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Influx of returning Kurds creates a
housing crunch in Kirkuk
21.5.2006
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Up to 250,000 people forced
to leave by Saddam are coming back to the city, and
100,000 newcomers have flocked there.
KIRKUK, Kurdistan-Iraq - Surrounded by
half-built housing developments, crowded tenements
and congested traffic, business is booming at the
tiny storefront office of Zakariya Real Estate.
Maps of subdivisions hang like gridded wallpaper.
Shelves display tile samples and colorful pictures
of modular homes, priced to fit a range of budgets.
"Seventy percent of our clients are Kurds who were
displaced by Saddam Hussein," Zakariya Tahir Ali
said in a recent interview. "Now they are coming
back."
As Kurds with means build new houses, thousands of
others who have returned to Kirkuk are demanding
that their old houses be vacated by Arabs there
under Saddam's ethnic policies, heightening tensions
in one of Iraq's most diverse cities.
The former Iraqi president forced approximately
250,000 Kurdish residents to give up their homes to
Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city and the
region's oil industry. U.S. and Iraqi officials
estimate that nearly all those Kurds have returned
to Kirkuk, capital of Al Tamim Province, along with
as many as 100,000 newcomers.
Kirkuk, with a population of about 1 million, has
long been home to a mix of Kurds, Turkomen and
Arabs, both Shiite and Sunni Muslims, and a
smattering of Christians.
Early in May, Turkomen leaders held discussions with
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most
influential Shiite leader, to push for greater
representation in Kirkuk's government. But it is the
majority Kurds who have taken the strongest action
to claim the city as their own.
Thousands of claims
Iraq's constitution outlines a process by which
those who were illegally displaced by Saddam's
regime would be compensated for confiscated property
or resettled in their old homes. Under the plan,
Arabs who relinquish Kurdish properties would also
receive relocation funds. The resettlement programs
would take place in advance of a citywide census and
2007 referendum that will decide whether the
oil-rich province should be annexed to the
semi-autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq's north.
Kurdish families have filed thousands of claims with
the Iraq Property Claims Commission, created to
redress victims of unjust land-grabs by Saddam's
regime. Of 131,937 land claims filed since 2003
nationwide, one-third of them were filed in Kirkuk,
according to commission figures.
Of those, about 2,500 claims have been settled, but
there is still no effective legal mechanism to
execute eviction orders on Arab occupants.
Thousands of Kurds have moved to Kirkuk to await
adjudication of their claims, settling in bombed-out
buildings and squatter camps throughout the city.
About a half-mile from the Zakariya Real Estate
office, Kirkuk's soccer stadium is home to one of
the city's largest displaced communities. During a
recent visit, two families could be seen holding a
slapdash wedding ceremony in the stadium parking
lot. Hundreds of others huddled in crumbling storage
and changing rooms.
The garbage-strewn stadium lacks running water and
electricity and has occasionally been targeted by
insurgents' rockets.
'Nobody cares'
"My family was driven out of Kirkuk during the
former regime because we are Kurds," said Ahmed Nori,
29, a refugee who said he was born in Kirkuk. "We
returned to Kirkuk after the regime fell and have
lived here since then. Nobody cares about displaced
people ."
Ali opened his real estate office three years ago
and says he has been doing brisk business. He says
he has sold two-thirds of the 1,850 land parcels he
started out with and is looking for more land to
develop -- but real estate inside the city has
become increasingly scarce.
Some beneficiaries of Saddam's Arabization plan say
Kurdish settlers are pressuring them to leave Kirkuk.
But after as many as 30 years in the northern city,
many Arab families have no place to go.
Kurdish leaders say they are willing to negotiate
resettlement costs for Kirkuk's Arab residents but
insist that most of them must leave.
LaTimes com
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