For 130 Kurdish families just returned from exile, purgatory is a muddy field of green canvas tents propped up on this city's edge, the floors damp with rainwater, the interiors warmed by small kerosene heaters.
It is not the homecoming they expected. Driven from Kirkuk more than a decade ago by former president Saddam Hussein's government, they eke out their days waiting for what they say is their due.
"We lost years of our lives, so we need compensation," Lukman Abdul-Rahman, 39, said as he stood surrounded by a dozen men, all nodding vigorously. "The Kurds have suffered much more than others, and we should be the government's top priority."
Kurdish demands for political rights and reparations have emerged as one of the most pressing issues confronting US officials, who are trying to create an Iraqi transitional government. Kirkuk, an oil-rich city just outside the northern Kurdish region, is the linchpin of the Kurds' drive to retain autonomy.
The campaign by Kurdish leaders for broad governing powers and families' demands property restoration are feeding ethnic tensions that could explode. That prospect seems even more likely if Kirkuk's political future is put to a popular vote in the area, an idea that Kurdish leaders and some members of Iraq's Governing Council support.
Protests by Arab and Turkmen residents against the Kurdish claims have ended in gunfire and death. US soldiers have stepped up street patrols, and their searches of the headquarters of various political parties have uncovered illegal wea-pons. A bomb exploded on Jan. 11 near the headquarters of one of the two main Kurdish parties.
Thousands of Kurdish have flooded into the city, along with a few Turkmen families, to demand the return of land stripped from them under Saddam. Many live in squalor, some in tent villages, others in ramshackle public buildings. Arabs who were paid to move here as part of the former government's campaign to make the region Arab fear that Kurds will exact vengeance. Many have fled.
For the two main Kurdish parties, this change in demographics bolsters their claim that the Kurdish autonomous region should envelop Kirkuk. Kurdish leaders believe they need the oil fields and the rich agricultural land nearby to keep the region economically independent. But no political group is willing to cede control of Kirkuk to the Kurds.
The Americans are trying to control the situation, said Joost Hiltermann, a Middle East expert with the International Crisis Group, a conflict-prevention group, adding, "it could really get out of hand."
Hiltermann said: "The Kurds have to make a basic decision -- to go with the Americans or not. If they go with the Americans, they'll get support, but not everything they want, namely Kirkuk."
Paul Bremer, the US administrator in Iraq, has met twice recently with Kurdish leaders to ask them to back down from their demands, including from their claims to Kirkuk, only to be rebuffed.
Fatal clashes have flared up, with Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens each claiming the city as their own.
"The ambition of the Kurds is not a new ambition," said Esmail al-Hadidi, deputy mayor of Kirkuk and a member of one of the city's oldest Arab families.
"But we need Kirkuk for everyone. The Arabs here are not willing to let Kirkuk go to the Turkmen and the Kurds," he said.
At a nearby youth and sports center for Turkmens, a banner proclaims that "Kirkuk is a Turkmen city and will stay a Turkmen city forever."
Muhammad Arga Oglo, 30, the director of the Turkmen Student and Youth Union, greeted a visitor while sitting beneath a poster of Ottoman horsemen slaughtering enemies in a river of blood.
"We have the right to express ourselves by any means," he said. "If it's necessary to defend ourselves, we will."
Thousands of Arabs and Turkmens held a rally at the end of last month against the Kurdish demand for autonomy. It ended in gunfire between protesters and Kurdish guerrilla fighters. Four protesters were killed and 24 wounded; other killings have followed.
Officers with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, which controls the city, have asked leaders of the main ethnic groups to stop the violence. But during a sweep of the offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, US soldiers found a cache of weapons, said spokesman Major Douglas Vincent. He said soldiers also found weapons at the offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the other main Kurdish party, and at the Iraqi Turkmen Front.
Najat Hassan, the local head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, denied that US soldiers had found illegal weapons. He also defended what he called the right of Kurds to govern the city.
"Kirkuk is a historical and geographical part of the Kurdish region," he said.
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