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Kirkuk vote a test for Iraq
21.7.2007 |
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July
21 2007
Kirkuk, Kurdistan region border with (Iraq)
A voter registration list of residents in Iraq's
oil-rich northern disputed territories is to be
completed by the end of July. It marks a
long-awaited step for Iraq's Kurds, who claim the
area was ripped from them by Saddam Hussein's
policies.
Little noticed, however, amid the violence in the
rest of Iraq, is the potential that a referendum for
the disputed territories, especially Kirkuk, could
be the match that ignites a powder keg.
More than 10 percent of Iraq's 115 billion barrels
of proven oil reserves -- the third-largest in the
world -- is located in the Kirkuk area. The city has
been historically Kurdish, though Turkomen,
Christian and Sunni and Shiite Arabs are far from
strangers.
Kurds felt the brunt of Hussein's northern
prerogative as he gassed populations and deprived
the region of investment.
And, as part of his Arabization program, he
forcefully displaced them with his fellow Sunnis
Arabs.
Iraq's Kurds looked to the post-Hussein era to
reverse that. They demanded semi-autonomy during the
formation of the government and the 2005
constitution. In an oil law now stuck in
negotiations, Kurds want strong regional and local
control over a large segment of the oil sector.
The Kurdish leadership has complained the federal
government has been slow in enacting constitutional
obligations to bring back to the disputed
territories Kurds who were displaced, verify
eligible voters and, by the end of this year, hold a
referendum.
"There is still a lot of disappointment," Qubad
Talabani, the son of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani
and the Kurdistan Regional government's
representative to the United States, said earlier
this month. "There is slow progress or lack of
progress made in normalizing Kirkuk."
If approved in the referendum, the territories would
be part of the KRG.
The KRG maintains the debate is about nothing but
righting past wrongs and uniting an ethnic nation.
Not all agree.
Violence in the area has kicked up as of late as the
referendum draws close. Sunni insurgents who have
rendered useless an oil pipeline from Kirkuk to
Ceyhan, Turkey, are now blamed for targeting
Kirkuk's residents.
The latest and deadliest was three suicide car
bombings Monday that killed more than 85 and injured
nearly 200; the largest was outside the Kirkuk
offices of Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
Attacks have also escalated in the relatively safe
KRG region.
Opponents of the referendum aren't limited to inside
Iraq. Looming largest is Turkey, which already has
amassed troops
on its border with Iraq as it continues to threaten
an invasion.
Turkey's bombs fell in northern Iraqi areas where
Ankara claims rebel Kurdistan Workers Party bases
are located. Media reports say no one was killed,
but residents of the town of Zakho, Iraq, fled the
violence. Turkey says the PKK, which wants a
separate state, plans and executes attacks in Turkey
from Iraq. The bombing came after three Turkish
soldiers were killed by a landmine near Iraq's
border. And it's fodder for Sunday's Turkish
national election, which used anti-PKK sentiment as
a steady campaign platform.
Iraq has warned against such an invasion and
condemned the bombings. The United States, late to
address the Turkey-Iraq beef, has appointed an envoy
to focus on the PKK and is trying to mediate a
lasting truce.
Decision-makers in Washington have yet to move the
issue of Kirkuk and other disputed territories up on
their Iraq agenda despite recommendations from
international reports and studies President Bush
ordered.
In its Dec. 6 report, The Iraq Study Group,
co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker
and former Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton,
called for an "international arbitration" on the
issue.
"A referendum on the future of Kirkuk ... would be
explosive and should be delayed," the report
recommended.
"With all sides dug in and the Kurds believing
Kirkuk is a lost heirloom they are about to regain,
the debate should move off outcomes to focus on a
fair and acceptable process," the Brussels-based
International Crisis Group recommended in an April
report. "For the Kurds, that means postponing the
referendum, implementing confidence-building
measures and seeking a new mechanism prioritizing
consensus."
The ICG blamed Washington for ignoring the Kirkuk
issue while implementing the troop surge. Hold a
referendum, civil war spreads to Kirkuk and Iraqi
Kurdistan, the report assessed. Postpone it without
a Kurd-approved deal, the government in Baghdad
could implode. It recommended the United States and
international allies move toward an alternative that
calms Ankara's nerves and cements Kurds' power in a
federal Iraq via a now stalled oil law.
Turkey fears a larger and stronger Iraqi Kurdistan
would embolden its own sizeable Kurdish population
to demand autonomy, as do Iran and Syria. All three,
along with Iraq, could oppose any country of
Kurdistan.
"Thus, what the Kurds have seemingly gained, albeit
largely through peaceful negotiations and skillful
political horse- trading, could be lost to internal
violence and external military action," the Public
International Law & Policy Group wrote in a report
last month. The report didn't call for the
referendum to be held or stalled; rather, it
recommended a nuanced political and constitutional
compromise.
To Iraq's Kurds, however, questioning the referendum
is a non-starter. The outcome, if it's held, is
likely to be dominated by pro-KRG Kurdish voters,
and the aftermath would be realized in a more robust
Iraqi Kurdistan.
It's a semblance of democracy in today's Iraq, but a
dichotomy of reality and what President Bush
promised in an April 2003 address to Iraq's
citizens: "You will be free to build a better life
... free to join in the political affairs of Iraq.
And all the people who make up your country --
Kurds, Shi'a, Turkomans, Sunnis, and others -- will
be free of the terrible persecution that so many
have endured."
UPI
**
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
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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