By: Sana Abdallah – Middle East Times

AMMAN — The Kurds in the northern autonomous region of Iraq are worried that the U.S. forces will leave the country without intervening in resolving key disputes with the central Baghdad government, amid warnings that the unresolved questions could erupt into an Arab-Kurdish war.

SCREWING UP — An Iraqi worker turning a valve at the Shirawa oil field outside the northern city of Kirkuk. A U.S. think tank has warned the Barack Obama administration of screwing up if it doesn’t move quickly to avert “violence and instability in Iraq” over the growing oil dispute in Kurdish territory. (AFP via Newscom)

The latest warning came Tuesday from the Kurdish regional government’s Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani, who told reporters there “will be war” if Washington does not resolve the “outstanding problems in Iraq and help the Iraqis confront these problems.”

He said such a U.S. role should be part of what U.S. President Barack Obama describes as a “responsible withdrawal.”

Obama indicated he might pull out American troops from Iraq before the deadline set in a U.S.-Iraqi security pact, signed with the George W. Bush administration in November, which states that all the forces will quit Iraq by the end of 2011.

The Kurds, who set up their own autonomous region with U.S. help in 1991 under Saddam Hussein’s regime, are concerned that the Obama administration will not do enough to pressure the Arab-dominated central government to make concessions to the Kurds.

Barzani identified three main disputes that have been put on hold: Article 140 of the new constitution, the oil law, and the law on distribution of its oil wealth.

All these issues are linked to the status of Kirkuk, the center of northern Iraq’s oil industry that sits on 13 percent of the country’s known oil reserves.

Kirkuk is a mixed province, whose 900,000 people are made up of Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen and Christians. The Kurds are seeking to annex it to their autonomous region, but the Arabs and Turkmen say the oil wealth is a national, not a regional, wealth and should therefore remain under the control of the central government.

The Kurds want to revoke what they see as the demographic distortion caused by Saddam’s “Arabization of Kirkuk” in the 1970s, during which thousands of Arab families were moved to the province and reportedly expelled Kurds from their homes to other regions to consolidate Arab control of the oil fields.

Many Kurds also have a historic claim to Kirkuk, describing it as their “historic capital” because of ruins in the area dating back thousands of years.

Resolving the thorny status of Kirkuk has been delayed, including Article 140 of the constitution that calls for a settlement of the territorial disputes dating back to the Arabization policies.

Plans to hold a referendum on the issue have been repeatedly delayed, namely because it seeks to remove Arab families who had been settled there under Saddam’s program from Kirkuk to their original home regions before carrying out a census, and then a referendum on whether the area should become part of the autonomous Kurdish region. The constitution set 2007 as a deadline to hold the referendum.

Kirkuk and the three northern Kurdish-controlled regions were not part of last month’s local elections. And Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite Arab, seems to have consolidated his power when his candidates swept much of the polls.

Maliki has previously made it clear that the constitution gave too much power to the provinces and has called for amending it in a way that would give more authority to Baghdad.

In recent months, he has also moved Iraqi troops into areas claimed by the Kurds – something Kurdish leaders see as a warning from the central government that it seeks to spread its power across the entire country, threatening the autonomous status of the Kurdish region and weakening its claims over Kirkuk.

As for the clash on the oil law and distribution of oil wealth, the Kurdish regional government wants the freedom to develop its own oil fields, but Baghdad insists on a centralized national system – a dispute that has delayed the endorsement of the oil legislation for two years.

With no signs that the central government and the Kurds are about to resolve their differences, the Kurds are counting on the Americans to resolve their problems for them.

Although U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden visited Iraq and Kirkuk in January, a week before he and Obama took office, the administration so far seems to adopt a hands-off policy in this regard.

U.S. State Department spokesman Robert Wood said last week that “there are ways for people in Iraq to bring the concerns that they have to the levers of power. It’s a democracy, and it’s not really up to the United States to reassure anyone.”

A Washington-based think tank disagrees. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said in a report, published on Feb. 10, that the United States should “move quickly” on these issues before it loses its influence with the U.S. withdrawal.

It recommended a number of U.S. policy steps to resolve the Kirkuk dispute and other issues, insisting the “United States has to take the lead, because it remains, despite its mistakes, the only power with the requisite capacities to cajole, convince and pressure governments and groups to act.”

The think tank warned, “If ignored or mishandled, Kurdish aspirations have the potential to ignite violence and instability in Iraq, as well as the region.”

Iraqi politicians in Baghdad have brushed aside these types of warnings by Kurdish leaders, saying such statements “don’t serve national interests” and that these disputes are best resolved “according to the rule of law.”