Yahoo! News - Revolts in Iraq Deepen Crisis In Occupation: "'worries about a different kind of civil war have been generated by reports that Iraq's ethnic Kurds are fighting alongside U.S. Marines and against the insurgency.
Guerrillas coming out of Fallujah have complained bitterly that Kurdish militiamen known as pesh merga are deployed against them. The Kurds are members of the 36th Battalion of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, built from several exile-based militias that supported the U.S.-led campaign against Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). Commanders of another, overwhelmingly Arab Iraqi army battalion refused to fight alongside the Marines.
... The politicians the Americans wanted to become popular have lost out to the guys the Americans didn't want to become popular,' said an Iraqi adviser to the occupation authority. 'It was exactly the outcome they did not want.'"
- posted by geoff @ #