"Thousands of Iraqi troops launched a crackdown in Kirkuk on Saturday, ordering residents to stay in their homes in an effort to put down violence that has swelled in the north.
. . . On Saturday, authorities announced a curfew had been extended to round-the-clock "until further notice," ordering all residents off the streets, said Kirkuk police chief Lt. Gen. Sherko Shaker.
"This operation comes as a measure to cleansing Kirkuk from weapons, as well to prevent the militants from having any chance to reorganize their abilities," he said.
. . . Kirkuk, located 180 miles north of Baghdad, is a major oil center and the focus of an ongoing struggle for power between its large Sunni and Kurdish populations.
The Kurds want to include the city in their autonomous zone further north and are working to resettle thousands of Kurds who were driven out during the regime of Saddam Hussein and replaced with Sunni Arabs.
Al-Qaida in Iraq and another major Sunni group, Ansar al-Sunna, have increased their presence in regions west of the city, said Sheik Abdul-Rahman al-Munshid, a top sheik in the Sunni Obeid tribe. He blamed Kurdish efforts in the city for fueling Sunni Arab support for insurgents.
"The demands of the Kurdish political forces and their attempt ... to work to make Kirkuk part of the northern region that have created worry among the non-Kurdish groups," he said."
[1]After 36 hours, the curfew was lifted.
"Thousands of Iraqi army and police force personnel backed by US-led coalition troops combed Kirkuk for insurgents, while US troops lent helicopter support.
Police said about 180 people were detained and large quantities of arms and ammunition seized."
[2]"Bombings and shootings are increasing in Iraq's north as part of a power struggle between Arabs and Kurds.
. . . The bloodshed is not nearly on the scale of Baghdad, where thousands have died in recent months in a wave of sectarian killings and insurgent attacks.
. . . The number of car bomb attacks in the city jumped from three in August to 16 in September, according to figures from Kirkuk police. The number of deaths from violence in the city rose from 12 to 42.
Numbers for the rest of Tamim province, where Kirkuk is the capital, were not available. But Associated Press figures gathered from police reports show a swell of violence. July was the peak with at least 93 dead, compared to around 20 a month in the spring.
The attacks are largely blamed on Sunni Arab insurgents targeting Kurds and the Kurdish-dominated police force.
. . . The city's population of around a million is thought to be about 40 percent Kurdish and 30 percent Arab, with a substantial population of ethnic Turkomen _ though exact figures do not exist.
Since Saddam's fall, Kurds have flooded back to the area, many of them living in camps or stadiums awaiting new homes. The Iraqi constitution calls for Kurds to be assisted in returning and for those brought in by Saddam's regime to be removed ahead of a referendum on whether to include the city in the Kurdistan region."
[3]
"The city of Kirkuk was long known as a city where people of different ethnic groups lived together in peace, but this changed starting in the 1980s during the regime of Saddam Hussein. Non-Arabs such as the Kurds, Assyrians and Turkmen were forced from Kirkuk and outlying villages where they had been living since the time of the British occupation of Iraq, to be replaced with Arab oilfield workers in Saddam's Arabization plan of the Al-Anfal Campaign."
[4]"The former Iraqi president forced about 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up their homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city and the region's oil industry. U.S. and Iraqi officials estimate that nearly all those Kurds have returned to Kirkuk, capital of Al Tamim province, along with as many as 100,000 newcomers.
. . . Iraq's constitution outlines a process by which those who were illegally displaced by the Hussein regime would be compensated for confiscated property or resettled in their old homes. Under the plan, Arabs who relinquish Kurdish properties would also receive relocation funds. The resettlement programs would take place before a citywide census and 2007 referendum that will decide whether the oil-rich province should be annexed to the semiautonomous Kurdish region in Iraq's north.
. . . Mohammed Khalil Nasif, an Arab member of the provincial governorate council, said that Kurdish leaders had manipulated the refugee situation in the northern city.
The Kurds are bringing people in who have never lived here before," he said. "And they stay in camps and government offices and say, 'We are oppressed.'
Kurdish leaders say they are willing to negotiate resettlement costs for Kirkuk's Arab residents, but insist that most of them must leave. "Kurds must return back to their homes, and Arabs must leave and go back to where they originally came from," said Adnan Mufti, speaker of Kurdistan's parliament.
. . . Kurdish, Turkmen, Arab and U.S. officials in Kirkuk have recently formed a body called the Committee for the Missing to identify, locate and secure the release of wrongful arrest victims.
Members of the committee have compiled a list of more than 100 "disappeared" people who are believed to have been arrested by Kurdish and U.S. forces. Most of those on the list appear to have Sunni Arab names."
[5]
"Divided between Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen and Assyrians, Kirkuk has longstanding inter-ethnic grievances, crime, corruption, a fierce insurgency in the west of the province, but it also has a local government learning to work together.
"As a council we continue to do our best to keep meeting and dealing with each other and trying to solve our problems," says Tahseen Kahya, a leading member of the Turkmen bloc in the council.
"We are suffering from political infighting," he says from his office in the government building.
Half of the 41 members of the council are Kurds, along with nine Arabs, 11 Turkmen, and an Assyrian. The Kurds are all part of the Kurdish Brotherhood list that includes the Assyrian, two Turkmen and three Arabs, and dominates the council.
. . . U.S. Maj. Victor Vasquez, the civil affairs officer for the 1st Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division in Kirkuk, however, sees massive improvement.
"When I got here, you couldn't get these guys to agree the sky is blue," he says. "Now they can agree in a unanimous vote on projects and priorities."
. . . After years of close relations with the Kurds, U.S. military and civilian officials are now working with the Arabs and Turkmen to build their political skills and train them to work like an opposition and force some compromises out of the Kurds.
. . . "We have serious problems that can't be addressed without a budget," says Governor Mustafa Abdel Rahman. "If we had this money the majority of our problems would be solved."
[6]"Largely drawn up by the Kurds and the Shiite SCIRI party, an article in Iraq's Constitution endorsed last year calls for a local referendum to decide on Kirkuk's fate. In other words, if the Kurds obtain a simple majority, Kirkuk and its oil will go to Kurdistan, at least in theory. With their migration-backed majority, the Kurds certainly would win the referendum.
But there are several roadblocks: Iraq's Sunni Arabs, Turkmens and Shiite parties with the exception of SCIRI -- meaning maverick Moqtada al Sadr's Mehdi army, current Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Dawa Party, and some others -- are all against an ultimate Kurdish takeover.
Earlier this month [Turkish] Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul once again warned that the planned referendum would not resolve the Kirkuk dispute and called for a political process to seek a consensus among all ethnic and sectarian groups.
. . . "If the United States continues with its stand-off position, the most likely outcome will be a civil war," said Joost Hiltermann, Iraq Project director for the International Crisis Group (ICG), said last week here. He said outside intervention also was likely.
"The United States is the only actor that can convince its allies, the Kurds, to step back on their demands and to encourage the Iraqi government to take the step of seeking external, international mediation in Kirkuk," Hiltermann said."
[7]So here is a mixed city with major Kurdish influence and a functioning (although still with problems), mixed local government which suffers from sectarian violence. This does not look good for my past suggestions of using Kurdistan as a model or letting mixed cities govern themselves.
And yet Kirkuk still doesn't seem to be nearly as bad as the non-Kurd dominated Baghdad. (I'm not sure if Baghdad is self-governing or not). Kirkuk also seems to have a plan to deal with the violence, though how effective that plan turns out to be, as with the rest of Iraq, remains to be seen.
And while in the case of Kirkuk, the Kurds don't seem to be behaving as well as they could, Kurdistan is still relatively stable and perhaps some lessons can still be drawn from there.
The current rise in violence also seems to be mostly by the Sunni Arab insurgents, even though the Sunni leader in the article quoted above blamed the violence on the Kurdish plans for annexing Kirkuk to Kurdistan. Kirkuk also seems to have been on the path to becoming a largely successful, self-governing, mixed city with political representation and benefits for all its various groups. So while the current situation in Kirkuk seems to lend less credence to my self-governance by mixed cities idea, the seeds for success for that idea seem to be there. Hopefully this possibility for success won't be harmed by the recent violence or by a heavy-handed attempt by the Kurds for the annexation of Kirkuk.
The situation might also be helped if the national government could settle the equitable distribution of oil revenue issue. It might take some of the edge off the conflict if it were shown that the Kurds did not want Kirkuk mainly for its oil.
The Kurds could also help their cause by the fair treatment of all people in Kirkuk. Though there's no guarantee, a relatively peaceful, prosperous Kirkuk where all take part in governance and all are treated fairly could prove a persuasive argument for its annexation, especially if this hopefully not too idealized version of Kirkuk is compared to so much of the rest of Iraq with its everyday violence and uncertainty.
sources[1] The Houston Chronicle. (Associated Press). Iraq sweep aims to stem killing in north. October 7, 2006.[2] BBC. Battle rages in Shia Iraqi town. October 8, 2006.[3] The Washington Post. Northern Iraq Grows Increasingly Violent. October 8, 2006. [4] Wikipedia. Kirkuk. Retrieved October 8, 2006.[5] Los Angeles Times. The Conflict in Iraq; Tensions Simmer as Kurds Reclaim Kirkuk; Thousands displaced by Hussein have returned to take back their homes and government seats. Arabs and Turkmens there feel marginalized. May 12, 2006.[6] Turkish Daily News. Kirkuk's fragile ethnic mix perseveres. April 23, 2006.[7] Turkish Daily News. Heading toward an (inevitable) war in Kirkuk. August 20, 2006.
related posting[1] Crack Iraq (If it works for the Kurds . . .). July 26, 2006.[2] Federalism and mixed cities. October 1, 2006.
[3] Rice in Kurdistan / oil. October 8, 2006.posted: sunday, october 8, 2006, 4:30 PM ETupdated: monday, october 16, 2006, 12:22 AM ET
