Trouble in Kirkuk

Meanwhile, in non-campaign news, Spencer Ackerman notes that Iraqi Kurds are now pretty clearly threatening violence unless a referendum on the status of Kirkuk is held by May:

Either the Kurds will control Kirkuk through a referendum they've spent five years ensuring they'll win, or they will declare war, and fight until they get the city back. The Kurdish-Arab war won't just be for Kirkuk, but for other cities, like violence-heavy Mosul, as well. Lucky for us we've already won the war.

The war has quieted down as an issue here at home, in part because Iraq's quieted down and in part because the primaries have been so loud. But I think we can expect to see it back in the headlines soon enough. The surge has left a ton of festering issues unsettled and they're sure to start bubbling over soon enough.

Comments

Yeah, but what the hell are we going to do if Kurds start mixing it up in Iraq? It's hard enough sorting out the conflict between the proliferation of Shi'a and Sunni factions. We actually like the Kurds. Which doesn't mean backing them in an armed power struggle over the oil-bearing regions of Iraq is the right thing to do.

Posted by gerontion | January 4, 2008 10:26 AM

I can't believe that our phony-baloney country is falling part like this.

Posted by norbizness | January 4, 2008 11:14 AM

Man, I smell SURGE 2.5: The Kirkukening already.

Posted by El Cid | January 4, 2008 11:21 AM

It would be nice to think Iraq would return to the headlines. This unfortunately assumes at least one of the following must exist; 1. public attention span, 2. competent journalism or 3. candidates that will risk their candidacy to point out that 1 and 2 do not exist in this country. Don't count on the press corp is the lesson of the 00's.

Festering Iraq is a reasonable prediction. The next battle is whether it got worse (again) before or after the next President assumed office.

Guess how and where those lines will be drawn. Yet a Democratic president who remains silent today (regardless of the specific Kurdish example) will strangely share blame for failing to be adequately forceful about how (not) rosy the present is, and why '100 years McCain' should either be institutionalized or appointed the American Cesar.

Posted by dbs | January 4, 2008 11:23 AM

So how will the coming Turkish invasion of
Kurdistan affect its chances of getting into
the EU?

Posted by DJ | January 4, 2008 11:27 AM

Everything in Iraq is fine!

All the Iraqis are inright, outright, upright, downright happy all the time!

And if you believe otherwise, you must be one of them Defeatocrats!
{/sarcasm}

Posted by low-tech cyclist | January 4, 2008 12:51 PM

Everything in Iraq is fine!

I give you high marks for the effort, low-tech cyclist, but for maximum authenticity you need to go with how everything in Iraq is going great, therefore our troops must stay there forever.

Posted by mds | January 4, 2008 1:01 PM

Time to ignore the reconciliation!

Posted by Al | January 4, 2008 1:06 PM

Al,

I think the real dangerous thing is that this reconciliation is happening in light of the massive ethnic cleansing and population transfers that are removing mixed areas of Sunni and Shia.

In other words, al-Hakim seems to be a NIMBY. He probably doesn't see any reason to go after Sunnis in Anbar, but he doesn't want them in his neighborhood either.

However, the one area of Iraq that remains to be ethnically cleansed is the disputed area claimed by Kurds and Sunnis - not to mention Turcomen, who are really Turkish, and Assyrians, but they're mainly gone. So if the Kurds go the same way as the rest of the country, we'd see more violence until, once more, the weaker party is either slaughtered or is intelligent enough to get the hell out of there.

Posted by Greg | January 4, 2008 2:48 PM

Al's hallucinating again. There IS NO "reconciliation".

Hakim was basically mouthing irrelevant words. If he talked to those guys, he'd quickly see that they intend to take back power from the Shia and that's the bottom line.

Meanwhile, there is a tenuous agreement between him and al-Sadr not to kill each other, which is being slowly worked on.

Also, vis-a-vis the Kurds, as soon as they declare Kirkuk and Mosul theirs and theirs alone, Turkey is definitely going to invade Iraq - and not just go after the PKK, either, but the two main Kurdish factions. Turkey will not allow the Kurds to build an oil-rich independent state in Iraq.

And Turkey has already said they're not afraid of the US military, either.

I would say by April or May, things in Iraq are going to look pretty bleak: the Sunni will be back at the Shia, and vice versa, the Kurds will be ethnically cleansing the Sunni and Shia, Turkey will be invading Iraq, and Al Qaeda will come back as well, to some degree.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | January 4, 2008 11:33 PM