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Iraqi MP: Kurds will not get Kirkuk, If
Kirkuk will go to Kurdistan then there's a civil war
11.10.2007
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Rise
in violence puts Kirkuk's future in doubt
October
11, 2007
Kirkuk, Iraq's border with Kurdistan region,
-- Violence is growing in the northern Iraqi city of
Kirkuk, long a hotbed of ethnic tensions among its
Kurdish, Arab and Turkmen residents. It now appears
that the long dispute over the city's status is not
likely to be resolved this year, even though an
article in the Iraqi constitution calls for a
referendum on it before 2008.
Iraqi Kurds want Kirkuk to be part of their
autonomous region, a move which many of the city's
Turkmen and Arabs oppose.
In his 20-year career as a fighter in the Kurdish
militia, Gen. Sarhat Qadir stormed and captured
Kirkuk twice. The first time was in 1991, during a
short-lived Kurdish uprising, which was crushed
after a matter of weeks by Saddam Hussein's forces.
The second time was in April 2003, when the United
States invaded Iraq, and the Kurds seized Kirkuk,
tore down statues of Saddam, and danced in the
streets waving the flag of Kurdistan.
Today Qadir is a brigadier general in Kirkuk's
police force. He says that being a rebel in the
mountains was much easier.
"In the old days, things were better, and I liked it
more because at that time our enemy was clear and he
was in front of us.
But now our enemy ... we don't see it — it's
invisible."
Portraits of dead policemen decorate the halls of
Kirkuk's main police station. In the past two years,
Qadir says, insurgents have killed more then 500
Iraqi police and soldiers in and around the city,
including his brother and his cousin. Qadir himself
narrowly survived an assassination attempt after
someone slipped poison into his Pepsi.
American forces in Kirkuk face a constant threat
from roadside bombs — more than five are discovered
around the city on any given day.
U.S. Army Sgt. John Zimmerman volunteered for his
second tour of duty in Kirkuk. When he first served
in Kirkuk in 2004, he says the city was safe,
compared with places like Baghdad and Fallujah. He
says he never thought the situation in the city
would deteriorate so dramatically.
Kirkuk sits on top of the largest oil fields in
northern Iraq. To better control the area, Saddam
deported hundreds of thousands of native Kurds and
Turkmen, and replaced them with Arab settlers.
The Iraqi constitution was supposed to undo this
ethnic cleansing. It calls for a census and a
referendum to determine the future status of the
city before Dec. 31.
The Kurds are confident the vote will lead to
Kirkuk's annexation to Iraqi Kurdistan. But many
non-Kurdish Iraqi politicians remain firmly opposed.
"They are wasting their
time," says Salah al-Mutlaq, an Iraqi parliament
member from the Sunni Arab National Dialogue Front.
"They will not get Kirkuk. If Kirkuk will go to
Kurdistan, then there's a civil war."
But amid the escalating insurgent violence in Kirkuk,
there are some non-Kurds in the city who support
joining Kurdistan.
"The services and security in Kurdistan are better
than in other parts of Iraq," says Ayden Ansi, a
Turkmen tire salesman. "If we join, Kirkuk will
become safer, too."
But the Kurds appear to have lost this round of the
struggle for the city. American and Iraqi officials
say it is highly unlikely the referendum will take
place this year.
There is growing criticism within Kurdistan over the
Kurdish leadership's Kirkuk strategy.
Asos Hardi, a Kurdish newspaper writer, says the
Kurds have not done enough to reach out to the Arab
and Turkmen communities in Kirkuk.
"Even if we will win the Kirkuk province in a
referendum, till there will be at least 30 to 40
percent of the population [who] don't want us.
"More important than winning the ... the referendum
is winning their hearts and minds," Hardi says,
adding that the Kurdish leadership has failed to
address that issue.
Back at the police station, Gen. Qadir lists the
names of at least half a dozen insurgent groups his
men are fighting in the city. But this veteran
Kurdish fighter says more schools and jobs — not
bullets — are the key to capturing Kirkuk for the
Kurds.
npr org
* Kirkuk city is a
Kurdish city and it lies just
south border of the Kurdistan autonomous region and
it is not under the full control of Kurdistan
Regional Government administration, its population
is a mix of majority Kurds and minority of Arabs,
Turkmen.
The former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein forced
over 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up their
homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city
and the region's oil industry.
Based on Iraq's Constitution a referendum is to be
held in late 2007 to decide whether the oil-rich
Kurdish province should be annexed to the safe
semiautonomous Kurdistan region in Iraq's north.
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