Kurds’ Return to Kirkuk Shakes Iraqi Politics

NY Times: “Kurds’ Return to City Shakes Politics in Iraq,” by Edward Wong, March 14, 2005.

As we pointed out here just a few weeks ago, the oil-rich city of Kirkuk is perhaps the key focus of the future of Iraq,

given that it WAS a formerly Kurdish city that Saddam “Arabized” with Shiites from the south, as well as Turkmen who look north to Turkey, thereby creating a caldron of highly intense ethnic and religious rivalries.

These would be important under any circumstances …

but the fact that Saddam “Arabized” Kirkuk with southern Shiites means what happens there has CRUCIAL implications for what we will argue in another post is the single most important issue in Iraqi politics –

the extent to which the Shiites will be able / willing to transcend the usual Middle Eastern – and, let’s face it, human – game of beating up on old enemies, once you have achieved power.

As the previous Kirkuk piece – a/w/a the NYT mag cover on Kurdistan – and this piece by Edward Wong
– as well as others make clear,

if Kurds intent on “un-doing” Saddam’s depredations end up displacing Shiites – who were themselves victims of Saddam – from their homes in Kirkuk,

there seems little chance that a Shiite / Kurdish alliance on the national level – which is the key to any Iraq outcome that is NOT civil war – will be able to survive.

So the stakes here are high indeed … and not just limited to Kirkuk …

Some of the best selections from Wong’s piece (bold emphasis mine):

Mr. Ahmed, a Kurd, and his friend, an Arab, had studied together at Kirkuk’s oil institute nearly two decades ago. But shortly after Mr. Ahmed started work at the state-owned North Oil Company in the late 1980’s, the government of Saddam Hussein, intent on solidifying Arab control of Kirkuk, forced him out of his job and made him and his family move north, where they joined tens of thousands of other Kurds exiled from this city.

That mass relocation planted the seeds for a bitter ethnic antagonism that has grown into the most incendiary political issue in Iraq outside of the Sunni-led insurgency, and the one that more than any other is delaying formation of a new government. …

Mr. Ahmed’s plight encapsulates the growing struggle over Kirkuk, a drab city of 700,000 on the windswept northern plains. Efforts to restore Kurds to their jobs and property without disenfranchising Arabs are fraught with the possibility of igniting a civil war. The debate has so inflamed passions that Kurdish and Shiite Arab negotiators trying to form a coalition government in Baghdad may have to put off any real decision on Kirkuk’s future. …

Kurdish leaders call Kirkuk their Jerusalem, saying they should control it – and its oil fields – because it was historically Kurdish. The Kurds are pushing Shiite leaders like [Prime Minister nominee] Dr. Jaafari to help quickly give property back to Kurdish returnees, evict Arab settlers and employ more Kurds at North Oil, the only major government institution here that the Kurds have been unable to dominate since the American invasion.

The Kurdish political parties have huge leverage. Kurds turned out in large numbers to vote on Jan. 30, securing more than a quarter of the seats in the 275-member national assembly and making themselves a necessary partner for the Shiite bloc that won the largest number of seats.

But with the oil in Kirkuk at stake, the Kurdish and Shiite parties have been unable to agree on how to carry out Article 58 of the interim constitution, which provides vague guidelines for settling the property disputes here. Equally vexing is the question of who will administer Kirkuk – the national government or the autonomous regional government of Iraqi Kurdistan.

In the 1960’s, Baath Party officials began packing Kurds and, to a lesser degree, Turkmen into trucks and evicting them from Kirkuk. As the displacement continued, the Kurds who worked for North Oil, like Mr. Ahmed, rose to the top of the relocation list. The government, dominated by Sunni Arabs, imported mostly Shiite Arabs from the impoverished south into the Kirkuk area.

Kurds began returning in large numbers nearly two years ago, when the Hussein government was toppled. Some Arab families fled, but most heeded the reassurances of American soldiers who, trying to avert an ethnic war, urged them to stay and urged the Kurds to await a legal solution.

“From my perspective, the Arab settlers who were brought into Kirkuk were also victims of Saddam Hussein,” said Barham Salih, the deputy prime minister and a top Kurd. “But the question is, if we’re talking about a new Iraq, does this mean the elite of Iraq, the democratically elected elite of Iraq, are willing to acknowledge the terrible mistake that was made and put it right?” …

Turkmen and Arab officials here accuse the major Kurdish parties of having moved people pretending to be returnees into Kirkuk before the Jan. 30 elections in order to bolster the Kurdish vote. The main Kurdish coalition won 26 of 41 provincial council seats, and a Kurd will almost certainly be installed as governor.

Each ethnic group claims demographic dominance, but no reliable census has been taken since 1957. Mutual suspicions are intense.

“The families who were kicked out of Kirkuk had homes in Kirkuk,” said Suphi Sabir, a senior official in the Iraqi Turkmen Front. “If these people were from Kirkuk, why did they not return to their homes? Why are they staying in the stadium?”

In the Kirkuk neighborhood of Qadisiya, from which Kurds were evicted in large numbers, a group of Arab men said on a recent afternoon that the city would remain peaceful – as long as no one tried to seize their homes.

“Those people are not from Kirkuk,” a tall man in a dark blue robe, Muhammad Awad, said of the Kurds. “They came from Turkey and Iran. They’re not Iraqis. Maybe the old regime kicked out 1 or 2 percent of the Kurds, but those people came from outside the country.” …

For many Kurds, employment at the oil company is as important as winning back their property. But securing jobs there is not easy, either. Muhammad Ahmed, who worked as a supervisor of oil pumps and turbines for 10 months before he was relocated, said he was among 180 experienced Kurds who recently applied together for jobs at North Oil. Mr. Ahmed had an interview two months ago, he said, but has heard nothing.

A senior official at the Oil Ministry said he had sent to North Oil nine lists of people, half of them Kurds, who should be given jobs.

The Kurds complain that they have seen little or no results. “It’s chauvinism,” Mr. Ahmed said. “They don’t want Kurds to work in oil. It’s the same as under Saddam’s plan.”

It doesn't take much to see what a DEEPLY complex situation this is … with immense implications for the future of post-invasion Iraq …

And if things DON’T break in the best possible way, the very likely outcome is going to be a civil war …

Which, in case you’ve forgotten, was preceded in the US by the ELECTION of 1860 … and 1856 … and 1852 …

But, gee, I thought elections solved EVERY problem … at least that’s what Condi and W say … but I guess that’s true for Iraq and the Arab world only.