Iraq’s oil guardians ill-trained and sometimes treacherous
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. Full Story