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KIRKUK, Iraq - Muhammad Ahmed realized how wide
the chasm between Kurds and Arabs here had grown
when he recently ran into a former classmate on the
serpentine streets of this troubled city.
Mr. Ahmed, a Kurd, and his friend, an Arab, had
studied together at Kirkuk's oil institute nearly
two decades ago. But shortly after Mr. Ahmed started
work at the state-owned North Oil Company in the
late 1980's, the government of Saddam Hussein,
intent on solidifying Arab control of Kirkuk, forced
him out of his job and made him and his family move
north, where they joined tens of thousands of other
Kurds exiled from this city.
That mass relocation planted the seeds for a bitter
ethnic antagonism that has grown into the most
incendiary political issue in Iraq outside of the
Sunni-led insurgency, and the one that more than any
other is delaying formation of a new government.
When Mr. Ahmed met his classmate again, he
discovered his friend was still working for North
Oil, one of as many as 10,000 employees helping to
tap the region's vast troves of oil, estimated at 10
to 20 percent of the country's reserves.
"He had a great salary and a good job all these
years," said Mr. Ahmed, 41, musing on the luxuries
of his old friend's house. "Arabs, Turkmen and
Christians were hired, and Kurds were not." He spoke
from his own home: a cinder-block building hastily
erected in a squatter camp inside the city's soccer
stadium, where he and his family have been living
alongside thousands of other returning Kurds since
the fall of Mr. Hussein's rule. "We wish we didn't
have oil in Kirkuk," he said. "If the oil wasn't
here, we'd have a comfortable life now. All our
problems are because of this damned oil."
Mr. Ahmed's plight encapsulates the growing struggle
over Kirkuk, a drab city of 700,000 on the windswept
northern plains. Efforts to restore Kurds to their
jobs and property without disenfranchising Arabs are
fraught with the possibility of igniting a civil
war. The debate has so inflamed passions that
Kurdish and Shiite Arab negotiators trying to form a
coalition government in Baghdad may have to put off
any real decision on Kirkuk's future.
"As far as Kirkuk is concerned, because of the
different ethnic groups in it, we have to apply a
permanent solution, not a temporary solution,"
Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Shiite nominee for prime
minister, said.
Kurdish leaders call Kirkuk their Jerusalem, saying
they should control it - and its oil fields -
because it was historically Kurdish. The Kurds are
pushing Shiite leaders like Dr. Jaafari to help
quickly give property back to Kurdish returnees,
evict Arab settlers and employ more Kurds at North
Oil, the only major government institution here that
the Kurds have been unable to dominate since the
American invasion.
The Kurdish political parties have huge leverage.
Kurds turned out in large numbers to vote on Jan.
30, securing more than a quarter of the seats in the
275-member national assembly and making themselves a
necessary partner for the Shiite bloc that won the
largest number of seats.
But with the oil in Kirkuk at stake, the Kurdish and
Shiite parties have been unable to agree on how to
carry out Article 58 of the interim constitution,
which provides vague guidelines for settling the
property disputes here. Equally vexing is the
question of who will administer Kirkuk - the
national government or the autonomous regional
government of Iraqi Kurdistan.
In the 1960's, Baath Party officials began packing
Kurds and, to a lesser degree, Turkmen into trucks
and evicting them from Kirkuk. As the displacement
continued, the Kurds who worked for North Oil, like
Mr. Ahmed, rose to the top of the relocation list.
The government, dominated by Sunni Arabs, imported
mostly Shiite Arabs from the impoverished south into
the Kirkuk area.
Kurds began returning in large numbers nearly two
years ago, when the Hussein government was toppled.
Some Arab families fled, but most heeded the
reassurances of American soldiers who, trying to
avert an ethnic war, urged them to stay and urged
the Kurds to await a legal solution.
"From my perspective, the Arab settlers who were
brought into Kirkuk were also victims of Saddam
Hussein," said Barham Salih, the deputy prime
minister and a top Kurd. "But the question is, if
we're talking about a new Iraq, does this mean the
elite of Iraq, the democratically elected elite of
Iraq, are willing to acknowledge the terrible
mistake that was made and put it right?"
In April 2004, the Americans created the Iraqi
Property Claims Commission to rule on restitution.
By the end of 2004, the commission had received
10,044 claims from Kirkuk's province, Tamin. The
commission's statistics show that judges have
decided only 25 cases.
The head of the commission said in an interview that
only two judges, both Kurds, were working on cases
in Kirkuk. The commission has been unable to assign
more judges because Kurdish political parties insist
that only Kurds review the claims, limiting the
number of qualified people, said the commission
head, who declined to be identified by name because
one colleague had been assassinated and another
kidnapped.
Turkmen and Arab officials here accuse the major
Kurdish parties of having moved people pretending to
be returnees into Kirkuk before the Jan. 30
elections in order to bolster the Kurdish vote. The
main Kurdish coalition won 26 of 41 provincial
council seats, and a Kurd will almost certainly be
installed as governor.
Each ethnic group claims demographic dominance, but
no reliable census has been taken since 1957. Mutual
suspicions are intense.
"The families who were kicked out of Kirkuk had
homes in Kirkuk," said Suphi Sabir, a senior
official in the Iraqi Turkmen Front. "If these
people were from Kirkuk, why did they not return to
their homes? Why are they staying in the stadium?"
In the Kirkuk neighborhood of Qadisiya, from which
Kurds were evicted in large numbers, a group of Arab
men said on a recent afternoon that the city would
remain peaceful - as long as no one tried to seize
their homes.
"Those people are not from Kirkuk," a tall man in a
dark blue robe, Muhammad Awad, said of the Kurds.
"They came from Turkey and Iran. They're not Iraqis.
Maybe the old regime kicked out 1 or 2 percent of
the Kurds, but those people came from outside the
country."
At the stadium, one glance at Mr. Ahmed's home shows
why he has grown so impatient. Water runs along the
floor when it rains. Children rummage in garbage
barrels outside. A small kerosene heater is the sole
source of warmth, and a television set the only
entertainment.
Insurgents attack the stadium every week or two. On
election day, a rocket landed near Mr. Ahmed as he
stood outside his home, decapitating a 16-year-old
named Yusef.
"We are willing to pay with our blood, like water on
the floor, because Kirkuk is a Kurdish city and
should stay part of Kurdistan," said Yusef's mother,
Sabrir Kareem Muhammad, as her husband kissed a
photo of their son.
About 440 families live in the stadium, at least 100
more than a year ago, said Ismail Ibrahim, an
unofficial mayor of the camp. Thousands of other
Kurdish returnees are living in dozens of sites in
and near Kirkuk, local officials say, scattered in
dirt fields, abandoned government buildings and
former military barracks. Many returnees started off
in tents, but this winter built spartan cinder-block
or mud-and-brick homes.
"Nobody is supporting us," Shakur Ahmed, 44, said as
he sat on Mr. Ibrahim's floor. "Baathists are still
occupying our land."
For many Kurds, employment at the oil company is as
important as winning back their property. But
securing jobs there is not easy, either. Muhammad
Ahmed, who worked as a supervisor of oil pumps and
turbines for 10 months before he was relocated, said
he was among 180 experienced Kurds who recently
applied together for jobs at North Oil. Mr. Ahmed
had an interview two months ago, he said, but has
heard nothing.
A senior official at the Oil Ministry said he had
sent to North Oil nine lists of people, half of them
Kurds, who should be given jobs.
The Kurds complain that they have seen little or no
results. "It's chauvinism," Mr. Ahmed said. "They
don't want Kurds to work in oil. It's the same as
under Saddam's plan."
On the edge of the city, out of sight of the
stadium, the flames from oil processing plants
leaped into the sky in the gathering dusk, the
brightest light for miles around.
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