Kirkuk’s ethnic communities each have contending claims to the area’s status: the Kurds wish to attach it to the adjacent Kurdistan region; the Turkomans would like for it to become a stand-alone region under neither Baghdad’s nor Erbil’s control; and the Arabs mostly favor the status quo—a province directly under Baghdad’s rule. In pressing their claims, demographics—who has the right to live and vote in Kirkuk—have become the principal battleground. Had oil been absent from the equation, the status question would have become a good deal less incendiary; the significance of the area’s ethnic makeup and numbers would largely have faded; and there would have been no need for the deployment of rival security forces.
The US military presence has succeeded in keeping the lid on tensions that never cease to boil just beneath the surface. It is for this reason that Kirkuki politicians of all stripes have called for an extension of the US troop presence in Iraq, but so far the Maliki government has given no indication it is prepared to face the likely political fallout from supporting such a call and negotiating a new status-of-forces agreement. Lacking mutual trust, suspecting each other’s motives, and manipulated by more powerful forces outside Kirkuk, these politicians have been unable to come to a basic agreement even over how to govern the area, regardless of its status. . . . Very little is likely to happen before US troops pull out, and all sides are now starting to prepare for that eventuality.
The Kurds have been the first to move, citing security concerns. During the Eid al-Adha, the feast of sacrifice, in late 2010, they deployed Asaesh security personnel throughout Kirkuk city, angering Arabs and Turkomans. In February, they sent troops to the city’s southern gateway, violating a security arrangement with their Iraqi and US partners in the so-called combined security mechanism, a system of joint checkpoints and patrols that has served to keep the peace. . . . Following US pressure, the Kurdish forces withdrew a month later.
The Kurds’ military assertiveness has been widely interpreted as an attempt to probe their adversaries’ resolve. Perhaps they feel heartened by the result, but they would be wrong to interpret Maliki’s passiveness in February as a potential willingness to acquiesce in a Kurdish takeover of Kirkuk once US troops are no longer there to ease the Kurds back out. No Arab leader in Iraq could hope to survive politically if he is seen to surrender Kirkuk to the Kurds, and inversely Kurdish leaders would lose all their credibility if they failed to stand up to an Iraqi army bid to drive the Kurds out of Kirkuk. This means that if the current standoff persists, unilateral moves, by either side, will without doubt trigger armed conflict once the US security blanket is removed.
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