Reminders

Updated Kirkuk is back in the news. The Washington Post for Sunday reports that

[t]he Iraqi government will soon begin relocating Arabs who were moved to Kirkuk under an edict by Saddam Hussein to force Kurds out of the disputed northern city, officials said Saturday.

The controversial step for the oil-rich city could help determine whether it becomes part of an autonomous Kurdish region, but critics warned that it would stoke sectarian tensions.

The relocation is supposed to be voluntary and those who choose to leave the city will be paid about $15,000 and be given a plot of land in their home town.

Under Saddam Hussein, thousands of Kurds were forced to leave the city, to be replaced by thousands of mostly Shiite Arabs. It was an attempt by Saddam to solidify his control of this center of Iraq's oil industry against the always-restive Kurds. After the war, many of those Kurds wanted to return to their homes but found them occupied by Arabs who were often unwilling to leave the houses they had occupied in some cases for decades.

The issue of the status of Kirkuk kept getting punted further down the field; even the Iraqi constitution didn't resolve it. So it remained, as I have mentioned several times (such as here and here), a potential flashpoint. But people are running out of field: The constitution requires a referendum to be held on the future of Kirkuk - specifically, whether or not it will be part of an autonomous Kurdish region in the north of Iraq - by the end of this year. First, however, the government needs to have moved on relocating Arab settlers and repatriating former Kurdish residents. This plan is intended to be a start on that.

However, if Iraq has taught nothing else, it has taught that intentions and outcomes are not necessarily related. There is considerable fear among Arabs in Kirkuk that the program will be voluntary in name only. That fear is not unfounded: The fierce determination of the Kurds to undo the effects of Saddam is considerable, driven not only by the fact that they regard Kirkuk as a Kurdish city, but because Kirkuk would be vital either for an economically-viable Kurdistan or an economically-influential Kurdish region in Iraq, depending on their views on secession. So whether Arabs who refuse to move from homes previously occupied by Kurds will be allowed to remain in peace is, frankly, still an open question.

Toss in one more fact: There is a third ethnic grouping in Kirkuk, that of Turkmen. And just like the Kurds, Turkmen think of Kirkuk as "their" city.

Hossam Abdullah, leader of the Patriotic Turkmen Movement in Kirkuk, stated his opposition ... bluntly: "All the Turkmens will become suicide bombers to defend the Turkmen identity of Kirkuk," he said.

All in all, you have a volatile mix which has remained as stable as it has as long as it has only because of a combination of forbearance and luck. The conflicts are many, the passions high, and the commitments are - or at least the rhetoric is, which might be even more dangerous - hot. In July 2005. writing about Kurdish hopes and Kirkuk, I said this:

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.

It's over a year and a-half later and while there has not been the explosion I feared, neither has there been resolution. What I said then remains true today, including the possibility that an agreed settlement can be pulled off. True, that is, with one exception: It can be put off no longer.

Updated with the news that the relocation program might not happen at all. Shortly after posting this, I read Juan Cole's item that some Iraqi parliamentarians are

rebelling against the decision of the cabinet on Thursday to implement article 140 of the Iraqi constitution,

the one which provides for the referendum on Kirkuk's future. "The Arab MPs." Cole says, citing the Arab-language newspaper Sawt al-Iraq, "are rethinking their approval of article 140."