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Claiming to be the
oldest site of continuous occupation in Iraq, Kirkuk
sits on archaeological remains that are 5,000 years
old. It reached great importance under the Assyrians
in the 10th and 11th centuries BC. Historically an
ethnically mixed city populated predominantly by
Kurds and Turkomen, Kirkuk is important to Kurdish
national identity. Kirkuk is also the center of the
Iraqi petroleum industry and thus strategically and
economically important to the Iraqi state.
To ensure Arab control of the oil fields, successive
governments in Baghdad have implemented a policy of
deliberate Arabization of the city. The forced
population movements and forced ethnic registration
changes continued under Sadam Hussein, making it
likely that there is no longer an official Kurdish
majority in the city. Because Kirkuk is one of the
centers of Kurdish national identity, both the KDP
and the PUK claim it as their regional capital.
Virtually all Kurds in the province are Sunni, while
the Turkmans are half Sunni and half Shia. There are
virtually no Shia Faily / Faili Kurds near Kirkuk.
Over half a million Faily Kurds were deported to
Iran from Iraq from 15 April 1980. The deported
Faily Kurds lived in their historical Ilamite region
to the east of Tigris in Iraq, neigbouring their
fellow Kurdish kins in Ilam province in Iran. Very
few Faily Kurds belong to the PUK or the KDP, but
vote with the Shia of the south. The PUK and KDP do
not offer much support to the Faily Kurds, because
they are not from the north.
Kirkuk is the center of Iraq's oil industry and is
connected by pipelines to ports on the Mediterranean
Sea. The Kirkuk field, originally brought online by
IPC in 1934, still forms the basis for northern
Iraqi oil production. Kirkuk has over 10 billion
barrels of remaining proven oil reserves. After
about seven decades of operation, Kirkuk still
produces up to one million barrels a day, almost
half of Iraqi exports. Kirkuk is a market for the
region's produce, including cereals, olives, fruits,
and cotton. There is a small textile industry.
Kirkuk is built on a mound containing the remains of
a settlement dating back to 3000 B.C. The majority
of the inhabitants are Turkmens with Kurds, Arabs,
Assyrians and Armenians.
Kirkuk is located in northern Iraq, about 250
kilometers north of the capital of Baghdad near the
foot of the Zagros Mountains. Kirkuk lies just south
of the no-fly zone patrolled by U.S. and British
aircraft to prevent Saddam from attacking the Kurds
and other minorities.
The city is built by the Hasa river on an area with
archaeologic remains over 5000 years old, the city
reached great prominence in the 10th and 11th
centuries, under Assyrian rule when it was known as
Harrapha. The oldest part of the town is clustered
around a citadel built on an ancient tell, or mound.
The discovery in 1908 of oil by British explorers in
Masjid-i-Sulaimant led to the creation of British
Petroleum (BP). This highlighted the potential of
the region that was to be exploited following the
collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. Oil was
discovered in Kirkuk in northern Iraq in 1927 and
around the same time attention was shifting to the
western littoral of the Gulf.
The Kirkuk region, rich in its oil fields and farm
lands, has been one of the principal obstacles to
finding a peaceful solution to the Kurdish question
in Iraq. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Iraqi regime
destroyed over 3,000 Kurdish villages. The
destruction of Kurdish and Turkomen homes is still
going on in Iraqi-controlled areas of northern Iraq,
as evidenced the destruction by Iraqi forces of
civilian homes in the citadel of Kirkuk. The
Kurdistan Democratic Party, led by Masud Barzani,
controls a part of the de facto autonomous region of
Iraqi Kurdistan adjacent to Kirkuk.
As of early 1988, Iraqi artillery shells, bombs, and
rockets loaded with chemical warfare (CW) materials
were stored either at Samarra or in a large
ammunition dump near the town of Muhammadiyat. This
facility was located outside of Baghdad.
Additionally, 122-mm rockets temporarily were stored
at the airbase in Kirkuk for further transport to
Sulaymaniyah. Mention of CW storage at "the airbase
in Kirkuk" in the 1988 report further strengthened
the US intelligence community's focus on S-shaped
bunkers and the assessment that they would be used
for forward deployment of chemical munitions, but
were not intended for long-term storage.
Post-1991 fighting between Kurdish and Iraqi forces
in northern Iraq resulted in temporary sabotage of
the Kirkuk field's facilities. In 1999, production
at Kirkuk was estimated at 900,000 bbl/d, with
output from all northern fields around 1.26 million
bbl/d. In early December 1999, Russian energy
company Zarubezhneft said that it was drilling
multiple wells in Iraq's Kirkuk oil field, and that
this did not violate U.N. sanctions (Russian
officials have denied that any work was being done).
Zarubezhneft hoped to boost Kirkuk production
capacity from its current 900,000 bbl/d to around
1.1 MMBD. Zarubezhneft also had a contract to drill
approximately 100 wells in the North Rumaila field.
Production from Kirkuk reached as high as 680,000
bbl/d, well above the field's estimated optimal
production rate of 250,000 bbl/d, as Iraq attempted
to sell as much oil as possible in the months
leading up to the March/April 2003 war. In addition,
some analysts believe that poor reservoir management
practices during the Saddam Hussein years
--including reinjection of excess fuel oil (as much
as 1.5 billion barrels by one estimate), refinery
residue, and gas-stripped oil -- may have seriously,
even permanently, damaged Kirkuk. Among other
problems, fuel oil reinjection has increased oil
viscosity at Kirkuk, making it more difficult and
expensive to get the oil out of the ground. In order
to better understand the state of the Kirkuk
reservoir, a contract was signed in early 2005 for
Exploration Consultants Ltd. and Shell to carry out
an integrated study on Kirkuk, with work scheduled
to be completed by early 2006. This will mark the
first such study in three decades for Kirkuk, and is
significant in that it will use the latest
technology.
The Kurdish Democratic Party, the more powerful of
the two Kurdish groups that control parts of
northern Iraq, is determined to make Kirkuk the
political capital of a Kurdish federal state in a
post-Saddam Iraq. The KDP has drafted an Iraqi
constitution outlining such a state, with Kirkuk as
its most important city. Turkey opposes Kurdish
control of Kirkuk, fearing it would strengthen
Kurdish autonomy.
Under the Ba'ath party the the city's main
government building had a sinister purpose. Three
different ministries once operated inside the
building, the Department of Resolution, the
Department of People Affairs and the Order of 111.
The Dept. of Resolution is believed to have taken
care of the regime's drug smuggling operations and
its police-sanctioned auto theft ring. Permits (and
what appear to have been blatant bribes) were
required by citizens to build just about anything
within Kirkuk and were handled by the Dept. of
People Affairs. The Order of 111 is believed to have
facilitated Saddam's efforts to Arabization the
region-often by forcefully evicting local, non-Arab
residents from their homes, Roughneen explained.
Though many of the returning workers are the same
ones who worked in the building under Hussein, their
names have been checked through various sources to
help ensure they have a clear background.
Community leaders and soldiers from 4th Infantry
Division's Task Force Ironhorse and the 173rd
Airborne Brigade have joined forces to repair the
neglected sewage system in Kirkuk. This project will
rid the streets of disease-laden sewage that area
families have had to live with, bathe in and wash
dishes in for more than two decades. Under the
former regime, Kirkuk's sewage system had been
neglected for the past 25 years, leaving it in
shambles. Before the sewage repair project was
initiated, 30 percent of the city's sewage was
dumped in the streets, 50 percent was transported to
a non-operational sewage plant where it quickly
seeped back into the city's water system and the
other 20 percent was stowed in containers then
dumped outside the city. With the help of Coalition
forces, the city is repairing this key piece of
infrastructure. Six projects were under way to clean
sewage from the streets.
In early 2005 the United States Agency for
International Development completed a $4.1 million
refurbishment of the Kirkuk Unified Water Treatment
Plant, benefiting over one million residents of
Kirkuk City and its surroundings.
Construction of Kirkuk's Unified Water Treatment
Plant began in the early 1980s, but was interrupted
due to the conflicts with Iran and Kuwait. In 1993,
the plant was completed and commissioned. After
several years of operation, however, pipe and tank
leaks began contributing to foundation and
structural problems.
Prior to USAID's refurbishment project, which began
in January of 2004, the plant's production was
approximately 22 million gallons of water per day.
Furthermore, the plant did not consistently produce
potable water because of system failures and
operational deficiencies. Following a year of
reengineering, the Kirkuk Water Treatment Plant is
capable of delivering 95 million gallons of potable
water each day. The plant will permanently employ
approximately 100 Iraqis. Approximately one million
dollars worth of operational spare parts, tools, and
safety equipment used in the upgrade were
transferred to the Ministry of Water upon
completion.
In October 2004 Abdul-Rahman Mustafa, governor of
Iraq's northern city of Kirkuk, denied allegations
from Turkey and some Turkomen representatives that
any attempts have been made to change the
demographic character of Kirkuk or to "re-Kurdify"
the city after the Arabization program under the
former Saddam Hussein regime. Mustafa held to his
position that the entire population of Kirkuk should
collectively and jointly decide the future of the
city -- Kurds, Arabs, Turkomens and Assyrians --
without any outside interference. Mustafa said, "We
shall do our best to improve conditions in Kirkuk.
If we have not succeeded so far, it is because of
lack of sufficient funds and resources. Our aim is
to turn Kirkuk into a city of 'brotherhood' among
all ethnic and religious groups in the region."
The US policy on the status of Kirkuk is that
efforts to remedy the unjust policies of the Saddam
government in and around Kirkuk, which included the
forced deportation of residents, confiscation of
property and the manipulation of administrative
boundaries, are internal issues for Iraqis to
decide. The Transitional Administrative Law (TAL),
which was drafted and agreed to by Iraqis, lays out
specific steps to undo Saddam Hussein's terrible
legacy.
Iraqi Armed Forces Recruiting Station
In January 2004 it was announced that work would
start soon on a $28.3 million project to renovate
the Tadji Military Base and Iraqi Armed Forces
recruiting stations. The recruiting stations are at
Al Hillah, Kirkuk and Baqcuba. The project is funded
through the Project Management Office (PMO) of the
Coalition Provisional Authority. The PMO manages the
$18.4 billion appropriated by the U.S. Congress to
support the reconstruction of Iraqi infrastructure.
The project is important to the Iraqi security
necessary to continue with the major task of
rebuilding the nation's infrastructure. A key
benefit of completing this project is to give the
Iraqi Armed Forces the facilities they need for the
defense of their country. Helping Iraqis gain jobs
and build industries will have a direct impact on
their safety and security. The work was completed by
early June 2004. The prime contractor, Parsons
Infrastructure & Technology Group of Pasadena,
California, U.S.A. involved Iraqi contractors,
suppliers and labor.
Kirkuk Army Base
The new Iraqi Army of 40,000 persons require basing
facilities at 18 locations. Prospective Military
Bases to re-construct include Kirkuk. The Coalition
Provisional Authority (CPA) Contracting Office has
budgeted $137,145,375 to renovate Kirkuk Army Base
(Phase I).
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