Iraq army moves to secure planned oil route to Iran

Iraqi forces launched a security operation along a planned oil transit route to Iran today, saying it was clearing and “destroying sleeper cells” in the mountainous border area where two armed groups operate, Reuters reported.

Iraqi oil officials announced in December plans to transport Kirkuk crude by truck to Iran’s Kermanshah refinery. The trucking was to start last week and officials declined to give reasons for the delay other than it was technical in nature.

“With the goal of enforcing security and stability, destroying sleeper cells and continuing clearing operations, an operation was launched in the early hours of this morning to search and clear areas east of Tuz Khurmato,” the Iraqi armed forces said in a statement.

The operation is being conducted by the Iraqi army’s 9th armoured division, the interior ministry’s elite Emergency Response Division, and Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), with air support from the US-led anti-Daesh coalition and in coordination with Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, the military said.

Read: Iraq and Iran sign Kirkuk oil export contract

A security official in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government confirmed Peshmerga coordination.

Sources within the PMF said there were between 200 and 500 fighters, belonging to remnants Daesh and a newly emerging militant group known as the White Banners. Other security sources said the militants numbered between 500 and 1,000. The White Banners fighters are believed to come from Kurdish populations displaced when Iraqi government forces and Iranian-backed Shia paramilitary took over areas around Kirkuk and Tuz Khurmato in October, according to Hisham Al-Hashimi, a security analyst in Baghdad.

“The White Banners have no connection to Daesh nor to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG),” he said, referring to the semi-autonomous Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq, he said.

Iraqi military officials acknowledge the existence of a group called White Banners but refuse to comment on its composition or leadership. The KRG has “strictly no relations whatsoever” with this group, a Kurdish official told Reuters.