Since the end of the Ottoman Empire
and the establishment of Iraq, conflict has emerged in Kirkuk over
political and physical control of the territory, which has only intensified
since the 2003 United States-led invasion of Iraq. As a result, Kurd, Arab
and Turkmen politicians have been competing for power, with little sign of
compromise. Despite the failure of elites to demonstrate a willingness to
reach an agreement, considerable attention from peacebuilders and donors
has focused on elite negotiations while the local side of peacebuilding has
been ignored. Utilizing survey research with 511 shopkeepers and customers
in the main Kirkuk bazaar, SIPRI’s latest Policy Paper ‘Building everyday peace in Kirkuk, Iraq: The potential
of locally focused interventions’ provides an understanding of
how, when and by whom acts of peace and conflict are carried out at the
everyday level, and gives policy recommendations for interventions that
would address the local side of peacebuilding. This essay highlights some
core areas where there is an opportunity for peacebuilding interventions to
affect real change in the everyday lives of Kirkukis. The importance lies
in the fact that local peacebuilding can provide a better basis for a
high-level political settlement and, as Kirkuk is seen as a ‘mini Iraq’, peacebuilding in Kirkuk can
feed into peacebuilding in the wider country.
Investing in local language training
One key aspect of the local dynamics
in Kirkuk is the languages used in everyday interactions. Language plays a
central role in intercommunity interactions and, with three distinct
languages (Arabic, Kurdish and Turkmen), multilingual proficiency is an
important factor in Kirkuk. The Kirkuk bazaar study shows that
there is a direct correlation between being able to speak the languages of
other ethnosectarian groups and increased social interaction across the
groups. Although the majority of Kurds and Turkmen can speak at least one
other Kirkuki language, language proficiency in all three—necessary for
improved community relations—is lacking. The majority of Sunni Arabs can
only speak Arabic, which is a significant factor in their isolation and
lesser privilege in the way they can occupy space in the bazaar. Moreover,
there is an additional dimension to this situation whereby Sunni Arab women
are the most isolated group in Kirkuk across a number of markers, such as
interaction with other groups and socializing in the bazaar.
Since an ability to speak the various local languages is important for
interaction between groups, there is the potential for interventions to
focus on community language learning programmes and services—similar
programmes exist in Kosovo for Albanian and Serbian.
Extra attention should be given to Sunni Arabs, particularly Sunni Arab
women, as their limited proficiency in the other local languages isolates
them on a number of levels within society. Due to the importance of building
the language capabilities of the youth of Kirkuk, interventions can also
focus on the development of a new multilingual curriculum in schools,
similar to the one that exists in Brčko, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Teaching in all three languages would enable students to communicate
better with other ethnosectarian groups from an early age and give an
understanding of different cultures, with the result of limiting conflict
and building social trust.
Creating and improving social spaces for interaction
This research shows that
ethnosectarian identity barely factors in either customers’ selection of
shops or shopkeepers’ negotiations on price, meaning that there is real
room for intercommunal interactions in the bazaar. The relatively
unrestricted interactions between the different ethnosectarian groups
demonstrates that the bazaar is a good site through which to focus
attention on building relationships between communities and working towards
social cohesion. However, with the establishment of more homogeneous
ethnosectarian neighbourhood bazaars and large malls in Kirkuk, attention
to improving the central bazaar—both physically and as a place of social
interaction across the ethnosectarian division lines—is necessary in order
to maintain its historic, multi-ethnosectarian roots and improve it as a
site for potential everyday peace. The bazaar is one of the few places in
Kirkuk where all communities interact, and it is important it remains such
a space. The bazaar needs investment from international actors to repair
and modernize it, while making it a more user-friendly and pleasing place to
be. In order to ensure the bazaar remains a site of interaction, it is
vital that social spaces are improved and increased—especially as this
study demonstrates the importance of social interaction.
The bazaar is a valuable place of intergroup socializing, since the
majority of people socialize with people from all groups and this research
confirms that. However, the results of the surveys demonstrated that women
socialize less in the bazaar and, despite the majority feeling comfortable
walking around the bazaar, only a minority feel comfortable socializing
there. Moreover, more than one third of women feel unsafe in the bazaar and
the majority feel they are treated unequally. This demonstrates the
gendered aspect of space and indicates that there is room for improvement
in how women feel in utilizing the space in the bazaar in order to take
advantage of it for intercommunity interaction; a factor also relevant for
other marginalized groups.
Focusing on gender equality education
Creating social spaces solely for
women can help to encourage interaction between women from the various
ethnosectarian groups who currently socialize far less in the bazaar than
men. As women do not feel they are treated equally in the bazaar—and this
has a direct impact on how they can utilize the space—it is important that
there is a focus on gender equality education both in the bazaar and in
wider Kirkuki society. Since women are particularly limited in how free
they feel to occupy space and how safe they feel within it, encouraging
more women to take on the role of shopkeeper and providing assistance to
help women set up businesses can offer spaces that feel more gender equal.
However, it is important that this happens in conjunction with gender
equality education in the bazaar so that women shopkeepers do not face
abuse. In order to improve the safety (and perception of safety) of women,
gender equality, and how women can occupy the space, it is important that
actors involved in the gender training of police and programmes to increase
the number of women police officers in Iraq focus on
Kirkuk. This can only happen with the support of the Kirkuk Provincial
Council, which could also look into developing new gender-sensitive
protocols for the police and wider justice system, with real repercussions
for failing to follow them.
Understanding privilege in societal dynamics
Despite the drastic changes in
Kirkuk since October 2017, when the central government took control of the
governorship and security there from the Kurds, Kurds are still
seen to have the most influence in both the bazaar and in wider society by
participants in the survey. It is important to note that privilege does
change over time and although Kurdish privilege is slowly waning, factors
like the imminent election of a Kurdish governor and
the potential return of the Kurdish forces will
once again increase Kurdish privilege. Privilege is significant in a place
like Kirkuk where wasta—using connections to get things done—plays an
important role in society. Moreover, this has a direct impact on how Kurds
utilize the space, specifically with regards to acts of everyday conflict.
Participants in this research highlighted that identity signifiers have a
notable impact on increased tensions at the everyday level, particularly
when they occur in conjunction with other factors such as increased
nationalist behaviour on national holidays. Kurds are the most likely to
wear identity signifiers during national holidays and are the most likely
to celebrate these holidays in public. For this reason, community tensions
are seen to increase in the bazaar on holidays linked directly to the
Kurds, such as Kurdish Clothing Day or Nawroz (Kurdish new year). This is not
to say that identity signifiers and national holidays are inherently negative,
rather that attention needs to focus on minimizing their potential as a
driver of conflict. Kurdish privilege, connected to influence, impacts on
the dynamics of bazaar interactions in other ways too. For example, Kurds
are the least likely to avoid topics that cause conflict and the most
likely to discuss contentious subjects. Additionally, this research
highlighted that Kurds feel freer in how they utilize space in the bazaar
and are the most likely to confront someone who is seen to have insulted
them. Moreover, although women are less likely to confront someone who
insults them, Kurdish women are more likely to than both Sunni Arab and
Turkmen men. However, it is important to highlight that the majority of
Kurds still carry out acts of conflict avoidance. Nonetheless, the impact
that privilege has on how people occupy space and carry out acts of
everyday conflict rather than everyday peace is an area that needs
attention in Kirkuk.
In conclusion
Creating better social spaces,
developing a new school curriculum and improving language capabilities
would all help to improve interactions between the ethnosectarian groups.
Nevertheless, wider dialogue and educational programmes are also needed so
that people understand the various cultures that exist in Kirkuk and how
their individual actions may cause conflict. Importantly, this research
demonstrates that—for the most part—people do engage in acts of everyday
peace, with everyday conflict only increasing at distinct times. Finally,
this research highlights that there is real potential for locally focused
interventions to play a role in building peace at the local, everyday level
in Kirkuk.
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