Harming the Kurdish Cause

Many sinister dramas begin with the phrase: "it was a dark and foggy night", and it seems that Islamic State jihadis thought enough of the phrase and what it might entail to make good use of it as cover for an attack on Iraqi Kurdish positions outside Kirkuk last Friday. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham lost their months-long battle to take Kobane on the Syrian border with Turkey, so no doubt they felt entitled to a win of sorts on this raid which killed a senior Kurdish commander and five peshmerga fighters.

Kurdish security personnel at the site of an attack by the Islamic State in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Friday. Bombs and shelling in Baghdad killed at least 25 people, officials said. Credit Reuters

The northern Iraqi city appeals to Islamic State for its importance as an oil hub central to the aspirations of an independent Kurdistan. The potential wealth that it represents is equally attractive, should it be taken by ISIS, to the Islamic State. Civilian Kurds fled in panic as the fighting ensued. Iraq's cities are vulnerable to these attacks wreaking their destabilizing effect on the population. This, despite some success seen in the U.S.-backed air strikes in dislodging the Islamist jihadis.

Simply put, the Iraqi military is not up to the job of meeting the Islamists head-on. Despite the investment by the U.S. in training, in weaponry, in funding, the Iraqi military melted away at the first sign of the impending onslaught by Islamic State in Mosul, leaving weapons caches and American supplied vehicles to the victors. And nor have the Iraqi military, shored up by Shiite militias and the assistance of Iranian al-Qods Republic Guard militias, improved their defensive positions since.

Even while Iraqi and U.S. military officials claim some successes, along with eliminating some of ISIS's top leaders, and recapturing some modest territorial gains from ISIS, it seems that the American assessment that a complete rout would take years to succeed was more than accurate. In Baghdad, 20 people were killed in a busy market area with a car bomb detonation.

In two other neighbourhoods, mortar shells fell killing and wounding people. In Samarra, north of Baghdad, ISIS jihadis attacked Iraqi army-held positions. In eastern Iraq, a suicide bomber killed Kurdish peshmerga fighters, including a lieutenant colonel. The Kurdish peshmerga, aided by the air raids have made a respectable accounting of themselves, unlike the regime's military.

Peshmerga fighters secure a hotel near police headquarters in Kirkuk on Friday. AP photo.

In the Kirkuk attack, hundreds of ISIS jihadis took part, according to Col. Hiwa Ahmed, a peshmerga commander who explained his forces had been aware of signs for at least a week that ISIS was preparing for the battle. With armoured vehicles and suicide bombers, ISIS attacked a number of peshmerga positions outside Kirkuk where Brig.Gen. Shirko Fatih leading the First Brigade was shot and killed, trapped by ISIS fighters.

The bodies of over one hundred ISIS fighters were found by peshmerga commanders after air strikes helped them beat back the jihadists' advance once peshmerga reinforcements from Sulaimaniya and Dohuk had responded. A blemishing incident where residents tied ISIS bodies to the back of vehicles to parade them through the streets of Kirkuk has many aghast at the spectacle.

Safeen Dezaye, a spokesman for Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani's office, condemned the "inhuman treatment of bodies in spite of whose they are and what they may have done"; that the emulation of ISIS' type of cruelty was unacceptable. The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) whose militia had taken part in the Kirkuk fighting called on Kurds "to avoid such acts, as it does not serve our cause."