A hundred miles
from Baghdad, tanks are facing off across a frontline defined not by an
international border but by ethnic enmity, fueled by past bloodshed and
future oil wealth, that risks tearing Iraq apart.
The sun-blazoned flag of
Kurdistan flies from the turrets of Soviet-built armored vehicles,
seized a decade ago from Saddam Hussein's army, their barrels now aimed
at the unseen forces of Iraq's national government on the far side of
Tuz Khurmato, a town beyond the formal boundary of the Kurds' autonomous
region.
For three weeks, Kurdish
"peshmerga" and soldiers of Baghdad's Arab army, have been reinforcing
positions in the "disputed territories", a long, ill-defined swathe of
northern Iraq, rich in oil and communal complexity, where the federal
government and Kurdish leaders based in Arbil vie for control.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/06/us-iraq-kurds-standoff-idUSBRE8B50UC20121206
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