Kirkuk’s Conundrum in the Wake of the American Withdrawal

The aftermath of a car bomb outside a hospital in Kirkuk. Photo AFP.

At the end of this year, all U.S. troops are expected to leave Iraq based on an agreement that was signed between both countries. From the day the Americans arrived in Iraq, there have been fears among Iraqi politicians and civilians of violence and war once they pull out.

Nowhere in the country does this anxiety seem to be weighing more heavily than in Kirkuk. The province has often been described by locals and foreign observers as a powder keg or a time bomb that could explode at any moment.

In a report last month the United States Institute of Peace called Kirkuk the greatest threat to Iraq’s stability.

“This is especially the case when the vacuum caused by the lack of an agreed political and constitutional framework for Iraqis to address competing claims to these strategic lands is combined with the impending withdrawal of what are effectively U.S. peacekeeping forces in northern Iraq.” read the report.

Kirkuk is a like a small Iraq: several different ethnic and religious groups share the territory—Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen, and Christians. Most of the province is disputed over and claimed by them all. Arabs and Kurds are further divided into Shiite and Sunni Muslims. 

It has not had an easy history. Throughout his rule, Saddam Hussein spared no effort in transforming the province’s demography; he forced thousands of Kurds to leave the province and brought Arab families from other parts of Iraq to settle there in their place.

This campaign, called Arabization, resulted in a dramatic change in the province’s social fabric. The displaced headed north into the autonomous Kurdistan region, and scattered across refugee camps or towns and cities while the Arabs who took their places were given privileges by the Iraqi regime, such as homes, farms and jobs.

In 2003, after the Americans toppled Saddam Hussein, the situation reversed once again for the residents of Kirkuk. Many Kurds returned to the city and some Arab families packed up and left. But this did not solve the problem. The legacy Saddam Hussein had left was too deep to fade so easily.

Many returning Kurds had lost everything they’d owned, and many Arabs refused to leave the city; they had been living there for years and now had nowhere else to go. To solve the problem, the new Iraqi government added an article to Iraq’s constitution, Article 58, that stipulated that all non-original residents of the province must return to their places of origin (the Arabs brought by Saddam’s regime), and all displaced families must return to the province and claim their properties (the Kurds).

Article 58 —later changed to article 140— is still in place. It is not specifically about Kirkuk. It includes many other areas that stretch along the border between the autonomous Kurdistan region and the rest of Iraq. These areas are called the disputed territories, since they are claimed by both Arabs and Kurds.

The center of the dispute, however, has always been Kirkuk, and that is where everyone watches nervously to see what will happen once the Americans leave. Kirkuk is an oil-rich province; whoever gets to keep it will no doubt be in a powerful position. But apparently neither side wants to make their claim about the oil, at least not publicly.

The Kurds say that Kirkuk has been historically part of Kurdistan and that that is where it belongs; the Arabs say that Kirkuk has always been part of Iraq and can in no way be separated from it.

The war over Kirkuk has so far been only a war of words, but the fear is that it could one day turn into a war of blood and steel. The Kurds and the Arabs, two of the largest ethnic groups in the capital city, both possess significant military power.

The Kurds dominate the police force, internal security, and most of the government departments, while the Arabs have a tight grip on the army and their powerbase is strong in the surrounding villages and towns. These two wings of Iraq’s official forces charged with keeping the country safe have never concealed their distrust towards each other. 

Recently, Kurdish security forces and soldiers from the Iraqi army came into armed clashes in the center of Kirkuk in broad daylight where two Kurdish security officers were killed. Insurgents on the other hand, have targeted the city’s population with car bombs and the police with roadside bombs whenever they have had a chance.

An Iraqi security official told the Arabic-language, Baghdad-based daily Almada, on condition of anonymity, that the American withdrawal is “a dangerous threat” to Kirkuk.

He added that “the Americans are reliable and everyone looks up to them to solve the issues related to the security forces and political rivalries.”

From 2003 on, the Americans have kept a close eye on the province and made sure to keep all parties in check. They understand the level of rivalry and mistrust that exists between these ethnic groups. Their heavy boots on the ground have helped a great deal in keeping the situation under control. Kirkuk’s new Kurdish governor, Najmaldin Karim, recognizes the importance of the American troops.

“The stance of the Kurdish leadership is clear: it demands the U.S. troops to stay in Iraq. This is not just for the disputed territories but for the whole of Iraq,” said Karim. “One of Iraq’s problems is intervention by neighboring countries that may have an interest in keeping Iraq unstable. America’s presence here will mitigate the effect of those interventions.”

But now, with the US's departure fast approaching, many people are seriously worried. The Kurds have always been known for their positive stance towards the Americans and the extension of their presence in Iraq, while the country's Arabs want the American troops to stay not a day longer.

In Kiruk, however, even the Arabs and Turkmen are concerned about the withdrawal. They've called for a broad meeting between all the ethnic groups in the hope of reaching a peaceful deal about the fate of the province before the Americans withdraw.

Rakan Saeed, an Arab member of Kirkuk’s Provincial Council (KPC), said that if Kirkuk’s various ethnic groups fail to reach an agreement, the situation in the province and the whole country will move towards uncertainty.

“I believe there will be some effort within the next couple of weeks,” said Saeed. “We've had a meeting with the US embassy and asked them to help us find a solution for a peaceful coexistence in Kirkuk.”

This certainly sounds like the sensible and long overdue step needed to bring all groups together, but the Kurds recently criticized the Arabs and Turkmen of Kirkuk for blocking an effort by the United Nations to bring about a meeting between all sides.

The meeting was to take place on May 5 in Baghdad under the supervision of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), headed by Ad Melkert, the UN envoy to Iraq.  

Ala Talabani, the executive secretary of the Kurdish coalition, said, “Based on a request from the Arabs and the Turkmen, the KRG representatives were denied participation.”

For his part, Arab member of Kirkuk’s provincial council, Muhammad Khalil al-Jiburi, did not deny the efforts to bar the KRG representatives from the UNAMI meeting.

“We agreed with the Turkmen that the representative of the KRG should not participate in this meeting, and let this be clear to the Kurdish government.” he said.

It was reported that the Turkmen and Arabs refused to attend the meeting if a KRG representative attended.

One of the major grievances of Arabs and Turkmen in Kirkuk is that they are underrepresented in the city council and therefore have no say in its affairs. They are demanding that the administrative posts be divided equally so that  the Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen each receive 32 percent of official positions, with the remaining four percent going to the Christians. 

For their part, the Kurds oppose this demand as something against the principles of democracy. They say that the ballot boxes should determine each ethnic group’s representation.

“Why shouldn’t the people themselves decide whose representation should be higher than the other,” said Kirkuk’s governor, Najmaldin Karim. “How can we accept that a party that has more than half of the seats in the province should have their representation decreased to only 32 percent?”

Out of the 41 seats in the provincial council, the Kurds hold 26, while the Turkmen have eight and the Arabs only six. Arab parties mostly boycotted the last provincial elections in 2005, which led to their underrepresentation in the council.

Ala Talabani says, “If we divide the seats on the ethnicities in a system of quota, then there will be no point of holding elections in the first place.”

This kind of disagreement over representation is nothing new. It has been going on since 2003. But the main issue on which the fate of the province seems to lie is Article 140. It demands a population census in Kirkuk and all other disputed territories once the original inhabitants have returned, before a referendum is held in which residents will decide whether they want to be part of the Kurdistan Region or remain under the control of the federal government in Baghdad.

It seems that some Arab and Turkmen officials in Kirkuk do not like the idea of a referendum about the fate of the province, which would constitute the last phase of the implementation of Article 140. They call it outdated—something that should have been done away with by 2007.

“We as the Arabs and Turkmen see some parts of the article to be against our interests, namely the referendum,” said al-Jiburi.

The veteran Turkmen representative at the provincial council, Tahsin Kahya, shares al-Jiburi’s view, saying, “We are in agreement with the implementation of part of the article—bringing back all the families to Kirkuk who were forcefully displaced. We are in agreement with the Kurds on this one. However, we are against the referendum about the fate of Kirkuk, and we are greatly worried.”

To the Kurds, however, the components of Article 140 are not negotiable. Their participation in the formation of the current Iraqi government, in 2010, was conditional on its full implementation.

Everyone, from the central government in Baghdad to some of the administrators of Kirkuk and the Kurdish authorities in the north, agree that Article 140 will solve a lot of Kirkuk’s problems. But they also readily blame each other for the lack of any progress in its implementation.

Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish member of Iraqi parliament, criticizes Kurdish officials for failure in pushing for its fulfillment.  

“We ourselves have been negligent and ignored Article 140. And the Iraqi government is grateful to us for that,” said Othman. “I feel there is no attempt by us or anyone else to implement Article 140 because all of us, the president, ministers, lawmakers and all other officials have not even held a meeting to discuss the fate of the article and how to exert pressure for its implementation.”

Othman suggests that in order to solve the problem, the Kurdish authorities in the Kurdistan region had better come closer to the al-Iraqiya bloc in Iraqi parliament whose lawmakers dominate the disputed territories.

Among parties concerned with Kirkuk’s problems, there are people who would rather blame external powers for hindering the efforts to solve the disputed areas. Raeed Fahmi, a member of the Iraqi Communist Party and former Minister of Science and Technology who has been assigned by the Iraqi government to oversee the employment of Article 140, emphasizes the risks that lie in abolishing the article, while he is pointing out the issue of interference by outside forces.

“I am not denying it that some external influences are hindering the implementation of this article, and some groups within Iraq are encouraging this external meddling.”

With this, Abdul-Rahman Sidiq, director of the Pird Center for Strategic Studies and Iraq’s former Minister of the Environment, fully agrees.

“Kirkuk is a domestic problem, but because of lack of trust, the domestic parties have brought in several neighboring countries that are not ready to get out without receiving some profit in return,” says Sidiq.

Sidiq believes that the solution to Kirkuk’s problem is in Kirkuk itself and can be found by the city’s local leaders.

“As domestic actors, we can solve these problems with the least possible cost. There is a price to be paid for any intervention by external actors,” he says. “Nobody will solve your internal problems for you free of charge.” 

There isn’t a fixed consensus among Iraqi and Kurdish leaders on how best to solve Kirkuk’s problem. But at the end of the day, no matter what they think and what approaches they may propose to finding a lasting solution, the unresolved issues could well play into the hands of those who see the extension of US troops in Iraq as inevitable.