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Analysis: Kirkuk Fearful of Future 1.10.2006
Analysis by Mohammed A. Salih
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Erbil, Kurdistan
Region (Iraq), September 30, -- The security
situation in the northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk
has further deteriorated over the past few weeks
after the Iraqi government formed a committee
assigned to "normalise the situation".
The creation of that committee under a
constitutional provision has led to a rise in ethnic
tensions between Kirkuk's Kurdish, Arab and Turkomen
populations. Violence has risen with the tensions.
September has been one of the bloodiest months for
Kirkuk, with an unprecedented number of attacks. For
many, the message behind the attacks is to stop
implementation of Article 140 of Iraq's
constitution, and to inflame sectarian strife in the
province.
Article 140 sketches a three-step plan to remove
traces of the Arabisation policy of the regime of
former president Saddam Hussein. The constitution
now provides for a census followed by a referendum
on the fate of the province, after normalising the
situation.
Some representatives of non-Kurdish groups in Kirkuk
believe that Article 140 supports only Kurdish
interests.
"We will act as an obstacle in the way of
implementing Article 140," Jamal Shan, deputy head
of the Iraqi Turkomen Front told the Kurdish weekly
Hawlati in Sulaimaniya. Shan's party has close ties
with Turkey and holds three seats in the Iraqi
parliament. Implementation of the Article will
"endanger the geography of Turkomen (territories),"
Shan added.
Seen as a microcosm of Iraq for its mix of several
ethnicities, Kirkuk awaits an uncertain future as
disagreements about the future of the province
increase. A victim of its oil wealth, Kirkuk has for
long been a divisive issue in Iraq's politics.
Many Kurds say Kirkuk is really a Kurdish province,
and that large numbers of ethnic Arabs were settled
there by the Saddam regime - a move that Article 140
could undo. They also see the Turkomens, a people of
Turkish descent, as outsiders. But each of Kirkuk's
ethnic groups claims historical ownership over the
city.
Turkomens claim that Kirkuk has been historically a
Turkomen-dominated city. Arab leaders say they were
legally settled in the province and have a right to
stay there. Kurds say that before the start of the
Saddam-led ethnic-cleansing policies, Kurds
constituted the majority of the population in the
province.
Kurdish leaders want to speed up action over Article
140 in the hope of bringing Kirkuk into a Kurdish
autonomous region.
"There is little time left for implementation of
Article 140, but if there is goodwill in Baghdad
then this remaining time is still enough," Mohammed
Ihsan, minister for extra regional affairs in the
Arbil-based Kurdistan regional government said in a
statement. He added that the regional government has
various strategies to deal with contingencies that
may arise over Kirkuk, but did not elaborate.
Interference by neighbouring countries, most notably
Turkey, is believed to have complicated the
situation and rendered a solution more difficult.
Turkey claims it acts to protect the Turkomen
community in Kirkuk, but not all Turkomens welcome
its intervention. Turkomen leader Irfan Kirkuli says
Turkomens will be better off joining a Kurdish
autonomous area.
He also warned against interference by outside
powers, saying "they aim to create turmoil and
tension in Kirkuk."
Turkey has been exercising diplomatic and local
pressure in support of the Turkomens. Several
commentators say Turkey wants to block creation of
an autonomous Kurd region in order to limit the
aspirations of its own Kurdish population.
Turkey also claims historical rights in Kirkuk, on
the grounds that the city was ruled by Ottoman Turks
for centuries until the creation of the modern state
of Iraq in the 1920s.
During a recent visit by United Nations
Secretary-General Kofi Annan to Ankara, Turkish
officials described the situation in Kirkuk as
"critical", and asked him to "support Turkey over
the current issue of Kirkuk."
Amid all these tensions, residents resent remarks
that Kirkuk may become the "flash point" for an
all-out civil war in the country. But not many are
sure how the microcosm can withstand the larger
divisions within Iraq.
IPS
The former Iraqi president forced about 250,000
Kurdish residents to give up their homes to Arabs in
the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city and the region's
oil industry.
Kirkuk city is not under the full control of
Kurdistan Regional Government administration. A
referendum in 2007 will decide whether the oil-rich
Kurdish province should be annexed to the safe
semiautonomous Kurdistan region in Iraq's north.
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