Kirkuk crisis postponed, Khanaqin to explode

Kirkuk

If we go through the main points decided today, we can con­clude that they are a mod­i­fied ver­sion of the 22 July law that was rejected by the Kurds and post­pone the prob­lem until next year:

- Post­pone the provin­cial elec­tion in Kirkuk.

- Keep the status-quo in the province as it is for the time being.

- Find­ing an admin­is­tra­tive and secu­rity power-sharing mech­a­nism between the three main com­po­nents in the province [that is: 32% Arabs, 32% Kurds, 32% Turk­men and 4% oth­ers] until the hold­ing an elec­tion in Kirkuk.

- Leg­is­la­tion of a spe­cial elec­tion law for Kirkuk enables the province to run the elec­tion before the end of the next year.

The main point in the elec­tion law which causes the cri­sis is Arti­cle 24 agreed upon 22 July:

Post­pone the elec­tions in Kirkuk province of Kirkuk and its coun­ties until the elec­tion prepar­ing com­mit­tee ends its tasks, and power shar­ing among Kirkuk’s three main com­po­nents by 32% each.

Today Arab and Turk­men insisted on the inclu­sion of the Arti­cle 13 of the Provin­cial Elec­tion Law and this rejected by the Kurds:

Par­ties and polit­i­cal blocs should pro­vide a reg­is­tered list of their can­di­dates com­pet­ing in the province. The list must con­tain at least four candidates.

But notice this pro­posal from Arab-Kirkuk rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the par­lia­ment, who sug­gested to form an Arab nation­al­ism alliance in the par­lia­ment just like the Kurds did.

Khanaqin

Funny to see Maliki’s gov­ern­ment “nation­al­ism” is hot item dis­cussed on west­ern Blog, so this is a live example:

Kur­dish news­pa­per Aso revealed that the Amer­i­can forces yes­ter­day pre­vented an armed con­fronta­tion between the Iraqi army in Jalaula’ — Diyala with the Kur­dish Pesh­merga militia.

Iraqi army asked the Kurds to leave their mil­i­tary posi­tions in the city and Kurds refused say­ing that they got orders to not to leave their positions.

Why Iraqi army is such enthu­si­ast about Khanaqin — Diyala and even ready for armed con­fronta­tion against the Kurds?

Sheikh Ya’koub Al-Lihaibi, Chief of Lihaib Tribe in Jalula said the following:

The “United Iraqi Alliance” and “Accor­dance Front” decided to share Khanaqin among them­selves; they con­spired against the Kurds and agreed to give Khanaqin to the Shi­ites and Jalula to the Sunnis.