ERBIL — Today marks the fourth anniversary of the fall of Kirkuk after a faction within the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) made a backroom deal with the authorities in Baghdad and allowed the Iran-backed militias of Hashd al-Shaabi, together with the Iraqi Army, to overran the city.
What happened on October 16, 2017?
On 16 October 2017, the pro-Iran Hashd al-Shaabi militias, together with the Iraqi army and after a secret deal with a group from the PUK, attacked the Peshmerga positions in Kirkuk, Tuz Khurmatu, and Khanaqin to push them back from the disputed Kurdish territories. The move was apparently in retaliation for the landmark independence referendum a few weeks earlier. However, it resulted in the killing and injuring of hundreds of civilians while more than 200,000 Kurds were displaced from these areas.
A faction within the PUK, led by Lahour Jangi and several others, were immediately held responsible for the catastrophic event. A day later, Jafar Sheikh Mustafa, the then Commander of the PUK’s Unit 70 of the Peshmerga forces, who is also a member of PUK’s politburo, revealed that a small group from his party “were responsible for the treason”. He said that the late PUK secretary general Jalal Talabani would punish this group as “traitors” if he was alive on that day.
“Those immature people within the PUK are responsible for the disaster in Kirkuk and Tuz Khurmatu,” Kosrat Rasoul, another senior official of the party said on 18 October 2017.
Aras Jangi, a brother of Lahour Jangi known as one of the key elements who are responsible for the fall of Kirkuk, was however defending the developments from the first moment. He repeatedly appeared on televised interviews describing the situation in Kirkuk as “absolutely safe” while the local Kurds were escaping Kirkuk in fear of mass detentions by Hashd al-Shaabi.
Bafel Talabani, on the other hand, appeared later in an interview showing a document to prove that “38 officials” from the PUK had signed the secret agreement with Baghdad to allow Hashd al-Shaabi into Kirkuk. However, some of the officials on the list later denied ever signing such a paper.
The signs of the treason were almost evident two days before the actual operation. On some fronts outside Kirkuk, some PUK-affiliated forces were smoothly withdrawn. Other Kurdish forces resisted when the Iraqi forces, backed by a neighboring country, launched the multi-axes operation, but the treason had already handed over Kirkuk.
Up to date, Kirkuk and other disputed Kurdish territories remain under the control of the Iraqi forces where Hashd al-Shaabi is the de facto ruler to oppress the Kurdish population, for which the blame is mainly put on Lahur Jangi and his group whom are now put aside by their own party’s leadership for attempts of poisoning several top PUK leaders.