Kirkuk Council votes on Tigris Operations Command today

Kirkuk Council votes on Tigris Operations Command today 06/09/2012 09:15 KIKUK, Sept.6 (AKnews)- Kirkuk Provincial Council is due to meet today to collect a vote in favor or against an order for forming Tigris Operations Command and it is expected that the order be rejected by a majority vote, a Council member said.    Recently Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered to form the joint operations command in Diyala and Kirkuk provinces and demanded all the interior and defense forces in the two ethnically diverse provinces be subordinated to the new command, locally known as Dijla Operations Command. The formation of the new command is not in the interest of Kirkuk and creates constitutional and legal violations because Kirkuk has a particular situation and no forces should be formed in the province, said Mohammed Kamal. He continued the situation in Diyala is quite different to that of Kirkuk. Kamal wondered how the Tigris Operations Command can be unified when there is Salahaddin province separating Kirkuk and Diyala. The representative thought formation of the new force is "politically motivated against the Kurds and Turkmen." He thought the new force is not for improving the security situation in Kirkuk and the best evidence for this is "assassination of Brig. Adnan Abdul-Razzaq [a police chief in Kikuk]… They want police to be weak so that they say let Dijla force come [into Kirkuk]." Calling into mind, a report in 2006 by James A. Baker (former US secretary of state) Lee H. Hamilton (former democratic congressman) which described Kirkuk as a "barrel gun", Kamal said "I believe that Kurds, Turkmen, Arabs, Assyrians, Chaldeans [in Kirkuk] did not allow for this barrel to explode. "But the Dijla force is the priming for this gun barrel to explode Kirkuk and this is not in the interest of any side."