|
KIRKUK, Iraq — For generations, this oil-rich
city was Iraq's melting pot, where the country's
diverse ethnic and religious groups lived in
relative peace.
Today, Kirkuk's ethnic balance is precarious,
threatened both by insurgents wanting to stoke civil
war and by Kurds and other long-oppressed groups
thirsting for justice and power in post-Saddam
Hussein Iraq.
"It's a potential flash point," says Army Maj. Gen.
Joseph Taluto, commander of U.S. troops in the area
stretching from just north of Baghdad to Kirkuk.
"But it has to get resolved by the Iraqis. What the
heck can we do? We stay out of it."
If Iraq's new government can pull off a
reconciliation here, this city of 850,000 could
become a model for ethnic harmony in a country with
a history of deep sectarian rivalries. If not, this
is where Iraq's experiment with democracy could
start unraveling.
"Kirkuk has the capability of being the shiniest
star of all the cities in Iraq," said Lt. Col. Rob
Lytle, executive officer for the Army's 116th
Brigade Combat Team, which patrols the city. "But
its diversity is also its liability. The tensions
are all there."
On Monday, a car bomb blasted a convoy carrying an
official with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said
Burhan Taib, the police chief in Kirkuk. The
official survived the attack, which occurred in a
town 55 miles south of Kirkuk, but six others were
killed.
The seeds of sectarian rivalry here were planted in
1991, when Saddam's regime began expelling Kurds and
Turkmens, often at gunpoint, replacing them with
Arabs. Since the collapse of Saddam's regime,
thousands of Kurds have returned, camping on the
outskirts of the city and spoiling to get their
homes back.
Quarrels, but relative peace
For now, there has been surprisingly little
sectarian violence, while political leaders quarrel
over who will control Kirkuk.
Newly powerful Kurds, who hold the second most seats
in the National Assembly, insist that Kirkuk be
included in the semiautonomous region they control
in the north. But Sunni Arabs and Turkmens want the
city controlled by Iraq's central government in
Baghdad, 150 miles south.
The dispute practically derailed the creation of
Iraq's new government. The Kurds refused to support
the new government without a guarantee that Kirkuk
would be part of the semi-autonomous Kurdish north.
Shiites, who hold a majority of seats in the
National Assembly, refused to give in.
Ultimately politicians on both sides decided to
delay the decision, agreeing to resolve the fight
when lawmakers create a new constitution later this
year. "Kirkuk is still out there as one of those
potential deal breakers," says David Phillips, a
senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations.
At stake is an estimated 40% of Iraq's oil reserves,
within 30 miles of downtown Kirkuk. Control of the
city could give the Kurds a significant chunk of
Iraq's oil revenue, depending on how the
distribution is determined in the new constitution.
Most of the remainder of Iraq's oil is in the
heavily Shiite south.
But oil is only part of the reason Kirkuk engenders
so much passion. The ancient city is central to the
Kurds' often tragic history.
"Saddam's government, with all its power, wasn't
able to wrestle Kirkuk away from the Kurds," says
Lukman Abdulafif, spokesman for the Kurdistan
Democratic Party, one of two major Kurdish parties.
"Who's going to do it now?"
Saddam's ambition to turn the Kurdish north into an
Arab stronghold began in the 1970s and crested with
the 1988 Anfal campaign, which resulted in the
"disappearance" of 100,000 Kurds. Those bodies are
now being recovered from mass graves across Iraq,
according to a 2004 report by Human Rights Watch.
After a failed 1991 uprising by Kurds, Saddam's
regime displaced a further estimated 120,000
residents from Kirkuk, the report said. During the
crackdown, many Kurds fled to Iran, Turkey, or the
mountainous areas still under Kurdish control.
Some Kurdish neighborhoods in Kirkuk were leveled,
and the Iraqi government blocked the return of Kurds
and other minorities to the city of Kirkuk, Human
Rights Watch said.
"Kirkuk has been a symbol of suffering for the
Kurds, and it's been the center of problems of the
Kurds with successive Iraqi governments," says
former Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin, a Kurd.
"I hope it can be a symbol of brotherhood and
peaceful coexistence. But it's a city of many
different people. A solution won't be easy."
After the fall of Saddam, Kurds were looking for
quick justice. They demanded that all of the Arab
families Saddam brought to Kirkuk return to the
south. Fears of reverse-ethnic cleansing began to
spread.
"I'm not for reversing ethnic cleansing," Amin said.
"But in an organized manner and assisting these
people, (Arabs) should go back to their original
areas."
Today, Kirkuk remains one of Iraq's most diverse
cities: 35% Arab, 35% Kurdish, 26% Turkmen and 4% of
other groups, according to a U.S. military survey
conducted in October 2004.
An afternoon drive through this northern Iraqi city
reveals the layers of ethnic groups that have
already returned: Turkmen butcher shops advertising
fresh sheep heads and whole plucked chickens quickly
fade into rows of Arab sweet shops and coffeehouses,
which, by another block or two, become open-air
Kurdish rug bazaars and cybercafes.
Moments of violence
It's an uneasy peace.
In January, four Kurds were dragged into the street
in Hawija, a mostly Arab town 20 miles southwest of
Kirkuk, and shot to death. Then in March, an Arab
police major and three officers were killed in
Kirkuk by a roadside bomb during a funeral
procession for a fellow officer who was killed the
day before by another roadside bomb.
The Iraqi Institute for Human Rights in Kirkuk, an
independent group, has documented more than 300
cases of vanished Arabs during the past two months.
"Every day, someone is in here complaining about
it," says Jalal Ibrahim, deputy director of the
institute.
Armed Kurdish militia, called peshmerga, or "those
who face death," still patrol the streets in
pickups. Other members of the militia have joined
the local police. The peshmerga fought guerrilla
battles against Saddam's army over the years and
joined with U.S. and coalition forces in 2003 to
drive the Iraqi army out of the north.
At offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK),
one of the main Kurdish political parties, the
former peshmerga, still dressed in camouflage and
cradling Kalashnikov rifles, pat down visitors.
Whether Kirkuk should join the semi-autonomous
northern region should be put to a citywide
referendum, says Jalal Jawhar Aziz, head of the PUK
offices in Kirkuk. "Let the people decide," he says.
"It will resolve itself peacefully."
Down the street, the offices of the Kurdistan
Democratic Party, the other main Kurdish party, is
also guarded by peshmerga. KDP spokesman Abdulafif
echoes Aziz's call for peaceful resolution. But, he
says sternly, Kirkuk should return to Kurdistan.
Seeking a 'greater Turkey'
On a residential street in Taseen, a predominately
Turkmen part of town, a sign on a fence announces
the offices of the "Humanity Aids Community." The
house is a cover for the Iraqi Turkmen Front, one of
two main Turkmen parties.
On a recent morning, a dozen young men in camouflage
vests, Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders,
lingered on the sidewalk outside.
Inside the home, a small wooden mural depicted a
wolf baying at a full moon — symbol of the Grey
Wolves, a Turkish paramilitary group created in the
1960s to battle leftists. It was strongly anti-Kurd.
Named for a legendary she-wolf that led captive
Central Asian Turks to freedom, the Grey Wolves
engaged in assassinations and terrorist attacks with
the goal of establishing a "greater Turkey," one
that would include Kirkuk and its oil fields.
Omar Khattab, manager of the office, strode among
the men outside, barking orders. Short and stocky,
with the demeanor of a drill sergeant, Khattab had a
Nokia mobile phone clipped to one side of his belt,
a Tariq 9mm pistol on the other.
"We have to defend our rights," he said. "If we fail
with politics, we'll do it with a bullet."
Political compromise in the city has remained
elusive. Politicians attempting to put together a
provincial government in Kirkuk are stalemated.
Kurdish leaders swept the Jan. 30 elections, winning
26 of Kirkuk's 41 provincial council seats.
A week after the election, the Kurdish coalition,
along with their Turkmen and Arab counterparts,
seemed poised to name a governor, deputy governor
and council leader representing all three groups,
says Lt. Col. Anthony Wickham, the Army's military
liaison to the council.
But negotiations between parties collapsed. The
council has been unable to fill the positions since,
he said. Arab and Turkmen leaders have boycotted the
council meetings, claiming the Kurds are hoarding
too much power.
"Instead of coming to a point in the middle, the
parties have actually drifted farther apart,"
Wickham said.
Aziz, the PUK chief, remains hopeful of a political
solution nonetheless. The party's good relationship
with other political groups and coalition officials
should work to bring about a solution, he said.
And his followers won't let insurgents disrupt the
road to peace, he says. Asked what can be done about
insurgents who have lately stepped up violent
attacks in and around Kirkuk, Aziz leans back in his
armchair and smiles. "We'll handle them," he says.
www.usatoday.com
Top |
® 