Kirkuk Conflict Coming

Aljazeera.Net - Kurds accused of rigging Kirkuk vote

Sometimes elections solve problems, but sometimes they don't. In the Kirkuk region of northern Iraq, there is every reason to expect that we will see a rapid build-up of tensions as the results of the recent vote are announced.

In areas like these, it's not the voting that is the important issue, but the decision on the voters list, since this decides the ethnic balance of the election outcome.

The future of the Kirkuk region is one of the most difficult and potentially dangereous issues in the entire region. You can safely expect the conflict to escalate rapidly when the election results are announced. I can only hope that US plans to now take home the extra troops deployed to Iraq for the election are not implemented in this area.