Friends, Neighbours, Alienation

"There are now no-go areas [in Kirkuk, Iraq] for us. Because of Daesh [Arabic for Islamic State], it is more dangerous for everyone who lives here."
"I am a proud Kurd and he [Iraqi Sunni friend] is a proud Sunni Arab, but we agree on everything. We don't have any differences. But lots of other people do."
Araz Berzanji, Kurdish resident of Kirkuk

"Security was much better under Saddam but, then as now, anybody can be killed at any time without any good reason. There is so much killing. Most of us just want it to end. But it won't."
"If Daesh comes, Kurds will be killed because it regards them as infidels. If the government in Baghdad gets control here again we will be destroyed by the Shia. We've seen their army and nobody trusts it."
"These tensions [between Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis] go back many, many years. But now they are much worse."
"We like it here. We have no problems with the Kurds, Christians or Turkomans. But many of the new people who arrived here as refugees after Daesh almost took the city think differently. They either like Daesh or are the types who will go along with whoever is in power."
Abdullah Taha, Sunni Iraqi resident of Kirkuk

A suicide car bombing followed by an assault by grenade-throwing gunmen on a police headquarters in a disputed city in north Iraq killed 30 people. The vehicle that was detonated in central Kirkuk was painted to appear as though it was a police car, and the militants who sought to seize the compound were dressed as policemen, witnesses said. Picture: REUTERS/Ako Rasheed

"Historically, the majority of the city's population was Kurdish and Turkoman. The Turkomans traced their families back to the Ottoman era. Later, Arabs began to settle in the region. Writing of the ethnic composition of the city, the Ottoman encyclopedist Shamsadin Sami, author of the Qamus al-A'lam, found that, "Three quarters of the inhabitants of Kirkuk are Kurds and the rest are Turkomans, Arabs, and others. Seven hundred and sixty Jews and 460 Chaldeans also reside in the city."
Middle East Quarterly

In its relentless onslaught on Iraq and its push to control an ever wider swath of Iraq and Syria, Islamic State terrorists have attempted on several occasions to seize Kirkuk, and when the Iraqi military decamped in terror rather than confront the Islamic State militias, it fell to the Kurdish Peshmerga alone to defend the city's 1.4-million residents. The Peshmerga fight courageously with the outdated and inadequate weapons they command.

The jihadists of the Islamic State have far more powerful weapons at their command, much of which represent high-tech equipment and armaments given to the Iraqi Army by the United States. Even with their high-value gear, and even while they were trained by U.S. troops the Iraqi military fell into disarray and terror overcame them as they abandoned duty and arms alike to the marauding Islamic State jihadis whose own confidence in their brutal battle hardiness was in stark contrast to the military's.

As the Iraqi army fled in fear, Kurdish Peshmerga militias rushed from the north to repel the invaders, taking unofficial control of the city where it is now considered, at least by the majority Kurds, to be part of Kurdistan, and to be ferociously defended by the Kurds. By the Kurds alone, since the Iraqi military is too squeamish about their own safety to risk it as is their national duty, by fighting alongside the Peshmerga forces.

The Peshmerga make a few territorial gains by hard fighting and determination in regaining control of small nearby towns. Just as determined and far better equipped to make inroads into the Kurdish defences, is the Islamic State. And though American and allied air attacks have taken place to give the advantage to the defending Kurds, those strikes have been successful only in destroying disparate, discrete pieces of equipment; the odd tank, Humvees and the like, after the bombing of several of the ISIS/ISIL headquarters and oil refineries.

The Islamic State militias have the reputation among fearful Syrians and Iraqis of being invincible, and the fact is their ferocious enjoyment of threats, torture, mutilation and death and their gruesome successes in those arenas of hellish conquest does not appear to have been slowed down very much by the air strikes. And without well-provisioned and trained active combatants on the ground to counteract the ISIS/ISIL advance, the Peshmerga are in dire straits, despite their courageous defence.

Many Kurds furthermore feel they have reason to suspect that Islamic State jihadis have successfully infiltrated Kirkuk, harboured by Sunni Arabs living there with whom the ISIS/ISIL terrorists have a shared goal. Kirkuk's two largest ethnic groups and its Assyrian Christians and Turkomans living in Kirkuk exist on tenterhooks, with the tension of uncertainty and insecurity, not knowing at any time when the nearby Islamic State terrorists will once again attempt to march forward.

The distrust now manifested by the vulnerable, and their Kurdish defenders against the Islamic State with the fear that living among them are Sunni Iraqi supporters of the terrorists, makes for an uneasy atmosphere. The unending fear of violence has resulted in an increasing number of mobile checkpoints, stricter controls at checkpoints ringing the city, including the highway south to Shiite-Baghdad through desert areas controlled by Islamic State jihadis.

The Sunni Arabs' aversion to the government controlling majority Shiites is born of resentment that their once dominant role under Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Arab, has been reversed, with the majority Shiites now dominant and treating them as shamefully as the ruling Sunnis once did the Shiites. For the Kurds the experience was far more fraught, with tens of thousands expelled from Kirkuk under Saddam Hussein, while Sunni Arabs settled there and were given preference in the creation of a Sunni majority that prospered in Kirkuk.

With the downfall of Saddam, Kurds returned to their ancestral homes in Kirkuk, and the region dominated by Kurds became autonomous, confident and peaceful and prosperous while other areas of Iraq remained in turmoil with the sectarian hatreds and violence manifested by Shiites and Sunnis without the restraint of a totalitarian rule to forcefully pacify them. Now in Kirkuk the Kurdish tricolour is seen in the north and east, the Iraqi flag in the south.

Since June when the Peshmerga militia took Kirkuk under its control, Kurds and Sunni Arabs have struggled for dominance. Both however, have reason to fear the resurgent attempts of the Islamic State jihadis to take the city. With the knowledge that among the Sunni population exist many who would give support to the jihadists and welcome them with open arms the moment they might manage to defeat the Peshmerga, leaving the ethnic and religious minorities to the pitiless mercy of the terrorists.