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Kirkuk dispute threatens to plunge Iraq
into Kurdish-Arab war
28.10.2008
By
Julian Borger |
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Study
warns dispute over territories and revenues in oil
region could lead to violence greater than Sunni-Shia
conflict
October 28, 2008
KIRKUK, Iraq's border with Kurdistan region,
— Iraq's relative calm is threatened by a festering
Kurdish-Arab conflict over the oil-rich city of
Kirkuk and other disputed territories, that could
explode into the worst sectarian war the country has
suffered since the 2003 invasion, a new report says
today.
The report by the International Crisis Group (ICG)
says the territorial dispute is blocking political
progress in Iraq, contributing to the delay in
passing a law on sharing oil revenue, and
threatening to put off critical provincial
elections.
Pointing out that the Arab-Kurdish dispute dates
back to Britain's creation of modern Iraq after the
first world war,www.ekurd.net
the ICG report warns:
"In its ethnically-driven intensity, ability to drag
in regional players such as Turkey and Iran, and
potentially devastating impact on efforts to rebuild
a fragmented state, it matches and arguably exceeds
the Sunni-Shia divide that spawned the 2005 - 2007
sectarian war."
At the heart of the dispute is the city of Kirkuk,
home to 900,000 Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen, which sits
on one of the country's biggest oil fields. It lies
outside the northern zone run by the Kurdistan
Regional Government, but is in practice run by
Kurdish peshmerga fighters and a Kurdish
intelligence service, the Asaysh, which works
closely with US intelligence.
Arabs and Turkmen residents, who represent 40% of
Kirkuk's population, claim they live in fear,
particularly of the Asaysh.
The tensions in the city ignited in late July, when
a suicide bomber blew himself up in the midst of a
Kurdish demonstration. That triggered an attack by a
Kurdish mob on the headquarters of a Turkmen party,
where guards fired into the crowd. Over 25 people
were killed in total and more than 200 injured.
Soon afterwards, Nuri al-Maliki's government in
Baghdad sent troops into three areas that had been
under informal Kurdish control, further escalating
tensions and threatening a direct stand-off between
Iraqi regular army and peshmerga forces.
The dispute over Kirkuk has derailed legislation in
the national parliament to pave the way for
provincial elections. Arab and Turkmen politicians
demanded a guaranteed quota of seats in the Kirkuk
assembly,www.ekurd.net
but Kurdish parties
refused.
Kurdish leaders argue Iraq's constitution gives them
the right to absorb Kirkuk and other historically
Kurdish-majority areas, in the name of "normalising"
demographics skewed under Saddam Hussein by forced
removals and a policy of Arabisation.
Today's ICG report recommends that the only solution
to the seemingly intractable problem is an
"oil-for-soil" trade-off, in which the Kurds are
given the right to manage revenues from their own
mineral wealth and receive security guarantees for
the existing internal boundary between Kurdistan and
the rest of Iraq,www.ekurd.net
in exchange for
deferring their claims on Kirkuk for 10 years.
The report warns: "The most likely alternative to an
agreement is a new outbreak of violent strife over
unsettled claims in a fragmented polity governed by
chaos and fear."
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
guardian co.uk
*
Kirkuk city is historically a Kurdish city and 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."
Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution is related to
the normalization of the situation in Kirkuk city
and other disputed areas.
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.
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