KIRKUK, Iraq — This fabled city of muddy streets and hidden guns, where one person's folklore is another's atrocity, has U.S. officials concerned that ethnic tensions could ignite a civil war and spoil plans for a unified Iraq.
Rising between the mountains and the desert, Kirkuk and the surrounding region are home to 40% of Iraq's oil reserves. The city is a strategic foothold in the north for competing Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens. History and myth here are twisted and revised daily over sugared tea. One day Kirkuk appears to be a multiethnic success story; the next it seems to be tumbling into chaos.
"Dry kindling is all over the place," said Col. William Mayville, commander of the U.S. Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade overseeing Kirkuk. "So you don't want someone coming in here with matches and making a fire."
More than 100,000 Kurds forced from the city and replaced with Arabs during Saddam Hussein's rule want to reclaim what was taken from them. Hundreds of Kurds are living in tents at the city's ragged rim, resembling an army of the dispossessed. The scene conveys the passion Kurds have for Kirkuk -- they call it their Jerusalem -- and reinforces their insistence that many Arabs leave the region in what would amount to another round of ethnic relocation.
That is a troubling prospect for the Bush administration's vision of preventing Iraq from cracking along ethnic lines. Such a failure could set off an international crisis if Turkey dispatches troops across the mountains to stop its Kurdish enemies from gaining control here. Turkey, which claims historical rights to the city, has long had designs on the region's oil wealth.
"Kirkuk is a benchmark for how most Kurds would define their legitimacy in Iraq," said Barham Salih, prime minister for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two main political parties controlling the Kurdish autonomous zone in northern Iraq. "We have a claim to Kirkuk rooted in history, geography and demographics.... This is a recipe for civil war if you don't do it right."
Violence so far has been sporadic. But many Arabs fear retribution and street battles -- like a firefight in December that left four dead and dozens wounded -- and have fled.
Said Akar, an Arab member of the Kirkuk City Council, said: "The people are worried and they're leaving because Kurdish militias are coming to their houses and threatening them."
