Kurdish soldiers from northern Iraq, who are mostly Sunnis but not Arabs, are deserting the army to avoid the civil war in Baghdad, a conflict they consider someone else's problem.
The Iraqi army brigades being sent to the capital are filled with former members of a Kurdish militia, the peshmerga, and most of the soldiers remain loyal to the militia.
Much as Shiite militias have infiltrated the Iraqi security forces across Arab Iraq, the peshmerga fill the ranks of the Iraqi army in the Kurdish region in the north, poised to secure a semi-independent Kurdistan and seize oil-rich Kirkuk and parts of Mosul if Iraq falls apart. One thing they didn't bank on, they said, was being sent into the "fire" of Baghdad.
"The soldiers don't know the Arabic language, the Arab tradition, and they don't have any experience fighting terror," said Anwar Dolani, a former peshmerga commander who leads the brigade that's being transferred to Baghdad from the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah.
Dolani called the desertions a "phenomenon" but refused to say how many soldiers have left the army.
This is just amazing. The Maliki government is trying to send Kurdish soldiers into Baghdad to stop the violence and civil war that is raging between the Shiites and Sunnis. Maliki knows he can't send Shiite soldiers into Baghdad, since his government and military have been infiltrated with Shiite extremists. The Shiites would go about with their own version of ethnic cleansing against the Sunnis. Sunni soldiers won't do much good in quelling the violence around Baghdad--they will align themselves with the Sunnis insurgents in Baghdad and kill the Shiites there. The civil war between the Shiites and Sunnis would continue on. So Maliki is trying to insert a third ethnic group in Baghdad to stop the violence between two other ethnic groups.
The problem here is that it will never work. Continuing with the McClatchy article:
In interviews, however, soldiers in Sulaimaniyah expressed loyalty to their Kurdish brethren, not to Iraq. Many said they'd already deserted, and those who are going to Baghdad said they'd flee if the situation there became too difficult.
"I joined the army to be a soldier in my homeland, among my people. Not to fight for others who I have nothing to do with," said Ameen Kareem, 38, who took a week's leave with other soldiers from his brigade in Irbil and never returned. "I used to fight in the mountains and valleys, not in the streets."
Kareem said he knew that deserting was risky, but he said he'd rather be behind bars in Kurdistan than a "soldier in Baghdad's fire." Without the language and with his Kurdish features, he was sure he would stand out, he said. He's a Kurd, he said, and he has no reason to become a target in an Arab war.
Now he drives a taxi in Sulaimaniyah, eking out a living and praying that he doesn't get caught.
Other soldiers in Sulaimaniyah also said they didn't want to be involved in someone else's war.
Farman Mohammed, 42, celebrated the Muslim Eid holiday with his family last month and didn't go back when he heard that he might be deployed to Baghdad. Afraid for his life, he found a new job and settled in with his family.
"The fanatic Sunnis in Baghdad kill the Shiites, and vice versa. Both of them are outraged against the Kurds. They will not hesitate to kill us and accuse us of being collaborators with the occupiers," he said. "How can we face them alone?"
Those who are planning to go to Baghdad said they didn't want to be considered cowards.
Mohammed Abdoul, 41, reluctantly prepared to leave for the Iraqi capital earlier this week. Fear clouded his mind.
"I don't know why we should interfere in this Sunni-Shiite war," he said. "If I am going to face a difficult task in Baghdad and feel sectarian tension, I will leave the army forever, come back to Sulaimaniyah and work in the market."
Here is the real problem with this war--none of the three ethnic groups identify themselves in terms of a single national identity of Iraq. They see themselves as Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. And they are only willing to fight for their own ethnic interests, rather than for a greater Iraq that encompasses all three ethnic groups. Maliki is grasping at straws here, trying to send Kurds into Baghdad in order to stop the violence taking place between the Shiites and Sunnis. What Maliki doesn't realize is that he is no longer a leader of a single nation, but rather he’s a puppet residing in the breakup of Iraq into three nations--each with their own ethnicity, culture, and religion.
And they are all three fighting against each other for territory, power, and oil.
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