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Military units should be under central govt. control

August 19, 2008 - 03:47:10

BAGHDAD,
Aug. 19 (VOI) – The parliamentary security and defense committee on
Tuesday said that it is important to place military units all over the
country, including those in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, under the control
of the central government in Baghdad.

"The
security and defense committee seeks to empower the central government
to have full control over military units in all provinces, even those
in the Kurdistan region, given the fact that all units are Iraqi and
are assigned to serve Iraq," Abdelkareem al-Samarraie, a member of the
Sunni Iraqi Accordance Front (IAF) said in a statement published on the
Web site of the committee.  

Earlier,
a source from the Peshmerga forces told VOI that Iraqi army forces
entered Qurtuba district in Khanaqin, Diala province, on August 10, and
gave Peshmerga forces stationed there a 24-hour time limit to get out.

Samarraie
praised Iraqi President Jalal al-Talabani’s role in defusing the
crisis. Talks inside the executive board in cooperation with the
regional government in Kurdistan resulted in a decision ordering the
gradual withdrawal of the 34th Brigade forces from Qurtuba.

Peshmerga
forces had withdrawn from Qara Tabba district in Diala’s Khanaqin and
handed over the security responsibility to the Iraqi army in light of
an agreement between the Iraqi government and a regional government
delegation.

Khanaqin
is affiliated with Diala province. In February 2008, the Kurdistan
Regional Government (KRG) ordered the establishment of an
administration that included the districts of Khanaqin, Kafri, Klar,
and Jamjal, which it said is administratively affiliated with the
region.

Diala
province extends to the northeast of Baghdad as far as the Iranian
border. Its capital is Baaquba. It covers an area of 17,685 square
kilometers (6,828 sq mi).

A large portion of the province is drained by the Diala River, a major tributary of the Tigris.

Because
of its proximity to two major sources of water, Diala’s main industry
is agriculture, primarily dates grown in large Date Palm groves. It is
also recognized as the orange capital of the Middle East.

In
January 2008 Operation Phantom Phoenix was launched in an attempt to
eradicate the remnants of al-Qaeda network following the Diala province
campaign between 2006 and 2007. 

The Peshmerga is a term used by the Kurds to refer to armed Kurdish fighters.

Khanaqin is one of the disputed areas included in Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution.

Article 140 is related to the normalization of the situation in Kirkuk city and other disputed areas.
Kurds seek to include the city in the autonomous Iraq’s Kurdistan
region, while Sunni Muslims, Turkmen and Shiites oppose the
incorporation. The article currently stipulates that all Arabs in
Kirkuk be returned to their original locations in southern and central
Iraqi areas, and formerly displaced residents returned to Kirkuk, 250
km northeast of Baghdad. The article also calls for conducting a census
to be followed by a referendum to let the inhabitants decide whether
they would like Kirkuk to be annexed to the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan
region or having it as an independent province.
These stages were supposed to end on December 31, 2007, a deadline that was later extended to six months to end in July 2008.
 
SS (I)/SR

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