Word: peshmerga
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...stake is the control of disputed territories. Kurds say they are reclaiming areas like the oil-rich city of Kirkuk that was theirs until Saddam Hussein forcibly removed them from it. Arabs say the land wasn't Kurdish to begin with. In the meantime, Kurdish peshmerga militia forces, which operate independently of Baghdad and answer to Kurdistan's regional government, have steadily pushed south of their United Nations-delineated border into contested zones...
...Nineveh, al-Hadba has vowed to push them back. "We reject the presence of the peshmerga," says Atheel Nujaifi, the party's leader and the presumptive governor of Nineveh. "We want the only force in Nineveh province to be a legitimate government force that follows the command of the Iraqi security forces." Top U.S. military commanders in Nineveh say Nujaifi's stance is just electoral bluster. But he insists he is being serious. Nujaifi says that as soon as he is sworn in and the new government is seated, he will request that Baghdad formally ask the Kurdish regional government...
...meeting with U.S. officials two weeks ago, local Kurdish leaders expressed concern that the forces sent by Baghdad and the Kurdish government to provide election security may not depart after the votes are counted. "I'm worried the Iraqi army won't leave. Then the Peshmerga won't leave. Then we will have a militarized city," the Kurdish mayor of Khanaqin, who asked to remain unnamed, warned. "What if they fought...
...Underneath the tension over election security, then, is the knottier problem of where to draw the boundaries of the Kurdistan Regional Government's authority. The Kurdish alliance is confident of winning votes in Khanaqin, which was under Peshmerga control until last August. "There are a lot of folks up there who really don't consider themselves being a part of Diyala province," said Thompson at a U.S. base outside Baquba. "You talk to folks, and they're like, 'Governor who? Governor Ra'ad? He never visits us. We don't get anything from Diyala province.' ... The Kurds provide for basic...
...Neither side is expecting the election to alleviate the growing friction. From the doorstep of his modest farmhouse outside Khanaqin, Mudhar Mohammed Madloum can see a Peshmerga checkpoint on one hill and an Iraqi army checkpoint barely half a mile away. Similar pairings are scattered along Diyala's contentious fault line. "The Peshmerga checkpoint has been here since the fall [of Saddam]. The Iraqi army checkpoint has been here for a few months," said Madloum. "They are not both necessary...