Iraq - Dubya's Potemkin Village starting to crumble.

[JohnyCanuck]

Good summary of the conflict in Northern Iraq between the Kurdish, Arab and Turkmen population. The author, Justin Raimondo, predicts these conflicts will blow apart the cobbled together coalition currently attempting to govern the country in the hope that it will maintain a facade of semi-legitimacy for Dubya's illegal invasion.


An Iraqi Potemkin Village
Bush's phony 'global democratic revolution' is failing in Iraq
by Justin Raimondo

<snip>

Talk of Kurdish secession is "at a fever pitch," according to this Knight-Ridder report. Clearly buoyed by their second-place finish in the recent elections – made possible by massive voter fraud as well as the Sunni boycott – the Kurds are aggressively moving to consolidate their victory, taking over provincial governments and pushing out the Arab and Turkmen minorities, who they claim are occupying land and housing that really belongs to Kurds.

The northern city of Kirkuk, which is the center of Iraq's oil-producing region, is the focus of a looming struggle pitting Kurds against the rest of the country. The Kurds claim it as their historic "holy city," a kind of Kurdish Jerusalem, while the majority Arab and Turkmen population resists Kurdification measures imposed by the "democratically" elected authorities, who are committed to carrying out an ethnic-cleansing program on a massive scale. Lt. Col. Anthony Wickham, the U.S. Army's liaison to the Kirkuk council, puts it this way:

"Worst-case scenario is a civil war. The threat is out there. There are armed Arab groups, Turkomen groups that say they need to arm themselves, and the Kurds say, 'We know how to keep the peace, we'll deploy the peshmerga,' a militia that numbers in the tens of thousands."

The source of the problem is Article 58 of the Transitional Administrative Law, imposed by the U.S. at gunpoint, which, as conservative constitutional scholar Bruce Fein puts it, "seeks to restore Kirkuk to its pre-Saddam character." A bit of social engineering that even the most militant neocon would shy away from, but a concession granted nevertheless to the Kurds as the price of their cooperation. Article 58 instructs the transitional government:

"Expeditiously to take measures to remedy the injustice caused by the previous regime's practices in altering the demographic character of certain regions, including Kirkuk, by deporting and expelling individuals from their places of residence, forcing migration in and out of the region, settling individuals alien to the region, depriving the inhabitants of work, and correcting nationality. …

"With regard to residents who were deported, expelled, or who emigrated; shall, in accordance with the statute of the Iraqi Property Claims Commission and other measures within the law, within a reasonable period of time, restore the residents to their homes and property, or, where this is unfeasible, shall provide just compensation."

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=5539

[Wright Patman]

1. Kirkuk is the center

of an oil-producing region.

But it is not THE oil-producing region. The bigger fields are in the south near Kuwait.

[Alpharetta]

2. U.S.-sponsored ethnic cleansing