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BALAD, Iraq --
Sunni distrust of Shi'ite and Kurdish militias is
fueling tension in Iraq's heartland and undermining
the development of a national army.
In this city 50 miles northwest of Baghdad, Sunni
residents' hostility has prevented a unit of Kurdish
troops from leaving its base.
The 700-strong Kurdish Iraqi army battalion,
originally from the northern city of Sulaimaniyah,
deployed to Balad recently to bolster a single
Shi'ite battalion mustered from local residents.
Last year, no fewer than three U.S. battalions
patrolled the Balad area, but this year that number
has dropped to two as U.S. forces turn over
responsibility for many cities to Iraqi forces.
Firefights, mortar attacks and roadside bombings
attributed to a combination of Sunni insurgents and
disaffected locals continued unabated in and around
Balad in the wake of the transfer of control,
leading to the reassignment of the Kurdish battalion
from the relative security of Iraqi Kurdistan.
The large Sunni minority living around Balad has
protested the Kurdish unit's presence, said U.S.
Army Lt. Col. David Coffey, a member of an ad hoc
military transition team that is helping train the
Kurdish battalion.
He said the residents have resisted the presence of
the Kurdish battalion with such force that
commanders are afraid to let the soldiers leave
their base, which is adjacent to a U.S. compound
outside the city.
Col. Coffey said the battalion is composed mostly of
former Kurdish peshmerga militia, fearsome guerrilla
fighters who, after decades of rebellion, defeated
Saddam Hussein's Sunni-led Iraqi army in the early
1990s, evicting it from northern Iraq.
The peshmerga, now essentially the army of the
Kurdistan Regional Government, remains fully active
in northern Iraq alongside Kurdish Iraqi army units
manned by former peshmerga.
The peshmerga's role mirrors the situation in
southern Iraq, where radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada
al-Sadr's Mahdi Army operates alongside Shi'ite
Iraqi army units.
After the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra
last month, Sheik al-Sadr mobilized his Mahdi Army
militia to defend Shi'ite religious sites, saying
that government forces were ineffective.
Of Iraq's three major factions, only the Sunnis lack
an unofficial army, unless one counts insurgents --
although Sunni officers serve in Iraqi army units
manned mostly by Shi'ites.
Soldiers in many units, however, acknowledge their
allegiance to Sheik al-Sadr or to powerful Shi'ite
Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani.
Iraqi army Gen. Anwar Dolani, commander of forces
around Sulaimaniyah, said last year his sole
allegiance was to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a
Kurd.
Stephen Biddle from the Council on Foreign
Relations, writing in Foreign Affairs magazine, said
training Iraqi security forces makes civil war more
likely and potentially bloodier, by effectively
equipping Shi'ites and Kurds for war while the
Sunnis remain on the sidelines.
"Iraq's Sunnis perceive the 'national' army and
police force as a Shi'ite-Kurdish militia on
steroids. ... To them, the defense forces look like
agents of a hostile occupation."
washingtontimes.com
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