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Kurdish Oil-rich Kirkuk at melting point
as factions clash
22.3.2007 |
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March 22, 2007
Kirkuk, Iraq-Kurdistan region border, -- Seven
bombs detonating in the space of 35 minutes sent up
clouds of black smoke over the centre of Kirkuk
earlier this week. The explosions in Arab and
Turkoman districts killed 12 people and injured 39
but exactly who was behind them is
unclear.
Kirkuk is a place where trust is in short supply. "I
firmly predict there will be a rumour the Kurds were
behind these bombings," sighs Rafat Hamarash, the
head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the
Kurdish political party that largely controls the
city.
He said somebody wanted to stir up ethnic divisions
between Kurd, Arab and Turkoman before they vote on
the future of Kirkuk in nine months' time. Mr
Hamarash is probably right about the motives for the
latest attacks.
The city is approaching a critical moment in its
long history. In December, there is a referendum,
its timing agreed under the Iraqi constitution, when
1.8 million people of Kirkuk province will vote on
whether or not to join the highly autonomous
Kurdistan region that is already almost a separate
state.
Kurds will vote in favour and probably win; Arabs
and Turkomans will vote against and lose.
The Kirkuk issue is as notoriously divisive in Iraq
as sovereignty over certain parts of Ireland used to
be in British politics.
Winston Churchill famously complained that, after
all the political and military cataclysms of the
First World War, the question of who should have
"the dreary spires of Fermanagh and Tyrone",
remained as ferociously contested as before the war.
The control of Kirkuk divided Kurds from Arabs in
Iraq under Saddam Hussein and continues to do so.
The city is commonly called "a powder keg" though it
has yet to explode. But that does not mean it will
not happen and the referendum might just be the
detonator for that explosion.
The Kurds believe they were a majority in the city
until ethnically cleansed by Saddam and replaced by
Arab settlers. As the regime crumbled in April 2003,
the Kurds captured Kirkuk and its oilfields. They
have no plans to give them up.
In negotiations in Baghdad with Arab political
parties, they fought for and won the right to take
back Kirkuk constitutionally.
First comes "normalisation", to be concluded by the
end of this month, whereby Arab settlers leave and
Kurds return. After that there will be a census and,
finally, before the end of 2007, a referendum on
becoming part of the Kurdistan regional government.
It now looks as if the referendum will have to be
postponed. No Kurdish leader I spoke to thinks it
can take place on time.
"Normalisation" has not really taken place,
governments in Baghdad have persistently dragged
their feet. The Shia religious parties may be allied
to the Kurds in order to form a government but they
fear political damage among their own followers if
they are seen to be handing over Kirkuk to the
Kurds.
For a city so coveted by Arabs and Kurds, Kirkuk is
a dismal place, drearier than anything to be seen in
Fermanagh or Tyrone. Its main street, with little
booths selling shoddy goods, looks like an Afghan
shanty town.
It has never benefited from its oil riches; Saddam
deliberately neglected it. Rezgar Ali, the head of
the local council, says Baghdad starves the city of
money. At one point, he threatened to retaliate by
stopping the supply of cement from local factories
to Baghdad.
The Kurds may delay the referendum but not
indefinitely. Kirkuk is too central to their
national demands. Militarily they could overcome
Arab resistance though they might have to cede
certain areas. Whatever happens, the approach to the
referendum is generating more violence.
A delicate ethnic balance
* Kurds in Kirkuk pre-date all other ethnic groups.
Turkomans began arriving in the Ottoman era.
* Under British occupation in 1921, population about
61% Kurd, 28% Turkoman and 8% Arab.
* Official census in 1957 found 48.3% of residents
to be Kurd, 28.2% Arab and 21.4% Turkoman.
* From 1963, Baathists sought to enforce Arab
nationalism. By 1988 an estimated 200,000 Kurds had
fled. Shia Turkoman villages were also destroyed.
* After the 1991 Gulf War ethnic cleansing
intensified. In 1996 a law compelled all Kurds and
other non-Arabs to register as "Arab", with
expulsion for those who refused.
* Between 1991 and 2003, 120,000 to 200,000
non-Arabs were expelled from in and around Kirkuk.
* According to Arab and Turkoman politicians claim
that around 350,000 Kurds have returned since 2003.
independent co.uk
**
The former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein 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 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, its population
is a mix of majority Kurds and minority of Arabs,
Turkmen.
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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