Tribal Elders Blamed For IS Militant Advances

By Stuart Ramsay, Sky News Chief Correspondent

Sirens wailing, lights flashing, the truck carrying six armed paramilitaries and a roof gunner from the Kurdish state security branch, Asayish, guided us into a notorious Arab neighbourhood in downtown Kirkuk.

It's from these virtual ghettos that the sporadic car bomb attacks in Kurdistan are planned and built.

Our guards are themselves a target and throughout our visit were jumpy and unhappy. I was assigned one of their number, a huge man armed to the teeth, for the whole time. He never left my side.

The rest of the security detail were deployed on the streets and alleyways. We were, they said, both a kidnap and bomb risk.

It felt a bit like over kill to be frank; but I didn't actually have a choice.

A military convoy drives towards Kirkuk, to reinforce peshmerga troops

Outside a school building I could see a few children playing in the street and a sort of greeting party forming up.

We were meeting displaced people, Sunni Arabs who have left Iraq proper to find sanctuary in Kurdistan.

Our security didn't know them and feared fundamentalists amongst their ranks.

Armed men walking into the temporary homes of Arab families, their children and their wives and daughters and their space, violated by our arrival.

I could sense the tension and approached the most senior looking guy and extended my hand and made the traditional greetings in Arabic.

Kirkuk has been the scene of several bombings in recent months

Within minutes I was surrounded by a group of their leaders. A friendly, scared and ultimately grateful group of men.

They crossed here to escape the bombing and fighting in their towns; to avoid Islamic State for sure, but also to escape the wrath of blood thirsty Shia militia.

This microcosm of Iraq speaks volumes.

They do not want some looney form of IS Islam. They don't want fighting. They want a fair share of Iraq, a government that represents them, an army that protects them.

IS has survived because they have offered a protection from the Baghdad government and are offering a society where they will be allowed to be Sunni without fear of attack.

Displaced Sunni Arabs are sceptical more airstrikes will help the conflict

These people are the ones who will decide the future of IS. One of the men asked to speak to me away from the group.

"I am Sunni. I agree with my friends here. But IS is being allowed to do all this by our tribal elders. The elders are behind everything. Tell your governments you have to speak to them," he said.

As airstrikes gain momentum and Britain decides to join in, I asked the group what they thought of it all.

Quite sceptical would best sum up their response.

They fear who would replace IS and they doubt they can be driven out from the air.

"What do your countries want us to do?," one of them asked.

"Will you arm us to fight IS? Will you support us in the future? Our government is a joke we trust none of them.

"They may have changed the faces and made a new government, but they are the same people. Nothing is changing."

IS and peshmerga troops are metres away from each other near Kirkuk

The basic strategy of the West is to attack IS but to try and urge the new government to be inclusive of all the religious and ethnic groups that make up this country.

That will take a very long time of course and that is really the problem because as every day passes IS are getting more bedded in.

It has only been a few months but their command and control of areas is staggering.

The most striking part of this incredibly informative hour or so was their total "getting" of Kurdistan.

An ethnic group of majority Sunnis who see Nation above Religion; in much the same way as the UK does.

"This country protects its people and they are protecting us. They have no need to but they are. That is what we want. A country that looks after all of us," one of them said.

Not an unreasonable demand. But right now it's just a hope.

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