This is the second in a two part article. Read Part One, Where Kurdistan Meets the Red Zone, here.
KIRKUK, IRAQ -- Kirkuk, like Baghdad, is one of the most dangerous places in the world. Car bombs, suicide attacks, shootings, and massacres erupt somewhere in the city every day. It is ethnically divided between Arabs, Kurds, and Turkmens, and is a lightning rod for foreign powers (namely Turkey at this time) that interfere in the city's politics in the hopes of staving off an ethnic unraveling of their own.
The city's terrorists are mostly Baathists, not Islamists, and their racist ideology casts Kurds and Turkmens as enemies. They're boxed in on all sides, though, and have a hard time operating outside their own neighborhoods. In their impotent rage they murder fellow Arabs by the dozens and hundreds. They have, in effect, strapped suicide belts around their entire community while the Kurds and Turkmens shudder and fight to keep the Baath in its box.
Kurdish and Turkmen neighborhoods are safer than the Arab quarter, but the city is out of control. Car bombs can and do explode anywhere at any time.
I spent the day with Peshmerga General "Mam" (Uncle) Rostam and Kirkuk's Chief of Police Major Sherzad at a house Mam Rostam uses a base in an old Arab neighborhood that now belongs to the Kurds. Just after lunch Major Sherzad’s walkie-talkie began urgently squawking.
"There has been a shooting," he said. "Two men on a motorcycle rode down the street and fired a gun at people walking on the sidewalk. One of the men was apprehended. They are bringing him here."
For some reason I assumed when the chief said "here" he meant the police station. He did not. He meant Mam Rostam's.
"They will be here in two minutes," the chief said.
"Here?" I said. "They're bringing him here? To the house?"
"They will bring him here before taking him down to the station," he said. "I'll interrogate him here. I'm not going to feel good until I slap him."
An Iraqi Police truck pulled up in front of the house and slammed on the brakes.
"Here he is," the chief said.
I grabbed my video camera, flipped the switch to on, and ran out the door.
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