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Iraq's simmering ethnic war over Kirkuk
24.4.2008
By Sam Dagher
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Tensions are rising between Kurdish, Arab, and
Turkmen factions over power and populations in the
province, the heart of northern Iraq's oil industry.
April
24, 2008
Kirkuk, Iraq's border with Kurdistan region,
-- Graffiti inside this city's ancient hilltop
citadel quickly spells out the tension between
Kirkuk's three main ethnic groups – Kurds, Arabs,
and Turkmen.
On one wall, an eagle descends on a two-headed
serpent meant to symbolize enemies of the Kurdish
nation. Next to it, the word "Arab" is erased and
replaced with an etched "Kurdish" in a slogan that
once read: "Kirkuk is an Arab city." Another slogan
reads: "Kirkuk is Turkmen."
Kirkuk has been the object of a bitter struggle over
the past five years among Iraq's competing ethnic
and sectarian groups. And now Arab, Kurd, and
Turkmen factions seem to be digging in,www.ekurd.net
anticipating that
tensions may erupt in an area that is the center of
northern Iraq's oil industry ahead of a promised
referendum on the fate of Kirkuk Province,
officially still called Taamim, its previous Baath
Party-era name.
Article 140 of Iraq's Constitution was supposed to
resolve the issue by the end of 2007 but the
deadline for a vote has been extended to the end of
June in the hopes that the United Nations may be
able to broker a solution by then.
But with or without a referendum, Kurds maintain
that almost the entirety of Kirkuk Province, of
which the city of Kirkuk is the capital, is a
natural part of their semiautonomous Kurdistan
region in northern Iraq. Arabs and Turkmen, on the
other hand, say Article 140 is now "null and void"
and that other solutions must be devised.
In general, Turkmen support a semi-independent
Kirkuk Province while Arabs back the idea of the
central government remaining in control.
Meanwhile, the United States is exerting a mix of
coercion and incentives to prevent the feuding
parties from battling each other over the issue.
But already local security officials say a simmering
conflict is under way with no day going by without a
tit-for-tat kidnapping or assassination involving a
member of the city's three competing population
groups. Turkmen and Arab leaders say hundreds of
their own have been jailed inside Kurdistan.
"We kidnap terrorists, it's the only way to protect
Kurdistan," says Ihsan Muhammad, minister of
extraregional affairs in the Kurdistan Regional
Government (KRG).
Mr. Muhammad also says that his government has proof
that Turkey, which is adamant that the Kurds not be
allowed to annex Kirkuk into the KRG, has members of
its military intelligence inside Kirkuk at the
offices of the Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF), the
Turkmen political coalition. "This is aggression and
interference," he says.
On a recent crisp morning, Ali Hashem, an ITF
strongman, was huddled with some of his colleagues
at a diner in downtown Kirkuk.
Over a traditional northern Iraq breakfast of
crushed yellow lentil soup and hot bread, they spoke
about what they characterized as aggression and
pressure by the two main ruling Kurdish parties –
the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan Party (PUK) and the
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) – regarding the
question of Kirkuk.
"In order to defend ourselves, we might be compelled
to bear arms one day," says Mr. Hashem, who is a
member of the ITF's executive committee and the
party boss in neighboring Salaheddin Province.
"Kurds have gone too far; they have taken their full
rights and now they want to infringe upon the rights
of others."
The talk in Kirkuk is that Hashem is leading a drive
to stockpile weapons ahead of any potential armed
confrontation with the Kurds. He does not preclude
the possibility but says his party is still banking
on efforts to draft more Turkmen into local police
and Iraqi Army forces, which he says are
disproportionately dominated by Kurds.
The ITF, which is a coalition of six parties,
receives significant support from Turkey and is even
considered by many to be a Turkish proxy party. It's
the most militant of the Turkmen parties and has
turned the issue of Kirkuk and what it views as the
city's Turkmen identity into a rallying cry.
Turkmen in Iraq, a distinct ethnic group, are
estimated to number anywhere from 250,000 to 2
million. They, along with Kurds, suffered from
Saddam Hussein's policy of demographic and
geographic engineering that accompanied his
Arabization policy of northern Iraq.
Turkmen and Arabs now accuse the Kurds of "Kurdifying"
Kirkuk and not waiting for the city's fate to be
decided through a vote. Many accuse them of having
brought back to Kirkuk more than half a million
Kurdish inhabitants since the fall of Mr. Hussein's
regime in 2003 and thuggishly seizing control and
power here.
The head of Kirkuk's provincial council, Rizgar Ali,
a Kurd, says only 240,000 people, including
non-Kurds, have returned since 2003. He says that
hundreds of Kurdish villages in the province remain
destroyed and abandoned.
But in Kirkuk it's hard not to notice the
overwhelming Kurdish influence. Entire districts are
now thoroughly Kurdish. Neighborhood and street
names and billboards glorifying Kurdish peshmerga
fighters attest to a new assertiveness. The
Kurdish-led coalition dominates the local council
with 26 seats,www.ekurd.net
followed by the Turkmen
with nine, and Arabs with six. The Turkmen have been
boycotting the council's meetings since November
2006.
In a recent interview in Kurdistan capital of Erbil,
the KRG's Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani cupped
his hands to describe how Kurdish forces have Kirkuk
surrounded. "If we want to change things by force,
we can do it like that," he says, snapping his
fingers.
"But we do not see a solution being imposed by force
… we want a consensus solution accepted by all
sides," says Mr. Barzani.
He says his government is under pressure from its
own public over the Kirkuk question and that it is
trying to juggle that with its commitments to the
political process in Iraq.
But Muhammad, who is Kurdistan's chief
representative in the national committee that's
supposed to resolve the Kirkuk question, says there
is a limit to the KRG's patience and that a forceful
annexation may be an option.
"What do you think, we are going to wait to make
Iraq stronger and come back … even now they are not
implementing the Constitution," says the minister.
"We are giving a chance until the end of 2008, but
no more."
The ITF says it's ready for this eventuality. "We
will be able to resist long enough until an outside
power intervenes," says Jala Neftachy, a Turkmen
provincial council member. She was among a
delegation that met with top Turkish officials
earlier this year and received assurances that they
would stop any forced Kurdish annexation.
"The Turkish government have confirmed this to us;
they will not be bystanders, they will interfere by
force," adds Ms. Neftachy.
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
csmonitor com
*
Kirkuk city is historically a Kurdish city
and it lies just south border of the Kurdistan
autonomous region, the population is a mix of
majority Kurds and minority of Arabs, Christians and
Turkmen. lies 250 km northeast of Baghdad. Kurds
have a strong cultural and emotional attachment to Kirkuk,
which they call "the Kurdish Jerusalem.".
The article 140 in Iraqi constitution calls for conducting a census to be
followed by a referendum to let the inhabitants
decide whether they would like Kirkuk to be annexed
to the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region or having
it as an independent province.
These stages were supposed to end on December 31,
2007, a deadline that was later extended to six
months.
The former regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
had 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.
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