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New National Assembly
will be closely monitored by those who want the city
returned to Kurdish rule.
Residents of this diverse and divided city are
sceptical that the new parliament will solve what
has become known as "the Kirkuk issue."
In the Sixties, the former regime began moving
thousands of Arabs into Kirkuk as part of a campaign
to "Arabise" parts of Kurdish northern Iraq.
Thousands of Kurds, as well as Turkomans, were
forced out.
Kirkuk, which today has Kurdish, Turkoman and Arab
residents who belong to a multiplicity of religions,
remains a central issue for Kurds. They want the
city returned to Kurdish rule, displaced Kurds
brought back, and the Arab settlers encouraged to
move back to their home regions.
Since Saddam Hussein's regime was overthrown, Kirkuk
residents and Kurds in other cities and regions have
closely monitored the government's initiatives moves
on the Kirkuk question, and it is now one of the key
issues facing National Assembly members, who will
hold seats for four years.
The constitution approved in October declares that
Kirkuk's displaced families should be moved back by
2007. Many are disappointed, however, that according
to the constitution, a referendum on whether it
become part of the Kurdish territories will be
delayed until after “normalisation”, a somewhat
undefined term, is achieved there.
Voters are expected to favour the main Kurdish
slate, the Kurdistan Alliance which promotes itself
as the coalition that will solve Kirkuk's problems.
It won the majority of seats on the Kirkuk
provincial council and a significant number of seats
in the Iraqi National Assembly in the January
election.
But Kurdish parties have come under fire for not
pushing hard enough to normalise Kirkuk. On a local
level, they were also accused of throwing their
weight around on the provincial council.
In Kirkuk, the Kurdistan Alliance will be competing
with slates representing minority Turkomans and the
Sunni Arab coalitions that had boycotted the January
polls.
Rizgar Ali, Kirkuk provincial council president and
a leading member on the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
party, said the Kurdistan Alliance pushed for Arabs
in Kirkuk to vote separately and for their ballots
to be counted towards candidates from the areas they
originally came from. The Independent Electoral
Commission in Iraq, IECI, did not agree to this.
Arab votes "will affect the election results in
Kirkuk to a large extent", he said.
The Arab-Kurdish issue was inflamed when local
officials discovered nearly 200,000 voters' names -
most of them Kurds -- were missing on official voter
registration lists. Kirkuk has 691,410 registered
voters.
Most of the 196,000 missing voters were displaced
Kurds who had returned to Kirkuk and voters who had
not participated in previous elections, said Farhad
Talabani, head of the IECI in Kirkuk.
Talabani said the electoral commission in Baghdad
resent the entire list, including the missing names.
But Talabani said he was concerned that the IECI
would not be able to print all of the voter lists in
time. Some in Kirkuk are worried that the lists will
not be ready and have called for the election to be
delayed.
The incident soured already complex relations
between Kurdish political groups and others who are
suspicious of their agenda.
"One mistake shouldn't be fixed with another
mistake," said Samira a-Hamdani, a 41-year-old Arab
resident, referring to the initiative to move Arabs
out of the city.
Parties serving in the next parliament should not
encourage annexing Kirkuk to Kurdistan, said
Muhammed al-Bayati, 45, a Shia Turkoman who sits on
Kirkuk's provincial council.
"They should educate people about how they can
coexist with other ethnicities," he said. "They
shouldn't arouse sectarianism."
Some Kurds have little confidence that any Iraqi
government will actually solve the issue.
"Foreign support - and particularly the United
Nations – could help solve the Kirkuk problem," said
Karwan Zangana, a 32-year-old Kurdish resident. "For
the Iraqi government, the Kirkuk issue is just about
ink on paper."
Samah Samad is an IWPR trainee journalist in
Kirkuk.
www.iwpr.net
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