Kirkuk:
The Potential
Spark For Civil War
By Ahmed Janabi
18 September 2006
Aljazeera
Kirkuk,
Iraq's oil-rich northern city, is probably the most critical area for
the future of Iraq, but the least covered by international media.
Historically, the city accommodates
people from Iraq's three biggest ethnic groups: Turkmen, Arabs and Kurds.
The groups have been engaged in a prolonged dispute over the city's
identity, with each side claiming ownership of the 5000-year-old metropolis.
Being the centre of Iraq's
northern oil industry, the Kurds see the Kirkuk region as vital for
their long awaited "independent state of Kurdistan". Attacks
on the infrastructure of the Kirkuk oil industry have been ongoing since
the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The Kurds' grip on Kirkuk
was strengthened after the invasion of Iraq, and the two main Kurdish
political parties led by Masoud Barazani, the president of the Kurdistan
region, and Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president, became the main powerbrokers
in the city. Now their ambition to annex the city to their intended
state has become public and bold.
A referendum is to be held
in late 2007 to decide the city's fate. But Arabs and Turkmen say the
Kurds are using their political new power and the support of the US
to manipulate it.
The situation has provoked Kirkuk's non-Kurdish communities and plunged
the city into a fierce war.
Attacks on Kurdish targets
reached their peak last month when a shrine owned by Talabani's family
was attacked on August 27. On the same day, a car bomber blew himself
up near the office of Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)
in Kirkuk.
Deteriorating situation
Najati Qalaji, secretary-general
of the London-based civil rights group the Committee for Defending the
Turkmen Rights, expressed serious concerns at the deteriorating situation
in Kirkuk.
"Kurds are slowly but
surely occupying Kirkuk, everything is for them now, jobs, privileges
and power," he said.
Qalaji accused the Kurds
of following Saddam's practices.
"Saddam wanted to Arabise
Kirkuk and exchanged its Kurdish minority with ethnic Arabs, and the
Kurds now are doing the same by scaring people away and bringing in
their fellow Kurds in their tens of thousands.
"I do not think there
is a need for the referendum because, according to what they are doing
now, the result will definitely be 100% in favour of annexing Kirkuk
to Kurdistan."
Influx
Kurdish parties say the Kurds
who have flooded Kirkuk since 2003, many now sleeping rough in public
buildings, are those who were thrown out of the city during the Saddam
era.
However, the Turkmen say
Saddam removed no more than 500 families and that they had ties with
the then Kurdish insurgents. Saddam's plan was to prevent them from
aiding the insurgency.
"One question I would like to raise here; We know that Kurds who
were kicked out by Saddam returned after the invasion and took back
their houses by force. So, if those tens of thousands of Kurds who have
been sleeping in stadiums and former public buildings were really kicked
out of Kirkuk by Saddam, then where are their houses? Why do they not
own anything in Kirkuk not even their old identities?" Qalaji said.
Non-Kurdish powers in the
city reject the Kurdish plan to launch a referendum in late 2007 and
say it is just another bid to break Iraq apart and warned they would
resist the Kurdish plan.
Counter act
Leaflets warning inhabitants
not to join the army or security forces were distributed in the city
last week. The leaflets also urged those serving in the army and security
forces to abandon their jobs, or get killed.
Policemen and army officers
have suffered countless attacks during the past months.
One Arab activist in Kirkuk,
who wanted to be identified as Abu Adnan, said his community is working
closely with the Turkmen to prevent the "hijacking of Kirkuk".
"Kurds were never a
majority in Kirkuk and the city was never Kurdish, they always shared
it with us [Arabs] and our brothers the Turkmen, who always constituted
half or two-thirds of the city's population.
"We also should not
forget the city's Chaldeans and Assyrians. Kirkuk is a small Iraq, where
the country's diversity is demonstrated, no party should get hold of
it, it is just an Iraqi city.
"I would like to say
that the referendum will be fiercely resisted, we will do everything
we can to prevent the hijacking of Kirkuk," he said.
Public wrath
Joost Hiltermann, director
of Crisis Group's Middle East Project, said: "For the Kurds, this
deadline could be a self-laid trap. Having raised expectations, Kurdish
leaders must now deliver by the end of 2007 or meet public wrath [among
Kurds]".
The group issued a report
last month urging an international action to prevent Kirkuk from turning
into a scene of savage civil war.
In 1959, Kurdish communists
took advantage of the support of Abd al-Karim Qassim, then Iraq's ruler,
and massacred Kirkuk's Turkmen elite.
Sami Abd al-Hamid, an Iraqi
communist leader, said the massacre has been wrongly blamed on the communists.
"It is true that those
who performed the killing were communist Kurds, but they acted as Kurds
not as communists, they were absolutely ethnic Kurds killing their rival
Turkmen," he said.
In 1991, Kurdish rebels seized
Kirkuk after the Iraqi army's chaotic withdrawal from Kuwait, which
caused a short power vacuum in Iraq.
Kurdish gunmen launched an
organised killing campaign against Kirkuk's Arab and Turkmen inhabitants.
Iraqi Republican Guards regained the city from Kurdish rebels shortly
afterwards.
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