Kirkuk’s time-bomb could explode at any time

The oil-rich city of Kirkuk, some 290km north of the capital, Baghdad, was long considered a microcosm of Iraq with its diversity of ethnic and religious groups. With Turkomen, Kurds, Assyrians, Chaldeans and Arabs living together in peace, it was a melting pot of the various communities that reflected Iraq’s demographic makeup.

However, the government of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein changed all that. Its ‘Arabisation’ policy in the early 1980s and during the 1990s forced tens of thousands of Kurds and other non-Arabs to flee Kirkuk. They were replaced with pro-government Arabs from the impoverished south.

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