MESOP FLASH : Death From Above? – US-Made Fighter Jets Over Iraqi Kurdistan Cause Local Fears, Politicians Concern

Histyar Qader – Niqash – 14 Aug 2015 – The Iraqi air force finally received four of 36 F16 planes it had ordered from the US. But a recent flight over Kurdistan has raised old fears and caused what some say is political scare mongering.Late in July two fighter jets allegedly flew over the semi-autonomous, northern region of Iraqi Kurdistan. The planes – F16s freshly delivered to the Iraqi airforce at the southern Balad air force base – were flown by Iraqi pilots and as they powered through the skies above Iraqi Kurdistan, they caused a lot of concern below.

Ever since the idea of the US supplying Iraq with fighter planes was first suggested, the Iraqi Kurdish have been wary of the plan. There are not a lot of good memories in the northern region – which has its own borders, military and parliament and which acts semi-independently of Baghdad – about Iraqi jet fighters in the skies above. The regime led by former Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, used its planes to terrorise and bomb citizens of Kurdish ethnicity for years.

One of the worst incidents was the bombing of the Iraqi Kurdish city of Halabja with chemical weapons in 1988. The attack killed an estimated 5,000 civilians and injured thousands more, with even more locals suffering the after effects for years.Local woman Joan Salah, who was seven years old at the time and living in Halabja, says she can never forget the noises and colours of the Iraqi warplanes.“The planes were white and they threw white papers down to us,” Salah told NIQASH. “We didn’t know then that the papers were messages of warning. A few hours later they started dropping chemical bombs.”Which is why when the plan to buy the F16s – single engine, all-weather military aircrafts – was suggested a few years ago, Iraqi Kurdish politicians were upset. The Iraqi government signed a deal for 36 planes as part of a US$12 billion arms deal that would strengthen the Iraqi military. But at the same time the relationship between the authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan and the government, headed by former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, was tense for various reasons and seemed to be deteriorating – so the Iraqi Kurdish were worried that, once again, the Iraqi airforce would be used against them.

The delivery of the F16s has been delayed for some time but on July 13, four of the planes finally arrived in Iraq. Iraqi pilots had been training on the planes in the US. It seems that the security crisis caused by the extremist group known as the Islamic State was enough justification to expedite the planes’ delivery. The July 22 flight over Iraqi Kurdistan did nothing to settle Kurdish fears. “The F16s are a threat,” Hamdi Kali, a military analyst based in Kirkuk, told NIQASH. “Nobody knows who will eventually command these planes – and that is even though there are Kurdish officials at senior positions in the Iraqi Ministry of Defence.”“The arrival of these aircraft in Baghdad should be considered a threat to the Kurds,” adds Iraqi Kurdish MP, Babir Kamila. “After 2003, the Iraqi government used all the weapons they had against their opponents.” And, Kamila added, the Iraqi Kurdish do not have any weaponry that would be capable of protecting their region against something like the F16s.

The late July flight caused so much concern that the commander of the Iraqi air force, General Anwar Mohammed Amin, held a press conference later the same day to allay fears. The planes above Iraqi Kurdistan were just doing their job, on a routine flight, Amin said, noting that the air force was just flying within the boundaries of federal Iraq, of which Iraqi Kurdistan is clearly a part despite its semi-autonomous status.Amin also pointed out that the pilots were actually Kurdish themselves. This certainly reassures some locals who believe that the fact that some of the pilots slated to fly the new F16s are Kurdish will mean that the planes cannot be used against them. Amin has pointed out that three out of five pilots who returned from training in the US are Kurdish and that in total, five out of 12 of the pilots studying in the US were actually Kurdish.There are also other things that should prevent the F16s being used against the Kurdish, says Shakhwan Abdullah, a Kurdish MP who is also on the Iraqi Parliament’s Security and Defence Committee. According to information they have, the Committee members believe that the sales contract between Iraq and the US stipulates that the planes not be used to bomb cities and that the US’ foreign intelligence service, the CIA, must be informed before the planes are deployed.“Despite these guarantees though, we cannot be sure that the Iraqi government would never use the planes to bomb the Kurdish region,” Abdullah told NIQASH. Then again, as some local observers have pointed out, the concerns being expressed may have more of a political motivation.“The Kurdish fears about these planes are politically motivated rather than related to genuine security concerns,” argues Watheq al-Hashimi, the director of the Iraqi Group for Strategic Studies based in Baghdad; he thinks the kerfuffle about the F16s flying over Iraqi Kurdistan is something of a storm in a teacup. “The officials of the region are trying to use these fears to distract from their own internal problems. Every time there is a new problem inside Iraqi Kurdistan, politicians raise fears about outsiders to keep local minds elsewhere. If Baghdad was capable of using these planes, then it would have done so already.” http://www.niqash.org/en/articles/security/5079/US-Made-Fighter-Jets-Over-Iraqi-Kurdistan-Cause-Local-Fears-Politicians-Concern.htm