|
KIRKUK, Iraq - (KRT) - While Iraqi politicians
broke a long impasse and formed a national
government last week, the council of oil-rich Kirkuk
province remains paralyzed along northern Iraq's
ethnic fault lines.
The province claimed as ancestral territory by
Kurds, Turkmens, Arabs and Assyrian Christians held
open elections about 12 weeks ago. But now the
people it elected are mired in political wrangling,
and there is no operating government there.
"We are embarrassed to face the people who elected
us," said council member Zhala Yunis Ahmad Hasan al-Taqteetchyl,
who has boycotted meetings for weeks along with his
eight fellow Turkmens on the council, retiring
instead to an office where they eat sweets and decry
Kurdish conspiracies.
Council members cannot agree on Kirkuk's governor,
deputy governor or chairman - the province's three
main posts - and so cannot get on with the business
of running the government. A pre-election holdover
is acting governor.
The council cannot even agree on an agenda: At its
most recent meeting Tuesday, security was supposed
to top the list. But soon after the Kurd-led meeting
began, an Arab member turned the discussion to the
growing problem of illegal garbage dumping on
highways, and the conversation descended from there
into mutual recriminations.
"You have a power vacuum," said the boycotting al-Taqteetchyl.
"People are complaining of lack of services. Our
only answer to them is that we haven't established a
government."
Of the 41 members elected to the council, only 26
regularly attend weekly meetings - all members of
the Kirkuk Brotherhood List, a multiethnic alliance
that itself has fallen into discord since the Jan.
30 elections.
Theoretically, the impasse could be broken. The
Brotherhood List needs only 21 of its votes to force
the approval of provincial leadership. But its
Kurdish-led members are unwilling to risk angering
other ethnic groups, and they have not agreed on
whom to select anyway.
"Right now, everybody's pointing at somebody else
and saying, `We're waiting on them.' It's a circle,"
said Army National Guard Lt. Col. Anthony Wickham,
the American military liaison to the council.
At Tuesday's council meeting in Kirkuk, a
representative of the U.S. State Department met with
the leadership of Kurdish, Turkmen and Arab
political parties. It is only the second time a
civilian from the U.S. government has attended the
council's meetings.
Wickham said the major Kurdish parties in Baghdad,
the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), were asked to
pressure their members in northern Iraq to end their
stalemate in Kirkuk.
"We're still working on it," said council member
Sherzad Adil Khursheed, a representative of the KDP.
"We are new to democracy. We don't have the
guidelines to organize political work in Iraq."
Home to the Turkmens before the Kurds, Kirkuk was
more recently the focal point of a 20-year "Arabization"
by Saddam Hussein. An estimated 100,000 or more
Kurds were expelled and replaced with Arab families
in a move to tighten the dictator's grip on the
province.
The Kurds began flooding back after the U.S.-led
invasion of Iraq in 2003, filling refugee camps,
moving onto public land and demanding the right to
return home.
Though the acting provincial governor has become
tougher about evicting Kurdish squatters from
abandoned buildings in the city of Kirkuk, Kurdish
camps southeast of town have become so established
that a $2 million water project is being run to the
new neighborhoods, military civil affairs officials
say.
Earlier this year, Kurds sought to redraw the
boundaries of Kurdish northern Iraq to include the
city of Kirkuk. But they settled for a pledge from
Shiites in the national government to implement
within the year a piece of transitional
administrative law that calls for the resettlement
of displaced Kurds in the region.
The matter is in arbitration, but the move was
enough to outrage other ethnic groups in the area.
"It took Saddam Hussein decades to carry out the
Arabization of Kirkuk," complained Turkmen council
member Ali Mehdi Sadiq. "It took the Kurds two years
to Kurdify it."
The prize is local control of oil wealth. About 6
percent of the world's oil reserves are within 30
miles of downtown Kirkuk, including almost 40
percent of Iraq's oil. The area also holds 70
percent of the nation's natural gas.
"Kirkuk will decide the future of Iraq. Because of
the wealth of Kirkuk, all eyes are on it," said
Sheik Barhan Mazhir al-Obeidi, one of only six Arabs
on the Kirkuk provincial council, though he does not
attend meetings. "If the situation is not stable in
Kirkuk, it won't be stable anywhere."
Many, including al-Obeidi, blame an increase in
violence around Kirkuk on the long impasse in the
provincial capital.
Since the elections, roadside bombs have killed a
Kurdish member of the Iraqi police and a Turkmen
police deputy chief in the province. An Assyrian
officer was shot and killed, as was a television
reporter working for a PUK-owned station.
On Tuesday, the council's most powerful players
hinted at movement on selecting a government. The
Turkmens said they likely would propose a new deputy
governor in the coming week, something the Kurds
have said they would welcome.
The potential breakthrough was cause for hope,
Wickham said.
"If we can have stability in Kirkuk," he said, "we
can have stability anywhere."
© 2005, Chicago Tribune.
www.chicagotribune.com
Top |
® 