Isil attacks villages south of Kirkuk as Iraqi and Kurdish forces are distracted fighting each other

Islamic Stateof Iraq and the Levant (Isil)  jihadists attacked villages south of the city of Kirkuk yesterday, exploiting the growing crisis between Iraqi and Kurdish forces in the area. Three villages near the town of Daquq were briefly captured by Isil in a nighttime assault on Wednesday.  The region had until recently been controlled by Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, but they were driven out earlier this week by Iraqi forces looking to claim zones disputed with the Kurds after they voted last month to secede.   Isil had been mostly driven out of the province after an Iraqi army offensive in the major city of Hawija saw more than a thousand of its militants surrender.  Isil fighters surrender in Hawija But the current chaotic security situation has given Isil room to manoeuvre. The US and its coalition partners had warned Kurdistan’s President Masoud Barzani against holding the referendum, saying that pursuing independence would undermine the war Iraq was still fighting against Isil.  Washington has stressed it would like its allies in Iraq to work together against the militant group, and warned it may consider halting its massive train-and-equip program for Iraqi forces if they continued their offensive against the Kurds. “As long as there will be problems between Baghdad and Erbil, Isil extremists benefit from the conflicts,” said Kamal Chomani, a nonresident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. “Isil can easily reorganise itself when there is a political and security vacuum, this is the strength of any extremist groups here as the ideology remains the same.” He said both Kurdish Peshmerga and Shia militia fighting with the Iraqi army are strong enough to control their areas now, but if conflicts intensified, both get weakened and Isil can easily gain ground. “I believe Baghdad thinks it's more important to move on the Kurds than to deal with remaining pockets of Isil in Iraq,” said Michael Pregent, a former US intelligence officer now with the Hudson Institute think-tank, told the Telegraph.   “I don't think it cares if Isil pops up here and there as long as it doesn't threaten non-Kurdish areas.” Members of Iraqi federal forces enter oil fields in Kirkuk, Iraq  Credit: Reuters Iraqi and Kurdish forces have slowly retaken territory from Isil over the past three years.  In July, they retook Mosul and effectively shattered its self-declared territorial caliphate. Despite the losses, however continues to carry out attacks in Iraq. Last month, an attack claimed by Isil at a checkpoint and restaurant in southern Iraq left more than 80 killed and 93 wounded. With relations continuing to deteriorate, a Baghdad court on Thursday issued an arrest warrant for the vice president of Iraqi Kurdistan on charges of "provocation" against Iraq's armed forces. About | Kirkuk Kosrat Rasul had referred to the Iraqi army and federal police as "occupation forces", the court said. In the statement, Mr Rasul, who is also vice president of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of the two main Kurdish parties, criticised his own group for not having resisted the entry of Iraqi federal forces into the disputed northern city of Kirkuk on Monday. The judiciary in the Iraqi capital last week also ordered the arrest of three senior Kurdish officials responsible for organising a September 25 independence referendum that went ahead in defiance of Baghdad.

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