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PUK official warns Peshmerga will not take
orders from anyone else: Iraqi Kurdistan
11.3.2014 |
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March 11, 2014
SLÊMANÎ,
Kurdistan region 'Iraq',— A senior member of the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan for the first time
revealed the size of the PUK’s military force,
stressing that the Peshmerga Ministry must go to his
party in the next Kurdish cabinet and warning that
the soldiers would not take orders from anyone else.
“How can they not give the Ministry of Peshmerga to
the PUK? Do they know that the PUK has 120 tanks and
a command staff,” said the politburo member,
speaking to Rudaw on condition of anonymity.
“Do you know that the PUK employs 20,000 Peshmergas,
tank battalion, artillery battalion and engineering
battalion? Some officials within the PUK have two
private brigades,” the official revealed for the
first time.
More than five months after legislative elections in
Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Region in September, the
three main parties that won the largest votes still
are quibbling over who gets which ministry and
senior posts.
The sticking point has been that the PUK, a
strategic partner in the outgoing government with
the dominant Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), did
not do as well as it expected at the polls. The KDP
came first, the PUK-breakaway Change Movement (Gorran)
came second and the PUK itself came third.
Officials involved in the negotiations blame the
PUK’s internal disputes, and its insistence on
certain positions and posts despite its loss of
power, for the delay in formation of a new
government.
Now, PUK officials appear to be reminding their
political rivals that they have their own private
army, which does not take its orders from the KRG.
“How can the KDP keep the Ministry of Natural
Resources, the Intelligence Agency and the Ministry
of Peshmerga?” the anonymous PUK official had told
the KDP in a message. “Nothing will be left for the
PUK, then,” the message reportedly said.
The source told Rudaw that the PUK’s Jaffar Sheikh
Mustafa, who is minister of Peshmerga in the
outgoing cabinet, is the only man who can control
the PUK forces. “I do not believe that anyone
outside the PUKwww.Ekurd.net
can fulfill the role of Sheikh Jaffar,” said the
source.
Mustafa himself refused comment, expressing his
anger at a report on corruption inside the Peshmerga
Ministry that was published in another Rudaw
publication.
Meanwhile Anwar Haji Osman, undersecretary of the
Peshmerga Ministry and a KDP member, criticized the
PUK stance over the issue.
“The Ministry of Peshmerga is the ministry of blood.
We must not think about the KDP and the PUK, and
should organize an army to serve all the people of
Kurdistan,” he said.
“This is a catastrophe,” said Osman, commenting on
the PUK’s warning that its forces would not take
orders from the KRG.
A military expert in Kurdistan told Rudaw that the
tanks under PUK control were those seized from
former dictator Saddam Hussein.
“All the tanks are Russian. When the Saddam regime
collapsed, the PUK seized the fifth brigade in
Kirkuk and moved the tanks to Sulaimani. Some of
these tanks are still in Qalachulan, Chwar Qurni,
Hamreen and the outskirts of Kirkuk,” he said.
“They are all Russian made T-55 tanks with a gun
range of 17 kilometers.”
By Hevidar Ahmed - Rudaw
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