Kurds' struggle intensifies ethnic conflict in Kirkuk

As probably the best-organized political groups in Iraq outside Hussein's Baath Party, they quickly moved beyond those borders. In the turmoil of postinvasion Baghdad, Kurdish fighters with lists of Baath Party buildings and houses controlled by Hussein's security apparatus fanned out into the city, seizing some of the choicest buildings for new party offices.

They did likewise in Kirkuk, seizing government museums, old British forts, and the former Baath Party headquarters. The city's new police is dominated by ethnic Kurds, the new mayor is a Kurd, and peshmerga move freely in the city.

After last week's violence, news wires reported that US forces raided both the PUK and KDP offices and seized weapons. But officials at both offices deny they were raided, and dozens of men at both locations still bristle with weapons.

"Our American friends visited us, but they didn't take anything,'' says Aziz Sharif, a scarred old peshmerga with spare clips for his AK-47 strapped to his chest. "Our relations with the Americans are still very good."

Nevertheless, coalition officials say the US has been consistently distancing itself from the Kurds, and point out that the local council created for the city has substantial representation from all sides.

The Kurdish parties are now lobbying for Kirkuk to be incorporated into what they hope will remain a mostly autonomous region once a new constitution is written. "Kirkuk has been and always will be part of Kurdistan,'' says Irzgar Ali, a former guerrilla who is now a PUK leader in the city. "Some of our Iraqi brothers don't want to read the real history."

"Real" history, as in conflict zones throughout the world, varies according to the source. Arabs estimate they make up 50 percent of the city's population, Kurds think they're probably 60 percent or more, and some Turkmen claim their numbers amount to about 70 percent. The last reliable census was taken in the 1950s.

All sides refer to the distant past to bolster their claims on Kirkuk, and deny the other sides' grievances. Many Turkmen say, for instance, that the brutal and well-documented campaign Hussein waged against the Kurds in the late 1980s, which included the deadly gassing of 5,000 people in Halabja, is grossly exaggerated.

Perhaps the most vulnerable community in town are the ethnic Arabs. Amar Abdullah, a young grocer in the Arab neighborhood of Khadamiha, says his family came from Nasariyah, in the south, in 1987. "All these other groups in the city, they're just like gangs now, swaggering around with their guns,'' he says. "But they won't be able to kick us out. We'll defend our homes."

Mr. Ali of the PUK wants the Arabs who were brought to the city by Hussein to return to the south. His party estimates about 160,000 of them remain. Asked if he would accept a decision by the Governing Council or a future elected Iraqi government to leave the city outside the Kurdish sphere of influence, he shakes his head. "It's not up to them to decide. The only ones who can decide the fate of Kirkuk are the members of the Kurdish parliament."

That's not how Lutfia Turmali, an official with the Iraqi Turkmen Party, sees it. "Kirkuk has to remain part of Iraq. The Kurds have no right to dictate this. This city has always been a Turkmen city."

Tied up in the animosity is a centuries-old cultural battle. When the Turks ran the Ottoman Empire out of what is now Turkey, the Kurds were the oppressed minority. Turkey remains deeply suspicious of Iraq's Kurds and the impact their parties could have on Turkey's own restive Kurdish minority.

Turkmen view the empire as their salad days; a poster displaying portraits of Ottoman caliphs going back 1,000 years is prominently posted in Kirkuk's main Turkmen cultural center.

Though Kurdish leaders say they just want their rights protected, it's easy to see why men like Makafili are suspicious. Kurdish national flags outnumber Iraqi ones in Kirkuk these days, and many Kurds speak longingly of independence.

Haziz Kirkuki, a former peshmerga, is now a journalist with a PUK newspaper. "Being a peshmerga was an honor. It would have been easy to die for my country,'' he says. What country is that? "Kurdistan."

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