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Vol. 73/No. 44      November 16, 2009

 
Iraqi Kurds seek new
election laws for Kirkuk
 
BY CINDY JAQUITH  
Sharp disagreements over how to conduct the vote in Kirkuk, Iraq, has placed a question mark over national elections currently scheduled for Jan. 16, 2010, and over how soon U.S. troops will be withdrawing from the country.

Provincial elections held in the rest of Iraq earlier this year never took place in Kirkuk because of differences between Kurds, who make up the majority of the population, and Arabs and Turkmen, who are minorities in the province, over who should control the regional government.

The Kurds are a historically oppressed nationality in Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria. Originally Kurds were the majority in Kirkuk, which was viewed as the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. In the 1970s and ’80s under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, more than 100,000 Kurds were driven out of Kirkuk and replaced by Arabs. Hussein’s “Arabization” plan also targeted Turkmen and Christians in the province.

Following the U.S.-led 1991 invasion of Iraq, Washington and London established a “no fly” zone over Iraqi Kurdistan that allowed Kurds living there to achieve a measure of autonomy.

After Saddam was overthrown by the U.S. invasion of 2003, Kurds seized the opportunity to establish a Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in northeastern Iraq. It did not include Kirkuk and some other Kurdish regions pending further discussion. The issue has never been resolved.

Many Kurds have returned to Kirkuk Province, becoming the majority of the population again, and have been fighting for control of its resources. Arab capitalist parties in Iraq are opposed to ceding Kirkuk, which has 13 percent of the country’s oil reserves, to the KRG.

The January elections are now thrown in doubt because the various parties cannot agree on who can vote in Kirkuk. Kurdish legislators boycotted the October 29 session of Iraq’s parliament, forcing those legislators who did show up to postpone a vote on a controversial election law for lack of a quorum.

The United Nations has recommended that voter registration records from 2009 be used in the voting in Kirkuk. The KRG backs this proposal as the majority registered now are Kurds. Arab parties have demanded that the 2004 voters’ list be used, which would give them greater weight in the outcome of the election. There is also a proposal to hold separate elections by nationality.

If the dispute is not settled in time to hold the elections in January then the timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops will also be affected. The current timetable calls for removing all U.S. combat troops from Iraq by August 2010. Fifty thousand troops would remain indefinitely.

The Rand Corporation, an imperialist think tank, submitted a July 2009 report commissioned by Robert Gates, U.S. defense secretary. According to a Rand news release, the report concluded that “the greatest threat to Iraqi stability and security comes from a possible Kurd-Arab armed conflict over contested areas, which in turn could result in armed intervention by Turkey.” Rand recommended that “U.S. forces depart at a slower rate from the part of Iraq where the Arab and Kurdish populations meet and where the danger of clashes escalating to open conflict are most serious.”
 
 
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Speeds weapons for military offensive
U.S. military out of Pakistan!
Tokyo balks at keeping U.S. base on Okinawa  
 
 
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