Kurds, Isil clash near Kurdish capital

Baghdad: Kurdish forces attacked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant fighters near the Kurdish regional capital of Arbil in northern Iraq on Wednesday in a change of tactics supported by the Iraqi central government to try to break the Islamists’ momentum.

The attack 40km south-west of Arbil came after the radical militants inflicted a humiliating defeat on the Kurds on Sunday with a rapid advance through three towns, prompting Iraq’s prime minister to order his air force for the first time to back the Kurdish forces.

“We have changed our tactics from being defensive to being offensive. Now we are clashing with [Isil] in Makhmur,” said Jabbar Yawar, secretary-general of the ministry in charge of the Kurdish peshmerga fighters.

The location of the clashes puts Isil fighters closer than they have ever been to the Kurdish semi-autonomous region since they swept through northern Iraq almost unopposed in June.

Shortly after that lightning advance, thousands of US-trained Iraqi soldiers fled. Kurdish fighters, who often boast of their battles with Saddam Hussain’s forces, stepped in as did Iranian-trained Shiite militias.

But Isil gunmen’s defeat of the peshmerga, whose name means “those who confront death”, has called into question their reputation as fearsome warriors.

Yawar said the Kurds had re-established military cooperation with Baghdad. Ties had been strained with the Shiite-led Baghdad government of Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki over oil, budgets and land.

But the dramatic weekend offensive by the militants — who seized more towns, a fifth oilfield and reached Iraq’s biggest dam — prompted them to bury their differences.

“The peshmerga ministry sent a message to the Iraqi defence ministry requesting the convening of an urgent meeting on military cooperation. The joint committees have been reactivated,” Yawar said by telephone.

Isil, which has declared a caliphate in swathes of Iraq and Syria that it controls and threatens to march on Baghdad, poses the biggest threat to Opec member Iraq since a US-led invasion toppled Saddam in 2003.

Isil fighters and their Sunni militant and tribal allies also hold parts of western Iraq.

Efforts to neutralise Isil have been undermined by political deadlock and sectarian tensions fuelling levels of violence not seen since the height of a civil war in 2006-2007.

Bombings, kidnappings and executions have become part of daily life for many Iraqis once again.

On Wednesday, a roadside bomb killed three Shiites who volunteered to fight Isil on a road between the town of Samarra and Mosul, said a police official.

Critics say Al Maliki is an authoritarian leader whose sectarian agenda has sidelined Sunnis and driven them to find common cause with Isil, even though they reject the group’s radical view of Islam.

Al Maliki, who has been serving in a caretaker capacity since an inconclusive election in April, has rejected calls by Kurds, Sunnis, some fellow Shiites and even regional power-broker Iran to step aside and make room for a less polarising figure.

In his weekly televised address to the nation on Wednesday, he warned that any unconstitutional attempt to form a new government would open “the gates of hell” in Iraq.

Al Maliki rejected any outside interference in the process, an apparent reference to Tehran, which Iranian officials have said believes Al Maliki can no longer hold Iraq together.

Iran is now backing calls by Iraq’s top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani for Al Maliki to go and is looking for an alternative leader to combat the Sunni Islamist insurgency, said the Iranian officials.

The United States, which was a key backer of Al Maliki when he fist came to office as an unknown in 2006, has urged Iraqi politicians to form a more inclusive government that can unify Iraqis and take on Isil.

Isil, which believes Iraq’s Shiites are infidels who deserve to be killed, has put Iraq’s survival as a unified state in jeopardy.

It seized three more towns and a fifth oilfield and reached Iraq’s biggest dam during the weekend offensive.

The capture of one of the towns, Sinjar, home to many of Iraq’s Yazidi minority sect, could lead to a humanitarian crisis.

Yazidis, ethnic Kurds who follow an ancient religion derived from Zoroastrianism, are at high risk of being executed because Isil militants view them as devil worshippers.

Yawar said 50,000 Yazidis now hiding on a mountain risked starving to death if they were not rescued within 24 hours.

“Urgent international action is needed to save them. Many of them, mainly the elderly, children and pregnant women, have [already] died,” he said.

“We can’t stop Isil from attacking the people on the mountain because there is one paved road leading up to the mountain and it can be used by them. They [Isil fighters] are trying to get to that road.” There are no signs that revived military cooperation between the Kurdish Regional Government and the Baghdad government has eased the dangers posed by Isil.

State television reported that Kurdish forces backed by Al Maliki’s air force launched a surprise attack on the city of Mosul, a major urban centre held by the Sunni militants.

Scores of Isil fighters fled, it said.

Witnesses told Reuters there was no major assault, just hit-and-run attacks by both sides and exchanges of mortar fire over the past few days which had damaged residential areas.

People in nearby Bashiqa, a diverse town with churches, mosques and a Yazidi temple, were taking no chances and have fled, a source at a non-profit organisation in the town said by telephone.