Kurds, Shiites Facing Off on New Frontline

Iraqi Kurdish military also say that a force from the Khorasani Brigades about 400-strong is in some of Jalawla’s neighbourhoods and members of the Badr Brigades were positioned outside the city.

Some locals have claimed that members of the militias are behaving badly, looting and burning homes and not allowing Sunni Muslim families to return to them. They also suggest that the militias are fomenting unrest in other areas inside the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, so that local Arabs turn against the Iraqi Kurdish military in charge there. Then again there have also been reports that the Iraqi Kurdish are bulldozing homes owned by Arabs to ensure that they cannot return and claim the territory again.

“These forces are not at all disciplined,” says Jafar Mustafa, who heads the Khanaqin branch of the Kurdish Democratic Party, or KDP. “They’re composed of a diverse mixture of individuals and they don’t fight for the nation, just for their own sect. They don’t take into account a lot of important factors about this dispute.”

“The Shiite militias have looted and burned entire areas in the Sadiya sub-district and they won’t allow any Iraqi Kurdish forces, or any Iraqi Kurdish individuals, into the city,” Mustafa said.

An Iraqi Kurdish official from the Diyala province, of which Sadiya and Jalawla are part, agreed. “The Shiite militias are trying to change the demographic composition of this area,” said the official, who could not be named because he was not authorized to comment on the topic. “They are doing this together with Iraq and their refusal to allow Sunni families back into their homes is simply their first step toward this goal.”

“Kurds used to make up about a third of the population in this city before the IS fighters came here,” the head of Sadiya’s administration, Ahmed al-Zarkoushi, told NIQASH. “The Shiites used to make up about 10 percent and the Sunnis were the majority here. But today they are unable to return to their homes in Sadiya,” he concluded.