Iraq Election Body: Finalize Law by Tuesday or Vote May Be Delayed
Kirkuk Tensions Reaching Crisis Levels as MPs Appear Far From a Deal
The deadlines for Iraq’s January elections appear to continue to come and go with little movement from the nation’s parliament. Already weeks removed from missing the official “deadline” for passing an election law, a warning from the UN that they needed to have the law finalized by today also passed without a vote.
The requirement to have the law in place 90 days before the January 16 vote is long gone, but Iraq’s election authority is now warning that they absolutely must have the deal finalized by Tuesday to have any reasonable chance of holding the vote on time.
But the various factions in Iraq’s parliament remain far apart and despite MPs repeatedly declaring their opposition to a delay it seems hard to imagine they can pass the law by Tuesday.
Not only must they work out a way for Iraqis to vote for individual candidates, as top clerics are opposed to making Iraqis vote on anonymous lists like last time, but they have to settle a Kirkuk dispute that has been growing for years.
The status of the oil-rich city is increasingly in dispute. Though the city has been occupied by Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs alike for centuries, the Kurdistan regional government maintains it is a uniquely Kurdish city and wants to annex it. The Arabs and Turkmen oppose this, as it would make them a very unwelcome minority in the autonomous region. The law governing the Kirkuk vote could either be a big win for Kurdistan’s ambitions on the region, or a bitter defeat. This has already led Kurdish MPs to boycott a prospective vote.
This is hardly going to be sorted out in the next 48 hours, but once a delay in the election, seemingly inevitable, is finalized, the question of its impact on the US troop drawdown will come increasingly into focus.
Merry Fitzgerald
November 2nd, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Jason Ditz is misinforming his readers when he says that Kerkuk has been occupied by Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs alike for centuries. There were no Arabs or Kurds in Kerkuk for centuries.
Kerkuk remained a Turkmen city up until 1958 when the Communist Iraqi government declared the Kurds as partners of the Arabs and neglected the Turkmens.
From that date on, the Kurds poured into the city to change the demographics. This campaign intensified in 1970 when Saddam, without consulting the Iraqi people, gave autonomy to the Kurds.
Please see: http://merryabla64.wordpress.com/the-struggle-of-...
Before the American invasion of Iraq, and despite all the Kurdification and Arabization efforts, Kerkuk was still aTurkmen majority city with Arabs as one third and the Kurds as one quarter.
It was the Americans who allowed the 600.000 Kurds to pour into the city in 2003.
The Turkmens are the original and majority inhabitants of Kerkuk. The names of the districts of original Kerkuk (before the Kurdish and Arabic influx) are Turkmen names. The names on the cemeteries are of the Turkmens. The historical monuments in Kerkuk are Turkmen.
The ‘intended’ January elections | stream4.me
November 2nd, 2009 at 8:12 am
[...] by 2007 and hasn’t been. The 2005 Iraqi Constitution mandates that the issue be resolved. Jason Ditz (Antiwar.com) observes, “The deadlines for Iraq’s January elections appear to continue to come and go with [...]
Shaun
November 3rd, 2009 at 12:01 am
thanks for this post – this is very interesting and I'd never heard this history before, although I've been very sceptical of the Kurd's claim that it is some kind of historically Kurdish city. It becomes obvious then that they are just trying to grab as much territory as they can for their planned kurdish state. and of course especially want Kirkuk for it's huge oil reserves, and not because they have some deep-seated attachment to it.