Iraq's 'ragtag' army units start fighting among themselves
In a further sign of the futility of the hope that Bush and Blair are putting in the new Iraqi army, news has emerged that infighting has broken out amidst it's ranks with Kurdish and Shia forces turning on each other in open gun battles.
The latest outbreak of violence has left one soldier and one civilian dead.
The incident is a further sign of the deepening tensions within the Iraqi military, and can only heighten fears that the country is actually nearer to civil war than it is to reconstruction.The shooting, which took place between Kurdish and Shia soldiers on Friday near Duluiyah, 45 miles north of Baghdad, is a bad omen for US plans to hand over security to the Iraqi army by the end of the year.
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.
Kurdish leaders have said 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 rather than to the notion of being an Iraqi.
One must never forget that Iraq was a mainly British construct, which brought together three different and wildly variant communities, and that it was only the hard line policies of people like Saddam that ever held it together.
With the removal of Saddam, and the glue brought by his authoritarianism, one cannot be completely surprised that it is now starting to come apart.
Bush and Blair seemed not to have understood this when they started their illegal adventure into the former Mesopotamia.
They are said to have dismissed any notion that the country would descend into sectarianism.
This is only further proof, were any needed, that we are currently being led by fools.
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