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Iraq's disputed oil-rich Kirkuk 'may be
fertile ground for militants'
26.11.2011 |
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November
26, 2011
KIRKUK, Iraq's border with Kurdistan region,
— Iraq's disputed oil-rich Kirkuk province may turn
into fertile ground for militant groups including
Al-Qaeda after the US withdrawal, officials from the
province warn.
Ethnically divided Kirkuk lies at the centre of a
tract of territory which Kurdish leaders want to
incorporate in their autonomous region in the north
despite the opposition of many of the province's
Arab and Turkmen residents, and of Iraqi Prime
Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
"The US withdrawal and lack of readiness of the
Iraqi security forces will be used by forces opposed
to the political process, and in particular
Al-Qaeda," Kirkuk provincial council member Sherzad
Adel said.
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Iraq's disputed oil-rich Kirkuk province may turn
into fertile ground for militant groups including
Al-Qaeda after the US withdrawal, officials from the
province warn. Photo: Marwan Ibrahim/AFP |
Al-Qaeda "want to have a foothold in Kirkuk," he
said, noting that "the conflict between the centre
(Baghdad) and the region (Kurdistan), and the
failure to resolve problems in Kirkuk are two
factors that form fertile ground for terrorism."
US forces have played the role of mediators in
Kirkuk, and were involved in setting up the "Golden
Lions" unit made up of Arab and Kurdish forces.
But all US soldiers except for a small contingent
under US embassy authority are to depart Iraq by the
end of 2011 leaving a dangerous security vacuum,
officials say.
"We have indications that Al-Qaeda is reorganising
and coordinating with the other remaining armed
groups to launch operations," said Major General
Turhan Abdul Rahman, the deputy director general of
the Kirkuk police and commander of its
anti-terrorism force.
There are signs that operations are in preparation
including kidnappings and bomb attacks, Abdul Rahman
said.
"But we will stand strong to face them despite the
challenges we face today, including the absence of
US forces that provided us with aerial
reconnaissance and surveillance."
Abdul Rahman expects Al-Qaeda and other militant
groups to focus their activities on Kirkuk and other
north Iraq cities "because they are trying to stir
up nationalist strife."
General Lloyd Austin, the top US general in Iraq, on
Monday also warned about the threat from Al-Qaeda,
specifically in Iraq's north.
"We expect that Al-Qaeda will continue to do what it
has done in the past," he said. "We expect that it's
possible that they could even increase in their
capability.
"Of course, that will depend on how effectively the
Iraqi security forces and the government of Iraq are
able to focus on that network."
Major General Jamal Taher, the director general of
the Kirkuk police, said that his forces were ready
to assume security responsibilities from US forces
after the withdrawal from Iraq.
But Taher warned that "all components" of Kirkuk's
ethnically fragmented society were "subject to
terrorism."
Sectarian disputes over Kirkuk pose a threat to
today's fragile status quo.
"Kirkuk may be one of the ticking bombs after the US
withdrawal from Iraq, especially in the conflict
between Arabs and Kurds," said Ihsan al-Shammari, a
political science professor at Baghdad University.
The fate of a US military base in the region sparked
a recent Arab-Kurd row, offering a glimpse of the
potential for conflict in the province.
Kurdish politicians said that the base should be
guarded by police,www.ekurd.net
as the provincial council had voted to turn the base
into a civilian airport, and condemned an Iraqi army
handover ceremony held on the site.
The dispute was eventually resolved with an
agreement for the army to guard the base for now,
after the Iraqi premier said he was amenable to
turning it into a civilian airport.
Sheikh Abdulrahman Munshid Aasim, one of the leaders
of the Arab Political Council in Kirkuk, said he
does not expect "the emergence of Al-Qaeda activity
as we have known in 2006 and 2007."
Rather, the conflict will be "Arab-Kurd in areas of
common interest, with Kirkuk at its heart, and this
is more dangerous than Al-Qaeda's work."
The oil-rich province of Kirkuk is one of the most disputed areas by the
regional government and the Iraqi government in Baghdad.
The Kurds are seeking to integrate the province into the semi-autonomous
Kurdistan Region clamming it to be historically a Kurdish city, 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.
Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution is related to
the normalization of the situation in Kirkuk city
and other disputed areas through having back its
Kurdish inhabitants and repatriating the Arabs
relocated in the city during the former regime’s
time to their original provinces in central and
southern Iraq.
The article also 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.
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.
Copyright © 2011, respective
author or news agency,
AFP | ekurd.net | Agencies
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