Kurds enjoy haven of peace, prosperity

Vast oil resources equal power
But many of Kirkuk's Arabs, and many Kurds too, suspect the main concern of the U.S. army is to make sure violence doesn't disrupt plans to pump more oil from northern Iraq.

Kirkuk's underground deposits of nearly 10 billion barrels account for six percent of the world's known oil reserves. 

Under Saddam Hussein they produced 60,000 barrels a day, but today their rusting and dilapidated infrastructure can barely manage to pump half that total. Pipelines leading north to Turkey and south to Baghdad are often sabotaged by insurgents. 

The U.S. is helping to train Iraqi forces to prevent these attacks, but even optimists concede it could be many months before the pipelines are once again carrying capacity loads.

Many Iraqis, particularly Arab Sunni Muslims, suspect the Kurds plan one day to declare an independent state, although Kurdish leaders say neighboring governments in Iran, Turkey and Syria would never allow it for fear of encouraging independence among their own Kurdish populations. 

Nevertheless, too much autonomy for Iraqi Kurds might prompt Iraq's Shia to demand the same, perhaps even resorting to war for control of southern Iraq's oilfields around Basra, leaving the once-dominant Sunni Muslims in the middle with no natural resources to support themselves.

While Iraqis envy and resent the Kurds for the support and protection they've received from the U.S. for more than 10 years, they now fear their political power as swing voters in the new Iraqi parliament. 

That’s the difficult challenge facing Iraqi leaders – how to give the Kurds enough autonomy to keep them happy without provoking rival Sunni and Shiite Arabs into fighting for their own share of Iraq’s resources and threatening the country’s fragile unity.

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