Northern City Could Be Key to U.S. Invasion of Iraq

CHAMSHAMAL, Iraq -- Just a 30-minute drive from this isolated checkpoint, beyond Iraqi troops and artillery deployed on a rocky ridge, lies a city that could make or break a U.S. intervention in Iraq.

Kirkuk may even be one of the first stops for American troops.

The northern Iraqi city’s importance was first hinted at in the Old Testament. King Nebuchadnezzar cast the Jews of Babylon into a “burning fiery furnace” -- a site that some Middle East scholars believe was the endless flame from Kirkuk’s natural gas, a clue to oil deposits discovered about 2,500 years later that give modern Iraq its economic and strategic importance.

But protecting Iraq’s oil wells to ensure that President Saddam Hussein’s forces don’t destroy them, as they did Kuwait’s rigs before withdrawing from that country in 1991, is only one reason that U.S. troops may deploy in this city. More important, say U.S. officials and Iraqi dissidents, is its ethnic makeup.

Kirkuk is the Jerusalem of Iraq, a city of about 900,000 people with conflicting claims on the land. Rivalries are so deep that any scramble for the city could become a war within a war -- with Iraqis fighting among themselves to claim it, potentially dragging in neighboring countries.

“Taking Baghdad will determine the outcome of the war. Sorting out Kirkuk will determine what happens afterward,” predicted a senior U.S. official.

In a twist on the conflict over Jerusalem, Arabs now dominate Kirkuk, largely because of a deliberate and decades-long campaign by the Iraqi leader to change the makeup of its population.

Between 120,000 and 200,000 Kurds, as well as Turkomans and Assyrians, have been expelled from Kirkuk since 1991, according to U.N. officials and a recent Human Rights Watch report. Tens of thousands were forced out in earlier decades.

Most were dumped at this lonely checkpoint, where Kurdish guards man a small cement shelter, or two other crossing points into the northern Iraqi enclave known as Kurdistan. And most are still waiting near here to reclaim their seized land, homes and possessions turned over to Arabs during Hussein’s rule and to bring Kirkuk back under Kurdish control.

“Kirkuk is the embodiment of the Kurds’ suffering in Iraq. It’s the place of the most brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing, which continues to this day,” said Barham Salih of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, which controls this checkpoint and half the Kurdish enclave that has gained self-rule since 1991 under protection from U.S. and British warplanes.

“For Iraq to be peaceful and rid of its terrible past, any new government has to redress the injuries of the people of Kirkuk,” said Salih, prime minister in the eastern sector of Kurdistan.

A recent study by the Brookings Institution warned that, if Hussein is toppled, the anger and plight of hundreds of thousands of displaced people could ignite “political struggles that are now dormant, suppressed by the larger struggle against the regime in Baghdad.”

But undoing the past presents its own problems, which is why American troops are likely to try to take and hold Kirkuk as one of the early acts of any military operation, U.S. officials say. The goal will be to prevent any race for the land by Kurds and other displaced minorities -- and the outbreak of an internal war that could divert U.S. attention and unravel the postwar transition.

In the confusion of conflict, that may be a tough assignment, U.S. analysts and Kurdish officials concede.

Ibrahim Aziz Biez, 29, is a Kurd born in Kirkuk, where his family ran a bakery. He was forced into exile in Kurdistan in 1992 and soon after joined the peshmerga, the guerrillas whose name means “those who face death.”

“Now I have two big goals in my life -- to get rid of Saddam Hussein and to go home to Kirkuk,” he said. “Kurdistan without Kirkuk is like a human being without a heart.”

Biez is not unusual. A U.N. survey found that about 45% of the Iraqis formally deported or unofficially squeezed from Kirkuk expect to return if Hussein is ousted.

With the peshmerga, the Kurds have a force to make this more than just a civilian rush to retrieve land. Indeed, most of the roughly 50,000 fighters aligned with one of the two dominant Kurdish groups in northern Iraq have ties to Kirkuk. The majority are from families forcibly deported from the area, according to a Kurdish official.

“Saddam Hussein says Kirkuk is the center of the north -- for intelligence, the military, to administer the region, and even for his Baath Party’s northern headquarters. If it’s the capital of the north, it should be after he goes too,” said Noshirwan Mustafa, a Kurdish author and historian. “So we demand that the Kurdistan regional government annex it. We will never give up Kirkuk.”

The city’s status has been a top issue since the Kurdish parliament resumed in October after a six-year hiatus due to internal tensions. One proposal calls for Kirkuk to be named the capital of Kurdistan -- a step that could provoke other ethnic groups.

It could also anger Turkey, which traditionally sees Kirkuk as a stronghold of Iraq’s ethnic Turkomans, a smaller minority. Turkey also fears the effect that a stronger Kurdish region would have on its own restive Kurds, who are the world’s largest ethnic group without a state. Even Kurds recognize that any attempt by their fighters to capture the city could provoke Turkish military intervention.

Any move by Turkey might in turn draw in neighboring Iran. The Arab world also could become concerned if Kurds -- who are ethnically Indo-Europeans -- should try to take back the homes, businesses and land given to Arabs.

In an attempt to calm passions, Kurdish leaders lately have begun taking a pragmatic line.

The PUK and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, or KDP -- the two dominant northern parties -- have pledged that Kirkuk’s prized oil fields should continue to be administered by the central government in Baghdad. The area, one of two leading Iraqi oil sites, produces up to 1 million barrels a day and has more than 10 billion barrels of proven reserves, analysts say.

Kurds began receiving a significant share of Iraq’s wealth only in 1996, when the U.N. “oil-for-food” program began channeling oil revenues through the U.N. for distribution throughout the country.

Leaders are also showing flexibility on Kirkuk as the regional capital. In an interview, KDP leader Massoud Barzani said the issue is negotiable. PUK leader Jalal Talabani said in a separate interview that Kirkuk should be a “city of brotherhood” for all ethnic groups.

The most urgent issue for U.S. troops may be preventing a mass influx of Kurds into Kirkuk during the chaotic early stages of any U.S.-led military operation.

“If U.S. troops come to Kirkuk, I welcome it,” said Mustafa, the historian. “It solves the problem of Turkey and prevents the danger of 23 Arab countries and Iran getting drawn into an internal problem -- at least for now.”