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Arabs quitting Iraq's Kurdish city of
Kirkuk
3.10.2007
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October
3, 2007
Kirkuk, Iraq's border with Kurdistan region,
-- Abu Mohammed, a 60-year-old Iraqi Arab, moved to
the oil-producing city of Kirkuk 28 years ago
because of incentives that included a home offered
by Saddam Hussein's Arab nationalist government.
But times have changed in Kirkuk, a mixing pot of
Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians, Turkmen and Armenians 250
km (155 miles) north of Baghdad which is potentially
Iraq's next flashpoint.
Abu Mohammed has decided to accept a compensation
offer of 20 million Iraqi dinars (about $16,000) to
voluntarily move his family of 10 back to Samawa in
southern Iraq, part of a "normalization" plan
enshrined in Iraq's constitution.
"I saw that it was best for me and my family to
return to our original province because, whether we
like it or not, Arab migrants will leave sooner or
later," he told Reuters on Tuesday.
The "normalization" plan is an attempt to return
Kirkuk to its earlier demographic make-up before
Saddam Hussein's "Arabisation" plan in the 1970s and
1980s when Kurds and Turkmens were expelled.
It is a key element in preparations for a referendum
-- due by the end of the year -- on the status of
the multi-ethnic city, which Iraq's Kurds want to
become a part of their autonomous region.
Some Iraqi Arabs and Turkmen who do not want to
leave fear they may be forced out if the vote goes
ahead and they want the poll postponed or shelved.
Analysts fear a bloodbath if it takes place against
the wishes of the other, non-Kurdish sects.
Estimates of the number of migrant Arabs in Kirkuk
vary greatly. Kirkuk's acting mayor Ihsan Guli says
there are 70,000 Arab families, or roughly 230,000
people, out of a population of about three quarters
of a million.
Iraq's Environment Minister Nermeen Othman, a Kurd,
put the number much higher, at close to 135,000
families. He has said 9,450 Arab families have
started procedures to move.
FED UP WITH PREJUDICE
Mohammed Khalil al-Jubouri, an Arab member of the
committee in charge of ensuring compensation to
those who relocate, said many of the families who
have claimed the resettlement money had already
moved out of the city.
"The number of families who have registered for
compensation are currently about 1,000 families, the
majority of which come from southern Iraq," Jubouri
said.
"Most of these families had already left Kirkuk
anyway ... some of these families had come back to
register after they heard of the compensation," he
said.
Um Zayneb, a 50-year-old mother of seven, said she
was fed up with the prejudice against Arab settlers
like herself.
"I am not allowed to work in Kirkuk anymore, that's
why I want to go back to Amara," she said, referring
to a poor southern Shi'ite city, as she stood
outside the provincial council office to complete
her paperwork.
"I've been here for more than 25 years, but however
long that is, we will always feel like strangers."
Reuters
* Kirkuk city is a
Kurdish 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, its population
is a mix of majority Kurds and minority of Arabs,
Turkmen.
The former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein forced
over 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up their
homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city
and the region's oil industry.
Based on Iraq's Constitution 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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