Pressure Building in Kirkuk: Will It Be the Next to Explode?

Last month, a United Nations envoy likened the struggle between Kurds and Arabs for control of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq to a "ticking time bomb.''

Staffan de Mistura, who is helping broker a settlement between Baghdad and Erbil on future arrangements for Kirkuk, said in an interview for the Bloomberg news agency that he had just a few months left to solve what he termed "the mother of all crises'' in Iraq.

"If that takes place, we will have contributed substantially to avoiding a new conflict at the worst possible time,'' said the Swedish diplomat in the report.

The autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, KRG, would like to see the return of Kurds who were expelled from Kirkuk as part of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's "Arabization" policy, under which the Kurds -- whom he viewed as politically suspect -- were driven out of oil-rich areas of the north and replaced by a smaller number of Arabs.

The Kurds say they have a historical claim to Kirkuk city, and that they lost a great deal of property and land there under Saddam.

The KRG is calling for a referendum to decide the future of the city and its surrounding oil fields, which lie outside Kurdistan's three provinces of Erbil, Sulaimaniyah and Dohuk.

Article 140 of the 2005 Iraqi constitution contains a provision for just such a referendum to decide the fate of the city and its environs.

Under this article, the authorities must first achieve "normalization" -- taken to mean the reversal or mitigation of "Arabization" policy -- and hold a census in Kirkuk. The government must complete a series of steps set out in the Transitional Administrative Law - an interim constitution dating from 2004. These include restitution for people who were forced out; resettling or otherwise accommodating people who were moved into the area by Saddam; and remedying unjust boundary changes carried out by his regime.

While no up-to-date statistics exist on the ethnic and religious make-up of the province of Kirkuk (also known as Tamim), Kurds are thought to be the largest ethnic group, and they hold the most seats on the provincial council.

But the idea that the city could be incorporated into an expanded Kurdish region is bitterly opposed by Iraqi Arabs, who do not want to cede control of the city and its oil to an autonomous Kurdish entity. The area is thought to hold some 12 per cent of Iraq's confirmed oil reserves.

Kirkuk's significant Turkoman population, which has its own historical claims on the city, is also against absorption into the KRG and would rather see the city granted some kind of special status.

A decision was made in December to delay the referendum until June this year, partly because of growing violence in Kirkuk.

As the Kirkuk crisis simmers, relations between the KRG capital Erbil and Baghdad have been further strained by disagreements over the funding of the Peshmerga or Kurdish military, and over oil deals signed by the Kurds without reference to Baghdad. The Iraqi oil ministry claims these arrangements are unconstitutional and is reportedly threatening to blacklist the foreign companies involved, preventing them pursuing oil contracts with Baghdad.

The UN has now been drafted in to help settle disagreements over Kirkuk and other matters ahead of a plebiscite designed to "determine the will of... citizens" with regard to the city and other disputed territories.

Meanwhile, Iraq's neighbors look on with keen interest. If the KRG were to absorb Kirkuk, the consolidation this would mean for the entity could have implications for Kurdish minorities in Turkey, Syria and Iran.

Ankara is fiercely protective of Kirkuk's Turkomans, and also fearful that Kurdistan could use the added oil wealth to make a future bid for independence - something it would oppose given the implications for its home-grown Kurdish separatist movement.