At least two peo­ple died and 10 were wounded today in Kirkuk when Arabs and Turk­men protested Kur­dish efforts to con­trol the oil-rich city.

Kurds on Iraq’s U.S.-appointed Gov­ern­ing Coun­cil are propos­ing that a future, fed­eral Iraqi gov­ern­ment grant broad auton­omy to the north­ern zone, with Kirkuk as its cap­i­tal, and a say over other areas with large Kur­dish pop­u­la­tions.
That plan is bit­terly opposed by Turk­mens and Arabs in Kirkuk, some 20,000 of whom took to the streets Wednes­day, chant­ing “No to fed­er­al­ism! Kirkuk is Iraqi!.”

This is the after­ef­fects of Sad­dam Hussein’s efforts to “Ara­bize” the Kirkuk region. The city became a pow­derkeg of eth­nic ten­sions when the “Kurds took Kirkuk”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000354.php in April and almost imme­di­ately began “Kur­dishiz­ing” the area by dri­ving out Arab fam­i­lies that had been set­tled there. In August, “three Turk­men were killed”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000445.php#000445 in eth­nic vio­lence in Kirkuk. (If you want to see some of what the Kurds are look­ing for, I wrote about the pro­posed con­sti­tu­tions “here”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000046.php#000046.)
I’m work­ing on an essay about the polit­i­cal maneu­ver­ings among the Kurds, the Iraqi Gov­ern­ing Coun­cil and even Turkey, so I’m not going to say much more than this. But, as dur­ing the war, some of the most inter­est­ing — and far-reaching — events are bub­bling in the north while most of the obvi­ous bang-bang action is around Bagh­dad. While the south­ern events are impor­tant — peo­ple are dying, for God’s sake — the Kurds could be the match that lights a larger fire.