Group Identities, Oil, and the Local Political Domain in Kirkuk

Abstract

Using materials from British government and oil company archives, as well as magazine articles, newspaper articles, and other published sources in English and Arabic, this article addresses the group identities of the ethnic communities of Kirkuk, Iraq, in the context of the city’s growth as a result of the presence of the Iraqi oil industry. It contends that in the early to mid-twentieth century, Kirkuk developed a distinct domain of urban politics in which previously fluid ethnic identities hardened and in which Kirkukis, at one time more reliant on external patronage, became deeply invested. These circumstances led to intercommunal tensions and violence in the city in Iraq’s post-1958 revolutionary era.