Riots in Kirkuk: Kurdistan and Iraq's Ethnic Tinderbox

Just when you think it's getting safe to begin thinking about the Iraq war in the past tense, suicide bombers pull their fanatical triggers and bring you back to the present tense that's been Iraq's bloodied lot for the last five years. This time the bombers didn't limit themselves to their usual grounds in Baghdad or Anbar or thereabout.

A woman blew herself up in Kirkuk, the oil-rich city of the Kurdish north, the one region of Iraq that's been considered so safe as to make the Economist wonder last month: "Can the Kurds offer a tourist haven?" The weekly was featuring Zakaria Abdulla, "the nearest thing to the Beatles, rolled into one man," whose Kurdish songs have sold 3 million copies in the region and in Europe, and whose real estate designs on the Kurdish area of Iraq would make South Floridian developers envious.

But maybe not so fast. Kurds had poured into Kirkuk's streets Monday morning to protest Baghdad's latest policies regarding Kurdistan, which Kurds think are aimed at further diluting their presence in the region. They have reasons to be suspicious: Saddam Hussein spent years importing tens of thousands of Arabs from Iraq's south into Kurdistan. It was part of his habit of cleansing ethnicities the way he cleansed political opponents: by smothering them or eliminating them. Nowadays the Baghdad government, heavily dominated by Shiites, is looking for ways to reclaim its authority in the Kurdish north, an authority it does not now possess in the least. You hardly see the Iraqi flag in Kurdistan. Locals hardly refer to the place as "Iraq," for that matter. So Baghdad writing legislation that would weaken the Kurdish hold on the city and its wealth of oil. It was a matter of time before that conflict began re-emerging.

Sometime during the demonstration, a woman blew herself up. It probably had nothing to do with the Kurdish question and Baghdad's politicking. The bombing had all the hallmark of Sunni provocation. Sunni terrorists in Iraq have a knack for sniffing out tensions and weak links between political factions, then provoking bloodletting by setting off suicide attacks. That's how the Sunni-Shiite clash began in Iraq in 2006, when a Shiite shrine was demolished in Samarra.

In Kirkuk's case, the bombing set off riots between Kurds and Turkmen--Kurds attacking Turkmen on the likely unfounded suspicion that they were behind the bombing. Turkmen form a small but important minority in Kurdistan. Their presence is one of the reasons ethnic tensions are running high. Later in the day a suicide bomber, again a woman, blew herself up in Baghdad, killing 10 and wounding 15. It's impossible to know of the two bombings were related, but easy to note the trademarks of al-Qaeda-type simultaneous bombings.

That's not to say that the breakdown in Kirkuk should be dismissed as freak riot. Whatever its trigger, it unraveled deep-seated divisions that have so far been masked by other conflicts in Iraq. But Iraq can't hope to move toward a more peaceful and cohesive future if it doesn't address those divisions. They're as serious as the political impass keeping Shiites and Sunnis from reconciling.

The Kurdish north, to Kurds, is a settled matter. It's the beginning of an independent Kurdistan. Everyone else in Iraq, as well as the governments in Turkey and Iran, where huge minorities of Kurds would be emboldened to have a piece of Kurdistan for themselves, will do everything in their power to ensure that Kurdistan remain nothing more than the dream it's been all these years.

See Also:

• Iraq: The Kurdish Question
• Kurdish dilemma