Summer Kirkuk-Off

"Dr. iRack took note of a good piece in the Christian Science Monitor on Kirkuk. The area has long been seen as a potential flashpoint for ethnic strife between Arabs, Kurds, and Turkmen--all of whom lay claim to the oil rich province. This opening to the article is telling:

Kirkuk provincial council head Rizgar Ali says one proof of the province's "Kurdishness" is in the maps.
Several maps dating from the Ottoman and British colonial eras hang on his office walls showing the city of Kirkuk at the heart of a Kurdistan that spans parts of Iran, Syria, and Turkey. A 1957 map shows Kirkuk Province's original border prior to it being renamed Tamim and then altered by Saddam Hussein's Arabization policy.

But Ali Mahdi, a Turkmen leader here, has his own maps. His show the city of Kirkuk at the heart of Turkmeneli: the supposed home of Iraq's ethnic Turkmen population.

The vastly different ways that Iraq's ethnic groups view this province and its capital city, Kirkuk, illustrate the deep-rooted, complex, and potentially explosive issue of its status and the ongoing debate over Iraq's internal borders. In Kirkuk, the issue was supposed to have been decided by a constitutionally mandated referendum to take place by the end of 2007. The vote is delayed until June.

In the meantime the United States is using its leverage with all sides – Kurds, Turkmen, and Arabs – to keep the situation from blowing up into an all-out war for control here as the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) works on a plan to broker a peaceful solution to the status of the province that is the home of northern Iraq's oil industry.

The UN has been given the task of finding a "technical" solution to the problem, seeking to find a rational bargain that will meet the minimal demands of all sides. The UN's strategy is to decompose the conflict into smaller issue areas, try to address more minor conflicts over water and commerce first and then build up to the big issues of establishing the boundaries and ownership of Kirkuk (i.e., is it part of Kurdish Regional Government [KRG] or governed from Baghdad). As one U.S. diplomat put it in the CSM piece: "If you start with some of the areas that are less controversial ... you might have some processes in place that have buy-in from all the sides involved, so you have an easier way of getting at ultimate resolution on the boundaries.""
Abu Muqaqama

This week we will be exploring a few new blogs that I recently received from LT Nixon. I have been reading and warming up to a few of them and I think I am ready to start posting a few in regular formation. So keep a look out for new material.

And give a shout out to Nixon for being kind with his link hoards.