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Iraq: Official Recalls Kirkuk's Past,
Present
12.10.2007
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October
12, 2007
PRAGUE, -- The oil-rich region of Kirkuk
which lies just south border of the Kurdistan
autonomous is currently undergoing a process of
"normalization" in which Arabs settled in the area
from central and southern Iraq during Saddam
Hussein's Arabization campaign of the 1980s are
being relocated to their original towns, and Kurds
displaced under the campaign are being resettled
there.
Iraqi parliamentarian Akram Qadir Muhammad, who
hails from the city of Kirkuk, paid a visit to RFE/RL
headquarters in Prague on October 5. RFE/RL Iraq
analyst Kathleen Ridolfo asked Muhammad to describe
the situation in the city today, in light of a
planned referendum that could lead to the
governorate being officially subsumed into the
Kurdistan region.
RFE/RL: What is the situation now in Kirkuk? How are
the people perceiving the situation? Are they
supporting the push for a referendum, or is there a
different feeling on the ground?
Akram Qadir Muhammad: I think that the issue of
Kirkuk has been a thorny issue for a long time,
since the days of the dictatorship of Saddam
Hussein. Interpretations vary. Some say [Kirkuk is
important because] there is much oil. That is true,
the first oil well was drilled in 1927 in Baba
Gurgur near Kirkuk. I know it well because I am a
native of Kirkuk, born there in 1945 in the Imam
Qasim neighborhood, and also my ancestors lived in
Kirkuk.
To give you an idea what it was like, Kirkuk was a
multiethnic city -- there was a large proportion of
the Kurds, and then came the [ethnic-Turkish]
Turkomans as second. Now, after the forced
resettlements – and after the Arabs were brought
from southern Iraq, central Iraq, and Baghdad -- the
proportion of the Arabs increased with some 30
percent.
But I can remember well that in 1952, when I was
seven, the city was small. There was just a small
group of 20 Arab families breeding buffaloes, and
there were no more of them in the center of Kirkuk
Governorate. But in Hawijah district, there were
Arab tribes such as Al-Jubur and Al-Ubayd, and these
belonged to the indigenous population although they
came there in 1936 or shortly before.
The situation of Kirkuk is not good now. There are
explosions and organized terror that affect the
people of Kirkuk. The administration of the city has
improved a little bit recently. But despite all that
has been spent, the city is not clean, its streets
are destroyed, and its infrastructure is old.
I think that if an economist or anybody from Europe
comes to Kirkuk -- and he will know that the city
has produced oil since 1927 -- he will be appalled
that the city is not clean. It is very neglected,
and all the tragedy can be found in this city,
especially in its Kurdish areas. This is in an
unnatural measure [when compared] with other areas,
even with the areas of the Turkomans. But in
general, all the ethnic groups inside the city have
been affected.
I remember the times of King Faysal. At that time,
and after that in 1958, there was no sectarian or
communitarian problem in Kirkuk. [There were] mixed
marriages -- my mother is Turkoman and my father is
a Kurd who married a Turkoman. That was natural that
Kurds would marry Turkomans, Turkomans would marry
Kurds, Kurds would even marry Arabs and Arabs would
marry others. These things were typical in Kirkuk.
But after the decline, after the fall of the
[Hussein] government -- or shortly before that --
nothing of these things and traditions remained in
Kirkuk. Kirkuk turned into a city where terrorists
walk about.
There is something we must know well: that those
Arabs brought to Kirkuk at the times of Saddam's
Ba'athists from different parts of southern Iraq
were given 10,000 dinars [to relocate to Kirkuk].
Houses were even built for them. They were given
other privileges and employed in crucial
institutions, such as in the IPC [the Iraqi
Petroleum Company].
Up to this day, the proportion of local people --
from among the Kurds -- in the IPC does not reach 4
percent. Only a low percentage of the Kurds could be
found in oil institutions and other important
institutions. Until now, there is a high percentage
of Arabs.
Even Chaldeans and Assyrians, many of whom lived
with us in Kirkuk, have left and emigrated to Europe
and, mainly, to the United States. They have a large
diaspora in America now. They have left Kirkuk and
only small numbers of the [Chaldeans and] Assyrians
have remained.
rferl org
* 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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