Iraqi onlookers stand next to a burnt car following a motorcycle bombing attack which killed at least eight people on September 19, 2014 in the northern city of Kirkuk.(Getty) For Kirkuk, its oil-rich surroundings have been more a curse than a blessing. The northern Iraqi city struck black gold in 1927, while still under the control of the British Empire, and became the country’s oil production powerhouse in the north. At its peak, its oil fields were pumping out 3.2 billion barrels per day, but this has since fallen sharply amid war and mismanagement by the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who seized control in 1968. Kirkuk is in what is now Kurdistan, a semi-autonomous region of Iraq, and was for years a multi-ethnic city. Many Kurds, who make up the bulk of the 850,000 population, had arrived in Kirkuk in search of work in the city’s oil industry. […]