Shots fired between Iraqi battalions; more indicators of a brewing civil war ?

[Der_Trihs]

This isn’t good.

A gun battle between two units of the Iraqi army has left one soldier and a civilian dead, underlining how ethnic and sectarian divisions are crippling the US-trained force.

< snip >

The fighting started after a powerful roadside bomb exploded as an Iraqi army convoy carrying Kurdish troops was passing Duluiyah, a small agricultural town that has long been a centre of armed resistance to the occupation. Four soldiers were killed and three wounded in the explosion, according to police, while the US military said one soldier died and 12 were wounded.

Immediately after the attack the Kurdish soldiers rushed their wounded to the local hospital, firing their weapons to clear the streets and killing one civilian. At this point, going by the police account, another unit of the Iraqi army, the 3rd battalion of the 1st Brigade, this time consisting of Shia troops, rushed to confront the Kurds. They appear to have thought that the Kurds were going to retaliate against the local Arab population. Shots were exchanged, and one Shia soldier was killed.

The Kurds decided to remove their wounded from Duluiyah hospital, fearing it would not be safe for them to be left there. But as they tried to leave the town, a third unit of the Iraqi army set up a roadblock, preventing them escaping. At this point US troops, who have a giant military base at Balad nearby, intervened and succeeded in ending the confrontation.

That’s bad enough, but consider the implications of this :

The incident shows the deepening divisions and mistrust within the Iraqi army. Kurdish leaders have told the IoS that in a real civil war, they believe the national army would evaporate immediately, because its units owe their primary allegiance to their own communities. Peter Galbraith, the former US diplomat and expert on Iraq, citing senior Iraqi Ministry of Defence sources, says the Iraqi army consists of 60 Shia battalions, 45 Sunni battalions and nine Kurdish battalions. There is only one mixed battalion. In fact the number of Kurdish troops, formerly known as peshmerga, is understated. Apart from Kurds in the Iraqi army, there are another 60,000 men under arms within the Kurdish region.

If I wanted to create the conditions for a civil war, that’s what I’d do. Heavily armed and ethnically/religiously seperate ? Is there anyone who thinks this a good idea ?

It seems to me that we’ve ( and possibly the Iraqi government as well; I’m not sure who set things up this way ) created the worst of both worlds; we hold Iraq together, instead of letting or helping it split; at the same time, we let each potential faction have it’s own battalions. I agree with the Kurdish leaders; in a civil war, there won’t be an Iraqi army; just 3 premade factional armies. And they are already shooting each other.

[Der_Trihs]

:smack: Forgot the link : Link

[Ryan_Liam]

You’re forgetting the fact that many Iraqis, government to civilian, might have objections to certain political parties holding power, but this in no way means they want the country divided into 3 seperate blocs, with the exception of the Kurds, but that’s a different story.

Apart from Kurds in the Iraqi army, there are another 60,000 men under arms within the Kurdish region.

Erm, that’s the Peshmerga which operates solely within Kurdish territory, it’s not allowed to venture outside of that area. So that is irrelevant.

From the Independent

From the US point of view, however, the communal divisions in the army are the most worrying development. When Iraqi security forces tried to enter the strongly Sunni district of al-Adhamiyah in east Baghdad last month, local militiamen saw the incursion as an attack by Shia death squads. They threw up barricades and militiamen raced from house to house, calling on each family to send one man with a gun to defend their district.

This is incorrect, the Sunni neighbourhood actually opposed Ministry of Interior troops from going in because of alleged affiliations with Paramilitaries, so instead wanted the Army to move into the neighbourhood to provide security, since they trusted them more.

Besides, this is just one version of what happened.

Here’s my link

BALAD, Iraq, May 13 (Reuters) - An Iraqi soldier was killed on Friday in a clash between two army units which prompted intervention by U.S. forces, the U.S. military said on Saturday.

The report may reflect ethnic and sectarian tension dividing the new U.S.-trained army that Washington hopes will replace American troops and prevent civil war.

But Iraqi police and military officers flatly denied it.

A senior Iraqi officer coordinating activities with the U.S. military in the region as well as police said the reported incident never took place.

Instead, they said a civilian was killed by a mostly ethnic Kurdish unit of the Iraqi army in a mainly Shi’ite Arab area just north of Baghdad. The Kurds fired to clear traffic as they rushed to take fellow soldiers wounded in an earlier insurgent attack to hospital in the town of Balad.

An angry crowd gathered outside Balad’s hospital, pelting the Kurdish soldiers with stones, and police helped them leave and restored calm, the Iraqi officials added.

“There were no clashes between soldiers,” Lieutenant Colonel Jasim al-Jibouri of the Iraqi army said from the Joint Coordination Centre in the regional capital Tikrit, which liaises among Iraqi and U.S. troops across the province.

Captain Ahmed Khalaf of Balad police gave the same version of events: “Furious people gathered outside the hospital and threw stones at the soldiers because of the killing of a civilian. Police intervened and calmed them down.”

CONFLICTING VERSIONS

The U.S. military said fighting broke out between two Iraqi army units after an insurgent attack on an army patrol outside the small town of Dhuluiya, 15 km (10 miles) from Balad. It said the insurgent attack had killed a soldier and wounded several others.

Police said four soldiers were killed in the insurgent attack.

The U.S. statement said soldiers from the patrol that had been attacked – from the 1st Battalion of the 4th Division’s 3rd Brigade – took their wounded to Balad. It did not explain why they later tried to remove them from its hospital.

It said they were then confronted by another Iraqi army unit – the 3rd Battalion of the same division’s 1st Brigade – trying to stop them from leaving.

“The confrontation between the two Iraqi units resulted in the death of one soldier,” the U.S. statement said, referring at one point to a roadblock on a bridge over the Tigris river.

It said U.S. forces intervened to separate the Iraqi soldiers and ease tension.

The U.S. military is training Iraqi security forces to take over the fight against Sunni insurgents and sectarian violence as part of Washington’s plan to start withdrawing its 133,000 troops from the country.

It says the security forces, including police and army, number about 250,000. Some units are drawn almost wholesale from Kurdish “peshmerga” guerrilla units which fought Saddam Hussein, and some include Shi’ite former militiamen.

Prime Minister-designate Nuri al-Maliki says he wants to bring all armed forces under state control, partly by integrating armed groups into the state’s security services.

U.S. and Iraqi commanders say they are trying to ensure a mixture of forces inside the army but some analysts warn the force could divide along ethnic and sectarian lines if widespread violence escalates into all-out civil war.

A U.S. military spokesman said he believed the Balad incident was an isolated one. “Passions can run very high when you have injured comrades,” Lieutenant-Colonel Barry Johnson told Reuters.