By Loveday Morris and Liz Sly,
IRBIL, Iraq — Iraq was on the brink of disintegration Thursday as al-Qaeda-inspired fighters swept through northern Iraq toward Baghdad and Kurdish soldiers seized the city of Kirkuk without a fight.
Lawmakers gathered at the Iraqi parliament to discuss the declaration of a state of emergency, a day after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki assured Iraqis that the insurgents' gains were temporary and would soon be reversed by the Iraqi army.
But after the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) captured fresh territory and set its sights on Baghdad, Iraq seemed to be fast slipping out of government control.
In Washington, President Obama expressed concern about the situation and said Iraq is "going to need more help from us" and from the international community. He said his administration was trying to determine the most effective type of assistance.
"I don't rule out anything, because we do have a stake in making sure that these jihadists are not getting a permanent foothold in either Iraq or Syria," Obama told reporters after a White House meeting with visiting Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
"I think it's fair to say that . . . there will be some short-term, immediate things that need to be done militarily, and our national security team is looking at all the options," he said. "But this should be also a wake-up call for the Iraqi government" about the need for political accommodation between the country's Shiite Muslim majority and the Sunni minority, he added.
Iraqi state television claimed that government forces recaptured the north-central city of Tikrit on Thursday, a day after ISIS said it seized the home town of former Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein. The group, an al-Qaeda offshoot, asserted, however, that it has completely surrounded the city of Samarra, south of Tikrit and just 70 miles north of Baghdad, leaving the situation on the ground unclear.
The semiautonomous Kurdish government said its pesh merga forces took control of the city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, after Iraqi security forces there fled rather than fight. The capture of Kirkuk follows the seizure by the (ISIS) on Monday of the important northern city of Mosul, putting northern Iraq beyond the central government's authority.
A top leader in ISIS, a radical Sunni Muslim group that U.S. forces spent eight years trying to defeat, urged fighters to press on to Baghdad, where he said there are "scores to be settled" with the Shiite-led government.
In an audio address posted on the Internet, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, an ISIS spokesman, taunted Maliki. "What have you done to your people, o foolish one," he said. "You lost a historic opportunity for your people to control Iraq, and the Shiites will always curse you for as long as you live."
Adnani also vowed that ISIS would take the southern Iraqi Shiite cities of Karbala and Najaf, sites of two of the holiest shrines in Shiite Islam.
In the north, Kurdish forces are in full control of Iraq's oil-rich city of Kirkuk after the federal army abandoned its bases there, a Kurdish military spokesman said Thursday.
Kirkuk lies at the heart of a long-running dispute between the central government in Baghdad and the Kurds, who run their own autonomous region in the north of the country and have an armed force called the pesh merga.
"The whole of Kirkuk has fallen into the hands of pesh merga," said Jabbar Yawar. "No Iraqi army remains in Kirkuk now."
The stunning speed with which the rout has unfolded in northern Iraq has raised deep doubts about the capacity of U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces, and it has also kindled fears about the government's grip on the capital.
In a country already fraught with sectarian tension, with parts of western Iraq now in Sunni militant hands, the latest gains by ISIS insurgents prompted cries of alarm from Shiite leaders.
It appeared that the militants were facing more robust resistance as they moved south, where Iraq's Shiites have a stronger presence. But several experts said it would be wrong to assume that heavily fortified Baghdad, with its large Shiite population and concentration of elite forces, could easily fend off an ISIS attack.
The Iraqi army's collapse in the north has deepened divides, in some cases physically. On the outskirts of the Christian village of Bakhdida in Iraq's Nineveh plains less than 20 miles southeast of Mosul, a mound of newly dumped earth on the road forms a barrier between the Kurdish pesh merga forces and their new neighbors: militants from ISIS.
"We've had to block it off in case they try to cross," said Brig. Gen. Ashkander Haji Saleh, standing on the berm. "We are watching their movements," he said, pointing across the scrubland toward Mosul and an ISIS checkpoint that he estimated was just two miles away.
Evidence of the rapid retreat of Iraqi forces lay scattered behind him, notably two abandoned armored police cars. Uniforms, military boots and boxes of ammunition were tossed across the fields.
Kurdish soldiers picked up the discarded shirts of two Iraqi army generals and joked. "This is what's left of the fearsome Iraqi army, that was going to stand against the Kurds," Haji Saleh said derisively.
For the Kurds, despite the concerns about having al-Qaeda-inspired militants so close, the withdrawal has meant consolidation and advances in areas where control has long been disputed with the central government in Iraq.
Bakhdida is one of them. It has harbored a Kurdish security presence since 2003, but the pesh merga has bolstered its presence in the village since the Iraq army streamed out of its nearby bases.
For the Kurds, fiercely disputed Kirkuk, a major oil-producing center with a diverse population, has been a far bigger prize.
Sly reported from Beirut. William Branigin in Washington contributed to this report.
- MAP: How ISIS is carving out a new country - U.S. prepares to send aid to Iraq - Who's who in the battle for Iraq
Source : http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/iraq-disintegrating-as-insurgents-advance-kurds-seize-kirkuk/2014/06/12/22e79e2b-f793-4120-8161-36f17c287e5f_story.html
