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Kurds: There is room in Kirkuk for all
kinds of Iraqis
28.6.2007
By Scott Canon |
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June
28, 2007
Kirkuk, Kurdistan region border with (Iraq),
-- For decades, Rizgar Ali Hamajan and his fellow
Iraqi Kurds strove mightily to withstand the tyranny
of Saddam Hussein and the Arab nationalists of
Saddam's Baath Party, who moved thousands of Sunni
Muslim Arabs to Kirkuk to cement the Arab hold on
the oil-rich region.
Today, Kurds have returned and Arabs have fled, and
Kurds now stand atop the shaky Kirkuk power
structure. Hamajan is the chairman of the provincial
council, presiding from a spacious office with fine
rugs, a big desk, a sitting area and a long walnut
conference table.
In a few months, Kirkuk could join the autonomous
Kurdistan Regional Government. Iraq's constitution
calls for a vote on Kirkuk's annexation by the end
of this year, and the Kurds are almost certainly
numerous enough now to win the balloting - if
politicians in Baghdad can agree on the terms for
the referendum.
That puts men such as Hamajan in a formidable, if
delicate, position. They're on the cusp of great
power - a growing concern to anxious Arabs, Turkmens
and other ethnic groups that populate the ever less
peaceful province in northern Iraq.
So these days Hamajan is all about mellowed
assurance.
''There is room in Kirkuk for all kinds of Iraqis,''
Hamajan said. ''None of them need to be afraid.''
The air in his office is frenetic. The tea is served
quickly and piping hot. The air conditioning blows
like a mountain breeze. Would you like a Marlboro?
No? Never mind, Hamajan will chain-smoke as he chats
you up between calls on his cell phone and greets a
stream of obsequious visitors.
The prospect of carrying out a key provision of the
Iraqi constitution - so-called Article 140, which
would join Kirkuk province with autonomous Kurdistan
- has created anxiety in many corners.
Sunni Arabs, who were the dominant force during
Saddam's time, could become just another vulnerable
minority.
Turkmens worry they'll see more oppression at the
hands of a new ethnic power. Neighboring Turkey is
already firing shells across the border out of fear
that Kurdish rebels in their country could soon have
a wealthy sponsor nearby. Syria and Iran also worry
that Kirkuk joining the Kurdistan Regional
Government will embolden their Kurdish minorities.
Like much else in Iraq, part of the dispute is about
oil. Kirkuk has huge, if poorly developed, oil
fields that would give a Kurdish government enormous
potential wealth.
The dispute also is partly a matter of ethnic
rivalries that have long simmered here in ways that
Baghdad and other areas of Iraq have seen only since
U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq in 2003.
The violence hasn't risen to the levels of the
capital or Diyala or Anbar provinces. American
officials in the area dispute suggestions that
Kirkuk province is an ethnic tinderbox, a spark away
from a civil war.
Still, roadside bombs are common. Gun battles break
out regularly between U.S. forces and insurgents.
And the tensions among rival groups have long
histories full of violent bitterness. Car bombs are
a regular threat in the city.
No date has been set for the vote. Indeed, Baghdad's
deadlocked politicians have yet to put to paper any
specifics.
Kurds want to press forward. Arabs and Turkmens say
that much in the constitution is vague and argue for
holding off until violence in the region subsides.
''There is no security yet. ... The meaning of the
constitution is not clear yet. Taking this (vote)
now will make the situation more complicated,'' said
Tahsin Kahya, a local Turkmen leader whose office in
a building devoted to carrying out the referendum
and its implications is decidedly more modest than
the space given to Hamajan.
Sunni Arabs want to put off a referendum, arguing
that despite the constitutional mandate for a vote
this year there are no compelling events to justify
a rush. What's more, they argue for a stronger
federal government that considers regions of the
country Iraqi rather than Kurd, Arab or otherwise.
''There are Christians here and Arabs here and
Turkmens. In Baghdad, there are also Kurds. So why
not give Baghdad to the Kurds? Kirkuk doesn't belong
to Arabs or Kurds or Assyrians,'' said Abdul Kareem
Ali, the mayor of Multaqa, a Sunni Arab enclave of
25,000 about 13 miles from Kirkuk. He has four wives
- two Arab, one Kurdish, and one Turkmen. ''Iraq
should be all in one piece.''
Sunni Arabs here can be divided clearly between
those whose kin have lived in Kirkuk for centuries
and those who came during Saddam's ''Arabization''
campaign, when Saddam offered Sunni Arabs cash to
move to Kirkuk and he forced tens of thousands of
Kurds to sell or surrender their homes.
When American forces moved into Iraq in 2003, Kurds
began moving back, and Sunnis moved south.
Currently, officials estimate that about half of the
1 million people in the province are Kurds.
Many Arabs say pressure is mounting for them to
accept official aid to get out, even though they've
lived nowhere else.
''The police get on their loudspeakers and tell us
where to fill out our applications,'' said one Sunni
Arab whose family came to Kirkuk in the days of
Arabization. He didn't want to be identified for
fear of being singled out for violence. ''We all
know where to get these forms. They're sending us a
message that we must leave.''
Meantime, Sunni Arabs whose families populated the
province long before the discovery of oil in the
1920s say they feel intimidated by Kurdish
domination. They complain that Kurdish soldiers and
police target Arabs and Turkmens for harassment.
''The army is cooperating with the terrorists,''
Ali, the Sunni mayor of Multaqa, charged.
Hamajan and provincial Gov. Abdullah Rahman Fatah
are keen to strike a moderate stance. They regularly
insist that a union with the Kurdistan Regional
Government is no reason for alarm.
''We don't have even one helicopter or one boat,''
Hamajan said. ''We might have some old tanks from
Saddam's war (with Iran). That's it.''
The stance is calculated. A tougher one would be
likely to incite violence from insurgents and al-Qaida-linked
groups and
alarm Baghdad and other capitals.
''They need Baghdad's support, and they've got the
issue of Turkey being perturbed by what might
happen,'' said Howard Keegan, a U.S. State
Department employee who's chief of the Kirkuk
provincial reconstruction team. Keegan advises the
regional government on repairing the physical
infrastructure and molding a political system. He
gave the Kurds high marks for not exploiting the
boycott to push through a one-sided agenda.
And yet the prize of Kirkuk is great enough that
Kurds may ultimately have a hard time sharing power.
''The Kurds cannot forget the memory of their forced
displacement, destruction of their villages and the
mass killings,'' Farid Assassard, director of
a strategic studies center based in the Kurdish city
of Sulaimaniyah, wrote in an article published
recently in a Kurdish newspaper. ''It is hard to
imagine the Kurds making concessions on Kirkuk. ...
Kirkuk is for the Kurds what Jerusalem is for the
Palestinians.''
newspress com
**
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.
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.
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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