Iraq: An EA Correspondent Reports from Kirkuk

At the main Bazzar inside the city of Kirkuk, three languages are heard simultaneously, Kurdish, Arabic and Turkmani, not in that or any order. Here is the alleged site of the tomb of prophet Daniel, there is a Chaldean Church, here is the Talabani Takiyah and there is the ancient Citadel, here is the Shorjah neighborhood and there is the Rahimawah and Rashidawah neighborhoods and underneath it all 160 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, enough to supply the whole world for 160 years!

While the security situation seems to be slightly better in Kerkuk these days, one still gets the feeling that this city is constantly awaiting its next bombing, everywhere you go, you see heavily armed policemen, wearing bullet-proof vests. On top of each and every police truck, a man in a helmet has his index finger on the trigger of a machine gun, waiting for an order from the officer in the front passenger seat to say "start fire." Police trucks penetrate through traffic with annoying sirens and occasional multilingual commands over loud speaks, ordering the cars immediately before them to make way or else...

There are no Americans to be seen, per the terms of the Status of Forces Agreement, SoFa, the Americans have retreated back to their bases and are called to duty only at the request and under the command of the Kerkuk police department, officially known as the Directorate of Kerkuk Police. Unlike the other police departments in Iraq, Kerkuk's is in charge of not only the city center but also the districts (in the rest of Iraq, the Iraqi military handles security in the outer districts). Kerkuk's outer districts includes the Sunni Arab district of al-Hawijah, which, despite the presence of an awakening council, continues to be, for the most part, a no man's land. Fighters of al-Hawijah awakening council have had their salaries cut after the security file was transferred to the Iraqis and according to one awakening council leader, the funds have not come in for two months! I could not help but wonder whether the Maliki government is intentionally irritating members of Kerkuk's awakening councils in order to stir things up ahead of the upcoming elections of which Kerkuk will take part. So I asked whether the al-Anbar awakening council members' salaries have also been reduced and the negative response confirmed my fears.

I sat there, puzzled: "Is this Kurdistan? Is this the heart of Kurdistan?" The Kurdistan I know and love has no terrorists, nobody wears an armored vest, nobody's church or mosque is protected by heavily armed policemen. The Kurdistan in which I live has no ethnic tensions, the Kurdistan in which I live, foreigners hail cabs as freely as they would in London or New York, they attend concerts, they even watch baseball and American football on large HDTV sets in Erbil's newly built T-Bar and Speed Center.

The naive person in me, the idealist person in me started to wonder, why would a Turkman or an Arab NOT want to be part of this prosperous and safe region and instead opt for this oh-so-tense status quo?

With that thought and with the bright flames of the Baba Gurgur oilfield behind me, I sped through the Kerkuk-Erbil highway and came back to Erbil, just in time to catch Dolphins-Patriots game, in which Patriots were, of course victorious!