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Arabs and Kurds dismantle Saddam's changes
in Kirkuk
9.12.2007
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December
9, 2007
Kirkuk, Iraq's border with Kurdistan region,
-- Umm Nasser sits on a curb in northern Iraq,
trying to decide where her home is.
The black-draped Shiite woman left her native
Baghdad for this contested city 27 years ago — one
of tens of thousands lured by Saddam Hussein's
campaign to settle Arabs in this oil-rich area near
Iran and Turkey while displacing Kurds he did not
trust because of their separatist views.
Saddam redrew the province's borders to maximize its
Arab population, and paid Arabs from elsewhere in
Iraq to move here.
Now Arabs like Umm Nasser are being encouraged to
leave as part of a constitutional mandate to undo
the demographic changes Saddam forced on this
community.www.ekurd.net
Kurds hope the
population shift will pave the way for their
autonomous Kurdistan administration to take control
of Kirkuk and its vast oil wealth.
But Turkey and other countries in the region with
Kurdish minorities have long feared that Kurdish
rule of Kirkuk would encourage separatist sentiment
within their own borders. Ankara fears that if the
oil-rich Kirkuk joins Kurdistan,www.ekurd.net
the Kurds will have the
economic foundation they need for an independent
state, Ankara fearins this could fan separatism
among its own large Kurdish population in southeast
Turkey.
A referendum is expected next year on whether Kirkuk
will join the Kurdish zone to its north, or continue
to be ruled by Baghdad.
When she arrived nearly three decades ago, Umm
Nasser was a newlywed, pregnant with the first of
what would be six children — all born in Kirkuk.
Now the 47-year-old sits in the street outside a
government building, lining up to register to leave
the province.
The Arabs who came here under Saddam — still called
Wafadeen, or "newcomers," in Arabic — receive about
$16,000 in exchange for transferring their residency
and food ration cards to their ancestral homelands,
mainly in Baghdad and the south. The moves are all
voluntary. |
A Kurdish woman and a girl wait for bread to bake at
their temporary home in a stadium in Kirkuk last
month. Kurds are also waiting for Baghdad to
schedule a referendum to resolve their fate
Over 500 Kurdish families have set up camp at a
dilapidated soccer stadium, awaiting government
approval to move back into the city. |
Thousands of Kurds return
So far about 1,200 families have received checks,
according to U.S. and Iraqi officials who believe
some 60,000 Arabs will eventually file applications
here to do so.
Meanwhile, Kurds who fled Kirkuk in the 1980s and
1990s are returning by the thousands to file
repatriation claims. Some of their houses have been
occupied by Arabs for decades, and about 500 Kurdish
families have set up camp at a dilapidated soccer
stadium, awaiting government approval to move back
into the city.
The migration of both communities — Kurdish and Arab
— has drastically altered Kirkuk's landscape since
the 2003 U.S. invasion. The stakes are high.
Much of Iraq's vast oil wealth lies under the ground
here, as well as in the south. Apart from the
petrodollars, Kurds have a strong cultural and
emotional attachment to Kirkuk, which they call "the
Kurdish Jerusalem.", Kirkuk is historically a
Kurdish city, 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.
"The referendum is the center of attention here,
because Arabs, small minority of Turkomen and
majority Kurds all claim historic and ethnic rights
to this province," said Howard Keegan, head of the
State Department team aiding reconstruction in
Kirkuk.www.ekurd.net
"They're all tugging on
the same rope."
The referendum is mandated by the Iraqi
constitution's Article 140, which also calls for a
provincewide census by the end of 2007. U.S. and
Iraqi officials say few details have been worked out
on how to administer the referendum, and it was
postponed until next year.
Keegan said he expected a census in about three
months and the referendum in six to nine months.
Kurdish lawmakers — confident they have a majority —
are pushing for a quick referendum, hoping for a
political union with their economically prospering
brethren to the north, he said.
'Difficult logistical problem'
Local officials are awaiting guidance from Baghdad
on how to conduct the census and referendum: who
will do the counting, who is eligible to vote and
whether there will be a transition period before
Kirkuk's final status becomes official.
Some Kurds have accused the federal government of
stalling the process for fear of losing this
oil-rich area to the Kurdistan regional government.
"I don't think it's a grand plot to stop the
repatriation of Kurds. It's truly a difficult
logistical problem to conduct this process fairly,"
said Army Maj. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, U.S. commander
in northern Iraq.
"You've got a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad
trying to deal with some very dicey issues.
Mediating a dispute between Arabs and Kurds in a
northern province is probably not their No. 1
priority right now," Hertling said.
Resettlement under Article 140 has given Umm Nasser
a choice between her hometown of Baghdad and Kirkuk,
where she and her husband started a new life 27
years ago.
She was enticed by Saddam's incentives but also by
Kirkuk's verdant hills and quaint downtown, with
buildings painted bright pink, yellow, aqua. The
oil-rich economy meant jobs for her husband and a
chance to leave their lower middle class life behind
in Baghdad.
"As Shiites, what was safer for us at that time than
doing what the Sunni dictator wanted?" she said of
the oppression she felt, even as a fellow Arab,
under Saddam's regime.
Now Umm Nasser — who gave only her nickname "mother
of Nasser" because of increasing security concerns —
has swapped optimism for a new kind of fear.
She did not like Saddam. But since his ouster, she
is worried about discrimination against Arabs in
Kirkuk — which has a larger Kurdish community and a
wealthier Turkomen one.
Ethnic and sectarian tension has burgeoned across
Iraq since Saddam's fall.
Umm Nasser acknowledged she received no threats or
pressure to leave Kirkuk, but said she cannot shake
the fear of being an Arab minority in a sea of
Kurds.
"I'm afraid someone will eventually force me out,
and I don't know how long the offer of money will be
there, so I feel like I should take it now, and say
goodbye to this town I have learned to call home."
AP
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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