Kirkuk

The Pre-War Situation

The recent delay of the passage of the 2010 election law showed that Kirkuk remains one of the major unresolved issues in Iraq. There is now talk that the United States will try to deal with the city before it withdraws its troops by the end of 2011.

On the night of November 8, 2009, Iraq’s parliament finally passed the 2010 election law. 195 of the 175 members were present, with 141 voting for the bill. As mentioned before, the law was originally supposed to be passed on October 16, but disputes over how to conduct voting in Tamim, home to the disputed city of Kirkuk, and whether to use an open or closed list voting system, delayed the proceedings.

Kirkuk is again the leading issue in Iraq’s parliament as it discusses a new election law. Parliamentarians have agreed upon all the major points in the bill except for voting in Tamim province, the home of Kirkuk. The Kurdish Alliance is pushing for Tamim to vote as a regular governorate.

In mid-August 2009, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq General Ray Odierno proposed joint U.S.-Iraqi-Kurdish patrols in Ninewa. The Americans made the proposal after a series of mass casualty bombings rocked the province. The offer was later extended to all of the disputed territories in northern Iraq.

August 2009 saw a sharp increase in mass casualty bombings across Iraq. After Baghdad, Ninewa was the hardest hit. On August 9 a suicide bomber struck a mosque in Mosul killing 23 and wounding 130. The next day two truck bombs hit the village of Khazna in eastern Ninewa killing 20 and wounding 110.

There was some controversy as to whether Tamim province, home to the disputed city of Kirkuk, would be allowed to participate in the 2010 parliamentary elections. Tamim has still not voted for a new provincial government even though the balloting was held in January 2009 in fourteen of Iraq’s eighteen governorates. One of the big hold ups was over the voter rolls.

In early July 2009 the International Crisis Group issued its latest report on Iraq covering the simmering Baghdad-Kurdish dispute entitled “Iraq and the Kurds: Trouble Along the Trigger Line.” This has been one of the biggest problems in Iraq over the last two years, and has replaced the sectarian war as the major dividing line in the country. The U.S. is especially worried that it might blow up and lead to new violence as the administration is trying to draw down forces.

Officials of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) consistently claim that the Constitution and its Article 140 need to be followed when it comes to resolving Kirkuk and other disputed territories. Most recently KRG President Massoud Barzani said at the end of July 2009 that he rejected the United Nation’s recommendations for the disputed areas and any other plan that does away with Article 140.

On October 24, 2009 Iraq is set to conduct a national census. This will be the first one held since the overthrow of Saddam. Its results will have the largest effect upon the disputed area of Kirkuk in Tamim province. Article 140 of the constitution called for a census in Tamim before a referendum on the future of Kirkuk could be conducted no later than December 31, 2007. Neither happened.