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KIRKUK,
Kurdistan-Iraq - Passions run deep for the Arab and
Kurdish soldiers who wear the Iraqi army uniform.
Kirkuk lies just a few miles from one of the
nation's largest oil fields, worth billions of
dollars. Arabs figure that the city's oil wealth
should belong to Iraq, while ethnic Kurds see it as
part of a future nation of Kurdistan.
"If the Kurds want to separate from Iraq it's OK, as
long as they keep their present boundaries," said
Sgt. Hazim Aziz, an Arab soldier who was stubbing
out a cigarette in a barracks room. "But there can
be no conversation about them taking Kirkuk. ... If
it becomes a matter of fighting, then we will join
any force that fights to keep Kirkuk. We will die to
keep it."
Kurdish soldiers in the room seethed at the words.
"These soldiers do not know anything about Kirkuk,"
Capt. Ismail Mahmoud, a former member of the Kurdish
Peshmerga militia, said as he got up angrily and
walked out of the room. "There is no other choice.
If Kirkuk does not become part of Kurdistan
peacefully we will fight for 100 years to take it."
Five days spent interviewing Iraqi army soldiers in
northern Iraq - who are overwhelmingly Kurdish -
made clear that many soldiers think that a civil war
is coming.
"I see Iraq gradually becoming three regions that
will one day become independent," said Jafar
Mustafir, a close adviser to Iraq's Kurdish interim
president, Jalal Talabani, and the deputy head of
Peshmerga for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one
of two major Kurdish parties. "I see us moving
toward the end of Iraq."
Achieving independence is a matter of life and death
for Mahmoud, as with most other Kurdish soldiers
interviewed.
His father, a Peshmerga, was killed by Sunni Arab
dictator Saddam Hussein's troops in 1991 during
fighting in Kirkuk. His entire neighborhood in
Kirkuk, which housed some 2,000 families, was razed
that year as Saddam massacred Kurds and replaced
them with Arabs.
"We all left in bare feet," he said while walking
through the cold mud outside the barracks. "My
father was martyred for this struggle. It's my turn
now, and if I don't succeed my son will continue the
struggle. ... I try to explain these things to my
Arab soldiers, and I hope that I do not end up
fighting them."
Almost all the Kurdish soldiers interviewed
expressed that sentiment.
Col. Sabar Saleem, the head of intelligence for the
4th Brigade of the Iraqi 2nd Division in the city of
Mosul, said there would be no compromise over Kirkuk.
"War is just another kind of political solution,"
said Saleem, a former Peshmerga.
He said that while he wore an Iraqi army uniform he
had a much larger mission in mind.
"I tell you that I am a part of the Iraqi army, but
when it comes to the Kurdish cause I am willing to
offer my life, my head, for one inch of Kurdish
land," Saleem said. "Especially for Kirkuk."
Knight Ridder Newspapers
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