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McClatchy NewspapersIraq's Kurdish-Arab tensions threaten to escalate into war
By Leila Fadel, McClatchy Newspapers 54 mins ago
MOSUL, Iraq — At the headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Mosul , Khasro Goran , the deputy governor of Iraq's Nineveh province, is worried about the future.
Iraq's Jan. 31 provincial elections have been hailed as a sign that the country is putting its violent past behind it, is moving toward democracy and no longer is in need of a large U.S. military force. Along a 300-mile strip of disputed territory that stretches across northern Iraq , however, the elections have rekindled the longstanding hostility between Sunni Muslim Arabs and Sunni Kurds, and there are growing fears that war could erupt.
Al Hadbaa, an Arab nationalist party with some Kurdish and other members that vowed to retake disputed territory from the Kurdish security forces; halt Kurdish expansion and eject Kurdish militias, won 47 percent of the vote in predominantly Arab Nineveh, according to the preliminary election results. That means the Kurds will lose control of the provincial council.
The provincial elections also cost the Kurds their place as Iraq's kingmakers. Their main ally in advocating a loose federal system of semi-autonomous Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni regions, the Shiite Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq , lost power in all the southern provinces it once controlled.
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