My Way News-Militants Try to Stir Arab-Kurd Violence:
"The two main Iraqi Kurdish parties are mostly secular U.S. allies that have a bloody history of animosity with some militant Islamic groups and Baath Party loyalists, both believed to be active in the Mosul insurgency. The parties have long been targets.
The Kurdish minority generally lives in peace with Mosul's Arab majority, although land and property disputes have in the past created some tensions.
When the militants overpowered Mosul's police force, which U.S. and Iraqi officials say is infiltrated by insurgents, the local government called in reinforcements, some of which came from the mostly quiet Kurdish region.
Gouran said some of the Iraqi National Guard reinforcements rushed to the city came from the Kurdish provinces of Dohuk and Irbil. He said many of their members were former peshmerga, a term that refers to the Kurdish militia that fought former Baghdad governments.
In addition, Kurdish political parties called in peshmerga fighters to guard their offices. The Kurdish militia proved harder for insurgents to overpower than the police - in some cases killing or capturing their attackers.
The solution offered its own problems: The fact that many of the National Guardsmen were Kurds and former peshmerga members didn't sit well with some of the city's Arab residents.
Kurdish and Arab officials took pains to stress that National Guardsmen were members of Iraq's security forces regardless of their ethnicity or their religion and that no peshmerga fighters were patrolling the streets.
'The Kurds have no intention to take over Mosul or to 'Kurdicize' it,' Gouran said. 'The relationship between Kurds and Arabs in Mosul is strong.'
Such assurances fail to ease the concerns of some.
'There has been an escalation in armed attacks against the Kurds and this proves that the Arabs don't agree to let the Kurds control the situation in the city, ' said Salem Ghanim Aziz, an Arab resident.
He said that having Kurdish forces could complicate matters, arguing that Arab residents might want to take revenge against the Kurdish fighters from the north that some blame for taking part in the looting that swept through Mosul when it fell during last year's U.S.-led invasion."
"The two main Iraqi Kurdish parties are mostly secular U.S. allies that have a bloody history of animosity with some militant Islamic groups and Baath Party loyalists, both believed to be active in the Mosul insurgency. The parties have long been targets.
The Kurdish minority generally lives in peace with Mosul's Arab majority, although land and property disputes have in the past created some tensions.
When the militants overpowered Mosul's police force, which U.S. and Iraqi officials say is infiltrated by insurgents, the local government called in reinforcements, some of which came from the mostly quiet Kurdish region.
Gouran said some of the Iraqi National Guard reinforcements rushed to the city came from the Kurdish provinces of Dohuk and Irbil. He said many of their members were former peshmerga, a term that refers to the Kurdish militia that fought former Baghdad governments.
In addition, Kurdish political parties called in peshmerga fighters to guard their offices. The Kurdish militia proved harder for insurgents to overpower than the police - in some cases killing or capturing their attackers.
The solution offered its own problems: The fact that many of the National Guardsmen were Kurds and former peshmerga members didn't sit well with some of the city's Arab residents.
Kurdish and Arab officials took pains to stress that National Guardsmen were members of Iraq's security forces regardless of their ethnicity or their religion and that no peshmerga fighters were patrolling the streets.
'The Kurds have no intention to take over Mosul or to 'Kurdicize' it,' Gouran said. 'The relationship between Kurds and Arabs in Mosul is strong.'
Such assurances fail to ease the concerns of some.
'There has been an escalation in armed attacks against the Kurds and this proves that the Arabs don't agree to let the Kurds control the situation in the city, ' said Salem Ghanim Aziz, an Arab resident.
He said that having Kurdish forces could complicate matters, arguing that Arab residents might want to take revenge against the Kurdish fighters from the north that some blame for taking part in the looting that swept through Mosul when it fell during last year's U.S.-led invasion."
Comments