This Land is My Land
The big stakes-and bubbling tensions-over who will control Iraq's oil capital
But the normalization process, controlled by the government in Baghdad, is moving slowly, and lately, some Kurdish government officials here have protested that the committee charged with reviewing housing disputes is packed with former Baathists intentionally dragging their heels because they don't want to see the oil-rich lands fall under Kurdish control. "Maliki is definitely appointing people who are going to slow down and not accelerate the process," says a U.S. official in Kirkuk.
This in turn has raised charges that Maliki is reneging on some key promises. "I don't mean to blame [Maliki]," says Hamajan. "But he should be more loyal. We do not have to have double faces, and we hope he does not try to cheat himself and others." Hamajan and others are also upset at the central budget-allocation figures that recently came from Baghdad-"other cities are getting much more, but we have a bigger population," he says. "Why are they marginalizing Kirkuk? Maybe they do not want us to be successful." Says one U.S. military official here, "We're lacking a lot of direction from Baghdad."
To date, there have been over 40,000 housing cases filed under the Article 140 normalization act. Some 3,500 have been adjudicated. Of those, almost all are under appeal, says Navy Capt. Bob Muro, provincial reconstruction deputy team leader for Kirkuk. Only about 1,000 cases have actually been settled. "They're getting bogged down in Baghdad," he says.
This all has people wondering whether normalization needs to be completed before a population census and, following that, the vote on whether Kirkuk will become part of the Kurdish regional government. Some, however, would rather see the whole process put off. "It would be a good idea to delay the vote until 2008," says a Turkmen shop owner here. "If we try to do it right now, it will make a lot of problems." There is evidence that Turkey-which fears the possible evolution of an independent Kurdistan-has also provided Turkmen groups here with cash and weapons, according to U.S. officials. (Turkmens make up roughly 20 percent of the population of Kirkuk, according to U.S. military estimates.) Turkmen protesters demonstrating against the referendum have repeatedly marched on the government center.
For now, Arab and Turkmen officials have pulled out of the provincial council and say they will not return until they have equal representation on the council, which includes primarily Kurdish legislators-and until what they characterize as harassment ceases. Ali Mahdi Sadiq, a Turkmen deputy political chief in the provincial council, says that over 100 Turkmens were kidnapped- with $15 million in ransom paid out- last year by Kurdish militias. The Iraqi Army units here, they say, are made up primarily of Kurds, including the 3rd Iraqi Army Brigade, which is entirely Kurdish and includes many former soldiers of the Peshmerga, the well-trained Kurdish militia that helped U.S. Special Forces win Kirkuk in 2003.
While U.S. military officials are closely monitoring the area for ethnic cleansing, they add that they have seen little evidence of it. "You do hear anecdotally of a threat every now and then," says Stackpole. "But there is no consistent activity to see there's planning around it." Mixon adds that "there may be some movement among the Arabs that's going on because they see the handwriting on the wall, but I haven't seen anything to believe that there's some force moving them out of Kirkuk."
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