ERBIL,
Kurdistan-Iraq May 13 (AFP) - Thousands of Kurdish
refugees of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war want UN
recognition of their status and to return to the
Iranian town from which they were driven.
"We want to go back under United Nations
supervision, but Iran does not accept us and we have
no status under the UN," said Mahmoud Azizi, a
member of a committee representing 223
Kurdish-Iranian families in Camp Qawa in Iraqi
Kurdistan's capital, Erbil.
The Kurds were driven from their homes in Iran's
Kasr Shirin village at the start of Saddam Hussein's
war against the Islamic Republic in 1981 by Baathist
forces. They were resettled in what is today the
predominantly Sunni Arab province of Al-Anbar.
The Kurds fled Anbar, where they were harassed and
attacked by insurgents, to Kurdistan at the end of
2005. But some 25 families remain in the desert
region, said Mansur Abdallah, a 21-year-old camp
resident.
"The situation grew worse for us there after the
fall of the regime. Here most of the young people
are unemployed. We lack basic goods," Abdallah said
Saturday.
A Kurdish government official said the refugees were
ready to accept any form of recognition so that they
could qualify for more assistance.
"These people want to go back to Iran, but they
would settle for political asylum in Iraq," said
Deiyar Zibari, the Kurdish provincial government's
UN liaison.
Zibari said the Kurdish regional government was
prepared to build homes for the refugees with UN
assistance if and when they were given an official
status by the UN's refugee agency.
Qawa itself was built with UN assistance, he said.
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A Kurdish fighter from the Jaff tribe, the largest
tribe in the Iraqi Kurdistan region, attends the
annual festival of her tribe in the area of Qara
Dagh, 50 kms south of the Iraqi Kurdish northern
city of Sulaimaniyah. Thousands of Kurdish refugees
of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, who live in a camp in
the Iraqi Kurdish city of Erbil, want UN recognition
of their status and to return to the Iranian town
from which they were driven. AFP |
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