Oil riches are a curse for Iraq's divided Kirkuk

Deep beneath the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk is one of the most valuable oil deposits on the planet. But when Fahd Hussein looks at his home town, all he sees is a fetid slum. Kirkuk, potentially one of the richest cities in Iraq, is instead one of its poorest, a city of a million people with raw sewage flowing through the streets.
For those who live here, its oil wealth has been nothing but a curse. Distant rulers have carted off its booty, leaving behind poverty and ethnic violence as they fight for control.
"Look around you, look carefully. Does it look like a city where people live well?" said Hussein, a Kurdish security guard standing in brutal midday heat in a main square littered with rotting rubbish.
"It is like a barn for animals," he said. "Because of the oil and the fight to control it, Saddam kicked the Kurds out of the city and turned our lives to a nightmare."
For decades Arabs were brought here under former President Saddam Hussein to "Arabise" the city.
In the last decade of Saddam's rule, Kurds maintained a quasi-independent state in the mountains to the north. Kurds and Turkmen who say they were driven out under Saddam now claim the city as their homeland.
All three ethnic groups agree on one thing, said journalist Stran Abdullah: Kirkuk's wealth was never spent on them.
"Oil is the most important reason why the identity and the issue of Kirkuk has not been solved," he said.
"Because of the political struggle in the city, the government in Baghdad was reluctant to spend money here. And the neighbouring Kurdish government also did not help, because they did not know the political fate of Kirkuk," he said.
Anyone who has travelled around Iraq can see - in the crumbling buildings, the crowded houses and potholed streets - that it is one of the poorest big cities in the land.
The city's main hospital is dirty and poorly lit. Muhannad Abdul Hussein, a nurse who has worked there for 15 years, said authorities once tried to bring them new equipment but couldn't get it through the doors because they were too narrow.
Life has only got worse since Saddam was toppled and the city became an ethnic battleground. Side streets are blocked by concrete barricades, main streets are choked by traffic.