MAKHMOUR, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi Kurdish mayor Barzan Said Kaka says he has no choice but to declare independence from the largely Arab-run council of violent Nineveh province — it’s infiltrated with insurgents and killers, he says.
“We hoped to see a new Iraq, with all Iraqis living together but it’s not happening,” said Kaka, mayor of the run down, mostly Kurdish market town of Makhmour.
“The governing council only cares about Arabs, not Kurds … And they support those groups that kill our people.”
Such accusations are becoming common in the testy stand off between Kurdish and Arab politicians in ethnically-mixed north Iraq, where a row over oil and land has alarmed officials and raised fears it could become the faultline of Iraq’s next war.
In one such dispute, Atheel al-Nujaifi, the Arab governor of Nineveh whose inflammatory rhetoric against Kurds won his party a comfortable victory in local polls in January, has so upset mayors in 16 Kurdish areas that they’re threatening to secede.
The tensions have been worsened by a determined insurgency that is still killing dozens of Iraqis in gun and bomb attacks as al Qaeda and other groups seek to foment ethnic conflict in their last remaining stronghold in the provincial capital Mosul.
A series of huge bombings last month triggered accusations of blame between Arabs and Kurds, escalating a dispute that has played into the hands of al Qaeda and some former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party who joined the insurgency.
Atheel, a Sunni, is himself a former Baathist, although members of his al-Hadba party have been targeted by insurgents.
“He’s never even acknowledged (insurgents) as terrorists. He calls them resistance fighters and refuses to condemn them,” said Kaka. “We’re quitting the council … We have no voice.”
