Kurdish troops from north deserting

Leila Fadel and Yaseen Taha, McClatchy Newspapers

As the Iraqi government attempts to secure a capital city ravaged by conflict between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslim Arabs, its decision to bring a third party into the mix may cause more problems than peace. Kurdish soldiers from northern Iraq, who are mostly Sunnis but not Arabs, are deserting the army to avoid the civil war in Baghdad, a conflict they consider someone else's problem. The Iraqi Army brigades being sent to the capital are filled with former members of a Kurdish militia, the peshmerga, that's the armed wing of President Jalal Talabani of Iraq's political party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. Most remain loyal to that militia...

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