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Kirkuk: A new Isis attack is the latest challenge for the long-troubled oil-rich city in Iraq

Kirkuk: A new Isis attack is the latest challenge for the long-troubled oil-rich city in Iraq thumbnail
Kirkuk
Iraqi onlookers stand next to a burnt car following a motorcycle bombing attack which killed at least eight people on September 19, 2014 in the northern city of Kirkuk.(Getty)

For Kirkuk, its oil-rich surroundings have been more a curse than a blessing.

The northern Iraqi city struck black gold in 1927, while still under the control of the British Empire, and became the country’s oil production powerhouse in the north.

At its peak, its oil fields were pumping out 3.2 billion barrels per day, but this has since fallen sharply amid war and mismanagement by the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who seized control in 1968.

Kirkuk is in what is now Kurdistan, a semi-autonomous region of Iraq, and was for years a multi-ethnic city.

Many Kurds, who make up the bulk of the 850,000 population, had arrived in Kirkuk in search of work in the city’s oil industry. They found oppression by the tyrant Hussein instead.

Hussein wanted to ensure total control over the Kirkuk oil supply and did not want the Kurds, who hated him, to threaten the production that made him, his family and his henchmen rich.

So his Ba’athist government tried to flood Kirkuk with Arabs and force out those of other ethnicities, such as the Assyrians, under its “Arabisation” programme.

According to Human Rights Watch, many of those who were expelled had refused to sign “nationality correction” forms which would have registered them as Arabs and relinquished their actual ethnic identities. Their property and assets were also stolen.

Across Kirkuk and other northern Iraqi cities, hundreds of thousands of Kurds and other non-Arab groups were pushed out by Hussein’s oppression.

Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein in 1987.(Reuters)

In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, and at the encouragement of US and British forces, there was a mass uprising against Hussein across Iraq.

The Kurds of Kirkuk rose up. But no armed support came from Western forces and Hussein’s Iraqi army crushed them with the help of his helicopter gunships, which he had been allowed to keep despite his invasion of Kuwait which sparked the war he quickly lost.

Days before the uprising, Kurdish men had been rounded up by the government and held in poor conditions, with little food and no toilets, forced to defecate in the corner of their cells.

Many were later released, but some never returned and no explanation was given.

Human rights organisations complained that assessing the plight of the oppressed groups in Kirkuk was difficult because it was one of the only cities in Iraq in which Hussein would not allow a UN office.

There were reports of looting by Iraqi loyalists from the homes and businesses of fleeing Kurds. Some Kurd-owned properties were demolished.

In the battles between Kurdish rebel fighters – called the peshmerga – and the Iraqis, hundreds of civilians were killed in the heavy shelling and crossfire. The Iraqi forces were also accused of committing atrocities.

“When the [Iraqi] tanks entered Kirkuk on March 27, they went to Saddam Hussein Hospital,” a local primary school teacher told Human Rights Watch at the time.

“My house is very near the hospital. About 150 meters away from me, I saw troops enter the hospital and then I saw peshmerga being thrown out of the windows.

“After they threw them on the ground, they shot those who were not dead from the fall.”

A lab assistant at the hospital gave another grim account.

“Iraqi soldiers opened fire from tanks and helicopters on the hospital,” he said.

“When they reached the hospital they entered and went upstairs, where they killed all of the patients, about 30 children, 50 women, and 20 young men.

“I saw them slit the throats of patients with knives and throw some of the patients off the roof or out of windows on the top floor.

“I personally saw five persons thrown out of windows.”

Once Hussein’s forces had brutalised Kirkuk into submission and re-established control of the city, he continued his policy of Arabisation. Since 1991, it is estimated that 120,000 Kurds and others have been driven out of the city.

When war came back to Iraq in 2003, the Kurds once again seized their moment. This time it came after the fall of Baghdad. Kurdish forces surrounding the city, and residents within it, defeated the Iraqi soldiers trying to defend Hussein’s control.

Kirkuk
Kurdish guerrillas drive trucks during celebrations April 10, 2003 in Kirkuk, northern Iraq.(Getty)

In the messy years after, as Iraq struggled to build a stable democracy and a functioning post-Hussein state, Kurds flooded back to Kirkuk to re-claim land and property that had been stolen from them in the past.

Elections were held and representatives of all of the city’s ethnic groups partake in its governance. It now forms part of the self-governing region of Kurdistan, which still falls under the auspices of the Baghdad administration.

The Kurds want to hold an independence referendum in order to establish Kurdistan as a state in its own right, with Kirkuk potentially as its capital.

Since 2005, Kirkuk has become the target of bomb attacks by Iraqi insurgents. In another attack in 2013, 38 people were killed and many more injured as a bomb exploded in a Kirkuk café during Ramadan.

Now Kirkuk and its oil supply face a new threat: the Islamic State, also known as Isis.

Since its birth from the rubble of war-torn Syria next door, the Islamic State – a self-declared caliphate run by violent Islamic extremists – has taken advantage of the post-2003 chaos in Iraq and seized control of territory in the country’s north.

It has attacked Kirkuk with bombings and shootings a number of times as it eyes the city’s oil wealth. Islamic State has sought to weaken Kirkuk by sabotaging its oil production by attacking nearby infrastructure, causing the level of barrels coming out of the ground to collapse by 90%.

When the advances of the Islamic State threatened Kirkuk in June 2014, after they had taken the second largest city Mosul and other parts of the surrounding area, the Iraqi government forces protecting the city fled.

The peshmerga once again took control of Kirkuk to fill the vacuum left by Iraqi troops. Soon enough, they were pumping oil. Now the city’s residents face their latest crisis.

Islamic State fighters have launched a fresh offensive against the city in order to expand their caliphate and seize control of the oil production.

They have so far captured land and villages to the south-west of the city, killing several peshmerga including a senior officer, by taking advantage of a dense fog engulfing the area to attack Kurdish positions overnight.

A suicide attack in the city centre reportedly killed peshmerga general Shirko Rauf, brigade commander of the Kurdish forces in Kirkuk.

Once again, Kirkuk finds itself at war because of the oil it’s cursed with.

IB Times



9 Comments on "Kirkuk: A new Isis attack is the latest challenge for the long-troubled oil-rich city in Iraq"

  1. ghung on Sun, 1st Feb 2015 9:38 am 

    http://thepeninsulaqatar.com/news/middle-east/319573/kurds-recapture-oil-facility-in-iraq

    “KIRKUK: Kurdish peshmerga forces retook a small crude oil station near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk which Islamic State insurgents seized earlier yesterday, but the fate of 15 employees remained unclear.

    Two officials from the state-run North Oil Co said the militants had seized a crude oil separation unit in Khabbaz yesterday morning and said 15 oil workers were missing after the company lost contact with them.

    One of the officials and a Kurdish military source said the peshmerga forces had regained control of the facility yesterday evening and were combing it for explosives.

    They were unable to confirm the fate of the 15 workers or provide details about the losses incurred by either side….”

  2. Davy on Sun, 1st Feb 2015 10:41 am 

    Just as Bahgdad is not going to fall neither will Kirkuk. The activity will be in the less secure outter regions near the urban areas. Terrorist will infiltrate these cities and make noise but that is it. I imagine Mosul will not fall either unless the inhabitants rise up against ISIL. In all three of these cases the cities would need to be destroyed and turned to rubble to achieve a take over. All three cities have a majority population that has no where to go so they will fight to the death.

  3. Plantagenet on Sun, 1st Feb 2015 12:51 pm 

    @Daver

    Khobani was completely destroyed by US airstrikes against the Caliphate. The same thing may happen in Kirkuk.

    We’ve seen this before in VietNam where a US spokesman famously said—“we had to destroy the city in order to save it”

  4. Davy on Sun, 1st Feb 2015 1:57 pm 

    Planter, Khobani is a cow town. Kirkuk is a real city. That is a big difference in scale. ISIL are a rable incapable of taking a large city another point. Good point about Vietnam though.

  5. GregT on Sun, 1st Feb 2015 2:43 pm 

    “‘Fresh Statistics’ Show Iraq’s Sunnis In Majority”

    “Fresh statistics by an international organization suggested that Iraq’s Sunnis are in a clear majority, as Shiite scholars conceded that Shiites could make up as much as 40 percent of the whole population.”

    “”the number of Shiites, I think, is averaged at 40 or 45 percent of the whole population against 53 percent of Sunnis,” the Shiite Mohamed Jawwad Ali told Quds Press news agency.”

    “Mazen El-Ramadani, a Sunni political science professor, attributed the numerical conflicts between two main sects to the Shiites’ huge ability of mobilization and their distribution at many governorates regardless of population density.

    El-Ramadani said the Shiite majority claims were first propagated by Jewish writer Hanna Batto.”

    “Observers said the contrasted Shiite and Sunnis statistics could have been politically motivated, as the U.S. occupation forces seeking to marginalize the role of Sunnis – now launching almost-daily resistance attacks that killed hundreds of American soldiers. Iraqis Sunnis have expressed bitter resentment at being marginalized under the new U.S.-led order in post-violence Iraq, charging that the Americans were rewarding the Kurds and the Shiites with drawing up the country’s political landscape. For the first time since modern day Iraq was founded in 1921 , the Sunnis are no longer in charge of Iraq with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The Sunnis have only five seats against 13 Shiites on the25 -member Interim Governing Council (IGC), whose members were selected by the U.S. occupation forces. Sunni leaders also showed fury over reports that the country’s Kurds clamor for a federalist state and Shiites poise to rule Iraq after years of oppression under captured former President Saddam Hussein.
    But they warned against schemes aimed at pitting the Sunnis and Shiites against each other, unleashing a deadly communal war.”

    http://uruknet.web.at.it/colonna-centrale-pagina.php?p=1028&colonna=m

  6. bobinget on Sun, 1st Feb 2015 3:02 pm 

    By 2016, election time, gasoline shortages will
    be laid directly at Democrat’s feet.
    When will ‘they’ tell the people?

    Likely presidential candidate Scott Walker said in a TV appearance on Sunday that he “wouldn’t rule anything out,” including U.S. troops in Syria, in the fight against ISIS.

    The Wisconsin governor was pressed on his foreign-policy views a day after a Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll showed him leading the pack among likely Republican caucus-goers who will vote in a year to help nominate the next commander-in-chief.

    ABC News’ Martha Raddatz, hosting This Week, reminded Walker about Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s recent comments that “taking a trip to some foreign city for two days does not make you Henry Kissinger.” Rubio has sought to distinguish himself from 2016 rivals—which include several governors—on foreign policy.

    “I think aggressively, we need to take the fight to ISIS and any other radical Islamic terrorist in and around the world.”

  7. bobinget on Sun, 1st Feb 2015 3:30 pm 

    AS Iraq implodes NATO will need to occupy Southern Iraq. There is no way allied forces can permit IS from capturing, controlling, Iraqi production.

    During WW/2 Americans were shown daily progress
    of every big European battle.
    Here are many examples:
    https://www.google.com/search?q=WW/2+battle+maps+images&client=safari&rls=en&tbm=isch&imgil=xxeipo7x8PsauM%253A%253BRKZVviswG5QgvM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fmemory.loc.gov%25252Fammem%25252Fcollections%25252Fmaps%25252Fwwii%25252F&source=iu&pf=m&fir=xxeipo7x8PsauM%253A%252CRKZVviswG5QgvM%252C_&usg=__2r7U13RmBMcZshb38jxGgCrgAy4%3D&biw=1040&bih=738&ved=0CDYQyjc&ei=bJnOVK30OtOTNt7sgIgH#imgdii=_&imgrc=xxeipo7x8PsauM%253A%3BRKZVviswG5QgvM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fmemory.loc.gov%252Fammem%252Fcollections%252Fmaps%252Fwwii%252Fimages%252Fww2_home.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fmemory.loc.gov%252Fammem%252Fcollections%252Fmaps%252Fwwii%252F%3B234%3B175

    Today, most Americans still can’t find Iraq or Afghanistan on any map during America’s longest
    war.

    On these pages most folks simply change the subject to drilling rigs down or how quickly tight oil
    wells poop.

  8. GregT on Sun, 1st Feb 2015 4:10 pm 

    “On these pages most folks simply change the subject to drilling rigs down or how quickly tight oil wells poop.”

    Bob, I believe that the two go hand in hand. The US oligarchy wouldn’t be putting America’s kids in harms way, or murdering millions of people in the ME, if the US hadn’t of lost energy independance in 1973.

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