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Bleak Prospects for Kurdish Returnees in
Kirkuk
5.12.2007
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Former Kurdish residents of Kirkuk are being
encouraged to return - but for many the homecoming
has been a big disappointment.
December
5, 2007
Kirkuk, Iraq's border with Kurdistan region,
-- Laylan, a tented encampment on the
outskirts of Kirkuk, is home to Kurdish returnees
who left places like Erbil, Sulaimaniyah and Ramadi
to start new lives.
But their initial optimism at returning to their
former home is beginning to wane, as many feel let
down by the local authorities who appear to have
done little assist them.
At the makeshift Tirkashkan primary school, 36
students attend lessons under canvass.
“Because we don’t have enough space, four different
lessons are taught at any one time by four different
teachers,” said Ihsan Shareef, the 36-year-old head
teacher.
“It’s difficult [for the students] to concentrate,
and the conditions will badly affect the students’
education.”
Poor education is not all the returnees have to
contend with. The water and electricity supply is
poor, so too is the sewage system. And with violence
in Kirkuk increasing, returning families hopes of a
new life are evaporating.
As many as 250,000 Kurds and Turkoman were expelled
from Kirkuk in the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein’s
regime brought Arabs into the province.www.ekurd.net
The settlers - many poor
Shia farmers from the south - consolidated the
Ba’ath regime’s grip over the oil-rich province.
Under Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution, Kirkuk
voters are expected to decide whether the province
is administered by the central government or the
Kurdistan Regional Government, KRG.
Before the vote is held, a voluntary resettlement
process is to be carried out, giving returning
Kirkukis the right to land and 10 million Iraqi
dinars (about 8,200 US dollars) in compensation,
while those who settled in Kirkuk under the former
regime’s Arabisation campaign are entitled to 20
million dinars and a plot of land in their places of
origin.
Approximately 25,000 to 30,000 Kurdish families have
come back to Kirkuk since 2003, according to the
KRG’s Office for Settlement and Compensation, which
coordinates the return of Kurds.
But few Arabs have moved out and only 2,000 land
disputes have been settled in the province,
according to Kaka Rash Sadiq, a senior Kirkuk
municipal official.
Sadiq said that no Kurdish families have received
compensation and are unlikely to until at least
February 2008.
Compensation is first given to the Arab settlers,
and their cases have to be resolved before Kirkuki
returnees receive their stipend and land, said Sadiq.
About 1,750 Arab families have be granted
compensation, and more than 3,500 Arab families have
submitted paperwork to
return to their provinces of origin, said Mohammed
Khalil Jabbouri, another Kirkuk city official.
The resettlement is expected to dramatically change
Kirkuk’s demography and land ownership. Violence,
including massive car bombs, has destablised the
area, prompting the postponement of the referendum
until at least May 2008.
Encouraged by Kurdish parties, exiled Kurdish
Kirkukis began returning in 2003. The wealthier
among them began purchasing properties, but
thousands of poor returnees still languish in camps
inside and outside the city.
The camps lack infrastructure and services such as
medical care, schools, running water, power, paved
roads and sanitation.
“We didn’t expect these very difficult circumstances
when we came back,” said Rasool Abdullah, 48, a
representative of Kirkuki Kurdish returnees who live
in the city’s football stadium. About 500 families
call the stadium home.
The central and local governments have neglected
Kirkuk as a whole, complain residents, and the
returnees are putting additional pressure on already
limited services.
“The government ignores the city’s services,” said
Sami Jamal, a 44-year-old local. “It spends massive
amounts of money every year in the name of service
projects, but we don’t see any results … and as the
population increases, the level of services in the
city declines.”
The Kirkuk provincial council and the municipal
authorities do not have enough funds to provide
everyone with services, said Sadiq.
The worst off are the returnees.
Habeeb Rozhbayani, director of the Settlement and
Compensation Office, said, “The government isn’t
giving enough land [to returnees], and the areas in
which they live lack many services."
Dilshad Peerot, an independent member of Kirkuk
Provincial Council’s reconstruction and public
services committee, said that the KRG, which helped
facilitate the return of displaced Kurdish families,www.ekurd.net
is providing much of the
limited support for them.
Critics say the Kurdish parties have pushed Kirkuki
Kurds to return in part to gain political control of
the province and its oil resources. In April, the
International Crisis Group issued a report on
resolving the Kirkuk crisis that criticised Kurdish
authorities for “using various incentives, some
bordering on blackmail, to encourage displaced
Kirkukis to return home”.
The report quoted a Kirkuki Kurd living Erbil who
said the Kurdish government would not issue his
newborn son a birth certificate unless he moved back
to Kirkuk. He said he did not want to return because
of the poor services there.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party has pledged to give
returnee families who resettle in the villages
around Kirkuk 10,000 dollars each, while the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan has given some families
5,000 dollars.
But there are plenty of returnees who’ve received
nothing.
Rebwar Rash, 31, a Kurdish returnee living in the
football stadium, said the Kurdish parties have not
kept the promises they made to support returnees.
"People are staying in this camp because we love
Kirkuk. The Kurdish Democratic Party and the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan haven’t given us
financial support,” he said.
Among the poor returnees, those not in camps are
either squatting in empty buildings, illegally
tapping electricity lines and water mains; while
others have built homes without permits.
The local government began cracking down on the
squatters last year but backed off when Kurdish
parties, which hold substantial power in Kirkuk,
intervened.
When he returned to Kirkuk, Muhammed Ghareeb, 35,
who spent years in exile in Iran, chose to build a
house without a permit because he could not find any
housing.
"I tried not to resort to illegal measures to get a
plot of land, but I was forced to. We have to
provide everything ourselves.
We can wait for the government to do something, but
it won’t."
Yahya Barzanji contributed to this story from
Sulaimaniyah.
iwpr net
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, the population is a mix of majority
Kurds and minority of Arabs, Christians and Turkmen.
lies 250 km northeast of Baghdad.
www.ekurd.net
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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