Areas affected by the fire included Ali Saray, Anana and Kobani villages of the Kakai region and Dara in Haftaghar area in Daquq, southern Kirkuk.
“When the fire ripped through the farmlands of Ali Saray village, I was nearby and saw some people from a distance torching the crops,” Luqman Khurshid, a local agricultural worker, told Rudaw
The fire broke out at around 10:30 p.m., he said.
“One person named Hardi Saman was killed and nine others wounded while trying to put out the fire by bullets from ISIS militants,” Rajab Kakai, head of the Mitra Organization for the Development of Yarsani Culture, told Rudaw English.
“We have no doubt it was done by ISIS, because last fall they had come up to the farmers when cultivating their land warning them that they had to pay them Zakat when they harvested their crops,” he said, referring to a form of Islamic tax.
“The scale of the fire was big. More than 200 dunams of Kakai lands were torched last night,” Kakai added.
In a statement, Iraqi Security Forces said Haftaghar residents had clashed with “Daesh gangs”.
“The residents of [Haftaghar] village of Daquq district in the Kirkuk province clashed with members of terrorist Daesh gangs, leading to the martyrdom of one citizen ... and the burning of agricultural crops,” the Iraqi Security Media Cell said Thursday morning, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.
Arson attacks on agricultural land are a new tactic employed by ISIS remnants operating in the disputed territories.
Hundreds of dunams of cropland have been burned over the course of May in Diyala, Kirkuk, Saladin, and Nineveh provinces.
ISIS claimed responsibility for some of the attacks via its media outlets. Other incidents were potentially caused by land disputes, electrical faults, or by accident.
More cropland was burned earlier this month in Makhmour, a disputed area to the southwest of Erbil, after local farmers refused to pay the Islamic tax.
Disputed parts of Diyala, Nineveh, and Saladin provinces are claimed by both the Kurdistan Regional Government in Erbil and Iraq’s central government in Baghdad. Militants are exploiting the security gaps between federal and Peshmerga lines.
ISIS is not the only militarized body accused of arson. In fires that took place in Khanaqin, locals blamed the Shiite paramilitaries Hashd al-Shaabi (known in English as the Popular Mobilization Forces, or PMF). Locals there also claimed to have received calls demanding zakat.
Adil Abdul-Mahdi, the Iraqi prime minister, has downplayed the ISIS role in the recent spate of crop fires.
“We have fires every year. Not all fires are the work of Daesh or hostility…some of them are internal feuds between landowners, between farmers,” the Iraqi PM told reporters at his weekly press conference, Tuesday.
Masoud Barzani leader of Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) said in a statement that the burning of Kurdish farms in disputed areas and “the killing, hurting and injuring of Kurdish people in these areas has become a recent phenomenon, committed on daily basis.”
“This is a great crime and oppression against innocent Kurds,” Barzani added on Thursday.
The KDP, as the largest party in the Kurdistan Region, has refused to return to disputed areas, claiming there are occupied following the October 2017 events by Iraqi forces supported by Iran-backed Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitias and militias.
What is happening in these areas is “violation of law” conducted due to ethnic identity, claimed Barzani.
He called on international community to weigh in and for the Iraqi government to “take responsibility and end this oppression and unlawfulness.”
The group has returned to its earlier insurgency tactics.
