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Revue de Presse-Press Reviezu-Berhevoka ęape-Rivisła Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basin Ózeti

Tm really happy at heart to be back Ln Kirkuk no w," he says, "even though I can't go back to the area where we used to live. When we left, we had nothing but the dothes on our backs - and that's still all we have, but at least with Saddam gone we have some hope."

Kirkuk's refugee crisis is intractable. This is potentiaUy one of the richest cities in the world. It sits in the middle of vast oil fields, whose flares bum on the horizon. But its futurę is undear. Who should control it in the looming federal Iraq?

At present, it is a simmering armed camp, with the Kurdish milita-ry policing the lion's share of town, while other ethnic groups main-tain their own enclaves. Roadblocks are everywhere, while at the heart of Kirkuk li es a large US air base. The dty is shelled and mor-- tared every night. Explosions light up the sky - but no one knows predsely who's behind the violence. Islamie groups are reported to be strong here. Reconstruction has ground to a halt. Western contractors are, understandably, absent.

The top Kurdish offidal in the dty, Abdu Rahman Mustafa, lays out the problems in a world-wom, thorough way. Attempts to control Kirkuk through ethnic deansing and dividing the town have been constant in recent years. The dty's different districts were even atta-ched to separate regional authorities, in a bid to dilute the town's political weight. Many of the Arab "transmigrants" shifted into Kirkuk 15 years ago were themselves victims of Saddam's regime, Shia muslims from the south of Iraq.

Kurdish authorities in Suleimaniyah are planning a census to gauge Kirkuks predseethnic balance, but they are apparently unwilling

to indude the "transmigrants" in the count. 'Kirkuk was a distinc-tive place," Mustafa says, "always somewhat multi-ethnic. We have original Arabs who were always living here and who naturally belong here - and then we have people who were brought here and artifidally planted here. Those people are themselves feeling guilty and ill at ease now."

The plight of the Kurdish refu gees is also complex. The great majo-rity come from Kirkuk itself, and still have the keys to their own houses, which now lie in Arab-held no-go areas. But there are large refugee populations living in large camps to the west of Kirkuk, built by the old regime. Many of them come from the 4500 Kurdish villages razed in 1988 by Saddam. Only two-thirds of those popu-lation centres have been rebuilt. A total of 30,000 other Kurdish families are refugees within the borders of Kurdistan, ma king a total displaced population of 150,000.

The situation worsens daily. The new educational year looms, and there are no coherent arrangements in place to school the refugees, who are still trickling back to Kirkuk from the refuges where they had lived until last year's US-led invasion. There are no homes for these incomers, while the hospitals and public services are almost all concentrated in the Arab-held quarters of the town.

Can there be a futurę for a dty so traversed by tensions from past, present and futurę? "Kirkuk already is a multi-ethnic dty," says Mustafa from within his fortress-like compound, defended by pla-tpon of armed guards. "Of course it will continue to be one. But we need a degree of peace and tranquility before we can do anything here at all."

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Despite The Tension, lraqi Kurds and Turkey Must Collaborate

Daily Star

By HIWA OSMAN July 26,2004

For the past decade, the relationship between the Kurds of Iraq and the Turkish govemment has been characterized by mistrust on the Kurdish side and paranoia on the Turkish side. Now that could change, espedally with a new interim govemment in Baghdad.

Since 1992, Turkey has had a Kurdish self-goveming endave on its border that it can neither live with nor live without. On the surface, the political situation today does not seem to have changed. But there are indications that the ebb and flow of Turkey's relationship with the Kurds could settle into a morę livable, stable relationship with inereased economic interdependence. There are, however, a few hurdles that could hamper the opening of a new chapter in relations between the two sides. The average Iraqi Kurd feels that Turkey s "Kurdophobia" blocks any step that could create a strong and stable Kurdish element in Iraq. Popular Kurdish resentment toward Turkey today is mainly caused by Turkey's deplorable treat-ment of its own 20 million-strong Kurdish population, and its stance on Kirkuk and the Turkmen who live there. But the lraqi Kurdish leadership is convinced that the only way forward is to have a stable relationship with Ankara, based on a solid foundation of

mutual trust and economic interests. Turkey’s large Kurdish mino-rity, which has been stripped of all cultural and political rights, is a cause of great concem for Ankara. Iraqi Kurds have carved out an autonomous place for themselves in Lraq, and Turkey fears "its" Kurds will demand the same for themselves. Over the past 12 years, the ruling Iraqi Kurdish political parties - the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriodc Union of Kurdistan - have been mindful of these concems and have even gone to the extreme of fighting their fellow Kurds from Turkey to prevent them from using Iraqi territory to launch attacks against the Turkish Army. On the other hand, the condition of Iraq’s Turkmen, mainly located in Kurdish-gover-ned Irbil and Kirkuk, has been described as the "golden age of the Turkmen." They have Turkmen-language schools, newspapers, magazines, televisions and radio, as well as cultural and political associations and a minister in the Irbil-based Cabinet.

The Kurds, who juxtapose the situation of the Kurds in Turkey with that of the Turkmen under Iraqi Kurdish rule, say that Turkey has no right to complain about the rights of the Turkmen in Iraq. lraqi Kurds often say that only once the Kurds of Turkey enjoy a fraction

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