A vote on whether the city should be absorbed into Kurdistan is likely delayed, leaving Kurds to wonder if Kirkuk is worth risking civil war
By Liz Sly
Chicago Tribune, 19 August 2007
The Kurdish flag, not the Iraqi one, flutters over government buildings here in Kurdistan because the Iraqi flag was banned last year. Yet when the Iraqi soccer team won the Asian Cup last month, the Kurds took to the streets to celebrate with their fellow Iraqis -- some even waving the forbidden flag.
Kurds tout their region as "the other Iraq," the one part of the country where foreigners are both welcome and safe. With their autonomous status enshrined in Iraq's constitution, they function virtually as an independent nation, with their own laws, their own government and their own parliament.
While much of the rest of the country is mired in sectarian violence, the Kurds have achieved almost everything they could have dreamed of -- except for one key prize, the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which some have called Kurdistan's Jerusalem.
Now, amid signs that a constitutionally required referendum on the city's status may not be held on schedule by the end of the year, the Kurds face a conundrum:
Should they take a stand and perhaps trigger a civil war, as Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani threatened last month? Or should they come to terms with what appears to be reality, that Kirkuk may be beyond their grasp for now?
The problem goes to the core of the Kurds' schismatic identity as a people with aspirations to independence who also happen to be citizens of Iraq.
"We are a different nation," said Falah Baqir, the foreign minister in the Kurdish regional Cabinet. "We are Kurdish and not Arab. But the fact is that we are a part of this country and we do not want history to repeat itself," he said, referring to how the Kurds were persecuted during the rule of Saddam Hussein.
Under the terms of Iraq's new constitution, a vote is due by December on whether Kirkuk should be absorbed into Kurdistan. The city was home to thousands of Kurds until the late 1980s, when they were driven out by Hussein's government.
Yet already it is August, and the complex process of organizing the referendum has barely started. The committee established to implement it has not met since March, when its chairman resigned.
"If you ask me, it is impossible," said Ahmed al-Baraq, the chairman of the Iraq Property Claims Commission who sits on the committee charged with implementing the referendum.
The Kurds smell a rat. As the months drag by without progress, they are fretting that referendum opponents -- including Shiites and Sunnis who believe Kirkuk is an Arab and Turkmen city -- have conspired to let the deadline slip and perhaps defer indefinitely the Kurds' dream of annexing the city.
"We feel there is a deliberate delay on this issue, and I don't think anyone has been courageous enough to tell us," said Safeen Dizayee, a spokesman for Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party. "We are becoming suspicious of this process."
Time is not the only problem. A groundswell of international opposition has emerged, with the International Crisis Group, the Iraq Study Group and the United Nations all warning that holding the referendum in the ethnically mixed city could provoke new bloodletting.
An escalation of bombings in areas where the referendum is due to be held -- including the devastating attack last week in the Yazidi community of Sinjar -- has underscored the dangers: Kurdish officials say the attacks are an effort by Al Qaeda in Iraq to deter the referendum from going ahead.
In addition, Turkey has massed troops on Kurdistan's borders, ostensibly to guard against attacks by Kurdish separatists based in Iraq. But many Kurds believe the troops are also there as a warning not to allow a vote that might advance Kurdish independence by giving Kurdistan control over Kirkuk's oil.
The U.S., a strong Kurdish ally, is an architect of the Kirkuk referendum proposal. Preoccupied with securing Baghdad, Washington has no wish to see violence erupt in the one part of the country that is considered safe, and U.S. officials have fallen silent on the issue.
They have much to lose
Officially, the Kurds say they will not budge from their insistence that the referendum be held soon. After so many warnings that the referendum could trigger violence, Barzani warned that not having it also could lead to a "real civil war."
But the Kurds recognize that they have much to lose from provoking a fight that would jeopardize the substantial though fragile gains they have achieved since the fall of Hussein. They have worked hard to ensure constitutional guarantees for their autonomous status, to lure foreign investment and to keep at bay the violence that has engulfed most of the rest of Iraq.
Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, have devised a plan to secure Iraq by partitioning it into three sections, creating separate Shiite and Sunni regions modeled on the success of the Kurdish enclave.
Yet even as Iraq's Kurds have moved to secure their autonomy, they have become active participants in the effort to forge a new democracy at the center, albeit one that protects their interests.
Some of Kurdistan's best leaders have been dispatched to Baghdad to serve in the Iraqi government. Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, is a Kurd, as are the army chief of staff and the Iraqi foreign minister. Kurdish pesh merga forces are helping secure threatened oil pipelines and divided Baghdad neighborhoods.
One possible step if the referendum does not proceed, Dizayee said, would be for Kurds to withdraw from the government.
That would not amount to a declaration of independence, but it is a substantial threat. The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki depends on the Kurdish parliamentary bloc for its survival.
Kurds would be ready to carry out the threat, according to Nouri Talabani, an independent legislator in Kurdistan's regional parliament. He notes that Kurds won autonomy after the 1991 Kurdish uprising against Hussein that saw Kurdistan become a UN-protected haven. They agreed to "rejoin" Iraq after the U.S. invasion on condition that the new constitution was implemented, including the Kirkuk referendum, he said.
If Baghdad strays from the constitution, "then in all honesty we say that we don't want to be part of this state," he said.
Kurds reliant on Baghdad
Kurds have become dependent on Baghdad in ways they can't ignore, making it hard for them to contemplate substantive changes to the status quo.
Despite Turkey's suspicions, "nobody in their right minds believes the Kurds are going to claim independence," said Joost Hiltermann, Middle East director of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. "They are very dependent on Iraq for their revenues and they depend on Turkey for their trade and fuel."
Phebe Marr, a Washington-based Iraq expert, said Kurdistan cannot afford to offend its neighbors because it cannot defend its borders.
"Realism is settling in," Marr said. "They happen to be sitting in an area with a border around it called Iraq. Syria, Iran and Turkey are not going to let them declare independence."
With that in mind, Kurds are also anxiously watching the debate in Washington over whether to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, which would leave Kurds even more vulnerable. They are hoping that another option -- redeploying U.S. troops to Kurdistan -- becomes reality. But so far no such plans have been formally proposed, Kurdish officials say.
With so many uncertainties ahead, Kurds say they recognize that they need to remain a part of Iraq, and to that end they are putting all their efforts for now into trying to salvage al-Maliki's government, most recently by renewing their alliance with his bloc in parliament.
"Let Turkey come here and [look] into our hearts to see if we have a plan for independence. They will find that we have no such plan," said Gen. Aziz Weysi, commander of the Kurdish pesh merga's border forces.
Despite the Kurds' disavowals, however, the possibility of future independence is never far from the discourse.
"A country has to be pragmatic and take into account the realpolitik of Iraq," said Dizayee, the KDP official. "We know a lot of challenges are facing us. Can you imagine what challenges would face us when we do declare independence, if and when that happens?"
Though the Kurds appear to believe that Kirkuk would help guarantee their future, Hiltermann believes it would have the opposite effect, by creating new enemies.
"More than Kirkuk, the Kurds need security," he said. "One way or another they can't get Kirkuk and they need to wise up to that."
----------------------------------
Citation: Liz Sly. "Oil-rich Kirkuk a thorny issue for Kurds," Chicago Tribune, 19 August 2007.
Original URL: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-kurds_sly_finalaug19,1,2161994.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
----------------------------------