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KIRKUK, Iraq (Reuters) - Deep beneath the
northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk is one of the most
valuable oil deposits on the planet. But when Fahd
Hussein looks at his home town, all he sees is a
fetid slum.
Kirkuk, potentially one of the richest cities in
Iraq, is instead one of its poorest, a city of a
million people with raw sewage flowing through the
streets.
For those who live here, its oil wealth has been
nothing but a curse. Distant rulers have carted off
its booty, leaving behind poverty and ethnic
violence as they fight for control.
"Look around you, look carefully. Does it look like
a city where people live well?" said Hussein, a
Kurdish security guard standing in brutal midday
heat in a main square littered with rotting rubbish.
"It is like a barn for animals," he said. "Because
of the oil and the fight to control it, Saddam
kicked the Kurds out of the city and turned our
lives to a nightmare."
For decades Arabs were brought here under former
President Saddam Hussein to "Arabise" the city.
In the last decade of Saddam's rule, Kurds
maintained a quasi-independent state in the
mountains to the north. Kurds and Turkmen who say
they were driven out under Saddam now claim the city
as their homeland.
All three ethnic groups agree on one thing, said
journalist Stran Abdullah: Kirkuk's wealth was never
spent on them.
"Oil is the most important reason why the identity
and the issue of Kirkuk has not been solved," he
said.
"Because of the political struggle in the city, the
government in Baghdad was reluctant to spend money
here. And the neighbouring Kurdish government also
did not help, because they did not know the
political fate of Kirkuk," he said.
CRUMBLING STREETS
Anyone who has travelled around Iraq can see -- in
the crumbling buildings, the crowded houses and
potholed streets -- that it is one of the poorest
big cities in the land.
The city's main hospital is dirty and poorly lit.
Muhannad Abdul Hussein, a nurse who has worked there
for 15 years, said authorities once tried to bring
them new equipment but couldn't get it through the
doors because they were too narrow.
"This hospital was built for the people of this city
in the 1950s when there were about 200,000. Now
there are over a million and no improvements have
been added."
Life has only got worse since Saddam was toppled and
the city became an ethnic battleground. Side streets
are blocked by concrete barricades, main streets are
choked by traffic.
"It is the story of Iraq, the story of us, the poor
people, from Saddam's day until now. Nothing has
changed," said Sadeq Abdul Rahman, 50, another
security guard.
"Everybody wants to control the city and they forget
about us. I want my children and grandchildren to
have a better future but it seems there is nothing I
can do."
The area was wealthy for thousands of years.
Millennia before oil was discovered in the 1930s its
fertile fields and olive groves fed the ancient
Assyrian empire.
Louai Mohammed, 47, drank tea with a group of
friends in his butcher shop in the city's crowded
market amid the bustle of late afternoon trade. If
only politicians would stop fighting over the oil
and leave the people of Kirkuk alone, he said.
"We want everybody and mainly the government to stop
looking at our city as a place for their struggle
and care for us a little bit, care for our kids."
Reuters
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