Knight Ridder Wire is reporting an interview with several soldiers in the new Iraqi Army...
You know, the one that will make it possible for a large number of US troops to come home in time for the midterm elections?
The gist:
Five days spent interviewing Iraqi army soldiers in northern Iraq - who are overwhelmingly Kurdish - made clear that many soldiers think that a civil war is coming.
"I see Iraq gradually becoming three regions that will one day become independent," said Jafar Mustafir, a close adviser to Iraq's Kurdish interim president, Jalal Talabani, and the deputy head of Peshmerga for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two major Kurdish parties. "I see us moving toward the end of Iraq."
More from the article:
Passions run deep for the Arab and Kurdish soldiers who wear the Iraqi army uniform.
Kirkuk lies just a few miles from one of the nation's largest oil fields, worth billions of dollars. Arabs figure that the city's oil wealth should belong to Iraq, while ethnic Kurds see it as part of a future nation of Kurdistan.
"If the Kurds want to separate from Iraq it's OK, as long as they keep their present boundaries," said Sgt. Hazim Aziz, an Arab soldier who was stubbing out a cigarette in a barracks room. "But there can be no conversation about them taking Kirkuk. ... If it becomes a matter of fighting, then we will join any force that fights to keep Kirkuk. We will die to keep it."
Kurdish soldiers in the room seethed at the words.
"These soldiers do not know anything about Kirkuk," Capt. Ismail Mahmoud, a former member of the Kurdish Peshmerga militia, said as he got up angrily and walked out of the room. "There is no other choice. If Kirkuk does not become part of Kurdistan peacefully we will fight for 100 years to take it..."
...Achieving independence is a matter of life and death for Mahmoud, as with most other Kurdish soldiers interviewed. His father, a Peshmerga, was killed by Sunni Arab dictator Saddam Hussein's troops in 1991 during fighting in Kirkuk. His entire neighborhood in Kirkuk, which housed some 2,000 families, was razed that year as Saddam massacred Kurds and replaced them with Arabs.
"We all left in bare feet," he said while walking through the cold mud outside the barracks. "My father was martyred for this struggle. It's my turn now, and if I don't succeed my son will continue the struggle. ... I try to explain these things to my Arab soldiers, and I hope that I do not end up fighting them."
Almost all the Kurdish soldiers interviewed expressed that sentiment. Col. Sabar Saleem, the head of intelligence for the 4th Brigade of the Iraqi 2nd Division in the city of Mosul, said there would be no compromise over Kirkuk.
"War is just another kind of political solution," said Saleem, a former Peshmerga. He said that while he wore an Iraqi army uniform he had a much larger mission in mind.
"I tell you that I am a part of the Iraqi army, but when it comes to the Kurdish cause I am willing to offer my life, my head, for one inch of Kurdish land," Saleem said. "Especially for Kirkuk."
Juan Cole wrote a very insightful piece today concerning "the top 10 myths about Iraq" in which he addressed the issues surrounding the potential for civil war. Among the "myths" he discussed about this subject were:
The guerrilla war is being waged only in four provinces. This canard is trotted out by everyone from think tank flacks to US generals, and it is shameful. Iraq has 18 provinces, but some of them are lightly populated. The most populous province is Baghdad, which has some 6 million residents, or nearly one-fourth of the entire population of the country. It also contains the capital. It is one of the four being mentioned! ...the total for the "only four provinces" to something like 10 million of Iraq's 26 million people....
...There is a silent majority of middle class, secular-minded Iraqis who reject religious fundamentalism. Two major elections have been held. For all their flaws (lack of security, anonymity of most candidates, constraints on campaigning), they certainly are weather vanes of the political mood of most of the country. While the Kurdistan Alliance is largely secular, the Arab Iraqis have turned decisively toward religious fundamentalist parties...
...The Bush administration wanted free elections in Iraq. This allegation is simply not true, as I and others pointed out last January. I said then, and it is still true:
' Moreover, as Swopa rightly reminds us all, the Bush administration opposed one-person, one-vote elections of this sort. First they were going to turn Iraq over to Chalabi within six months. Then Bremer was going to be MacArthur in Baghdad for years. Then on November 15, 2003, Bremer announced a plan to have council-based elections in May of 2004. The US and the UK had somehow massaged into being provincial and municipal governing councils, the members of which were pro-American. Bremer was going to restrict the electorate to this small, elite group.
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani immediately gave a fatwa denouncing this plan and demanding free elections mandated by a UN Security Council resolution. Bush was reportedly "extremely offended" at these two demands and opposed Sistani. Bremer got his appointed Interim Governing Council to go along in fighting Sistani. Sistani then brought thousands of protesters into the streets in January of 2004, demanding free elections. Soon thereafter, Bush caved and gave the ayatollah everything he demanded. Except that he was apparently afraid that open, non-manipulated elections in Iraq might become a factor in the US presidential campaign, so he got the elections postponed to January 2005. This enormous delay allowed the country to fall into much worse chaos, and Sistani is still bitter that the Americans didn't hold the elections last May. The US objected that they couldn't use UN food ration cards for registration, as Sistani suggested. But in the end that is exactly what they did. '
So what's the solution? It looks no-win to me. I'm so glad that my son is in a relatively safer place (Afghanistan) now...there are a few less people trying to kill him there.