Iraq’s oil guardians ill-trained and sometimes treacherous

KIRKUK, IRAQ – A pillar of black smoke blocked a quarter of the sky, turning the spring sky outside Kirkuk overcast and hinting at yet another attack on the all-important pipeline to the refinery at Baiji.

But no one at the Strategic Infrastructure Brigade, whose job it is to protect the buried length of pipeline and whose local headquarters is no more than a kilometre (half a mile) away, had any idea what was going on.

Major Abdullah Hussein Saad, the SIB second battalion’s executive officer, said that there had been reports of a leak the night before. Then, without any sound of an explosion, it had all caught fire this morning.

“No one saw anything,” he told US soldiers visiting his base and inquiring about the massive fire. “It’s hard to see anything; there’s a lot of grass and people are constantly coming and going.”

AFP