This strategic city was home to a rich multicultural population with a large community of ethnic Turks (Turkmen), Christians, Shiite and Sunni Arabs, Armenians and Assyrians. Kirkuk is close to the southern flank of the Kurdish autonomous zone stretching across three provinces of northeastern Iraq.Kurds, non-Arabs and non-Muslims fled Kirkuk in the 1980s and 1990s in droves for fear of their lives. They were replaced with pro-government Arabs from the mainly Shiite impoverished south.
Now Iraq’s new government has endorsed plans to relocate thousands of Arabs who were moved to Kirkuk in an effort to undo one of the former dictator’s most enduring plans. The declared relocation would be voluntary. Those who choose to leave will be paid about $15,000 and given land in their former hometowns.
Since Saddam’s fall four years ago, thousands of Kurds who once lived in the city have resettled there. It is now believed that Kurds are a majority of the population. Iraq’s constitution bears an end-of-the-year deadline for a referendum on Kirkuk’s status. It is expected that a referendum on adding Kirkuk to the Kurdish autonomous zone would pass easily.
Why is this relocation so important? Both the Kurdish autonomous administration in the north and practically any one else knows that without the oil revenues of the Kirkuk region, a Kurdish political entity will not be sustainable. So this is a matter of life and death (or better independence and/or dependence) for the Kurds, who have provisional power to convince their American and Shiite partners in this volatile interim period.
The controversial decision on Kirkuk immediately led to a flurry of debate centering on the fear that it would provoke more violence among Iraq’s fractious ethnic and religious groups and quicken Iraq’s division among Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shiites.
There is a group of bureaucrats, soldiers and politicians in Turkey who fear that a prosperous and self-reliant Kurdish autonomous mini-state or (later) independent Kurdistan will whet the appetite of its own restive Kurdish minority. This worry is shared by Iran and Syria, which harbor increasingly radicalizing Kurdish enclaves. The evolution of the Iraqi Kurds’ fortunes has sensitized them all toward independence or at best autonomy. It is hard to think that these governments would do nothing to stop this process that will lead to the dismemberment of their countries if Kirkuk is annexed by the present Kurdish statelet. So it is in everyone’s interest that both Kirkuk and the oil revenue of the country would be under the control of the mutual government in Baghdad. But the Iraqi Kurds think otherwise. This means a long turmoil in the country and the region.
Knowing that further instability means fragmentation of Iraq that is tantamount to the emergence of a Shiite dominated second country in the Middle East after Iran, the Saudi government has stepped in with a novel proposal. The Saudi’s are Sunni and they do not want the Sunni world to fall prey to the threat of Shiite power, especially when Iran is seeking nuclear capability.
A Shiite newspaper published in Baghdad called Al-Bianh al-Jadidah reported on April 3 that the Saudi leadership offered President Massoud Barzani of the Kurdish Autonomous Region and Deputy Prime Minister Berham Saleh when they visited Saudi Arabia last month a $2 billion offer for giving up demands to have oil-rich Kirkuk as the capital of Kurdistan. The newspaper said that both Mr. Barzani and Mr. Saleh had declined to give in to Saudi pressure to give up the “Kurds’ historical rights to the city.”
The Saudis also asked for a 10-year freeze on the Kurdish demand to incorporate Kirkuk into Kurdistan. The newspaper said that an Iraqi government source who did not want to be named gave them this important information.
This must be the year of Saudi Arabian political initiative in the Middle East, where creative and innovative diplomatic resourcefulness is quite wanting. After a serious proposal to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, now the Saudi leadership is searching for peaceful venues to minimize the chaos created by the US intervention in Iraq that disrupted all checks and balances in the Middle East. What can one say? Maybe there are lessons for Turkey’s politicians and other strongmen to learn something from the Saudis.
