Kurdish Peshmerga "Fully Control" Kirkuk: Are They There to Stay?

The fighting in Iraq is confused. but it seems clear that ISIS forces, while pursuing the Iraqi Army, are avoiding a direct assault on the peshmerga fighters of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). After some initial ISIS clashes with peshmerga in the Kirkuk area, the peshmerga now say they are "fully in control" in Kirkuk. And that raises some intriguing questions.

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the status of Kirkuk has been a matter of dispute, with Kurds returning to the city from which Saddam had removed m them in a program of Arbitration; the Iraqi Constitution left the issue for future agreement, and the City Council is carefully balanced ethnically. But the KRG sees it as a rightfully Kurdish city.

Now the KRG, officially acting as allies of the Maliki government, has driven ISIS out. (They have also said that they could have defended Mosul if asked. Baghdad is also saying it will work with the peshmerga to retake Mosul.

That may be. But it has long been the dream of the KRG to control Kirkuk, and now they say they do. Now that the peshmerga control Kirkuk, will Baghdad (if it regains control somehow) ever be able to persuade them to leave? [UPDATE: Apparently they're having the same thoughts: "Kurdistan's Peshmerga: We will not withdraw from any Kurdish areas under our control."

The Iraqi Election Law Finally Passes

Continuing a quick links roundup on the eve of our Annual Conference:

Later than its original mid-October deadline, Iraq's Parliament has finally passed the critical electoral law that is essential for holding elections in January. The thorny problem has always been Kirkuk. Because I'm rolling into our Annual Conference I'll defer comment and, for details, direct you to Norwegian Iraq expert Reidar Visser's detailed assessment here, and of course Juan Cole is on it as well. Also check Visser's Iraq and Gulf Analysis blog for lots of background on Kirkuk.

Oops

It sounds like a car bombing in Kirkuk may have taken out the bombers rather than innocent victims: Deadly Kirkuk Blast 'a Mistake'. I'm not sure "mistake" is the right word, being a bit weak, but it appears to have been final, however you characterize it.

Since today is September 11, it may be useful to note that the bad guys still make mistakes and are not such infallible evil geniuses as we sometimes imagine in our most paranoid moments. Suicide bombings that kill only the suicide bombers are the best kind, if there is such a thing. But there seems to be a hint in this story that others (family?) may have suffered as well.

The UN on Kirkuk

The United Nations has issued its recommendations on the future of the Iraqi city of Kirkuk, one of the most difficult challenges facing the Iraqi government as it tries to build a peaceful future. The UN report has not been made public, and only its general outlines have been officially announced, but there is enough leakage for The New York Times to offer a general outline, and for commentary by veteran Iraq-watchers. It seems the report urges several possible futures, but comes down against partition (between Arabs and Kurds) and favors some sort of autonomous city-state or corpus separatum with power sharing among Arabs, Kurds, and the third ethnic group involved, Turkmens.

Those kinds of solutions are easier said than done, easier to talk about than to realize. Kirkuk offers no easy solutions. It sits amid oilfields which make it a valuable prize; for decades the central government sought to Arabize the area, renaming the province "Ta'mim" (Nationalization) and moving Arabs in where Kurds and Turkmen had once predominated. The Kurds (and the Turkmen) have been seeking to reverse decades of demographic change, but as always happens in such cases that involves dispossession of people who have already lived there for years. Here's a backgrounder by Joost Hilterman of the International Crisis Group that introduces the issues. Any grand compromise that deprives the Kurds of the city but does not offset that with some sharing of the oil revenues is likely to provoke open conflict between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the central government.

Of all the slowly simmering fuses threatening the future of Iraq, Kirkuk is perhaps the biggest powderkeg. For that reason it, rather like Jerusalem, has been deferred as too thorny to resolve right away; the province did not hold provincial elections earlier this year like other provinces.

Juan Cole notes that he thinks partition would be a better solution. Certainly power sharing arrangements have a tendency to come apart when there's a great deal at stake. It will be interesting to learn more about the UN recommendations.