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Iraqi Kurdistan: 12,000 Peshmerga troops
ready to protect power towers
30.7.2007
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July
30, 2007
Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan region (Iraq), -- The
Iraqi Kurdistan region's government is ready to send
12,000 Kurdish Peshmerga troops (Kurdistan national
guard) to protect power towers, the spokesman for
the peshmerga said on Sunday.
"We're waiting for the approval of the government of
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki," Jabbar Yawir,
the undersecretary of the ministry of Peshmerga
affairs, said.
He said "we are in agreement with the central
government in Baghdad to send 6,000 troops to
protect power facilities on the Taza-Baiji highway."
He pointed out that the central defense ministry in
Baghdad has asked the Iraqi Kurdistan government in
a meeting in Erbil, the region's capital, earlier in
July for dispatching 6,000 Peshmerga soldiers to
protect the oil pipeline in the district of al-Shurqat,
80 km south of Mosul, which leads to the Turkish
port of Ceyhan. |
Peshmerga, Kurdistan national guard |
The Kurdish 2nd Brigade Commander, Anwar Hama Amin,
had said on Saturday that Kurdish Peshmerga forces
will be deployed in several areas of Kirkuk to
protect power towers and oil installations.
"Bringing the Peshmarga to the province is part of
an agreement and a protocol signed between the
General Commander of the armed forces, Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and the President of Iraqi
Kurdistan region, Masoud Barazani," said Amin in a
press conference held on Saturday at the military
training base of K1 in Kirkuk.
The Peshmarga is the Kurdish name for a militia that
fought the former Iraqi regime, and, after the
regime of Saddam Hussein withdrew the Iraqi army
from the three Kurdish provinces in 1992, turned
into paramilitary forces to protect the region. Two
ministries were established to deal with the
Peshmerga affairs in 2006 in the region's
government.
This is not the first time Peshmarga forces are sent
to areas outside the region of Kurdistan. Three
battalions were sent last March to Baghdad to help
consolidating security in the capital.
The oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which contains a mix of
Majority Kurds, Arabs, Chaldean-Assyrians,
Christians and Turkmen, Kirkuk lies just south
border of the Kurdistan autonomous region with Iraq,
is 250 km northeast Baghdad.
Meanwhile, Amin said that twenty-four suspects were
arrested and seven car bombs were seized in a
security operation
that lasted for two days on the outskirts of Kirkuk.
VOI
**
Kirkuk city is a Kurdistani city and it lies just
south border of the Kurdistan autonomous region and
it is not under the full control of Kurdistan
Regional Government administration, its population
is a mix of majority Kurds and minority of Arabs,
Turkmen.
The former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein forced
about 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up their
homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city
and the region's oil industry.
Based on Iraq's Constitution a referendum is to be
held in late 2007 to decide whether the oil-rich
Kurdish province should be annexed to the safe
semiautonomous Kurdistan region in Iraq's north.
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