Kurd Demos Spark Ethnic Conflict Concerns
The call for a referendum on the right to self-determination by thousands of Kurdish demonstrators last week has sparked concern over their region’s fate.
Some protestors at the rallies, which took place both in Kurdistan and in Europe, even called for a completely independent Kurdistan – with oil-rich Kirkuk as its capital.
The demonstrations renewed concerns over potential ethnic conflict in Kirkuk, with Mohammed Khalil, an Arab representative on the Kirkuk city council, warning the situation would be “impossible to control” if unrest was triggered.
The Kurdish Referendum movement was established last year by prominent Kurds, who launched a widespread campaign to collect signatures demanding a vote on self-determination.
According to organisers, as many as two million signatures were collected, and letters outlining the goals of the campaign have been sent to the Kurdish parliament, Iraqi president Sheikh Gazi al-Yawer, British premier Tony Blair, US president George Bush, and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, among others.
But little has come of it all, and Almaz Fadhil, a lawyer and organiser of last week’s demonstration in Kirkuk, expressed her resentment over the policies of the interim Iraqi government.
“We are annoyed and upset,” she said. “They [the government] have not achieved anything for the Kurds up to now.”
Fadhil said she has demanded the return of tens of thousands of Kurds who were deported from Kirkuk by the former regime of Saddam Hussein.
But the Turkomen Shiite Council, TSC, the country’s largest group of Muslim Turkomen, claims the Kurds already are “enjoying facilities and privileges from the occupiers and the government”.
In Kirkuk, with its mixed ethnicity of Arabs, Kurds, Turkomen and Assyrians, the issue of the deported Kurds remains troublesome and complicated.