Kurds resist hope of unity in Iraq

BY TOM LASSETER

KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS

Five days spent interviewing Iraqi army soldiers in northern Iraq made clear that many soldiers think that a civil war is coming. “I see Iraq gradually becoming three regions that will one day become independent,” said Jafar Mustafir, an adviser to Iraq’s Kurdish interim president. “I see us moving toward the end of Iraq.”

KIRKUK, Iraq — Kurdish leaders have inserted more than 10,000 of their militia members into Iraqi army divisions in northern Iraq to lay the groundwork to swarm south, seize the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and possibly half of Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city, and secure the borders of an independent Kurdistan.

Interviews with Kurdish leaders and troops in the region suggest that U.S. plans to bring unity to Iraq before withdrawing U.S. troops by training and equipping a national army aren’t gaining traction.

Instead, some troops that are under U.S. and Iraqi national command are preparing to protect territory and ethnic and religious in-terests in the event of Iraq’s fragmentation, which many of them think is inevitable.

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