Kirkuk, Floating on a Sea of Oil

Friends,
Kirkuk, which was the one quiet spot in Iraq, now flexes it's muscle (oil and money). This is the area that delayed the provincial elections and will continue to do so.
"Kirkuk, combustable for its mix of ethnicities floating together on a sea of oil...."
Peace and Love,
Rev O

Kurdish Control of Kirkuk Creates a Powder Keg New York Times
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
The ethnic quarrel over the oil-rich city is a major barrier to creating stable political structures in Iraq.

"KIRKUK, Iraq — The phone rang, and it was answered by a Kurdish security commander, Hallo Najat, sitting in his office in this deeply divided city. On the line, he said, was a United Nations official wanting to know whether it was true that the Kurdish militia, the pesh merga, had left its bases in northern Iraq and was occupying Kirkuk."
"No, Mr. Najat told the caller. But after hanging up, he wryly revealed the deeper truth about Kirkuk, combustible for its mix of ethnicities floating together on a sea of oil: the Kurds already control it."

"Of all the political problems facing Iraq today, perhaps none is so intractable as the fate of Kirkuk, a city of 900,000 that Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens all claim as their own. The explosive quarrel over the city is one major barrier to creating stable political structures in the rest of Iraq."

"Beyond that, it demonstrates that despite a recent decline in violence, Iraq’s unsettled ethnic and regional discord could still upend directives emanating from Baghdad and destabilize large swaths of the country — or even set off a civil war."

"Colonel Paschal blames all the political parties for inflaming tensions to serve their interests. But he said it was difficult to comprehend the level of mistrust."
“Negotiations here are, ‘You give me everything I want, and I will walk away happy,’ ” he said. “It is hard for us to appreciate the level of ethnic hatred.”