Kirkuk shaping up as flashpoint ahead of Kurdistan independence vote

Kurdish vendors wait for customers at a market in the mainly Kurdish Iraqi city of Kirkuk. (AFP)
Updated 20 September 2017
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Kirkuk shaping up as flashpoint ahead of Kurdistan independence vote

KIRKUK, IRAQ: Visitors to Kirkuk in northern Iraq are greeted by an imposing statue of a Kurdish Peshmerga fighter with a gun slung over his shoulder, a reminder of tensions building in the hotly-contested city ahead of a referendum on Kurdish independence.
Erected in July, the statue has come to symbolize how the Kurds want to cement their hold on oil-rich Kirkuk and other parts of the region by holding next Monday’s vote. Peshmerga, which means those who confront death, are the military forces of the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan.
The referendum is risky, especially in Kirkuk, a multi-ethnic city also claimed by Arabs since oil was discovered there in the 1930s. The Kurdistan region produces around 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil.
The central government in Baghdad, Iraq’s neighbors and Western powers fear the vote could divide the country and spark a wider regional conflict, after Arabs and Kurds cooperated to dislodge Daesh from its stronghold in Mosul.
Already at least one Kurd has been killed in pre-referendum clashes, and security checkpoints have been erected across the city to prevent further violence.
But the Kurds say they are determined to go ahead with the vote, which, though non-binding, could trigger the process of separation in a country already divided along sectarian and ethnic lines. Iran, Turkey, the United States and Western allies oppose the vote.
Some non-Kurds fear Baghdad will attempt to regain control of Kirkuk and send in Shiite militias (PMU), also known as the Hashid Al-Shaabi, stationed just outside the province.
“I fear the Hashid will come and fighting will start in Kirkuk,” said Nazim Mohammed, an Arab from Mosul who fled to Kirkuk when the northern city was overrun by Daesh.
Backed by Iran, the militias fear an independent Kurdistan would split Iraq, giving them and Tehran less influence.
Kirkuk, populated by Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen, Christians and other minorities, is one of 15 ethnically mixed areas in northern Iraq that will participate in the referendum. They are claimed by both the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government(KRG).
A decision by KRG President Massoud Barzani to include these so-called disputed territories in the plebiscite was widely interpreted as a unilateral move to consolidate Kurdish control.
Critics say Kurdish intentions were already clear before the referendum was announced. Peshmerga fighters seized Kirkuk in 2014, after fleeing Iraqi security forces left its oil fields vulnerable to Daesh militants who had just swept across northern Iraq.
The statue is dedicated to the Peshmerga and is designed to represent the appreciation of the people of Kirkuk.

Kurds mark out territory
Tensions between the KRG and Baghdad are not new, and hinge on oil revenue. The Kurds have long accused Baghdad of failing to make budget payments to the region, while central government has opposed oil deals made by the Kurds without its consent.
Nevertheless, the Kurds have been marking their territory in the run-up to the vote. Peshmerga outposts dot the area, protecting the flaming oil fields on Kirkuk’s outskirts. Kurdish flags have been hoisted across the city since the spring, and now fly alongside Iraqi flags on government buildings.
Dreaming of long-denied statehood since World War One, the Kurds say the are ready to fight if necessary. “Kurdistan’s land belongs to the Kurdish people,” Kemal Al-Kirkuki, the Kurdish military commander responsible for the front-line against Daesh, told Reuters at his base in Dibis.
“No one, not the PMU, has the right to take it ... We will ask them to leave Kurdish territory, peacefully. But we are prepared to fight if we need to.”
On Monday, clashes broke out in Kirkuk after a Kurdish convoy celebrating the referendum drove by a Turkmen political party’s office. A Kurd was killed, and two others were injured, security sources said.
This followed a week of escalating rhetoric between the Kurdish leadership and Baghdad, where parliament voted to reject the referendum and oust Kirkuk’s Kurdish governor, Najmaddin Kareem.
The conflict over the disputed territories is bitter. If the Kurdistan region of Iraq declared a break-off from Baghdad, Kirkuk would fall right on the border between the two. Kirkuk produces around one quarter of the region’s oil.
“If the Kurds want to press for a separation of sorts,” said Joost Hiltermann, MENA program director at the International Crisis Group, “the boundary question becomes critically important.”
“If Baghdad and Erbil continue to take unilateral steps,” he said, “things can only escalate.”
There are no reliable statistics on Kirkuk’s population, where both Kurds and Arabs say they have a demographic majority; vital to legitimize their respective claims over the province.

Returning kurds
Kirkuk was meant to have a census under the 2005 constitution, drafted two years after former Iraqi leader Saddam was toppled in the US-led invasion, but it did not take place because of the risk of ethnic and religious tensions.
During Saddam’s Anfal campaign waged against the Kurds in the 1980s, there was a forced “Arabization” of disputed areas, which ejected Kurds from the province. Arabs from other parts of Iraq were then settled, taking over Kurdish homes and businesses.
In 1988, Saddam caused international outrage by staging a chemical attack on the Kurdish city of Halabja which killed thousands of people.
Many Arabs have been ousted since Saddam was toppled in 2003, emboldening the Kurds to reclaim large parts of the disputed territories, including Kirkuk. Displaced Kurds were provided with incentives to return, while Kurds from other areas were also moved in, angering other minorities.
“Since 2003 some 600,000 Kurds have arrived, many of them are here illegally,” said Ali Mehdi Sadiq, a Turkman member of Kirkuk’s local council. “Without dialogue everything is possible. We need to avoid a war engulfing the whole of Iraq.”

“Nothing comes without a price”
He blamed Governor Kareem, a Kurd who lived for more than 30 years in the United States for what he called a Kurdish discrimination of minorities.
The governor said the Kurds would guarantee minorities’ rights, pointing to relative stability in the Kurdistan region in contrast to Baghdad where suicide bombings are frequent.
But his support for Kurdish independence is worrying minorities: he refused to sit behind an Iraqi flag during an interview, preferring the Kurdish one and said he would destroy his Iraqi passport the minute he got a Kurdish one.
He shrugged off the decision by Iraq’s parliament last week to sack him as “unlawful,” adding: “This is a proud day for me.”
Anticipating trouble ahead, some residents of Kirkuk have been stockpiling basic foods such as flour, rice and milk.
“Since they announced the referendum I have hardly had any customers. The market is dead,” said 27-year-old Ali Hamza, an Arab who has a small textiles shop in the old city.
Several Kurds interviewed supported the independence vote but privately said they were worried about clashes afterwards.
But faced with his people’s fears of clashes and economic problems, Governor Kareem said that when taking a big step like the referendum, “anything was possible.”
“Nothing comes without a price.”


Paris makes jailed Erdogan rival honorary citizen

Updated 3 sec ago
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Paris makes jailed Erdogan rival honorary citizen

  • Mass protests have erupted in Turkiye after the March 19 arrest of Ekrem Imamoglu
  • He is widely seen as the only politician capable of challenging Erdogan at the ballot box
PARIS: The French capital on Tuesday made Istanbul’s jailed mayor a citizen of honor, with the city’s top official throwing her support behind the Turkish opposition figure.
Mass protests have erupted in Turkiye after the March 19 arrest of Ekrem Imamoglu, a main rival to President Recip Tayyip Erdogan, on corruption charges his supporters say are false.
Widely seen as the only politician capable of challenging Erdogan at the ballot box, Imamoglu was elected as the opposition CHP party’s candidate for the 2028 election on the day he was jailed.
“Imamoglu is today unfairly prevented from representing his party and carrying the voice of millions of Turkish people,” Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo told the city council after it voted to make him a citizen of honor.
“Deprived of his freedom and his basic rights, he should be able to count on the full support of Paris,” said the Socialist, describing the French city as “the capital of human rights.”
This show of support “will perhaps allow the current Turkish authorities to hear the voices of democratic reason,” she added.
Hidalgo was among several European mayors who called for Imamoglu’s release last month.

Gaza rescuers say 19 killed in Israeli strikes overnight

Updated 08 April 2025
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Gaza rescuers say 19 killed in Israeli strikes overnight

  • Five children and four adults were killed in a strike that hit a home in the central city of Deir el-Balah

Gaza City, Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s civil defense agency said on Tuesday that Israeli strikes overnight killed at least 19 people across the Palestinian territory, where Israel has resumed its offensive against Hamas.
Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that “19 civilians including several children were martyred” and dozens more wounded in the latest Israeli raids.
Five children and four adults were killed in a strike that hit a home in the central city of Deir el-Balah, while two separate pre-dawn attacks on Gaza City and Beit Lahia in the north left a total of 10 people dead, Bassal said.
Separately, a media outlet affiliated with the Islamic Jihad movement, a Hamas ally, announced the death on Monday of an employee named Ahmed Mansur in an Israeli strike on a tent used by journalists in the Khan Yunis area.
The Hamas government media office had on Monday reported the death of journalist Hilmi Al-Faqaawi, who worked for a local news agency, in the same strike, which also wounded another nine.
The Israeli military meanwhile said the strike had targeted “Hamas terrorist Hassan Abdel Fattah Mohammed Aslih,” claiming that he operated “under the guise of a journalist and owns a press company.”
It said Aslih had “infiltrated Israeli territory and participated in the murderous massacre carried out by the Hamas terrorist organization” on October 7, 2023.
Israel resumed intense strikes on the Gaza Strip on March 18, ending a two-month ceasefire with Hamas. Efforts to restore the truce have so far failed.
According to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, at least 1,391 Palestinians have been killed in the renewed Israeli operations, taking the overall death toll since the start of the war to 50,752.
Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.


Israel’s Supreme Court opens hearing on security chief’s dismissal

Updated 08 April 2025
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Israel’s Supreme Court opens hearing on security chief’s dismissal

JERUSALEM: Israel’s Supreme Court on Tuesday began hearing petitions challenging a government decision to dismiss the head of the Shin Bet domestic security agency, Ronen Bar, that cited “lack of trust.”
Opposition politicians and non-profit groups have contested the move, which Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara said was “tainted by personal conflict of interest” on the part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.


An Israeli strike hit near a charity kitchen in Gaza as Palestinians gathered for food

Updated 08 April 2025
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An Israeli strike hit near a charity kitchen in Gaza as Palestinians gathered for food

  • The strike hit around noon as the kitchen was distributing meals to displaced people living in tent camps
  • Israel’s campaign has killed more than 1,000 health workers and at least 173 journalists, according to the UN and the Committee to Protect Journalists

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: An Israeli strike on Monday hit next to a charity kitchen where Palestinians crowded to receive cooked meals as food supplies dwindle under Israel’s month-long blockade of the Gaza Strip, one of a string of attacks in the territory that killed more than 30 people, mostly women and children, hospital officials said.
Another strike hit a media tent outside a hospital, killing two people, including a local reporter, and wounding six other journalists, medics said. The Israeli military said the strike targeted a man whom it identified as a Hamas militant posing as a journalist.
Video footage showed people carrying the body of a little girl, her face covered with blood, from the blast that witnesses said hit a tent next to the charity kitchen outside the southern city of Khan Younis. Six other people were killed, including two women, and at least 10 people were wounded, hospital officials said.
The strike hit around noon as the kitchen was distributing meals to displaced people living in tent camps. Samah Abu Jamie said her nephew was among those killed and her young daughter was wounded as they waited with their pots to collect meals for their families.
“They were going to get food. I told her, ‘Daughter, don’t go’,” she said. “These were children, and they had nothing with them but a pot. Is a pot a weapon?”
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the strike.
‘Bombed and starved again’
Charity kitchens have been drawing bigger crowds of Palestinians because other sources of food are running out. More than a month ago, Israeli cut off all food, fuel, medicine and other supplies for Gaza’s population of more than 2 million people, forcing aid groups to ration their stocks.
The World Food Program has warned that its supplies to keep kitchens going could be depleted by next week. It had to stop distributing boxes of food staples directly to families last week, spokesperson Abeer Etefa said Monday. The bakeries it ran have also shut down for lack of flour, ending a main source of bread for hundreds of thousands of people.
Since it ended its ceasefire with Hamas last month, Israel has carried out bombardments across Gaza, killing hundreds of people, and ground forces have carved out new military zones. Israel says it is pressuring Hamas to free its remaining hostages, disarm and leave the territory. Under the ceasefire deal, it had agreed to negotiate for the hostages’ release.
The heads of six UN agencies operating in Gaza said in a joint statement Monday that the blockade has left Gaza’s population “trapped, bombed and starved again.” They said Israeli claims that enough supplies entered during the ceasefire “are far from the reality on the ground, and commodities are running extremely low.”
“We are witnessing acts of war in Gaza that show an utter disregard for human life,” they said. “Protect civilians. Facilitate aid. Release hostages. Renew a ceasefire.”
Strikes hit journalists and homes
The strike outside Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis about 2 a.m. set the media tent ablaze, killing Yousef Al-Faqawi, a reporter for the Palestine Today news website, and another man, according to hospital officials.
The military said the strike targeted Hassan Eslaiah, claiming he was a Hamas militant who took part in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel that ignited the war. Eslaiah was among six journalists who were wounded in the strike, according to the hospital.
Eslaiah had occasionally contributed images to The Associated Press and other international media outlets as a freelance journalist, including on Oct. 7. The AP has not worked with him for over a year.
A strike that hit a street in Gaza City killed an emergency room doctor, the Gaza Health Ministry said. Israel’s campaign has killed more than 1,000 health workers and at least 173 journalists, according to the UN and the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Hospitals in Khan Younis and the central town of Deir Al-Balah said they received the bodies of 33 people, 19 of them women and children, from strikes overnight and into the day on Monday, including those from the kitchen and the media tent attack.
Some of the strike reduced houses to rubble. Imad Maghari said the blast that hit his neighbors in Deir Al-Balah at 2 a.m. was like “an earthquake,” followed by the screams of women and children. He said one neighbor lost five family members and another a young boy.
“I don’t know what danger he poses. He’s 7 years old,” Maghari said.
Israel’s military offensive in retaliation for Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry, whose count does not distinguish between militants and civilians. The offensive has destroyed vast areas of the Gaza Strip and displaced around 90 percent of its population.
Israel says it tries to avoid civilian casualties and blames Hamas for their deaths because it operates among the population.
In the Oct. 7 attack, Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251 people. They are still holding 59 captives — 24 of whom are believed to be alive — after most of the rest were released in ceasefires or other deals.
Protests in Israel as Netanyahu meets Trump
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with US President Donald Trump in Washington on Monday to discuss Gaza and other issues.
Dozens of protesters gathered outside Netanyahu’s official residence in Jerusalem to call for an agreement to release the captives. Many fear that Netanyahu’s decision to resume the fighting has put the remaining hostages in grave danger and hope Trump can help broker another deal.
“Now the moment of truth has come,” said Varda Ben Baruch, grandmother of Israeli American hostage Edan Alexander, addressing Netanyahu. “You are in the United States and you have to sit there with President Trump and close a deal so that everyone will be released home.”
 

 


Syria appoints finance expert as new central bank governor

Updated 07 April 2025
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Syria appoints finance expert as new central bank governor

  • Hasriya takes over from Maysa Sabreen, who had been appointed caretaken governor in late December, after an Islamist-led offensive toppled longtime president Bashar Assad

DAMASCUS: Syria’s interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa on Monday appointed Abdul Qadir Al-Hasriya as governor of the war-battered country’s central bank, state media reported.
State news agency SANA posted a picture of Hasriya taking the oath as the new central bank chief in front of Sharaa, who on Monday led a first cabinet meeting to “discuss government priorities for the next phase.”
Sharaa announced the formation of a new government on March 29.
Syria’s national currency is considered the foremost challenge for the central bank post, after its value plummeted during 13 years of civil war.
Hasriya takes over from Maysa Sabreen, who had been appointed caretaken governor in late December, after an Islamist-led offensive toppled longtime president Bashar Assad.
Sabreen, a banking expert, had been the first woman to head the financial establishment, having served as first deputy governor since 2018.
Hasriya was born in 1961 and previously lived between the United Arab Emirates and Syria.
He studied at the American University of Beirut before completing his PhD in finance at the University of Durham in Britain.
He previously worked for accountancy firms EY, previously known as Ernst & Young, and Arthur Andersen, as well as having been a member of the financial committee of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Geneva.
He was a consultant on reforms to Syria’s central bank in cooperation with the United Nations Development Programme.
The Syrian pound has lost about 90 percent of its value since the start of the civil war in 2011, sinking from 50 pounds to currently around 10,000-12,000 to the US dollar.