Wednesday, 9 April, hailed the end of an era in the history of Baghdad, with a new one yet to begin. Nermeen El-Mufti writes from Kirkuk Kirkuk is a riot of colour as the multi-hued flags of the various parties draped on buildings and houses flutter in the breeze. The main colours on show here are the blue of the Turkomen Front, the green of Jalal Talibani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party and the yellow of Massoud Barzani's Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP). And the fields, too, bear witness to the season; spring is here and the flowers are in bloom, on time as always. The red of the poppies is the colour that greets the eyes, a colour all too familiar after years of war, sanctions and death squads. The joyous shades, however, are overshadowed by black: the nightmare which began in Iraq when Saddam Hussein became president in 1979. It is the morning of 9 April, the 23rd day of the war, and three workers are feverishly putting the finishing touches to a huge frame for a giant poster of Saddam Hussein to mark his coming birthday. They are working in front of the social club, which has been converted to a base for the Al-Quds Army in Kirkuk. As the craftsmen finish their work, Kurd Sat announces that American forces have occupied the entire city of Baghdad and that the fate of Saddam Hussein, his two sons and some of his followers remains unknown. And just one day earlier, the Iraqi Minister of Information Mohamed Said Al-Sahhaf had warned Americans that if they did not withdraw from Baghdad "the Iraqis will burn them inside their tanks". On the afternoon of 9 April a letter from Saddam Hussein, written the day before, was blasted from the loudspeakers of the mosques of Kirkuk. The document was neither a farewell nor apology, but rather an appeal "to resist the American, British, Zionist forces". And for the entire day local TV channels in Kirkuk broadcast slogans praising Saddam Hussein, and showed footage of a meeting between Unis Al- Ahmed, a high-ranking Ba'athist official, and the chiefs of many Arab tribes in Kirkuk. Until the day of the occupation of Baghdad, the Ba'athist Iraqi regime continued to deny the existence of Turkomen and Kurds in Kirkuk, threatening those who said the opposite with arrest, while the huge statue of the president was being smashed in Baghdad. The day before, hundreds of trucks arrived in Baghdad carrying birthday cards from millions of Iraqi school and university students congratulating him on his coming birthday. I asked a primary school headmaster if the cards had been sent voluntarily. He answered -- naturally on condition of anonymity -- that the greetings had been ordered to be sent by the Ministry of Education. Each card cost 600 Iraqi dinars, and every single student was required to send one, regardless of income. I asked for his permission before writing this down saying, "it is time to know the truth". To know the truth is also to know that a single sentence, broadcast by opposition leaders, Kuwait TV and Kurd Sat, cost the Iraqi people their country, dignity, future and history. Looters began robbing the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad -- one of the most important museums in the world -- and stealing from museums in Kirkuk and Mosul. In Baghdad and Kirkuk American tanks protected the Ministry for Oil and the industrial oil fields, failing, however, to provide protection for hospitals, food stores, medicine warehouses or other infrastructures. They failed, also, to stop the looting. On the contrary, this was encouraged by the opposition leaders, Kuwait TV and Kurd Sat who said that, "they are not looters, they are good citizens taking revenge against the regime." The National Museum, libraries and universities in Baghdad, Kirkuk, Mosul and Basra were, therefore, simply tools for meting out that revenge; the White House spokesman, too, confirmed on 11 April that such behaviour cannot be referred to as looting, "but an ordinary reaction to Saddam's oppression". But back to Kirkuk. This city is a single act in the absurd play that is the war in Iraq; the strangest of wars, conducted in the name of "liberation". The Kirkuk scene began with the heavy bombardment of the city in which dozens of civilians had been killed and injured by 9 April, the very day on which all military forces, security, policemen, militia, Fedayeen Saddam (Saddam's freedom-fighters) and the Al-Quds army withdrew from Kirkuk. The actors left behind their props: light and heavy weapons, vehicles, tanks and clothes, while black banners bearing the names of martyrs continued to hang here and there. Kurdish peshmerga forces, supported by Americans, entered Kirkuk without resistance. Yet, within hours, the looting had begun. And after the looting, the empty buildings were burned. Who were the looters? Nobody knew. The next day, Jalal Talabani asked the peshmerga to withdraw, ordering police forces from Suleiymaniya to go to Kirkuk. I tried to speak to one of the Americans whose tanks had stopped in front of the Al-Horiyya Airbase, one of the largest airbases in Iraq. When I approached him, he ordered me to stop. I was about 10 metres away from him and when I tried to how my press pass, his officer shouted saying, "we need you to go". Kirkuk was renamed "Taa'mim" which means "nationalisation", marking the nationalisation of the oil industry in 1972. It is once again called Kirkuk, ironically at a time when the Americans are considering privatising the oil fields which were discovered here in 1927. According to statistics, Turkomen and Kurds formed the largest population sectors in Kirkuk in 1957 and 1977. Thereafter began the brutal ethnic cleansing by the Ba'ath Party, during which time Kurds were expelled. At the start of the 1970s the regime expelled Kurds not only from Kirkuk but from all areas north and south. Some returned with the start of the Iran-Iraq war. Ali Hassan Al-Majeed became the high-ranking party official in the north and he brought thousands of tribal Arabs from southern and central Iraq to settle in the city. Each family settling in the city was given 10,000 Iraqi dinars ($30,000) and a house. These houses had been owned by Turkomen families who had been forced out to the suburbs and Kurds who had been expelled. The immigrants, most of whom were extremely poor and uneducated, were isolated by the Turkomen and Kurds who had managed to stay, in a city that, up until then, had had no records of illiteracy. According to 1987 statistics, the Arab population had swelled to become the largest population sector, but 1997 statistics indicated that their numbers had declined. This was mainly due to their marginalisation, poverty levels and the failure of the government to provide them with assistance. Izzat Ibrahim was placed in charge of the north and decreed that no Turkoman or Kurd would be permitted to work or become involved in agriculture, attend Saddam university, buy or build a house without first changing his ethnicity. And now, as the spring poppies ripple gently in the fields and the fate of Saddam still remains unknown, the final act of this absurd Iraqi play has yet to unfold.
