Kurdish Peshmerga Say They are Ready if Islamists Bring Fight to Kirkuk

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Security officials in Kirkuk say they have taken all measures in the multiethnic city and its surrounding areas to protect the province from any attacks by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Speaking to Rudaw, Brigadier Sarhad Qadir, chief of Kirkuk’s suburban police force, said it is unlikely for the war currently raging in Iraq’s Sunni areas to reach Kirkuk.

“We had had previous intelligence that the armed groups were active around Tikrit, so we had already taken measures against anything untoward coming this way,” Qadir said.

Just two days after it expelled the Iraqi army from Mosul and took over the city and its government institutions on Saturday, the ISIS marched south and overran the cities of Hawija and Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s birthplace.

“We raided some of their bases (ISIS) days before and detained some of their members,” Qadir added.  “We try to foil any plans against Kirkuk in advance.”

On Thursday, Kurdish Peshmerga forces moved in and took all Kurdish areas south of Kirkuk after the complete withdrawal of Iraqi troops from the province.

A high-level security official in Kirkuk, who did not want to be named, said that a detailed security plan was in place in Kirkuk, and that the ISIS is unlikely to be a match for Kurdish forces there.

“Even if they put together all their forces, the ISIS wouldn’t be able to fight more than two hours or control any part of Kirkuk,” he said.

ISIS fighters have bolstered much of their military strength from heavy weapons, Hummer vehicles and rocket launchers seized from the fleeing Iraqi army in Mosul, Salahaddin and south of Kirkuk.

“In the past, these groups were in the form of sleeper cells, but this time they have weapons and are well-trained,” Qadir said, noting this was something new.

Over the past several months, the ISIS has changed its fighting tactics. It has gone from hit-and-run attacks on Iraqi troops to trying to control entire cities, as it did in Fallujah and Ramadi, in Anbar province, last year.

ISIS emerged in Syria soon after the start of the revolution against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Now, it also has an Iraq branch, with the aim of establishing an Islamic state that would include Syria and Iraq.

The focus of ISIS’s fight is the Iraqi government and its Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whom the jihadists accuse of neglecting and abusing the country’s Sunni population for almost a decade.

According to some sources the Kurdish Peshmerga forces have moved 50 kilometers south of Kirkuk to secure Kurdish-populated areas and strategic roads connecting the province with the rest of Iraq.