Arab-Kurdish fued makes Pentagon ‘very nervous’
The Pentagon said it was “very nervous” about ethnic tensions in Iraq between Arabs and Kurds despite the progress stemming from initial talks between their leaders. A top U.S. commander warned fighting over land and oil could still turn violent.
While the sectarian violence that created massive rifts in Iraq has died down, the battle between northern Iraq’s Kurdistan region and its Arab-led government in Baghdad is being seen as one of the greatest threats to the country’s fragile stability by politicians and military leaders in Washington.
These tensions have not gone unnoticed by al Qaeda insurgents. According to U.S. defense officials, they have sought to exploit the tensions to retain a strong hold even as their influence wanes in other region’s in Iraq. These officials point to a string of deadly bombings as evidence that the group was capable of reconstituting its “combat power.”
Reuters reports:
Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said Washington was “heartened” last week when Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki met the Kurdish region’s president, Masoud Barzani, after more than a year of deadlock.
“But we are very nervous, continue to be, about the overall Arab-Kurd tensions,” Morrell told a news conference.
U.S. troops, preparing to withdraw from Iraq by 2012, have intervened many times to defuse the row, and Washington has pushed for a settlement before its forces go home.