Iraq and the Kurds: The Struggle over Kirkuk

1. The Current Situation

2. Crisis Group Resources

Picture: A fireman hoses down a burning oil pipeline after a bomb attack near the city of Kirkuk May 24, 2007. REUTERS/Slahaldeen Rasheed

Updated January 2010

1. The Current Situation

Among the many disputes roiling the Iraqi body politic, one has been particularly intractable: the conflict between the federal government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan regional government in Erbil over Kirkuk. Kirkuk is a city and province that straddles an unofficial dividing line between Arab and Kurdish Iraq. It has a thorough mix of ethnic and religious groups – Arabs, Kurds, Turkomans, and various small Christian denominations; it also happens to be an area rich in oil and gas. The dispute over its administrative status is contaminating and even paralysing national politics.

Crisis Group has followed developments in and concerning Kirkuk since the U.S. invasion in March 2003. The 2005 constitution prescribed a process to resolve the status of Kirkuk and other disputed territories. This process has run aground, however, over the federal government’s unstated but unambiguous resistance to implementing steps that could lead to Kirkuk’s incorporation into the Kurdistan region. Both a census and a referendum in these territories have been allowed to miss their end-of-2007 deadline. Ever since, tensions have been building along the Arab-Kurdish dividing line, along which federal army troops and Kurdistan regional guard fighters are encamped, and which therefore is sometimes referred to as a “trigger” line.

The struggle between the federal government and Kurdistan regional government concerns more than just territory. They disagree also on how they should divide power between them, manage the country’s hydrocarbons wealth, and distribute revenues from oil and gas sales. But in each of these issues, the Kirkuk question plays a pivotal role. Moreover, the inability to resolve Kirkuk’s status has muddled parliamentary debates and obstructed legislation of nationwide import, such as the laws for provincial elections in 2009 and legislative elections in 2010.

The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq has charted a way to navigate the conflict over the disputed territories, but progress has been slow, due in part to the weakness of the Iraqi state. What happens in Kirkuk as U.S. troops withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011 will play a major role in determining, through political/legislative or violent means, the shape of the Iraqi state.

2. Crisis Group Resources

Crisis Group Reports

• Iraq’s New Battlefront: The Struggle over Ninewa , MENA Report N°90, 28 September 2009
• Iraq and the Kurds: Trouble Along the Trigger Line , Middle East Report N°88, 8 July 2009
• Turkey and Iraqi Kurds: Conflict or Cooperation? , Middle East Report N°81, 13 November 2008
• Oil for Soil: Toward a Grand Bargain on Iraq and the Kurds , Middle East Report N°80, 28 October 2008
• Iraq after the Surge II: The Need for a New Political Strategy , Middle East Report N°75, 30 April 2008
• Iraq and the Kurds: Resolving the Kirkuk Crisis , Middle East Report N°64, 19 April 2007
• Iraq and the Kurds: The Brewing Battle over Kirkuk , Middle East Report N°56, 18 July 2006
• Iraq: Allaying Turkey's Fears Over Kurdish Ambitions , Middle East Report N°35, 26 January 2005
• Iraq's Kurds: Toward an Historic Compromise? , Middle East Report N°26, 8 April 2004
• Iraq's Constitutional Challenge , Middle East Report N°19, 13 November 2003
• War In Iraq: What's Next For The Kurds? , Middle East Report N°10, 19 March 2003

Other commentary

• "Elections in Iraqi Kurdistan: Results and Implications", Joost Hiltermann in Tusiad, 1 January 2010
• "Spoils of Babylon", Joost Hiltermann in The National Interest, 16 December 2009
• "Iraq's Real Deadline", Joost Hiltermann in Foreign Policy, 29 June 2009
• "Kurdish crude bails out Baghdad", Joost Hiltermann in Foreign Policy, 13 May 2009
• "Everyone Wants a Piece of Kirkuk, the Golden Prize", Joost Hiltermann in The National, 26 February 2009
• "Kirkuk and the 'Grand Bargain'", Joost Hiltermann with Michael Walid Hanna, The Globe and Mail, 11 November 2008
• "Iraq's Kurds Have to Choose", The Globe and Mail, 30 July 2008
• "Frieden oder Freiheit", Le Monde Diplomatique, 11 July 2008
• "مستقبل الأكراد في العراق", Le Monde Diplomatique, 9 June 2008
• "To Protect or to Project? Iraqi Kurds and Their Future", Joost Hiltermann in Middle East Report, no. 247 (Summer 2008).
• “Kirkuk and the Kurds: A Difficult Choice Ahead”, Joost Hiltermann in Al-Hayat, On-Line in English, 22 May 2007.
• “Kirkuk as a Peacebuilding Test Case”, Joost Hiltermann in Markus E. Bouillon, David M. Malone and Ben Rowswell, eds., Iraq: Preventing a New Generation of Conflict. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007.
• "The Kurds: A catastrophe waiting to happen", Joost Hiltermann in International Herald Tribune, 20 March 2003 (co-authored with Gareth Evans).

For all Crisis Group Iraq reports, click here.

For background to the conflict, see Crisis Group's Iraq conflict history.

For a month-by-month report on developments in Iraq since September 2003, see Crisis Group's CrisisWatch Database.