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Backgrounder: The Challenge in Iraq's Other Cities: Kirkuk

Council on Foreign Relations

Author: Lionel Beehner, Staff Writer
June 30, 2006

Introduction

Kirkuk, an ethnically mixed city of Kurds, Arabs, and Turkmen, among them Muslims and Christians, is in the throes of a struggle over its future status. Located just south of Iraqi Kurdistan, the oil-rich city was "Arabized" under Saddam Hussein, only to be reclaimed after the war in 2003 by Kurds looking to annex it to their semiautonomous province. Neighboring Turkey is watching on nervously as Iraq's Kurds assert themselves politically and angle to take control over Kirkuk, something Ankara fears may mark a first step toward an independent Kurdish state. Iraq's Sunnis and Shiite nationalists, fearing an eventual split-up of Iraq, say Kirkuk is home to Arabs as well as Kurds and thus should not be incorporated into Iraq's autonomous region of Kurdistan. They accuse Kurds of forcibly driving Sunni and Shiite Arabs out of their homes. The Iraqi constitution mandates a citywide referendum on the status of Kirkuk by December 2007, a poll predicted to favor the Kurds. Yet until its status is finalized, Kirkuk will remain what former U.S. diplomat Peter Galbraith calls in his new book, The End of Iraq, a "ticking ethnic time bomb."

Who lives in Kirkuk?

Between the 1970s and 2003, Saddam uprooted more than 100,000 Kurds in his efforts to Arabize the city. Kurds claim, stretching back to the late nineteenth century, they historically made up three-quarters of the population of Al-Tamin province around Kirkuk. Ethnic Turkmen point to a 1957 census that showed they made up a plurality of the city's population, while the surrounding province was majority Kurdish.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.