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In Iraq's oil battle, Kirkuk is key
31.10.2009 |
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October
31, 2009
BAGHDAD/ERBIL, Iraq, —
The president of Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish
region has demanded the disputed, ethnically divided
city of Kirkuk, which dominates the northern
oilfields, be put under his control.
The Baghdad government, struggling to make ends
meet, is unlikely to relinquish such a vital
economic prize.
So the demand by Massoud Barzani, who fought a
guerrilla war against Saddam Hussein for decades,
has raised the specter of a conflict between the
independence-minded Kurdish minority and the federal
government that could splinter Iraq.
"We will not accept any other solution,"
Barzani declared
Wednesday in the Kurdish city of Erbil. "We want it
to be annexed to our region because the majority of
its population are Kurds."
The issue of who controls Kirkuk, capital of a
province with the same name, has already sabotaged
efforts to push an important electoral law through a
fractured Parliament, and that could derail a
general election scheduled for Jan. 16.
The Kirkuk fields produce one-third of Iraq's oil.
If the Kurds get their hands on those reserves, it
would almost certainly push some factions in the
Shiite majority to take control of the southern
fields, which produce the rest of Iraq's oil output.
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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." Kurds see it as the rightful and
perfect capital of an autonomous Kurdistan state.
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. The last
ethnic-breakdown census in Iraq was conducted in
1957, well before Saddam began his program to move
Arabs to Kirkuk. That count showed 178,000 Kurds,
48,000 Turkomen, 43,000 Arabs and 10,000 Assyrian-Chaldean
Christians living in the city. |
That
would effectively cut out the minority Sunnis, who
were the pillar of Saddam's brutal regime but have
few resources in their areas in central Iraq,www.ekurd.netbolstering
jihadist insurgents and antagonizing the region's
Sunni regimes, particularly in Saudi Arabia and
Jordan.
The result would likely be the disintegration of
Iraq into sectarian statelets, with the Kurds and
Shiites in full control of the country's energy
riches.
Iran, which borders the Shiite-dominated south,
would probably have access to the southern oil
reserves, greatly boosting its own reserves.
At the same time, Turkey and Iran don't want to see
an independent Kurdish state emerge in northeastern
Iraq. They have enough problems with their own
restive Kurdish minorities, and an independent
homeland in Iraq would only fuel those groups'
separatist ambitions.
If Iraq is to be plunged into another spasm of
sectarian savagery, it is likely to explode in
Kirkuk, where the long-festering rivalries between
Kurd and Arab are already colliding.
Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish leader and veteran
guerrilla fighter who is currently Iraq's president,
calls Kirkuk "the Kurdish Jerusalem," underlining
his people's emotional ties to the ancient city.
The Kurds have long claimed Kirkuk as theirs, saying
it was part of the Ottoman-era governate in
Kurdistan that existed until World War I. The Arabs,
along with the sizeable Turkmen minority in Kirkuk,
dispute that.
During Saddam's rule, he forcibly moved rebellious
Kurds out of the Kirkuk area as part of his
Arabization program. Since Saddam's downfall in the
U.S.-led liberation of 2003, the Kurds have been
moving large numbers of their people back into the
city and its environs in a demographic
confrontation.
They want a referendum to decide whether Kirkuk
should join three other provinces that make up the
Kurdistan Regional Government. So they oppose
holding parliamentary elections until a proper
census has been conducted.
The prospect of a new sectarian conflict, on top of
the brutal bombing campaign being conducted these
days by al-Qaida as U.S. forces withdraw and
simmering Shiite-Sunni violence, will also impede
Baghdad's efforts to attract international oil
companies to Iraq to restore the country's rundown
oil industry.
Iraq has always been particularly vulnerable to
eruptions of violence during times of political
deadlock. So as the issue of who is to run the
Kirkuk oil fields moves to center stage, the
prospect of a new bloodletting is looming closer.
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