Ethnic divide in Kirkuk puts government to test

KIRKUK, Iraq - Darawan Salahadin, dressed in a black shirt and blue jeans, strolled out of his home in the Kurdish part of his ethnically fragmented neighborhood, passing concrete barriers and a checkpoint guarded by a Kurdish fighter. He entered the Arab section and walked swiftly to his tan, flat-roofed school.

In the classrooms were only Kurdish students. The Arabs would arrive as Kurds left, and then the Turkmen students would get their turn. The school has three names, one in each community's language, and three sets of teachers and principals.

"I have no Arab and Turkmen friends. I have only Kurdish friends," said Salahadin, a slim 17-year-old with thick, gelled black hair. "I can't speak Arabic or Turkmen. So I don't know them."

The school's divisions illustrate the tensions rippling through this neighborhood and all of Kirkuk, ground zero of Iraq's most vexing conflict over land, oil, and identity. The battle over who will rule Kirkuk is a significant test of whether the Iraqi government can solve the country's internal disputes as the US military draws down.

In contrast to security improvements elsewhere in the country, Arab, Kurdish, and Turkmen residents of Kirkuk remain targets of political violence as their leaders vie for control of what they see as their ancestral lands. Earlier this month, at least 57 people died in a suicide bombing on the outskirts of the city, the deadliest assault in Iraq in six months.

"Kirkuk could be the capstone in the house of freedom or it can be the cheap thread that when you pull out unravels the entire suit," said Lieutenant Colonel David Snodgrass, deputy commander of the Third Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, which oversees the city.

Even the name of Salahadin's neighborhood is contested. Arab and Turkmen residents call it Hay al-Wasiti, as it was known before the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. The Kurds have renamed it Nowruz, after the Kurdish New Year.

For decades, Arabs, Kurds, and Turkmens mingled freely, intermarried, and ran businesses together. Today, the communities rarely mix.

On Nov. 24, across the road from Hay al-Wasiti, a red pickup truck waited over a splatter of fresh blood for a final journey. Forty minutes had passed since a gunman had pumped a single bullet into the head of Khalaf Hamoud al-Jubouri, an Arab lawyer, as he pulled out of his driveway. His daughter found him slumped over the steering wheel.

Now, his body lay inside his house, covered with a thick red blanket, awaiting the rituals of burial. His wife and daughters wailed, their anguish piercing the walls.

"I know it was the Kurds who killed my father," said one of Jubouri's sons.

Jubouri, a 58-year-old father of five, worked in the crucible of the conflict, pressing Arab legal claims to disputed lands.

The assassination did not surprise Abid al-Jubouri, an Arab resident of Hay al-Wasiti. "A lot of Arab figures have died in mysterious ways," said Jubouri, a short man with a thin mustache and a serious demeanor who was not closely related to the lawyer.

Many Arabs in the neighborhood have moved to Arab areas or to their villages. This year alone, Jubouri has rented out 20 Arab houses, mostly to Turkmens displaced from Kurdish areas.

Kurds hold senior posts in the police, are predominant in the City Council, and have US allies. "If we complain, the Kurds go to the Americans and tell them that those Arabs are terrorists. And Americans come and arrest them," Kabi said.

Kurdish officials said they conduct raids with US troops but only against suspected insurgents, who are mostly Arabs.