Arbella Bet-Shlimon can be considered one of the new Iraq researchers who attempted to break free of the conventional wisdom that shaped much of the discourse about the country after 2003. Her City of Black Gold, Oil, Ethnicity, and the making of Modern Kirkuk takes a look at the political and economic development of the city from Ottoman times to the present. Rather than seeing the city as always being divided by competing ethnicities the book creates a history where Kirkuk was shaped by Turkey, England, Iraq, oil and where ethnicity changed over time.
In the present time Kirkuk is considered a city divided between three distinct groups. The Kurds claim it as their Jerusalem, Turkmen say it has always been a Turkmen metropolis while Arabs say it is an Iraqi city. There are also Christians and Armenians but they are usually ignored. Journalists and historians have taken the current situation and considered it historical which Bet-Shlimon hoped to prove was not true through her book. Her research points to times when language, outside powers, the Iraqi government and oil were far more important than ethnicity.
City of Black Gold sees the Ottoman period as a time where patronage, opposition to the central control, and tribes were driving forces in Kirkuk rather than ethnicity. The city’s elite were mostly Turkish speaking who forged loyalties based upon patronage. Europeans for example, who visited the city said that the prominent families considered themselves Turks even though some of them were Kurds and Christians. Kirkuk accepted ties to the Ottomans but at the same time resisted its centralization attempts later in the empire. In the rural areas the Ottomans supported Kurdish tribes even though they often switched over to the Persian side.
Those trends were continued under the British where tribes were backed to run rural Kirkuk while the elite continued to receive support from the Turks to oppose the new authority coming from Baghdad. Rather than seeing itself as part of Kurdistan when Sheikh Mahmoud Barzinji rose up against the Mandate and declared himself king of the Kurds only one part of one tribe in Kirkuk supported him while the rest were opposed. The book argues this shows that ethnicity was far from the driving force in Kirkuk at this time.
Bet-Shlimon points to a turning point in Kirkuk’s history following the 1958 coup. It was at this point that ethnic politics began forming in the city and becoming a driving force. This was when Mulla Mustafa Barzani for instance began claiming Kirkuk as a Kurdish city. There were also outbreaks of large scale violence between Kurds and Turkmen in Kirkuk on several occasions that had not been witnessed before. After 1968 the Baathist government took major steps to Arabize the Kirkuk district and considered Kurds either as inherently suspicious or enemies of the state.
Finally, the book looks at the role of oil in Kirkuk. The Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) was treated almost like its own state by the British and Iraqi governments. It profoundly changed the demographics of the area by bringing in hundreds of workers from not only the Kirkuk district but other parts of Iraq seeking work. It led to strikes over better wages, organizing by the Iraqi Communist Party which was once the largest organization in the country, attacks by the Kurdish nationalist movement, and jobs in the industry were handed out as patronage by various governments.
In the end City of Black Gold presents an alternative history which challenges the conventional wisdom of ethnosectarian politics as being the center piece of Iraqi and Kirkuk politics. It treats that as an ahistorical trope and provides ample evidence that it did not always play a dominate role. The one main criticism of the book is that it only gives short shrift to modern Kirkuk. The 1990s to the present are barely covered. Perhaps that was because the author wanted to focus upon history more than contemporary times because those were the times where the politics and economy of Kirkuk were established. Otherwise it is an important look at a city has led to plenty of conflict in Iraq.
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