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KIRKUK, Iraq — Looming elections in this
ancient city are igniting the kind of ethnic strife
that many have long feared.
Militants kidnapped a local Kurdish politician two
weeks ago, and seven Kurdish refugees were slain in
a Sunni Arab neighborhood late last month. Last
week, gunmen sprayed the main Turkmen political
party headquarters with bullets. Campaign posters
for the leading Arab slate have been torn down or
crossed out with black paint.
On Saturday, a mortar round landed near the
Kurdistan parliament building in Irbil shortly after
leaders debated whether to boycott the Kirkuk local
election.
"If this continues, we are headed for a civil war,"
said Riad Sari Kehya, the political chief of the
Iraqi Turkmen Front in Kirkuk.
Since the invasion of Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi leaders
have feared that Kirkuk, with its evenly divided
population of Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen, was the most
likely place for sectarian violence to erupt. To
everyone's surprise, the city, capital of Kirkuk
province, remained relatively calm even as insurgent
attacks rocked other towns.
Now, the Jan. 30 vote is testing the groups' fragile
coexistence.
Tensions escalated in recent weeks as Kurds began
pushing to postpone local elections, saying any
decision on the fate of the disputed province must
wait until the return of tens of thousands of Kurds
displaced during an ethnic cleansing campaign by
Saddam Hussein.
"Saddam Hussein expelled the real citizens of Kirkuk,"
said Gov. Abdulrahman Mustafa. "We can't have
elections until this is resolved."
On Saturday, the Kurdistan parliament reached a
tentative deal to participate in the vote, pending
the registration of an additional 100,000 Kurdish
voters.
Along with a 275-member transitional national
assembly, Iraqis in each of the nation's 18
provinces will choose regional councils. In
addition, the three Kurdish provinces in the north
are to elect a Kurdish parliament.
But now Kirkuk's Turkmen and Arab leaders are
threatening to pull out. They accuse Kurds, who
currently hold most of the seats of power in the
province, of attempting to steal the election.
All three groups claim to represent the majority of
residents in the province.
"This is the Jerusalem of Iraq," said Col. Lloyd
Miles, the U.S. Army commander in charge of the
province.
Census figures are of little use because Hussein not
only replaced as many as 100,000 Kurds with Shiite
Arabs from southern Iraq, he also forced many
Turkmen and Kurds to identify themselves as Arab or
face deportation. The discovery of a mass grave
outside the city served as evidence of what happened
to Kurds who refused to leave.
Rivalry over Kirkuk is fueled by oil — the province
sits atop one of the world's largest known petroleum
reserves, representing about 40% of Iraq's supply.
"It's all because of the oil," said Adnan Ridha
Baba, who manages Kirkuk's census office. "All the
parties are lying about their population numbers
because they are driven by self- interest. It's all
a political game."
Kurdish leaders, eager to absorb the province into
their semiautonomous region, say they aim to reverse
the effects of Hussein's "Arabization" campaign.
Many Kurds view Kirkuk as a future capital and
economic heart of a long-desired independent Kurdish
state. After the U.S. invasion, Kurds flooded back
to Kirkuk, with nearly 75,000 returning last summer,
U.S. military officials estimate. Some sought to
reclaim their old homes, but most lived in refugee
camps scattered around the city's edges, receiving
financial assistance from the two major Kurdish
parties, with promises of more to come.
At the same time, Kurds — with U.S. support — gained
control of the governorship, a majority of seats on
the city council and the top jobs in the police
force and Iraqi national guard. Kurdish flags were
raised around the city until U.S. officials forced
them to come down.
"For 35 years we had to live with the Arabization of
Kirkuk," said Col. Burhan Tayeb, a Turkmen and the
city's police chief. "Now we are living with the
Kurdization of Kirkuk. Their aim is to change the
demographic map."
The issue has become a political hot potato that
neither the U.S. nor the interim Iraqi government
wants to deal with. Under Article 58 of Iraq's
Transitional Administrative Law, Kurds are allowed
to return, and Arabs, if relocated, must be
compensated. But the details and timing have not
been spelled out. A commission created to handle
resettlement claims remains unfunded and inactive.
Not a single claim has been processed.
Arabs worry that returning Kurds will force out
families who have lived in Kirkuk for more than 30
years, creating new refugees. Hundreds have fled in
fear.
"They are threatening our existence in Kirkuk," said
Ghassan Muzhir Assi, head of the Arab Gathering and
Tribes Council.
Sukayna Ghazi Said, whose family moved to Kirkuk
from Basra in the early 1980s, worked in the city's
Customs and Smuggling Office for four years. When
Kurds took over, they disbanded the office and left
her without a job or even a desk.
"When I asked what I was supposed to do, they said,
'You are from the old regime. Go back to Basra,' "
she said.
Her mother fears the family will be forced to leave.
"We have committed no crime," the mother said.
"What's wrong with us? We are good citizens. Aren't
we Iraqis?"
Despite such fears, efforts to repopulate Kirkuk
with Kurds have largely failed. As winter approached
and the new school season began, most of the refugee
families returned to more comfortable, secure
residences in Irbil or Sulaymaniya, leaving behind
ghost camps of empty tents along the highway. Many
refugees were disappointed when assistance never
materialized. Others left when it became clear that
the Iraqi government would not conduct an
all-important census to measure the ethnic make-up
of the province.
"The repopulation is not going as fast as the Kurds
would like," said Joost Hiltermann, Middle East
Project director in Amman, Jordan, for the
International Crisis Group. "In fact, the joke in
Kirkuk is that the Kurds came to town for summer
camp."
Several thousand impoverished refugees, as many as
30,000 according to U.S. estimates, remain in the
city's sports stadium and other neighborhoods. But
the dwindling numbers have caused Kurdish leaders to
rethink their support for the Jan. 30 election.
"The Kurds made an assessment a few months ago and
realized that they don't have the numbers to win,"
said Miles, the U.S. commander. "That's when they
started talking about boycotting."
Earlier this month, all sides began discussing a
compromise under which they would join forces on a
united slate, in effect duplicating the current
government council structure. The council has 13
Kurds, 10 Arabs, 10 Turkmen and seven Assyrian
Christians. Since Kurds and Christians often vote
together, the arrangement has created a virtual
deadlock.
Negotiations on the united slate broke down over how
many seats each side would receive.
The latest battle is over voter registration. Kurds
are demanding that election officials register
100,000 additional Kurds to vote in the city,
claiming their names were mistakenly or
intentionally left off registration lists.
The missing voters include people like Taha Latif
Hassan, who was expelled from Kirkuk in 1972 at age
20. He now lives in Sulaymaniya, where he is a
well-known photographer. Though he has no plans to
move back, he wants to register himself, his wife
and their four grown sons, all born outside Kirkuk,
to vote in his hometown.
"For 30 years there has always been the hope that
some day we could go back," Hassan said. "We have a
lot of memories there. But I won't go back to live
without guarantees that I will not be expelled again
and that my rights will be protected." On election
day, his family intends to make the one-hour drive
to Kirkuk.
Turkmen and Arabs accuse the Kurds of artificially
inflating their support by sending such "commuter
voters." They also accuse the Kurds of forging
identification papers. According to census director
Baba, a Turkmen, there are approximately 200,000
more food-ration cards issued in Kirkuk than the
actual population supports.
"It's not logical," he said. "Some of them, about
25,000, are for actual refugees. We believe the rest
are fake." Kurdish party officials insist all the
refugees and registered voters once lived in Kirkuk
and that they have the documentation to prove it.
Over the weekend, Kurds announced that they'd
reached a deal with the nation's electoral
commission to register the additional voters and
accelerate the return of Kurds to Kirkuk.
Turkmen leaders promptly vowed to boycott the
election.
"We will not accept the annexation of Kirkuk to
Kurdistan," said Kehya of the Turkmen Front.
http://www.latimes.com
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