Unreported World

While Sunnis and Shias battle for control of Baghdad, Unreported World travels to northern Iraq, where Kurds are quietly consolidating their hold on 40% of Iraq's oil reserves and ethnic violence is fuelling a break up of the country.

Reporter Evan Williams and director Paul Kittel travel to Kirkuk, at the heart of the oil fields. It's claimed by three ethnic groups - Arabs, Kurds, and Turkomans. At stake is an area that sits on 40% of Iraq's oil reserves. If Iraq ever breaks up, the Kurds want to be certain this oil is theirs.

Under a deal brokered with Baghdad, the Kurds have already been promised a referendum that could take Kirkuk into the Kurdish Autonomous Region. - a largely self-governing Kurdish region just twenty kilometres from Kirkuk. Arabs fear that if the oil-rich city joins the autonomous region it will allow that region to secede from Iraq as a fully independent nation.

The only way for western journalists to work in this area is to embed with US Forces. Williams and Kittel join units based at Kirkuk air base. When Saddam Hussein was gassing the Kurds in the late eighties it was from here that some of his planes took off.

Travelling with the US forces, the team enters Kirkuk city and finds half a million Kurds have returned to reclaim the area after being expelled under Saddam. They tell Williams how their homes were destroyed and relatives killed as Saddam turned Kirkuk into an Arab city.

The government in Baghdad relies on Kurdish politicians to stay in power. Williams discovers they're funding a programme that gives $19,000 to every Arab who leaves the city - and $8000 to every Kurd who arrives.

But as the Kurds move back in, tens of thousands of Sunni Arabs are increasing their resistance to Kurdish control. In a city hospital Williams meets victims of the latest suicide attack. The violence is nowhere near the scale of Baghdad, but the Clinical director says that every day a dozen people are injured or killed.

Unreported World also discovers Arabs are boycotting the regional council that rules the area, helping smooth the way to Kurdish control.

The team travels with US units as they mount night raids on villages in the heartland of the Sunni Arab insurgency. US officers tell Unreported World that they don't trust Arab police and soldiers, who they say work with the insurgents. Instead they work closely with the Kurds. Since Kurdish troops took over guarding the main oil pipelines, insurgent attacks have dropped dramatically.

As Williams and Kittel leave Iraq, it's clear that tension between the Kurds and Arabs is growing as extremists on both sides fan the flames of sectarian hatred.

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