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Kirkuk's time-bomb could explode at any
time 23.1.2007 |
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January 23, 2007
BAGHDAD, January 22, -- The oil-rich city of
Kirkuk, some 290km north of the capital, Baghdad,
was long considered a microcosm of Iraq with its
diversity of ethnic and religious groups. With
Turkomen, Kurds, Assyrians, Chaldeans and Arabs
living together in peace, it was a melting pot of
the various communities that reflected Iraq's
demographic makeup.
However, the government of former Iraqi president
Saddam Hussein changed all that. Its 'Arabisation'
policy in the early 1980s and during the 1990s
forced tens of thousands of Kurds and other
non-Arabs to flee Kirkuk. They were replaced with
pro-government Arabs from the impoverished south.
But after the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003
brought Saddam's rule to an end, Kirkuk was widely
seen as a tinderbox as Kurds and other non-Arabs
streamed back with their house keys in hand only to
find their homes were either sold or given to Arabs.
Tens of thousands of returning Kurds found nowhere
to live except abandoned government buildings and
parks. They became displaced in their own hometown.
At the same time, many Arabs were forced to leave
the city, despite Sunni and Shi'ite Arab leaders
pleading them not to. As a result, areas that were
once 80 percent Arab became 80 percent Kurd.
Since then, the city of more than one million
residents has witnessed escalating violence with
bombings, assassinations and shootings directed
against civilians, Iraqi security forces, US forces
and political rivals.
No accurate figures for victims of violence in
Kirkuk over the past three years are available.
However, from the beginning of 2006 until 20 January
2007, 348 people were killed and 1,474 injured,
according to Lt Col Anwar Hussein of the city's
police force.
Those killed include 121 civilians, 92 policemen, 64
soldiers and 69 unidentified dead bodies, apparently
victims of death squads, found with their hands and
legs bound and with torture marks on their bodies.
"The past year was a bloody one for the residents of
Kirkuk from all backgrounds. Violence ranged from
suicide attacks by car bombs and explosive belts to
roadside bombs against Iraqi security forces and the
US army. There were also assassinations of political
rivals and high-ranking government officials,"
Hussein said.
"All of Iraq's problems are represented here in this
city. There is sectarian violence between various
religious sects and violence between different
ethnic groups. There have been insurgents' attacks
against Iraqi and US forces and there have also been
acts of violence by local criminal gangs," Hussein
added.
Kurds say they are the dominant ethnic group in
Kirkuk and would like the city to be part of the
Kurdish autonomous region, otherwise known as
Kurdistan, which stretches across Iraq's north-east.
But geography works against them. Kirkuk lies just
south of Kurdistan. Kurdish leaders want to annex
the city, but Iraq's new constitution calls for a
census and referendum on the issue by the end of
next year.
Until then, a demographics game continues to be
played in Kirkuk.
The new Iraqi government has adopted a policy of
'normalising' Kirkuk. This means repatriating to
Kirkuk those Kurds who were expelled by Saddam and
resettling Arabs to outlying villages or to their
ancestral homes in southern Iraq.
"The quicker the government solves Kirkuk's ethnic
problems, the sooner security will prevail and all
kinds of violence will end," Jabar Khoja Ali, a
political analyst from Kirkuk, said. "Kirkuk is the
most important province in Iraq [it sits on about 60
percent of the country's oil] and the government
should find solutions very quickly, otherwise all
Iraq will explode once large-scale violence erupts
in Kirkuk," Ali added.
Displaced families and humanitarian needs
Kirkuk's major humanitarian problem is meeting the
needs of the huge number of displaced people there.
Nearly 200,000 Kurds have returned to Kirkuk since
the US-led occupation of Iraq began in 2003,
according to Rebwar Talabani, deputy head of Kirkuk
provincial council. This is in addition to more than
3,500 Arab families, around 17,500 individuals, who
fled escalating sectarian violence in other
provinces after the 22 February 2006 bombing of a
revered Shi'ite shrine in the northern city of
Samarra.
"We can't do more than offer them these places
[public buildings and tents in parks] until the
government holds the referendum and then they [the
government] will find a solution for their problem
by helping them build their houses," Talabani added.
Aid workers say these families are living in
miserable conditions which are worsening as winter
temperatures start falling
below zero degrees Celsius.
"These families have no access to potable water or
appropriate sanitation systems as most of them live
in tents or abandoned government buildings, which
lack these things," said Ahmed Haqi Nadhim, a
volunteer with the Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS)
in Kirkuk.
"We are in dire need of blankets, heaters and heavy
clothes to help these families, especially the
children, cope with the cold weather," Nadhim added.
Nashmil Rashid, a 44-year-old Kurdish mother of
three boys, has to walk nearly two kilometres every
two days to reach a residential area where people
donate potable water for her children.
"Children are not like us. They can't withstand
these harsh conditions and it is very hard for them
to recover from diseases, especially
gastrointestinal ones," Rashid said, adding that
five children and four women, who were living in
tents in the city's stadium, died recently as a
result of drinking polluted water.
irinnews org
The former Iraqi president forced more than 250,000
Kurdish residents to give up their homes to Arabs in
the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city and the region's
oil industry.
Kirkuk city is a Kurdistani city and it lies just south border of the Kurdistan
autonomous region and it is not under the full
control of Kurdistan Regional Government
administration.
A referendum is to be held in late 2007 to decide
whether the oil-rich Kurdish province should be
annexed to the safe semiautonomous Kurdistan region
in Iraq's north.
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