After decades of Saddam’s manipulative ethnic policies, is there a chance for this city to live in peace, or will divisiveness, revenge and greed for oil be the pattern here…and for the rest of Iraq?
Down a potholed road, past a cemetery where her ancestors are buried, Farida Said sits on the floor of a darkened tent in the pouring rain, 10 feet from an open latrine. Farida, a Kurd, was born in Kirkuk as was her father and grandfather. Before being expelled in 1991, she once owned a house here.
Across the street in a modest home sits Riyadh Hasan, a soft-spoken geography teacher and ethnic Arab who came to Kirkuk in 1978 as part of Saddam Hussein’s effort to Arabise the city.
Both Farida and Riyadh have become political footballs in a highly emotional, sometimes violent contest between Kurds, Turkmen, Arabs, Christians and even foreign states, over who should live in Kirkuk and who should control the oil-rich city from which half of all Iraq’s oil exports flow.