Home   >   Features   >   Issues   >   Iraq   >   Article     

No end likely to ethnic tension

April 12 2003
By Alan Philps

The advance of Kurdish fighters in to the oil town of Kirkuk and the murder of a Shiite Muslim leader highlight the ethnic and religious tensions that have made Iraq perennially unstable.

Iraq's varied population - Arabs, Kurds and Turkomans, divided into Shiite and Sunni Muslims, with a Christian minority - produces an unlikely nation state.

Britain put the country together in the 1920s, under a royal family imported from Arabia, but the kings were unable to unite the diverse sectors of the population. The country of 24 million is roughly divided into three bands: Shiite Muslims in the south, forming 60 per cent of the population, Sunni Muslims in the centre, and the five million Kurds in the mountainous north.

The north is also home to the Turkomans, cousins of the Turks, as well as ancient Christian communities that still speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus.

But the division is not this simple. There are two million Shiite refugees living in Baghdad. Saddam Hussein destroyed villages and drove the Kurds out of Kirkuk as part of a plan of ethnic cleansing to secure the oil wealth for the Arabs. The Kurds have now returned to Kirkuk, prompting fears that they will claim the town as their capital and claim a third of Iraq's oil production.

The Kurds are a nation of 25 million without their own state. They are scattered between four countries - Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. The arrival of Kurdish peshmerga guerillas in Kirkuk has alarmed Turkey, which fears that its own Kurdish minority will be emboldened by what is happening in northern Iraq.

Iraq is unique among Arab countries in having a majority of Shiite Muslims. They live around the holy places of Shiite Islam - Karbala and Najaf - but have always ceded control of the country to the minority Sunnis, the dominant branch in the Arab world.

There are doctrinal differences between Sunni and Shia, but more important distinctions are emotional and political. In the Sunni Arab world, religious leaders are employees of the state and do what they are told.

The Shiites have jealously guarded their independence and their own hierarchy, from which spring political leaders. If there was a simple vote for president, it is likely that the leading candidate would be a Shiite cleric. But that would be anathema to the Sunnis and the Kurds.

Relations have never been easy between Iraqi opposition groups and friction has mounted in recent days. Some resent the the Pentagon's backing for the Iraqi National Congress, the opposition group led by Ahmad Chalabi that was flown to Iraq last week by the US military. Others are angered by the fact that former US General Jay Garner will head the US-run transitional civil authority in Iraq.

- Telegraph, Boston Globe



War in Iraq

CNN insists its reporters were targeted

Iraqi 5th Corps surrenders at Mosul

Day 23 briefing

The enduring mistake of war

Rivals eye off oil riches

Much depends on interim government

Allies move on stronghold


A wounded child of Baghdad learns to hate

Pentagon enlists soldiers in hunt

Court jester earns a net result

Why the road to democracy is still uncertain

Looters uncover passion for US culture

Syria fears it is next on Bush's hit list

Media fights war within a war

The AgeMost viewed articles
From midnight AEST

  1. Rose makes sure it counts