Wednesday, March 03, 2004
Meanwhile Back in Kirkuk ...
A lot of unrest in Kirkuk lately -- aside from a steady trickle of attacks against police, in the wake of last month's bombings of the headquarters of two Kurdish political parties in Arbil, there's been a wave of Kurd violence against Turkmen. Today, a mob of Kurds ransacked the offices of a Turkish organization, the Iraqi Turkmen Front (FIT). Also on January 31st, the day before the bombing of the Kurdish party offices, two senior FIT officials were killed near the village of Taza Khormathe, south-west of Kirkuk. According to Sahid Danilchi of the FIT, "The Peshmerga are now trying to drive us from our homes through intimidation." The Turkmen of Kirkuk have called on the international community for intervention on their behalf:
We demand the United Nations and the Arab League and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference send peacekeeping forces to maintain security in Kirkuk to prevent events which may lead to civil war -- Saad al-Din Arkij
In one of the above linked stories, an American serviceman comments
"I don't doubt that the minute we pull out of here, there is going to be a full-on civil war."
