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Kurds no closer to taking Kirkuk after
Iraqi elections
9.3.2010
By Joost Hiltermann |
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March
9, 2010
At 9 p.m., some four hours after polls closed in
Kirkuk on March 7, the sky outside my window starts
to echo with fireworks and celebratory gunfire. I am
staying in a mixed neighborhood in the center of
town, and here both Kurds and some Turkomans have
plenty of reason to celebrate. Although results are
preliminary, at least one local Turkoman candidate
appears assured of a seat in Baghdad's parliament.
The Kurds have their eyes on a much bigger prize:
seven to eight seats and the political heft these
bring in shaping Kirkuk's future. While the results
are not yet known, whatever happens these elections
are unlikely to significantly advance the Kurds'
chances to integrate Kirkuk into the Kurdistan
region.
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Joost Hiltermann, Deputy Program Director for the
Middle East and North Africa, International Crisis
Group |
In
the public eye, every election in Kirkuk turns into
a census and quasi-referendum rolled into one. This
is because the ethnic communities here assume that
Arabs, Kurds and Turkomans vote for their own
candidates; that this shows the respective
communities' sizes; that the vast majority of Kurds
want Kirkuk to be attached to the Kurdistan region;
and that these factors combined suggest the probable
outcome of a future referendum on Kirkuk's status.
If the Kurdish parties gain eight of Kirkuk's twelve
parliamentary seats, as many predict they will, they
would cross what they consider the magical threshold
of a two-thirds super majority that, in their view,
psychologically at least, would clinch their claim
to Kirkuk as an inalienable part of Kurdistan. They
would await a formal census, now scheduled for
October, and use their explicitly acknowledged
political weight in Kirkuk to press for a status
plebiscite.
Not so fast, Arabs and Turkomans say. They challenge
the legitimacy of the voter rolls that produced this
Kurdish majority by using a provision in the
electoral law that mandates, if a simple majority in
parliament requests it, an investigation of the
voter registry in governorates such as Kirkuk that
have seen an unusually large annual population
growth. As long as this scrutiny is underway - the
law says it should be completed within a year but
Kirkuk has a history of parliamentary investigations
running on endlessly and aimlessly - the contested
registry cannot be used as the basis for future
elections or as a precedent for Kirkuk's political
or administrative status. In other words, the Kurds
may have advanced only ever-so-slightly in untying
the Gordian knot that the Kirkuk question has become
since 2003.
Moreover, matters are complicated by intra-Kurdish
divisions. Some of the heaviest campaigning in
Kirkuk was not between Arabs and Kurds but
intra-Kurdish: between the Kurdistani Coalition
which combines the two Kurdish principal parties -
the Kurdistan Democratic Party and Patriotic Union
of Kurdistan - and the upstart Goran, or Change,
movement. Goran's strong showing in the Kurdistan
regional elections last July was a dire warning to
the ruling parties, especially the PUK,www.ekurd.netthe
party from which Goran's frustrated would-be
reformers sprang last year. Today, when no open
campaigning was allowed, the PUK and KDP went
all-out in their bid to outpace their rival. Cars
bearing KDP and PUK flags and blaring their horns
crisscrossed Kurdish neighborhoods as if the
campaign was still in full swing. Men beat drums; in
some areas, women - decked out in their most
colourful finery - danced to the beat.
Some Goran candidates may not be following the main
parties', and possibly their own leadership's, line
on Kirkuk. For five futile years, the KDP and PUK
have insisted that the only way to resolve Kirkuk's
status is by a referendum based on an ethnic vote.
They have loaded the outcome through their control
of local government, which allowed them to change
the governorate's demography in their favor. That
outcome, therefore, is unlikely to be accepted by
the losers, who have threatened violence if they are
inducted into the Kurdistan region against their
will.
Some Goran officials in Kirkuk, by contrast, seem to
be saying something new - that the only sensible way
to proceed is to restore trust between the ethnic
communities and let Kirkukis decide for themselves,
over time, what the best solution is for Kirkuk, by
referendum or otherwise. This is music to the ears
of Arabs and Turkomans, who have made no secret of
their hope that Goran will gain a couple of seats at
the PUK's expense, even if they themselves wouldn't
vote for Goran, lest they increase the overall
Kurdish vote. As voting ended, however, Goran looked
to have done less well in Kirkuk than it had
expected and may be lucky if it gains a single seat.
For now, it is too early to determine each party's
true strength. Votes are still being counted and all
sides have made accusations of fraud that will have
to be investigated and adjudicated before the
supreme court certifies the final tally. The stakes
are enormous, however, here in Kirkuk, and many
worry that gunfire directed at the sky tonight will
find more serious targets once the results are in
and all sides draw their own conclusions, and act on
them.
Joost Hiltermann is the Deputy Middle Eastern
Program Director at International Crisis Group.
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
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