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Kurds bide their time

The relationship between the Kurds and the Arabs is uneasy.

VISITORS MAKING the trip to northern Iraq are advised in Baghdad to follow what is called the Kirkuk route. The highway, it is said, is narrow but safer. Only in Baquba do the Sunnis regularly take on the U.S. The other route towards Mosul passes through the former Baathist strongholds of Tikrit and Samarra.

It takes about three hours of non-stop driving on a rather crowded highway to near the outskirts of Kirkuk, which holds one of the largest deposits of oil in Iraq. From afar, the sight of a shooting orange flame, natural gas venting out from the desert sands, is arresting and a faint smell of sulphur permeates the air. A hoarding soon after the arch at the entry into the city gives directions towards Baba Gurgur, the site where oil was first tapped in Iraq on October 15,1927. It is said the drill bit had been driven in only a few hundred feet when the earth shook and a powerful jet of oil virtually exploded out of the ground. So powerful was the gusher that local tribesmen had to be mobilised to build embankments to save the town from oil flooding.

From Kirkuk, the road heads northwards towards Erbil, a stronghold of ethnic Kurds and the capital of Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). After the first Gulf war in 1991, the Iraqi Government was denied any role in governing the Kurdish areas. By 1998, the U.S. ensured that arch-foes Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, leader of the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), had made up. Iraqi Kurdistan was split up into two nearly equal administrative halves and the PUK decided to govern from its headquarters in Sulaymania, not far from the border with Iran. In terms of revenues, the Erbil enclave stood at an advantage mainly on account of transit taxes collected from truckers who ferried oil from the northern Iraqi oilfields into Turkey through this area.

Soon after Kirkuk, the frequency of checkpoints increases. The people manning them also look different; they are the Peshmerga or the Kurdish irregular troops. Dressed in baggy olive green trousers and shirts and with cummerbunds around their waist, they stop all vehicles heading towards the mountains in the north. Arab car drivers are subjected to fairly extensive questioning, but if they are ferrying an Indian the checking is more relaxed. Nevertheless, it is clear that the relationship between the Kurds and the Arabs is uneasy. This is partly on account of the Baathist policy of pushing Arab settlements in Kurdish dominated areas. After the war, tensions between the two communities have not eased as the Kurds have now begun to reclaim their dwellings and land. These tensions can acquire dangerous proportions as both communities are flush with weapons and have a tradition of using them to settle scores.

Erbil has the trappings of a modern city. Unlike the rest of Iraq, mobile telephones in this area work. Young people throng the several Internet cafes that the city has to offer, while in the evenings it is common to see parents taking their children out into public parks. But the atmosphere of normality might be changing as a suicide bombing last month that targeted a U.S. facility in Erbil has generated a deep sense of insecurity. The bombing, in fact, has further soured the Arab-Kurd relationship as many Kurds apprehend that extremist Arabs with possible links to the Al-Qaeda might have masterminded the blast. Kurdish officials point out that extremist Islamic groups have already registered their presence in the area and organisations, such as the Kurdistan Islamic Group (KIG) are active in the Khurmal area, close to the border with Iran. Another organisation, Islamic Movement of Kurdistan (IMK), they say, is also gaining ground.

With the security situation worsening, the Iraqi Assyrian Christian population that lives in this area is in an introspective mood. Nearly 30,000 from the community reside in Erbil's Ankawa district, making it the second largest Assyrian Christians concentration in Iraq after Mosul. The Assyrians have done well as they are well educated and have supplied the area its doctors, engineers and technocrats. The community's relative affluence has also given it options and many from Ankawa have migrated to Europe, especially Sweden. Many more are considering doing so in case post-war security conditions inside northern Iraq worsen.

Atul Aneja

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• A land under siege
• Kurds bide their time
• The Shia-Sunni equation
• Multi-national force to move to interior Afghanistan

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