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Title: US Troops Prepared For Violence In Kirkuk
Source:
Reuters
URL Source: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?sf=2 ... 499B262&click_id=2813&set_id=1
Published: Feb 14, 2005
Author: Reuters
Post Date: 2005-02-14 10:44:22 by Brian S
Keywords: Prepared, Violence, Troops
Views: 166
Comments: 1
Kirkuk - United States troops were braced for violence in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Monday after a strong showing by Kurds in provincial elections threatened to upset the city's delicate ethnic balance.
"I think there'll be some ethnic violence here, I really do," said US Captain Mitch Smith, a company commander in the heart of Kirkuk, the most ethnically diverse city in Iraq.
"Before the elections there were concerted attacks on coalition forces and Iraqi security forces but I think the focus may have shifted now," he told Reuters.
"Rather than targeting us, I expect we might see the various groups in the city fighting among themselves."
Kirkuk's 850 000-strong population is split roughly three ways between Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen, with Assyrian Christians forming a minority of around three percent.
The Kurds regard the city as theirs, and many want it to become the capital of a federal Kurdish state within Iraq, or even an independent Kurdistan.
The Turkmen, who have close cultural and linguistic ties with Turkey, trace their arrival in Kirkuk from eastern Asia to the 11th century, and have no intention of leaving.
Many of the Arabs were forcibly moved here from the south by Saddam Hussein under his "Arabisation" programme of the 1980s, which aimed to strengthen his hand in this oil-rich region.
Until now, the city has been relatively peaceful, in part because no one group has a majority or a monopoly on power.
But the Kurds won 59 percent of the vote in elections to the regional assembly, prompting fears among some Arabs and Turkmen that Kurdish parties will dominate local politics in the city at the expense of others.
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