Kirkuk dispute threatens to plunge Iraq into Kurdish-Arab war (Guardian)

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Kirkuk dispute threatens to plunge Iraq into Kurdish-Arab war
Study warns dispute over territories and revenues
in oil region could lead to violence greater than
Sunni-Shia conflict

Julian Borger, diplomatic editor
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday October 28 2008 00.05 GMT

Iraq's relative calm is threatened by a festering
Kurdish-Arab conflict over the oil-rich city of
Kirkuk and other disputed territories, that could
explode into the worst sectarian war the country
has suffered since the 2003 invasion, a new report
says today.

The report by the International Crisis Group (ICG)
says the territorial dispute is blocking political
progress in Iraq, contributing to the delay in
passing a law on sharing oil revenue, and
threatening to put off critical provincial elections.

Pointing out that the Arab-Kurdish dispute dates
back to Britain's creation of modern Iraq after the
first world war, the ICG report warns: "In its
ethnically-driven intensity, ability to drag in
regional players such as Turkey and Iran, and
potentially devastating impact on efforts to
rebuild a fragmented state, it matches and arguably
exceeds the Sunni-Shia divide that spawned the
2005 - 2007 sectarian war."

At the heart of the dispute is the city of Kirkuk,
home to 900,000 Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen, which
sits on one of the country's biggest oil fields. It lies
outside the northern zone run by the Kurdistan
Regional Government, but is in practice run by
Kurdish peshmerga fighters and a Kurdish intelligence
service, the Asaish, which works closely with US
intelligence.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/27/iraq

[azurnoir]

1. The Kurds

want an independent Kurdistan, nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is the pressure IMO put on them by the US to do other wise, the area of Iraq inhabited by the Kurds also has relatively plentiful water and arable land, they really do not need the rest of Iraq to have a stable economy.