city.
“Forming this army without consulting Kirkuk’s provincial council, and without carefully considering the different ethnic mix in the city, will lead the province into disarray,” said Sherzad Adil, a member of the Kirkuk Provincial Council (KPC).
“We simply cannot allow this force to form here,” he told Rudaw.
But a Turkman member of the council questioned why the Kurds oppose the new army when they have their own military and security forces.
“The Turkmen and Arabs are not part of the existing security forces in the city,” said Gulen Ahmed, spokesperson of the Turkman Front and a member of KPC.
“We support this new force wholeheartedly, since Kirkuk needs a genuine security force, made of the components of the city itself,” Ahmed said as he criticized the Kurdish objection.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar Abadi says the National Guards will recruit members only from the areas they operate in and will not be allowed to cross to other regions.
His proposed army, which has Pentagon support, is the Iraqi government’s latest attempt to reorganize various paramilitary forces into a single army in the fight against ISIS.
“Any army should reflect the mosaic of Kirkuk’s Provincial Council, where Kurds and Arabs and Turkmen have equal seats,” Adil said. “The Christians should also have a portion of it and it should be commanded directly by the governor.”
Shiites in Kirkuk and Khurmatu say Iraq should have one unified army, and do not support the local militias.
Mahdi Taqi, who leads a Shiite paramilitary force, said the proposal will further undermine Iraq’s unity.
“There is no need for a local army in every province. All forces should be united under the Iraqi flag and in a restructured national Iraqi army,” he said.
Sunni Arabs have long championed the formation of a joint military force for Kirkuk but do not take any position over the National Guards.
“It is premature to say anything about it,” Said Muhammad Khalil Jaboori, a representative of the Sunni factions in Kirkuk. “We should first see how it will be structured and how big the Sunni share will be.”
Jaboori said the Sunnis have no objections to Baghdad commanding the army as long as Sunni demands about the force are met.
But a Christian member of the Kirkuk Council rejected the proposal, saying the city “already has a functioning security force.”
“We have asked the Kurdistan Regional Government to launch a special branch for the Christians within the Peshmerga forces so that we can protect our areas like our Christian bothers in Erbil have done,” said Edward Oraha, who is a member of the KPC.
