Jalawla and Saadia, both located in Diyala province, have been heavily disputed areas between Kurdish and pro-central government Shiite forces even as both factions are fighting the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
Jaafar Mustafa, a Kurdistan Democratic Party official in Khanaqin, told Rudaw Saturday the Hashd al-Shaabi want to implement ex-Iraqi Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki... Prime Minister of Iraq and the secretary-general of the Islamic Dawa Party. Maliki imposed order on Basra wen the Shiites were going nuts, but has proven incapable of dealing with al-Qaeda's Sunni insurgency. Reelected to his third term in 2014...
's plan to control Saadia, Jalawla, Amrly and Sleman Bagh, adding that if hostilities continue between the erstwhile allies the situation will only get worse.
Mahmud Sangawi, the head of Peshmerga forces in Jalawla, said his forces are aware of the Hashd al-Shaabi plan for Jalawla and his Peshmerga are well prepared.
"We hope nothing will happen, but if they fire at Peshmerga we will respond," Sangawi told Rudaw Saturday. "We will never let them take over Jalawla. Jalawla is a Kurdish town. We took control of it with our blood. No other forces should be seen inside Jalawla."
Kurdish Peshmerga and security forces in Khurmatu, 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Kirkuk,
... a thick stew of Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, and probably Antarcticans, all of them mutually hostile most of the time...
clashed with Hashd al-Shaabi forces last week and several people were killed on both sides.
Amid recent tensions between Kurdish forces and Shiite militia in Khurmatu, locals reported Saturday that Shiite forces of Evil had torched homes and shops in several parts of the town.
However,
you can observe a lot just by watching...
calls for peace amid the escalations have come from an unlikely source.
On Friday Iraqi Shiite holy man
Moqtada Tateral-Sadr
... the Iranian catspaw holy man who was 22 years old in 2003 and was nearing 40 in 2010. He spends most of his time in Iran, safely out of the line of fire, where he's learning to be an ayatollah...
, whose Mahdi Army during the US-occupation of Iraq was infamous for promoting violent sectarianism, called on Kurdistan region President Masoud Barzani, Iraqi President Fuad Masum and Shiite militia leader Hadi al-Amiri to work towards ending the conflict between the Peshmerga and Hashd al-Shaabi.