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KIRKUK, (Southern Kurdistan), Feb 7 (IPS) -
”When someone has the power, he will take
everything,” says retired soldier Mohammed Hassan
Mohammed in a Shia mosque in the Northern Iraqi city
of Kirkuk.
Like most Shia Arabs in this oil-rich city, his
family came here in the 1980s during Saddam's
massive campaign of ethnic cleansing against the
Kurds. Like most Shias here, his family came from
the Iraqi military. And like most Shias here, he
rejects Kurdish claims that Kirkuk is a part of
Kurdistan.
What about claims that Saddam killed or forcibly
removed more than 100,000 Kurds from Kirkuk and
replaced them with Arabs, I ask. ”What they say is
very correct,” he says, ”but when you see what
they're doing, it's like what Saddam Hussein was
doing.”
But Kurdish leaders are firm. They want all the
Arabs who came to Kirkuk since 1975 to leave.
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) chief Jalal
Talabani, the Kurdish candidate for president or
prime minsiter of Iraq, has made the repatriation of
Arabs from Kirkuk a non-negotiable point for a
Kurdish-Shia governing coalition in Baghdad.
Younger Arabs find the conflict simply ridiculous.
Like a whole generation of Arabs, 24-year-old
medical resident Ali Falah has lived his whole life
in Kirkuk. ”This is my home,” he says. ”All of the
time we feel the problem of the Kurdish policy here
but we don't agree with that. I feel that Kirkuk
city is like a mixture of all the types of people in
Iraq. Like a small state. For what reason are we
fighting each other. Why can't we live as brothers.
As Iraqi people. That's all.”
But he feels that dream is slipping. The red, white
and green Kurdish flag flies throughout the city.
All important government offices are now staffed
with officers of the major Kurdish political
parties.
”When you walk into all the important offices of
state here in Kirkuk,” Ali Falah says, ”all the
important signs in all the important offices are
written in Kurdish because they want to isolate
Kirkuk from the centre.”
Like other Arabs, Ali Fatah says he will never leave
the city of his birth, but Kurdish politicians are
unsympathetic.
”The principle is important,” Iraqi Kurdistan Prime
Minister Necevin Barzani told the Financial Times
recently. ”Whether or not the children were born
there is a different issue. These people have
occupied property that belonged to other people and
unrightfully settled. They should go back.”
Behind the bellicose rhetoric, however, there are at
least some signs of a peaceful solution ahead.
Sheikh Nife al-Jabouri has represented one of the
largest Sunni tribes in Northern Iraq on Kirkuk's
local council since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein
22 months ago. His father and brother were killed by
the regime after they attempted an officers revolt
against the government. After that, the Sheikh says,
the rest of his family was rounded up and put in
prison.
This election year Sheikh Nife al-Jabouri ran for
Kirkuk's local council on a brotherhood slate that
included both major Kurdish political parties. He
has been in regular negotiations with Kurdish
leaders on the future of Kirkuk, and he says he is
getting ready for another round beginning Sunday in
Arbil.
He is confident the repatriation will go smoothly.
”The Kurds will not try to move people out in a hard
way,” he says. ”That may be the way people talk on
the street but that's not the speech of their
leaders at the negotiations. The Iraqi government
will offer people money to move and jobs in the
south of Iraq and then offer their houses here in
Kirkuk to Kurdish refugees..”
And about the Arabs who do not want to move to the
south?
”We should remember that in some countries you can
become a citizen after living there for just four or
five years,” he said. ”Every person has a right to
live where he wants. We all want to live in peace
and safety and brotherhood.”
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