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The
Iraqi city of Kirkuk has been the scene of ethnic
tension since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April
2003. The recent return of Kurds who were forcibly
removed by Saddam has added to the local problems
and led to the displacement of Arab Iraqis sent
there as part of the former government’s
“Arabisation” of the key oil city.
Increasing numbers of the existing local population
are now leaving according to officials and NGOs
working in Kirkuk, which is 255km north of the
capital, Baghdad.
A local government official who did not want to be
named, said that nearly 16,830 Kurdish families have
moved to the city since March 2004. They are living
in old government buildings or are camped in the
outskirts of the city, waiting to return to homes
they say they were forcibly removed from. The
official confirmed that an additional 830 families
had joined the group three weeks ago, putting
further pressure on Arab residents of the city to
leave.
This rise, he said, could be due to the fact that
the new Iraqi president is of Kurdish origin,
leading Kurds to believe that they now have the
right to return through unofficial means.
The Kurds have 77 parliamentary seats in the new
national assembly as well as the position of
president occupied by Jalal Talabani. A spokesman at
Talabani’s office in Baghdad said that the new
president had not yet decided on the sensitive issue
of Kirkuk but affirmed to IRIN that Kurds would be
welcome to return to the city.
International organisations are concerned that the
situation could get out of control. “On one side
it’s extremely important to them that oppressed
Kurds have the presidency of the country but on the
other side they have been making clear that they
don’t want to be part of Iraq and it’s that which
concerns the future of Kirkuk,” Joest Hilterman, a
spokesman for the International Crisis Group (ICG),
told IRIN, in Kirkuk following discussions with the
Kurdish community.
Saddam Hussein banished Kurds from the oil-rich city
of Kirkuk as part of his Arabisation programme which
started in the 1970s, placing Arabs in wealthier
residential areas. Some 250,000 Kurds and other
non-Arabs, were forced to give up their homes and
leave the city by the Baath regime, mainly in 1997,
according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). Most went to
northern Iraq and some moved in with relatives but
many ended up in squalid camps such as Al Salam,
near Chamchamal, on the southern tip of the region
and Benislawa, near the northern city of Arbil.
Those displaced were assisted by local Kurdish
authorities and foreign aid agencies. “There were
around 400 families camped in this area, now there
are 650. I cannot believe that no one can see this
mess and feel what we are suffering. With the Kurds
in power our situation has became worse,”
56-year-old Hussein Azize, told IRIN in a makeshift
camp populated by Kurdish returnees on the outskirts
of Kirkuk.
According to the Arab Displacement Union (ADU), a
local NGO, more than 4,000 Arab families have been
made homeless since the conflict of 2003. Less than
25 per cent can return to the south of Iraq and most
are camped outside the region, in the cities of
Diwania, Diala and near the southern city of Basra,
according to the ADU.
Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS) officials in
Kirkuk maintain that urgent supplies are needed for
internally displaced people (IDPs), especially food,
tents and drinking water.
“The humanitarian situation in the city is not
improving, especially with increasing displacement
in the city. Every day we need more supplies and
nothing is being done to help those people,” an IRCS
spokesman, Nuri Al Salihi told IRIN.
They add that a solution needs to be found quickly
to prevent further conflict in the city, as well as
health problems that could affect children, such as
malnutrition and water-borne diseases.
Other organisations reported a shortage of supplies.
“We are ready to help our brothers, but we don’t
have any supplies and every day the needs in the
city are increasing,” Nuri Al Salihi, a spokesman
for a local NGO in Kirkuk, Human Rights Organisation
(HRO), told IRIN. In addition, sewage and water
treatment in the city are not working well and waste
is overflowing in the streets, posing a health
hazard, Yetcci Subhi, a volunteer in the Kurdistan
Peace Organisation (KPO), told IRIN.
Officials at the Ministry of Displacement and
Migration (MoDM) told IRIN in Baghdad that with the
establishment of the new government and continuing
security problems, there have been difficulties
sending relief supplies to the area. Long before the
Arabisation process started, the Turkomen people
made up the majority of the population in Kirkuk,
when it was part of the Ottoman Empire. Numbers have
fallen over the years due to the influx of Kurds
from the north and then the Arabisation process,
which forced both Turkomen and Kurds out of the
city.
US State Department statistics from 2004 show that
Turkomen people along with Christians, Assyrians and
other smaller religious and ethnic groups make up
just five per cent of Iraq’s population today. There
are no accurate figures on how many are now in
Kirkuk, but estimates suggest they currently
represent 20 per cent of the population in the city.
The majority of Iraq’s Turkomen community are now
based in the northern region between the cities of
Tal Afar and Mandily and in northern Baghdad. The
community has been caught in the middle of
population movements and having already been
discriminated against during Saddam’s regime, they
fear that their situation will not change.
The Turkomen are descendants of the Turkik-speaking
Oguz tribes from Central Asia and historically
formed a cultural barrier between the Arabs in the
south and the Kurds in the north.
Jinan Saluci, a member the Turkomen Shia Council (TSC),
told IRIN that many families from the community had
started to leave Kirkuk, saying that the city had
now effectively become part of the Kurdish north. He
added that there are no accurate statistics on how
many have left so far.
“I’m leaving the city and moving to the capital as I
cannot continue to see our origin being given away
so easily to Kurds. They will soon have total power
inside Kirkuk and we will be discriminated against,
just as Saddam did with us,” a Turkomen father of
five, Ziad Al Muktar, told IRIN.
With Talabani in place, tension between Arabs, Kurds
and Turkomen people could intensify in the oil-rich
city, the TNF claimed. “They (Kurds) knew what to do
and put us out from any important place in the
government as a way of controlling decisions over
Kirkuk’s future. They are just making more Turkomen
and Arabs leave without any kind of humanitarian
attitude,” Sungul Chapuk, a Turkomen member of the
new national assembly, told IRIN.
In an effort to resolve land disputes between Arabs
and Kurds in the city, the government has
established the Iraqi Property Claims Commission (IPCC),
which started accepting claims in June 2004.
Youssef Ahmed, a senior official at the IPCC, told
IRIN that nearly 39,000 claims had been registered
in the office, but less than 420 decisions have been
made so far, most of them giving Kurds the right to
return and reclaim property and businesses turned
over to Arab Iraqis in Saddam’s days. But whether
newly-displaced Arab residents of the city will
receive any official compensation remains unclear.
“As an official, I cannot judge the government but I
believe that something is going wrong here. Before
you give the right to someone to return, you should
offer the minimum living standards to the ones you
are displacing and not follow the same step that was
taken by Saddam’s regime,” Ahmed said, implying that
two wrongs do not make a right.
Hilterman from the ICG stressed that urgent action
is needed. He said that the interim government needs
to halt the return of displaced Kurds to Kirkuk,
allowing them to go back only if the IPCC has
already ruled that they may do so to re-occupy the
property they are claiming as their own.
IRIN News
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