Kurds and Arabs fighting each other to the last Shabak, Yazidi and Turkoman?

[Watser?]

Last week the Independent published an insightful article by Patrick Cockburn about the faultline running through Northern Iraq separating Kurds and Arabs. It contained this remarkable example of how things are on the edge of the volcano there:

The 26th Brigade of the 7th Division of the Iraqi army, an Arab unit, recently tried to move from Diyala province northeast of Baghdad through Makhmur, where there is a Kurdish majority, to reach the mainly Sunni Arab city of Mosul. Fearful this might be a Baghdad government land-grab for Makhmour, Kurdish civilians blocked the road. Khasro Goran, a senior member of the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), says the army advance would have been resisted if it had gone on. "Our forces had taken up positions on higher ground and if the Iraqi army brigade had come on, they were under orders to open fire." Ominously for the future unity of Iraq, the Kurdish unit preparing to shoot was itself part of the Iraqi army.

American mediation and Arab-Kurdish negotiations in Baghdad ultimately prevented a clash and the 26th Brigade withdrew without fighting. But according to Mohammed Ihsan, the KRG's Minister for Extra Regional Affairs, who has responsibility for the disputed territories, any outbreak of hostilities could be the start of a major conflict: "If fighting does start at one point I am sure it will quickly spread along the whole line from Sinjar [near Syria] to Khanaqin [near Iran]."

...

Anti-Kurdish feeling is running high in the rest of Iraq, as is fear of Iraqi Arab revanchism in Kurdistan. Ethnic and sectarian hatred is strongest in the disputed territories where different communities live side-by-side. Nineveh province is like an Iraqi Lebanon in its diversity with its complicated mix of Kurds, Kurdish speaking Yazidis, Shabak, Sunni Arabs, Shia and Sunni Turkomans as well as Chaldean and Assyrian Christians.

Now lately all the attacks in North Iraq have been on minorities: a Shabak village near Mosul on August 10, the Yazidi town of Sinjar on August 13, an attack on Shi'a Turkmen in June.

Arab leaders in North Iraq are now accusing Kurds of being behind these attacks to make these communities ask for Kurdish peshmerga protection:

In Mosul, guerrillas wounded Qusay Abbas, the only representative of the Shabak community on the Ninevah Provincial Council (in the al-Hadba' List, which generally favors secular Arab nationalism). The Shabak are Kurdish speakers who practice a folk religion tinged by Shiite Islam. Two of his aides were also wounded in the bomb attackon his automobile in downtown Mosul.

Responsibility for the attack on Abbas and for other recent attacks on heterodox Kurds (Shabak and Yazidis) became a point of contention between Arab and Kurdish leaders. AFP reports that Arab politicians in Mosul accused the Kurdistan national guard, the Peshmerga, of being behind the attacks, as a wily way of having the Yazidis and Shabak demand the stationing of Peshmerga in their areas, which in turn would be a step toward Kurdistan's annexation of those districts. A Kurdistan spokesman retorted that two brothers of Ninevah's governor, Atheel al-Nujayfi, a secular Sunni Arab nationalist, were behind the bombings. Nujayfi replied that the Kurdish spokesman was speaking hastily, and he called up the Kurdistan leadership to formally renounce designs on annexing parts of Ninevah province to their Kurdistan confederacy.

Informed Comment: Kurdish, Arab Leaders Accuse Each other of Terrorism over Ninevah Attacks; <br> 12 Killed, 52 Wounded in Iraq Attacks; <br>

This comes on top of a nationwide census being canceled for fear it would inflame tensions between Kurds and Arabs in the north and an attempt by Arabs and Turkmen to cancel a referendum on the status of Kirkuk for the same reason.

[godfry n. glad]

Ooooo....Another civil war brewing. It's like we should send troops right in there, huh?