By Steve Hynd
As Iraq becomes the forgotten occupation instead of Afghanistan, the abject failure of "The Surge" (tm) to accomplish its stated goal - political reconcilliation - isn't in the news right now. It will be if the shooting starts in earnest, and that's looking increasingly likely. Not between Shiites and Sunnis, or at least not at first, but between Kurds and Arabs.
The Kurds have a large swathe of autonomous region to control nowadays, but they want more - especially, they want more oil. That and a little bit of "romantic nationalsim" fervor explains why they have refused to countenance a UN-brokered deal for the administrative division of the Kirkuk area and why there are now Kurds in Nineveh province threatening to secede.
Kurdish local councilors in a disputed part of Nineveh currently boycotting all contact with its Arab governor Atheel al-Nujaifi vowed on Sunday to form their own splinter council if their disagreement with him fails to be resolved.
They represent 16 out of Nineveh's 37 seats.
The Kurds see parts of majority Arab Nineveh as part of their ancient homeland and want them included in Iraq's semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan. They complain that Nujaifi has marginalized them in the provincial council since he was elected in January.
"If no solution is found, we will be forced to form the Nineveh council to run the 16 administrative units," said Kurdish councilor Derrman Khitari, adding that he would ask the central government to divert part of its Nineveh budget.
...Kurds refuse to participate in a new Arab-led provincial government and several Kurdish towns vow they will not respect Mosul's new government.
Violence in Mosul and Kirkuk, which has stayed at a higher level than the rest of Iraq and is rising again, is mostly a consequence of Arab/Kurd tension. The US military has failed in an attempt to hve the area be an exception to the general withdrawal of combat troops from Iraqi cities, leaving the way open for confrontations between Kurdish peshmerga and Iraqi army forces. There were several such standoffs last year which were only saved from sparking the tinderbox by frantic behind-the-scenes US intervention. In my cynical opinion, it's only a matter of time and always was no matter how long America and its allies occupied Iraq.
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