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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.
Ahmed, a Kurd, and his friend, an Arab, studied
together at Kirkuk's oil institute nearly two
decades ago. But shortly after Ahmed started work at
the state-owned company North Oil in the late 1980s,
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 exiled
Kurds.
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 Ahmed met his classmate again, he discovered
that 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 percent
to 20 percent of the country's reserves.
"He had a great salary and a good job all these
years," said Ahmed, 41, musing on the luxuries of
his old friend's house. "Arabs, Turkmen and
Christians were hired, and Kurds were not."
.
Ahmed spoke from his own home, a concrete-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 Saddam's
government.
"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."
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," said
Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Shiite nominee for prime
minister.
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 Jaafari to
help give property back quickly 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 U.S. 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 1960s, 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
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, after the U.S. invasion. Some Arab
families fled, but most heeded the reassurances of
U.S. 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, said the
commission head, who declined to be identified by
name because one colleague had been assassinated and
another kidnapped.
Turkmen and Arab officials accuse major Kurdish
parties of having moved people pretending to be
returnees into Kirkuk before the Jan. 30 elections
in order to strengthen the Kurdish vote.
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