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During Saddam Hussein's blood-soaked rule, he
ordered the ethnic cleansing of Kurds, the
Arabization of their lands and their forcible
removal from Kirkuk, the northern Iraqi city at the
center of 40 percent of Iraq's oil reserves.
The Kurds, 20 percent of Iraq's 24 million people,
thus lost control of a city they claim is theirs.
They now want it back as the capital of their
semiautonomous Kurdish region. But both Sunni and
Shi'ite Iraqis are opposed, and the stalemate could
provide the spark for a much-feared civil war.
Brits, with long colonial experience in Iraq, say
Kirkuk, not the insurgency, is the tipping point
between success and failure for the U.S. attempt to
introduce democratic rule.
A coalition of Shi'ite Iraqis and another alliance
of the two main groups of Kurds, who are not Arabs,
between them garnered 215 seats in the 275-member
national assembly. The Sunnis, for the most part
boycotted the national elections Jan. 30.
The Shi'ites have 140 seats, just shy of a majority.
But they can count on support from small splinter
factions to block the Kurds from seizing both Kirkuk
and the surrounding oil wealth. But Kurds already
control the Kirkuk city council with 59 percent of
the vote. They are determined to right the wrongs of
the Saddam regime -- by force if necessary. The
Kurdish militia -- the 80,000-strong peshmerga,
which means "those who face death" -- are the best
troops in Iraq outside coalition forces. They were
also the only Iraqis to fight alongside U.S. forces
during Operation Iraqi Freedom. They have done well
against insurgents in the three mainly Kurdish
northern provinces in Mosul, Kirkuk and Tal Afar.
Under an agreement last June, peshmerga were to
disband and be absorbed into Iraq's army, security
and police forces. Some now wear Iraqi uniforms but
still consider themselves an autonomous Kurdish
force. The authoritative London-based "Jane's
Foreign Report (March 17) said, "For some time now,
largely unnoticed by the outside world, there have
been repeated clashes between the Kurds and their
rivals in Kirkuk and other northern towns."
The International Crisis Group in Brussels said:
"Tensions in the Kirkuk region, where the political
ambitions, historical claims and economic interests
of the principal communities -- Kurds, Arabs,
Turkomen and Chaldo-Assyrians -- clash, have been
escalating since U.S. forces toppled the Ba'athist
regime in 2003. Violence is assuming a troubled
pattern."
The ingredients for a civil war are in place. Such a
conflict could rapidly escalate regionally, dragging
in Turkey, Iran and Syria: Turkey, because it fears
an independent Kurdish state would become a magnet
for Turkish Kurds; Syria, because it also has a
Turkish minority and would welcome an opportunity to
sabotage America's democratic experiment; Iran,
because it wants Iraq's Shi'ite-dominated government
to prevail. The Kurds cannot recover confiscated
lands without dispossessing the Arabs who replaced
them in the 1970s and '80s.
But the Kurds also hold a trump card short of
hostilities. The Transitional Administrative Law,
written in 2004 by the Interim Governing Council
under U.S. guidance, says a permanent constitution
can be vetoed if three of the 18 provinces fail to
ratify. Kurds control three provinces in the north.
Jalal Talabani, one of two principal Kurdish
leaders, was to become president of the new Iraq, a
largely ceremonial post, and Shi'ite leader Ibrahim
al-Jaafari the new prime minister. Iyad Allawi, a
secular Shi'ite with 40 seats in the national
assembly, who is still prime minister may still be
the compromise candidate to see Iraq through the
rest of the year.
Whatever happens, the Kurds, who have known nothing
but betrayal by the powers in the 20th century, are
not about to give ground on Kirkuk and its oil
revenues. Mr. Talabani calls the city "the Jerusalem
of Kurdistan." Massoud Barzani, the other principal
Kurdish leader, says, "We are ready to fight and
sacrifice our soul to preserve [Kirkuk's] identity."
A unitary democratic Iraq is the U.S. goal. If the
Kurds have their way, Shi'ites in the south would
find salvation with 60 percent of Iraq's oil and a
closer relationship with Iran. The Sunnis, high and
dry in the center of the country, would take the
insurgency to new heights of violence. The failure
of negotiations would spell disaster.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The
Washington Times and of United Press International.
www.washingtontimes.com
Comments by Kurds: Kirkuk is the heart of
Kurdistan. No power in the world is strong enough to
take this heart from body of the homeland of
Kurdistan
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