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ATLANTA As Iraqis turn from holding elections to
writing a constitution, the make-or-break issue for
their nation may be the city of Kirkuk. Situated
next to Iraq's northern oil fields, Kirkuk is a
setting for all the ethnic-sectarian conflicts that
are the historic reality of Iraq - Muslim against
Christian, Sunni against Shiite, Kurd against Arab.
It is also home to the Turkmens, who are the ethnic
cousins of the Turks and look to a willing Turkey as
their protector. In their fierce competition for the
right to claim Kirkuk, the Turkmens and the Kurds
threaten to turn Iraqi internal politics into a
regional conflict.
Kirkuk is the center of the Turkmen population in
Iraq, while for Kurds, the city is a touchstone of
their identity. Each group makes up something over a
third of the city's population of 850,000. When the
invasion of Iraq began in March 2003, Kurdish
militias advanced southward from the Kurdish
autonomous zone established in the northern third of
Iraq in 1991 and entered Kirkuk. Since then the
Kurds have used their position as American allies to
bring in Kurdish families and thus bolster their
demand that Kirkuk be incorporated in the Kurds'
autonomous zone.
Their reason is emotional but also economic: Kirkuk
is the key to oil fields that represent 40 percent
of Iraq's proven petroleum reserves. At the least,
those fields are an enormous bargaining chip in
talks over the future Iraqi government; at most they
provide the economic base for a future Kurdish
state.
Intense hostilities between Kurds and Arabs date to
the late 1980s, when Saddam Hussein pushed many
Kurds out of the city and replaced them with Arabs.
But it is the contest between Kurds and Turkmens
that is the far more serious problem for the United
States, because the only card the Turkmens of Kirkuk
have to play against the Kurds is Turkey. It is a
card Ankara is willing to allow them to put on the
table.
Turkey holds its own claim to Kirkuk, which was
taken from Turkey as a result of the 1923 Lausanne
Treaty. Turkish nationalists still regard it as
historically part of Turkey. Ankara also asserts
guardianship over the Turkmen ethnic minority in
northern Iraq. But what is mainly driving Turkey's
interest in Kirkuk is the long-term problem of
Turkey's own rebellious Kurdish minority, 20 percent
of its population.
Since 1999, Turkish Kurds have attacked Turkey from
bases in northern Iraq, in the Kurdish autonomous
region. To Turkey's frustration, Iraqi Kurd
officials turn a blind eye to their Turkish Kurd
cousins' activities, while the Americans have been
reluctant to move against the bases for fear of
damaging their relationship with the Iraqi Kurds.
The Turkish military has taken matters into its own
hands by crossing the Iraqi border on occasion to
battle the rebels.
But more ominous are Turkish fears that Baghdad will
be forced to let the Kurds make Kirkuk part of their
autonomous zone. For Ankara, this would be excessive
Kurdish autonomy, its red line in Iraq.
The Turkish military has repeatedly warned Iraqi
Kurds against changing Kirkuk's demographics and
insisted that the inclusion of the city into the
Kurdish autonomous zone is a question in which it
intends to play a part. To underline the point, the
military makes no effort to hide its plans to send
troops if needed to thwart the Kurds' claim to
Kirkuk.
Military intervention in northern Iraq is
diplomatically risky for Turkey. Having just secured
an agreement to open talks on membership in the
European Union, Ankara will move with caution. Yet
Turkey may see preventing the emergence of a
potentially oil-rich Kurdish political entity on its
borders as worth the risk. And Europe may regard
keeping the Iraqi Kurds within Iraq's boundaries,
thus promoting stability in the Gulf and in oil
markets, as more important than keeping Turkey out
of Iraq.
Though publicly circumspect, Washington sees Turkish
military involvement as a looming possibility. It
has quietly said that the Kurds will not be allowed
to take control of Kirkuk. American military bases
in northern Iraq are discreetly being reinforced.
And the First Infantry Division, in charge of Kirkuk
for the last year, has balanced the rights of the
Turkmens and Arabs against those of the Kurds.
So Washington recognizes that the Kurds, further
emboldened by their anticipated numbers in the new
Iraqi parliament, could precipitate a crisis over
Kirkuk. The question is whether the United States or
the non-Kurdish members of the new Iraqi government
can hold the Kurds in check - a difficult task
considering the fervor, especially among younger
Kurds, for an eventual Kurdish state.
This is one of the complications of the Iraqi
election that the Bush administration has hailed as
such a success. If the Kurds try to change the
status of Kirkuk, the United States may find itself
forced to turn its military power on them. But if
America does nothing to hold Kirkuk, it may well
find itself in another crisis. Only this one would
not be confined to Iraq.
http://www.iht.com
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