|
North Iraq city of Kirkuk could be a new
front 1.2.2007 |
|
|
|
As a vote on oil-rich Kirkuk's future looms, a
surge in violence has U.S. officials and Iraqis
fearing a major conflict.
February 1, 2007
KIRKUK, Iraq-Kurdistan border, -- American
officials, regional leaders and local residents are
increasingly worried that this oil-rich city in
northern Iraq could develop into a third front in
the country's civil war just as increased numbers of
U.S. troops arrive in Baghdad and Al Anbar province
as reinforcement for battles there.
Al-Qaida-linked fighters have recently surfaced
here, launching a wave of lethal attacks, U.S. and
Iraqi officials say. The attacks come amid a rise in
communal tensions in the months before a referendum
on the status of the city and the surrounding
province.
Meanwhile, Kurdish bureaucrats are pushing through
little-noticed administrative decisions that will
take away the voting rights of tens of thousands of
Arabs.
|
Kurdish city of Kirkuk |
Elsewhere in Iraq, Sunni and Shiite Muslim Arabs are
locked in a bitter civil war. Here, the two groups
have common cause against the Kurds, a non-Arab
minority group that dominates Iraq's far-northern
provinces.
The Kurds, Arabs and members of a third minority
group, the Turkmens, each want control of this city
and its surrounding region. At stake are land, water
and control of some of Iraq's richest oil reserves.
None of the groups want war, they say. Yet everyone
here appears to be preparing for it.
"They are right when they call it a time bomb," said
Sheik Abdel Rahman Obeidi, a prominent Sunni Arab
leader in Kirkuk.
"We will not leave, and we will not let anyone take
Kirkuk. We are ready to fight. We hope we won't have
to, but we're ready."
Kurdish leaders, in turn, warn that they will take
the city by law or by force.
"People don't have any more patience," said Kurdish
Councilman Rebwar Faiq Talabani, sitting inside
Kirkuk's heavily fortified provincial council
building. "They are telling the government, 'If you
can't get our rights back, we'll do it by
ourselves.' "
Neighboring countries, especially Turkey and Iran,
fear that if the Kurds do gain control of Kirkuk,
Iraq's Kurdish region, which is already
semiautonomous, would have the confidence and
economic power to move toward independence. That
could embolden Kurdish militants in the surrounding
countries and further destabilize the region. In
recent weeks, Turkish officials have threatened to
intervene if the Kurds take over Kirkuk and have
warned against efforts to change the city's
population balance.
"Turkey cannot stand idly by, watching the efforts
to change the demographic structure of Kirkuk,"
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said
last month, according to the Cihan News Agency.
Against this backdrop of ethnic, political and
regional tensions, Iraq's new constitution mandates
that a referendum be held by the end of this year on
control of Kirkuk. If the vote goes ahead as
scheduled, most analysts expect the Kurds to win.
Last year, at least 325 people were killed and 1,390
wounded in this city of about 1 million. During the
first three weeks of this year, bombings and
assassinations left 23 dead and injured 102, local
police say.
"We expect increased violence when we get closer to"
the referendum, said Maj. Gen. Anwar Mohammed Amin,
the top Iraqi commander in Kirkuk.
The emergence of fighters from two radical Islamic
groups with ties to al-Qaida after years of lying
low is especially troublesome, officials say. The
groups, known as Ansar al Sunna and the Islamic Army
in Iraq, have launched a bombing campaign targeting
politicians and civilians. Their aim is to foment
violence between ethnic and sectarian groups much as
they have done in Baghdad and elsewhere, officials
say.
Painting Iraq's Sunni Arab guerrillas as al-Qaida
associates serves Kurds in their goal of taking
control of Kirkuk and its environs by making the
aims of their rivals seem less legitimate.
Assassinations, bombings and attacks on Kurdish
parties' headquarters by Shiite militias and Sunni
groups linked to al-Qaida "are now all part of
Kirkuk's violent landscape," said a report last
month from the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy.
Turkmen and Arab politicians, too, have been
targeted in apparent retaliation by Kurds.
"Kirkuk is as likely as Baghdad to produce a
calamity that can fracture Iraq," the report's
authors wrote, recommending a delay of the
referendum. The International Crisis Group, a
nonprofit think tank based in Belgium, and the U.S.
government's bipartisan Iraq Study Group have also
recommended postponement.
But for Kurds, this year presents a historic
opportunity they won't part with willingly.
Once a distant dream carried in the heart of Kurdish
peshmerga fighters as they battled onetime Iraqi
leader Saddam Hussein's army in the mountains, full
independence is now tantalizingly within reach.
If the timetable leading to the referendum is not
followed, Kirkuk will be thrust into chaos, said
Talabani, the provincial councilman. "It will be a
civil war," he said. "Worse than Baghdad, because it
will be a battle of ethnicities."
For nationalist Arabs and minority Turkmen,
meanwhile, Kurdish appropriation of Kirkuk would
signify the first step toward Iraq's disintegration.
Turkmen do not want to become part of an independent
Kurdistan, but they don't want to be controlled by
Baghdad either. Most Arabs want to remain part of a
unified Iraq.
As both sides maneuver for the coming referendum,
the issue of who has the right to vote is emerging
as a major flashpoint.
In 1957, the year of Kirkuk's last reliable census,
Turkmen made up 40 percent of the population, while
Kurds made up 35 percent, Arabs 24 percent and
Christians 1 percent. In the surrounding province,
Kurds constituted a majority with 55 percent of the
inhabitants.
During the 1970s, however, Saddam forcibly removed
250,000 Kurds from Kirkuk, giving their property to
Arabs in an effort to "Arabize" the city and its
oil. Many of the new residents were Shiites moved
here from villages in the south of Iraq.
Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, the
demographics have shifted again. Thousands of Arabs
and Turkmen have left because of political pressure
and violence. And as many as 350,000 Kurds have come
to Kirkuk, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials. In
dilapidated camps throughout the city, thousands of
Kurds now wait for property claims to be resolved
while Kurdish officials complain that the government
in Baghdad is slowing the process.
The Kurds want Arabs who moved here under Saddam to
return to the south, and are pushing through
little-noticed administrative decisions that will
take away the voting rights of tens of thousands of
Arabs before the referendum.
Kurdish officials have recently proposed a cash
incentive to Arabs, compensation of about $19,000 to
each family who will give up their property and
voting rights in the city. The tens of thousands of
Arabs affected would be allowed to stay but would
not be able to vote on Kirkuk's future, Kurdish
officials said.
"I don't believe they have the right to vote in the
referendum," said Adnan Mufti, the powerful speaker
of Kurdistan's regional parliament. Even Arabs born
in Kirkuk to parents who came from the south will be
ineligible, he said. "It's the mistake of their
fathers."
Arabs and Turkmen accuse Kurdish politicians of
gerrymandering and administrative jiu-jitsu.
"Many of the Kurds who returned to Kirkuk are not
the original residents of the city," said Abass
Ahmed, a 60-year-old Turkman. "They are actually
Kurds from other Kurdish regions."
Because of the demographic shifts and the Sunni Arab
boycott of the 2005 election, Arabs already have
little representation in the city. Kurds control 26
of the 41 provincial council seats as well as the
army, police and intelligence services in the city.
"We are all arming ourselves," a politician from
Kirkuk recently told the International Crisis Group.
"We are afraid. There is talk of civil war. Anything
could start it."
A special correspondent in Sulimaniyah
contributed to this report.
latimes com
* The former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein forced
more than 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 a Kurdistani 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.
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.
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news
information on this page
|
® 