Strip of Iraq 'on the Verge of Exploding'

Tensions between Kurdish forces, above, and Iraq's army have stoked fear just as years of Shiite-Sunni violence wane. (By Andrea Bruce -- The Washington Post)
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The question of where to draw the exact boundary of the Kurdish autonomous region is one of the most politically explosive issues in Iraq. The Iraqi constitution called for a reckoning of the competing claims, including a census and a referendum. But the mandated 2007 deadline for the referendum passed, and it is now unclear what will happen.

U.S. and other Western officials, fearing that the issue could imperil the security gains made over the past year, tried to persuade both sides to back a U.N. process to present reports on Kirkuk and other contested areas as part of a strategy to "defuse and deflect the referendum," said Stefan de Mistura, head of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq. Kirkuk, which the Kurds refer to as "Our Jerusalem" because of their emotional and historical attachment to the city, presents a particular difficulty because it lies atop an estimated 7 percent of the world's oil reserves.

"I am going to be one of the wealthiest men in the world," said Ahmed Hameed al-Obaidi, secretary general of the Arab bloc in Kirkuk. "I would never let the Kurds steal this money by making the city part of their region."

Western officials increasingly believe that a referendum in which residents of individual areas decide whether to join the Kurdish autonomous region will only spark greater conflict. De Mistura said the approach now is to have the leaders of each bloc reach a viable compromise, perhaps to be confirmed later through a straight yes-or-no referendum.

"At the end of the day, what we need is a grand deal, not a piecemeal approach," de Mistura said.

Yet far-reaching compromises seem remote from places such as Sinjar, a ramshackle city on the border with Syria that is ringed by Arab villages but controlled by Kurds. After a coordinated bombing there last year killed hundreds of Yazidis, a religious minority that some consider Kurdish, pesh merga forces tightened their control of the area, according to Arab and Christian residents.

Abdullah Ajeel al-Yawer, an Arab tribal leader near Sinjar, gathered dozens of Arabs from the area in his home on a recent morning. They described how Kurdish forces had driven them from their homes, detained and tortured them in prisons in the Kurdish region and prevented them from launching their own political party.

"They are like the Gestapo," Yawer said. "Their treatment is the same as what Saddam Hussein did."

Sarbest Terwaneshy, the head of the Kurdish Democratic Party in Sinjar and described by U.S. and U.N. officials as the most powerful figure in the region, denied the allegations against the pesh merga and said the fighters were in the area only to provide security.

"If the pesh merga leave, all the people will leave in a huge exodus," he said. "Without the Kurds, the massacre of last year would be repeated tens of times."