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What Do They Want? Kirkuk! When Do They Want It? Now!The Kurds play a dangerous game of brinksmanship.

By Zvika Krieger
Posted Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2007, at 2:08 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

"People have been telling us for years to wait for our rights—'Later, later, later'—and all we get are mass graves and chemical smoke," Kirkuki says. "We're not waiting anymore."

The Kurds are barreling toward a referendum they are sure to win even though a hasty resolution of Kirkuk's status promises to bring even more violence. They have done little to reassure Kirkuk's minority populations that the KRG would protect their rights—by, for example, strengthening minority provisions in the draft of the Kurdish Constitution and appointing ethnic leaders to senior KRG positions. Instead, Kurdish nationalist rhetoric has become more aggressive. Kurdish politicians have made little effort at outreach to these communities, preferring to deal with the small segments that support annexation rather than the significant portions that don't.

The Kurdish narrative of victimhood prevents many of them from admitting that they may be the aggressors in this situation. But the KRG could get more than they bargain for by taking such a hard line on the Kirkuk issue and recklessly raising hopes among Kirkuk's displaced Kurds like those in Bani Slawa.

"Imagine if someone took your house, stole your property, killed your sons, raped your wife, kidnapped your daughter, and then the government told you to just live peacefully among them as their neighbors," Kirkuki says. "If the Kurds don't get Kirkuk, thousands will take revenge."

It doesn't seem that their rhetoric will soften anytime soon, since the Kirkuk issue has become a key tool for the two warring Kurdish parties to prove their nationalist credentials. "The Kurds will never relinquish or bargain over Kirkuk," Barzani reiterated after the postponed census. The hasty constitutional process was reaffirmed last week as the two Kurdish parties joined the two Shiite parties in renewing their support for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on the condition that he commit to a "speedy completion of the stages of application of Article 140 of the constitution … and the attempt to adhere to the timetable … to the settlement of matters in Kirkuk."

But by raising expectations on all sides, Kurdish politicians have boxed themselves into a corner, risking ethnic violence in Kirkuk and Turkish retaliation if the referendum is pushed through by the November deadline, Kurdish backlash if it isn't.

"The Kurds are now anxiously awaiting the implementation of 140 by the end of the year," says Nouri Talabany, an independent Kurdish MP from Kirkuk and chair of the Kurdish electoral commission. "If nothing is done for them soon, they will become hopeless, and that is dangerous."

It is a precarious game of brinksmanship in which the Kurds will lose no matter the outcome. The central government in Baghdad can help allay Kurdish concerns by helping them to develop oil fields in territory already under KRG control. But a sustainable solution to the Kirkuk issue will come only from genuine Kurdish efforts to build confidence among the city's minority communities—a lengthy process that will require postponing the referendum. Their leaders must accept that sacrificing a swift victory in the short term is the only way to prevent Kirkuk from becoming the next flashpoint in Iraq's bloody civil war.

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Zvika Krieger is a writer based in the Middle East.
Photograph of Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani by Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty Images.
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