Bloody fight over Kirkuk's
future By Mohammed A Salih
ARBIL, Iraq - The security situation in
the northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk has further
deteriorated over the past few weeks after the
Iraqi government formed a committee assigned to
"normalize the situation".
The creation of
that committee under a constitutional provision
has led to a rise in ethnic tensions among
Kirkuk's Kurdish, Arab and Turkoman populations.
Violence has risen with the tensions.
September was one of the bloodiest months
for Kirkuk, with an
unprecedented number of
attacks. For many, the message behind the attacks
is to stop implementation of Article 140 of Iraq's
constitution, and to inflame sectarian strife in
the city.
Article 140 sketches a
three-step plan to remove traces of the
Arabization policy of the regime of former
president Saddam Hussein. The constitution now
provides for a census followed by a referendum on
the fate of the city, after normalizing the
situation. The issue is whether Kirkuk should be
added to the autonomous Kurdish-run region of
northern Iraq.
Some representatives of
non-Kurdish groups in Kirkuk believe that Article
140 supports only Kurdish interests. "We will act
as an obstacle in the way of implementing Article
140," Jamal Shan, deputy head of the Iraqi
Turkoman Front, told the Kurdish weekly Hawlati in
Sulaimaniya. Shan's party has close ties with
Turkey and holds three seats in the Iraqi
parliament. Implementation of the article would
"endanger the geography" of Turkoman territories,
Shan said.
Seen as a microcosm of Iraq for
its mix of several ethnic groups, Kirkuk awaits an
uncertain future as disagreements about the future
of the city increase. A victim of its oil wealth,
Kirkuk has for long been a divisive issue in
Iraq's politics.
Many Kurds say Kirkuk is
really a Kurdish city, and that large numbers of
Arabs were settled there by the Saddam Hussein
regime - a move that Article 140 could undo. They
also see the Turkomans, a people of Turkish
descent, as outsiders. But each of Kirkuk's ethnic
groups claims historical ownership over the city.
Turkomans claim that Kirkuk has been
historically a Turkoman-dominated city. Arab
leaders say they were legally settled there and
have a right to stay. Kurds say that before the
start of the Saddam-led ethnic-cleansing policies,
Kurds constituted the majority of the population
in the city.
Kurdish leaders want to speed
up action over Article 140 in the hope of bringing
Kirkuk into a Kurdish autonomous region. "There is
little time left for implementation of Article
140, but if there is goodwill in Baghdad, then
this remaining time is still enough," Mohammed
Ihsan, minister for extra-regional affairs in the
Arbil-based Kurdistan regional government, said in
a statement. He added that the regional government
had various strategies to deal with contingencies
that may arise over Kirkuk, but did not elaborate.
Interference by neighboring countries,
most notably Turkey, is believed to have
complicated the situation and rendered a solution
more difficult. Turkey claims it acts to protect
the Turkoman community in Kirkuk, but not all
Turkomans welcome its intervention. Turkoman
leader Irfan Kirkuli says Turkomans would be
better off joining a Kurdish autonomous area. He
also warned against interference by outside
powers, saying, "They aim to create turmoil and
tension in Kirkuk."
Turkey has been
exercising diplomatic and local pressure in
support of the Turkomans. Several commentators say
Turkey wants to block creation of an autonomous
Kurdish region to limit the aspirations of its own
Kurdish population. Turkey also claims historical
rights in Kirkuk, on the grounds that the city was
ruled by Ottoman Turks for centuries until the
creation of the modern state of Iraq in the 1920s.
During a recent visit by United Nations
Secretary General Kofi Annan to Ankara, Turkish
officials described the situation in Kirkuk as
"critical", and asked him to "support Turkey over
the current issue of Kirkuk".
Amid all
these tensions, residents resent remarks that
Kirkuk may become the "flashpoint" for an all-out
civil war in the country. But not many are sure
how the microcosm can withstand the larger
divisions within Iraq.
