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Kirkuk: Flags on the Faultine
15.3.2010
By Sam Dagher |
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March
15, 2010
KIRKUK, Iraq's border with Kurdistan region,
— Ahmed Sheik-Mohammed and his friends confronted a
group of Iraqi police officers who wanted to bring
down a flag fixed to an electricity pole with this
warning: “you have to shoot us first.”
The police officers backed off, leaving the flag,
which was for a Kurdish political party. The
officers were Turkmens, according to Mr.
Sheik-Mohammed. He is a Kurd.
A virtual war of flags is underway in Kirkuk, a
bitterly divided city of Kurds, Arabs, Turkmens and
other groups, control of which is claimed by both
the central government and the semiautonomous
Kurdistan region.
Even the mound on which Kirkuk’s ancient citadel
stands is covered with massive Kurdish flags — red,
white and green with a shining sun in the middle. In
a clear challenge to the Kurds, Turkmens taped their
flag to the statue of one of their heroes in the
city center. They say he was lynched by a mob of
Kurds in 1959.
Unlike in other parts of Iraq, flags and banners
here are not mere campaign props, but loaded symbols
of each community’s claims to the land. For the
feuding communities the parliamentary elections on
March 7 were ultimately a referendum on each group’s
weight in the city and province.
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Ayman Oghanna for, NY Times photo.
Kirkuk city is historically a Kurdish city and it
lies just south border of the Kurdistan autonomous
region, 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. Photo: Ayman
Oghanna for The NY Times |
Nearly every Iraqi and Kurdish security official you
speak to here will say bluntly that the number one
threat involves potential clashes between the
heavily armed supporters of the various political
parties. The top threat is no longer the insurgency,
which has receded significantly. Add to the mix the
fact that loyalties of most members of the local
police force belong first to their respective
communities and parties. The United States military
is serving as a referee.
A coalition of the two Kurdish parties that control
the Kurdistan region is widely expected to win more
than 50 percent of the votes in Kirkuk. The Kurds
now control most of the city and are making inroads
into predominantly Turkmen and Arab neighborhoods.
But most Arabs and Turkmens voted for the Iraqiya
slate of former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi,www.ekurd.netand
especially for candidates who campaigned to keep
Kirkuk out of the Kurdish region. Iraq’s electoral
commission released on Sunday partial results based
on 61 per cent returns which showed Iraqiya with a
3,000 vote advantage over the Kurdish coalition.
Kurdish neighborhoods like Rahimawa, Iskan, Shorja,
Azadi and Rizagri (formerly Hurriya) and others are
awash with Kurdish flags. As Rizgari spills into
predominantly Arab Mamdouda and Orouba, some Kurdish
flags flutter outside recently opened outposts for
Kurdish political parties and security forces.
A handful of tattered Iraqi flags fly inside Orouba.
Kurdish flags fly from lampposts near the heavily
guarded offices of Kurdish political parties in the
predominantly Turkmen neighborhood of Baghdad Road.
They give way to Iraqi flags and light blue flags
with a white crescent as you approach the
fortress-like offices of the Iraqi Turkmen Front.
Its candidates ran on the Iraqiya slate
Two days before the election, Turkmens accused Kurds
of shooting at a convoy of their flag-waving
supporters, wounding eight people.
At a news conference the following day a Kurdish TV
reporter asked Maj. Gen. Abdul-Amir al-Zaidi,
commander of the Iraqi Army’s 12th Division, why
some of his vehicles brandished Iraqi flags.
“What’s the harm?” asked General Zaidi, trying to
keep his cool.
“What’s the need?” insisted the reporter.
“Is not the election an Iraqi occasion?” the general
said.
“Yes,” the reporter responded.
“So it’s an Iraqi occasion and it’s an honor for
Iraqis to wave their flag,” General Zaidi said.
Flags tell the story.
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
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