What we still refuse to face, one

There is no resolution of the conflict between the Kurds and the Arabs, both Sunni and Shiite. There have been several signs of that conflict in just the last month. For one, the Iraqi Press Monitor for June 6 cites the daily paper of the Al-Mashriq Institution for Media and Cultural Investments as reporting that

Iraqi Kurdistan President Masood Barzani said the Kurds will not raise the currently used Iraqi flag because it is the flag of Ba'ath Party, which attacked Kurds.

Instead, the flag used during the reign of Abdul Karim Kasim is flown beside the Kurdish flag at the Kurdish parliament. Abdul Karim Kasim lead the coup that on July 14, 1958, overthrew the monarchy in Iraq and established the republic. He served as president until his own assassination on February 8, 1963.

(To get to an IPM story, follow the link to the index page then click on the date of the report.)

A few days later, on June 10, IPM referred to an opinion piece in Aso, issued three times a week by Xandan for Broadcasting and Publishing. It referred to the death of four Kurdish peshmerga (members of the Kurdish militia) in Mosul at the hands of Iraqi police. While noting that the US identified it as a friendly fire incident, the writer said that "Kurds call it a treasonous stabbing."

The corpses of the martyrs were brought back to Kurdistan so the grievance of the event can be put with other grievances that the Kurdish people have towards the Ibrahim al-Ja'afari government,

among which, he says, is seeing

the duty of government as Arabization, not serving people. They do it deliberately to make the Kurds ... forget about implementing Article 58 of the Transitional Administrative Law, which calls for normalizing the situation of Kirkuk.

There also are those who would take advantage of the tensions, particularly involving Kirkuk, a city that is a center both of Kurdish nationalism and the Iraqi oil industry. From the Iraqi Crisis Report for June 22:

The interior ministry has sought to distance itself from an apparent order to fire 2,500 Kurdish police officers working in Kirkuk, after protests from city law enforcement officials. ...

Interior ministry spokesman Colonel Adnan al-Asadi said that officials there were unaware of the directive, while Lateef Haji Faraj, representative of President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, in the ministry, said it had been drawn up long ago but was no longer valid.

Nonetheless, the alleged order heightened the already tense situation in the multi-ethnic Kirkuk, which is claimed by Arabs, Kurds and Turkoman. Since the Kurds won a majority of seats on the provincial council, Arabs and Turkoman representatives have threatened to resign.

Senior police officials in the area suggested that the fake order had been sent out by people wanting to cause trouble in the city, but suggested no names. However, in a clear sign of the suspicion that exists between Kurds and the central government in Baghdad, local police officials said that had the order been genuine, they would have refused to obey it.

Even as we ignore the issue of the future of Kurdistan, it's something of which Iraqis remain aware. Enough so that in the wake of a meeting in Baghdad among Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Iraqi Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani, and head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) Abdul Aziz al-Hakim (IPM, June 22, citing Al-Taakhi, the daily of the Kurdistan Democratic Party), SCIRI felt it necessary to announce through its daily newspaper Al-Adala that

Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi has denied that there are disagreements between the United Iraqi Alliance and the Kurdish Alliance regarding the shape of federalism and specifying it in the constitution. He said there is a common agreement about federalism.

That from IPM for June 23.

But that "agreement" may be simply papering over a sharp divide yet to be dealt with, but which must be faced as part of establishing a new Iraqi constitution - and that's only one of the divisive issues to be resolved, the difficulties of which are something else we still refuse to face.

Lawmakers are up against an August 15 deadline to finish writing the constitution[, says the Iraqi Crisis Report for June 28.] a daunting task considering the disputes that have taken place so far even over who should sit on then 55-member drafting committee. ...

Disputes over the number of slots given to Sunni Arabs on the committee delayed the start of the drafting process. After weeks of negotiations, it was finally agreed they should have 25 places, of which 15 would be actual members of the constitution committee and 10 would be advisers.

But the National Assembly rejected the 25 names nominated by Sunni groups, causing further acrimony.

On June 26, agreement was reached about the Sunni names and they are expected to be ratified this week by the National Assembly. With the 15 extra Sunnis, the constitutional committee will expanded to a membership of 70.

But that left the expanded committee less than two months to actually come up with a draft. And the most contentious issues - the role of Islam, Kirkuk, and federalism - all set the Kurds against both Shiites and Sunnis.

On the first point, it's sufficient to note that the Kurds are considerably more secular than the others and while they seem content with the wording of the interim constitution, the so-called Transitional Administrative Law, or TAL, which calls Islam "a source of legislation," others want it named as the only or at least as the principal source. On the second, while some want to put it off to be dealt with by later legislation in the National Assembly,

Massoud Barzani, the new president of Iraqi Kurdistan, is pressing for the Kirkuk's status to be resolved and made explicit in the constitution.

And it's status as a Kurdish city is not something the Kurds are likely to surrender willingly.

Finally, what about federalism, that principle on which everyone supposedly agrees? Everyone does agree - until you start asking them what the word "federalism" actually means.

Whether Iraq will be structured as a federal state is also up for debate. Committee member Abbas al-Bayati, of the Iraq Islamic Turkoman Party, insists that there is no "disagreement among the parties over the principle of federalism" and that some form of it would certainly be established.

But he added, "the disagreement is about defining the powers of the regions and the central government, and about the number of regions that will be established in an Iraqi federal state".

The Kurds will push for the greatest amount of autonomy they can get and certainly will want to lock in no less than they have. But what will that mean for other areas of the country wanting to maintain control over Iraq's northern oil fields? What will it mean for Kirkuk, so often described with the adjective "oil-rich" that there must be those who think it's part of the city's name?

I've been saying for some time - just about long as this blog has been around, in fact - that the conflict between Kurds on the one hand and Shiites and Sunnis on the other is the biggest unconsidered issue, the biggest unregarded powderkeg, in Iraq. Maybe it can be resolved. Maybe the negotiators can pull it off. So far, all anyone has done it put it off. But the time and the options for doing that are running out.