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Iraq: The Fight Over Kirkuk's Oil 25.8.2006
By Karzan Sherabayani
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Now in our second
season of online Rough Cut videos, we return this
week to Iraqi Kurdistan, the subject of our very
first Rough Cut back in June 2005. In the
original report, Kurdish exile Karzan
Sherabayani took us on an emotional journey to his
hometown of Kirkuk, where he saw his family for the
first time in 25 years and voted in historic
elections there.
This time, he returns to investigate Iraq's growing
oil crisis and discovers that much has changed in
Kirkuk, home to 40 percent of Iraq's oil fields.
"I am shocked at how much the security has
deteriorated," Sherabayani says, surveying the
wreckage of a car bomb attack that happened hours
earlier. "Kirkuk is a crippled city with shortages
of water, electricity and fuel." When he tries to
film the long lines of vehicles waiting at gas
stations all over town, the local police arrest him.
Insurgents have hit three gas stations in the last
few days and everyone is nervous. Sherabayani says
the increase in violence is not only part of a
battle over Kirkuk's oil wealth but an attempt to
destabilize the entire region and drag the Kurds
into a civil war. "At the moment, the Kurds are the
main force to keep Iraq together and build a
democratic government," he says.
His words are especially ironic since the Kurds were
the victims of Saddam Hussein's notorious "Anfal"
campaign in 1987 and 1988, in which the Iraqi regime
used chemical and other weapons to kill more than
180,000 Kurds. At long last this week, the Iraqi
Special Tribunal began to prosecute Saddam for
genocide against the Kurds.
Meanwhile, Iraq itself is now in what many believe
is a civil war and U.S. casualties have reached at
least 2,612.
To find out just how crippling fuel shortages have
become, Sherabayani visits a petroleum distribution
center in Kirkuk, where the director tells him that
production has dropped to the point that Iraq now
imports most of its oil.
He then heads north to the Turkish border to see how
oil is moving in and out of the country to keep
Iraq's economy afloat. Iraq also lacks the capacity
to refine the oil it does produce. At the main
crossing, oil tankers stretching as far as the eye
can see wait to enter Turkey from Iraq. Because of
security issues, the Turks often close the border,
and anywhere between 8,000 and 10,000 trucks can sit
for weeks waiting to pass through. The crude oil
they carry will be refined in Turkey and then
trucked back into Iraq.
"Iraq's oil import and export business seems to be
very inefficient," notes Sherabayani, as he scans a
giant parking lot.
With the situation made worse by insurgents
regularly attacking the pipeline, and striking oil
workers disrupting supplies, it's no surprise that
smuggling operations have begun to fill the gap. At
a remote crossing on the Iranian border, Sherabayani
finds convoys of horses loaded up with plastic
containers of gasoline. Everyday, Kurds living on
the Iranian side trek through a relative no-man's
land in broad daylight to sell their contraband
fuel. Young Iraqis on the other side tell
Sherabayani that reselling the gas is a good way to
earn money during the school holidays.
Since Saddam's toppling in 2003, tens of thousands
of Kurds have moved back to the north after being
driven out by Saddam's "Arabization" program in the
1980s. As their numbers have strengthened so has
their resolve to secure what they see as their
rightful claim to Kirkuk's oil and gas reserves. But
when Sherabayani sweet talks his way into heavily
guarded drilling and refinery compounds set up by
the Kurdish government, he's told that the Kurds
aren't running the operation.
"I am puzzled to discover that my people, finally
free from Saddam, are now inviting Turkish companies
to control their most important assets," he says. He
poses this to the Kurdish deputy prime minister,
Omar Fatah, asking him wryly if Kurdistan might end
up as a Turkish colony.
His report highlights a country consumed by ethnic
and security problems with no easy solutions in
sight, but it's also another personal journey for
Sherabayani, whose affability in front of the camera
and sincere empathy with his fellow countrymen often
tinge his reports with a tragicomic effect.
Back in Kirkuk, he stands over a plot of land
promised to his family by the new regional
government. Like many Kurds, Sherabayani and his
family were forced out of their village in 1963 when
the land was cleared for oil exploration. After
years in exile in Europe, he contemplates the land
before him and what it would mean to return.
"This is not for me," he says, shaking his head.
"Not yet. But hopefully in the future."
Jackie Bennion
Senior Interactive Producer
pbs org
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