Fate of Key Iraqi City To Be “Messy,” Iraq Prez’s Son Says

One predicted crisis in Iraq that hasn’t materialized is an all-out war for control of Kirkuk — the multi-ethnic, oil-rich city in northern Iraq that the Kurds call their Jerusalem. A major reason why the battle for Kirkuk hasn’t yet happened is because U.S. and Iraqi officials have consistently deferred resolving the city’s political status over the past four years. This year, however, that all changes.

The Iraqi constitution stipulates that by the end of 2007, a referendum will take place in Kirkuk to determine whether the city becomes part of the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government or will continue to be administered from Baghdad. Since 2003, Kurds who had been displaced by Saddam Hussein’s campaign of ethnic cleansing have been returning, a vast demographic shift within the approximately-700,000-person city that very likely will ensure that the Kurds prevail.

According to the just-released National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, “The Kurds are moving systematically to increase their control over Kirkuk to guarantee annexation of all or most of the city and province into the Kurdistan Regional Government,” something the NIE considers understandably destabilizing.

Qubad Talabani doesn’t necessarily disagree. Talabani, the son of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and the Washington representative of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, told me that “the aftermath of the referendum may be messy, undoubtedly.” But for Talabani, the issue is that, especially after the hanging of Saddam Hussein and his henchmen, “we can’t leave their racist handiwork intact.” For a population that experienced a genocide a mere 20 years ago, making Kirkuk Kurdish again is first and foremost a matter of justice. As part of that, Talabani says, “we can’t rectify a crime with another crime,” which is why he and the Kurdish leadership support financially compensating Arabs who Saddam moved into Kirkuk as part of the “Arabization” campaign of the 1980s. But the Kurds have been similarly firm in their demand that those Arabs do indeed have to leave the city.

And that’s how Kirkuk can easily become the next catastrophe in Iraq. According to a United Nations-sponsored news report, a preview of what’s to come after the referendum is on display today: Hundreds of Arabs have taken to the streets to demonstrate against the decision of a Baghdad committee on Kirkuk. The Arabs relocated out of the city will be compensated with up to $15,000, it decided. And while a firm number of the people expected to be displaced isn’t known, it will surely number in the tens of thousands, as the committee has decreed that Arabs who moved into Kirkuk after 1968 — when the Baath Party took power — have to leave. As can be expected, the money comes as little compensation:

“We vehemently reject this decision. We will not leave Kirkuk by force or without force. If they [Kurds] try to force us out of the city, then there will be dangerous reactions against them,” said Sheikh Raad al-Najafi, 37, an Arab Shi’ite religious cleric at the Kirkuk office of the radical Shi’ite leader Muqtada al-Sadr.

The Kurds have frequently warned that they will go to war for Kirkuk if they feel their interests are threatened. And as the referendum creeps up, Turkey has become increasingly alarmed, worried about the fate of the city’s thousands of ethnic Turkmen if the city is administered by the Kurds.

Talabani says he wants to see a “a power-sharing arrangement for administering a multi-ethnic city,” but he’s also clear that the Kurds “cannot sit by and watch as Kirkuk is taken over by terrorists and extremists.”

So while Bush administration officials focus on Baghdad, they may find that before the year is out, there’s another crisis further north.