ONE of the few perks of reporting foreign affairs is the occasional opportunity to have a ringside seat to history in the making. Being in Iraqi Kurdistan this week as its people went to the polls to vote in an independence referendum was one such instance.

As the full results of the poll came in yesterday, it became clear that Iraqi Kurds had voted overwhelmingly in favour of independence from the country’s central government in Baghdad. In all, some 92.73 per cent of those living under Iraq’s northern autonomous Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) decisively backed statehood. In a turnout that most western democracies would envy, more than 72.61 per cent of those eligible cast their vote. Ever since the ill-considered Sykes-Picot agreement drew its clumsy and problematic borders across the Middle East more than 100 years ago, the Kurds have found themselves losing out. It’s hardly surprising, then, that on Monday they seized the opportunity to take their dream of full independence a step further by voting Yes.

I say a step further, because let’s not forget this was a non-binding vote, one simply aimed at preparing the ground and gaining a mandate from the people, before independence becomes a fully-fledged reality.

Even this first step, though, has already thrown up challenges and opposition. And the Kurds can expect more of that from here on in. No sooner had I flown out of the region following the referendum than the Iraqi Government and neighbours Iran and Turkey began ratcheting up the pressure. In Baghdad the central government threatened to send troops and seize oil fields, and took steps to shut down international flights to and from the Kurdish region. All of this begs the question, what next?

If there is one thing that is certain amidst all this turbulence, it’s that the Kurds face a tricky and potentially dangerous time ahead.

One of the most serious moves in the wake of the referendum was the Iraqi parliament’s mandate to the country’s prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, to deploy troops to the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, one of several disputed areas held by Kurdish Peshmerga forces but claimed by Baghdad.

Increasingly I can’t help feeling that this ethnically mixed city with its Kurdish, Arab and Turkmen population will inevitably feature heavily in any coming political storm in the region.

On referendum day itself before visiting the polling stations, I spent time in the company of the Kirkuk’s governor Najm al-Din Karim. A slight, wiry, bespectacled man, Mr Karim trained as a doctor in the United States before becoming governor of the city in which he was born and raised. He has a no-nonsense steely attitude and an agile and astute political mind, just the right qualifications for someone in charge of a place like Kirkuk.

During our conversation he was at pains to tell me how much journalists and outsiders like myself misunderstand the city and what it represents. “It’s the people from outside who make these grand pronouncements about how dangerous Kirkuk is, that it’s a timebomb or tinderbox and they have been saying this since 2003 and they have been proven wrong,” he insisted. Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen, Shi’ites and Sunnis, he said, have all been living side by side in this city.

Back in 2003 I was one of the first journalists to enter Kirkuk as the Kurdish Peshmerga liberated it from the regime of Saddam Hussein. To this day I still have a photograph of myself with colleagues and Peshmerga fighters, as behind us others tore down the statue of Saddam. That the giant figure of the dictator was dressed in Arab costume was deliberate, a sharp reminder to the Kurds and others that Kirkuk was and should always be an Arab city.

Today, not far from where that statue once stood, another has been erected to replace it. This time it’s a monumental steel and concrete figure of a Kurdish fighter, Kalashnikov rifle on his shoulder and a Kurdish flag raised aloft. The swapping over of those statutes tells all about both sides claim to Kirkuk.

Governor Karim is undoubtedly right in saying that ordinary citizens of different ethnicities have lived side by side in Kirkuk. But but there is no getting away from the fact that the city itself sits on massive oil wealth and that neither the Kurds nor Iraqi central government will likely contemplate relinquishing control of this.

Only days before the referendum the Kurds signed a billion-dollar contract with the Russian state oil giant Rosneft to develop its natural gas industry, for domestic supplies and eventual export. It’s hard to imagine that Kirkuk and it supplies would not be crucial to the implementation of this deal on the ground.

As I write there are reports that the Iraqi Government has called the referendum vote illegal, vowed to ignore the results and has sent a delegation from the Iraqi military to Iran to “co-ordinate military efforts” in response to the Kurdish ballot.

Iraqi troops, including Shi’ite Muslim militias incorporated into Iraq’s armed forces, are already in the Kirkuk area, where they are battling Islamic State (IS) fighters holed up in the town of Hawija about 40 miles southwest of Kirkuk. Driving back to Erbil from Kirkuk late on referendum day, news reports on the radio told of clashes between the Shi’ite militias and Kurdish forces. This may well be an ominous portent of things to come.

For now Iraqi Kurds are celebrating their referendum vote, but the squeeze by those opposed to their ambition grows greater by the day. The closing of land borders and shutting down of airspace by the Iraqi government threatens to isolate Iraqi Kurdistan. The talk too of mobilising troops toward Kirkuk may just be a high stakes bluff by Baghdad, but if not, then the future does not augur well. The Kurdish independence challenge would only be the latest crisis to rock Iraq in recent years.

Before I left Kirkuk Governor Karim told me how the independence vote was something he had been working for and dreaming of since he was 14. September 25, 2017 he said, was something his grandchildren will remember as part of the Kurdish people’s history.

Here’s hoping that date remains positively and peacefully auspicious for both Kurds and other Iraqis alike.