Kurds pull out abruptly from disputed Iraqi areas

Associated Press

BAGHDAD

Kurdish fighters pulled out of disputed areas across northern and eastern Iraq on Tuesday, one day after giving up the vital oil city of Kirkuk – a dramatic redeployment of forces that opened the way for government troops to move into energy-rich and other strategically important territories.

The vastly outnumbered Kurdish forces, known as the peshmerga, appeared to have bowed to demands from the central government that they hand over areas outside the Kurds’ autonomous region, including territory seized from the Islamic State group in recent years.

The evacuations exposed a Kurdish leadership in turmoil in the wake of last month’s vote for independence as Iraq’s central government shores up its hand for negotiations over resource-sharing with the country’s self-ruling minority.

Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi acknowledged the power shift, saying Iraqi forces took over the disputed areas from the Kurds with barely a shot fired.

“I call on our citizens to celebrate this day, because we have been united,” al-Abadi said, calling the independence vote “a thing of the past” as he offered to begin talks with the Kurdish regional government.

The developments followed weeks of political crisis precipitated by the Kurdish leadership’s decision to hold the referendum for independence in territories beyond the boundaries of its autonomous region in northeast Iraq.

The Iraqi government, as well as Turkey and Iran, which border the land-locked Kurdish region, rejected the vote. The U.S. also opposed the vote, saying it was a distraction on the war against IS.

If the mood in Baghdad was triumphant, it was acrimonious in the Kurdish capital of Irbil, reflecting the sense among many Kurds that they had been betrayed – and by their own leaders.

“Kirkuk was sold out, everyone ran away,” said Amir Aydn, a 28-year-old Kirkuk resident as he returned to the city after fleeing the day before.

A hospital in the nearby Kurdish city of Suleimaniyah said it had received the bodies of 25 peshmerga fighters killed in clashes over Kirkuk. The claim could not be independently verified.

Kurdish President Masoud Barzani said the evacuation of Kirkuk was forced by “certain people in a certain party,” a swipe at his political opponents in the Patriotic Union of Kuridstan, known as the PUK. Barzani heads the Kurdistan Democratic Party, or KDP.

The General Command of the peshmerga, nominally in Barzani’s hands, went even further, accusing PUK officials of “a great and historic treason against Kurdistan.”

Their accusations were grounded in reports that peshmerga divisions loyal to the PUK had abandoned their positions as the Iraqi government forces advanced, though the KDP-aligned divisions also withdrew, in Kirkuk and in other parts of the country.