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85,000 Iraqi Arabs seek sanctuary in
Kurdistan region
7.2.2007 |
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February 7, 2007
Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan autonomous region
(Iraq) ,-- As snow fell outside, the smell of frying
eggplant and onions burned Umm Ali's eyes as she
cooked in her kitchen — which doubles as the family
bathroom. There's not much else: one other room for
her, her husband and four children.
Still, she says, it's better here than at the
family's home in Baghdad, 260 kilometers (180 miles)
south, at the center of Iraq's bloodshed.
"Even if we were living in a tent, without a real
roof over our heads in this snowy weather, we'd
still be happy to be away from that intimidation,"
said the 41-year-old Shiite housewife.
Some 2 million Iraqis have fled to neighboring
countries in the past three years and up to 3,000
more flee abroad everyday, according to the U.N.
refugee agency.
But Umm Ali and her husband, Hussein Jawad, are
among nearly 85,000 Iraqi Arabs who have chosen,
instead, to flee to the autonomous Kurdistan region
of northern Iraq.
There, they too find themselves in what feels like a
foreign country: Kurdistan has been autonomous since
1991, and Kurds have run their own affairs. While
Arabic is still an official language, it is all but
eclipsed by Kurdish.
But Iraq's Kurdistan also has largely been spared
the relentless car bombings, suicide attacks and
Shiite-Sunni slayings that have killed thousands in
Baghdad, central Iraq and the south. People here
also are mostly free of the daily crime,
kidnappings, death threats and fear present in
Baghdad.
The result has been an economic boom in the three
provinces that make up Kurdistan, with numerous jobs
in construction for Iraqis from the south.
"Our joy comes in feeling secure," said Jawad, who
took his family from the Baghdad district of Dora
after a note was left at their house calling the
family "Shiite infidels" and warning that the
children would be "slain like sheep" if the family
didn't leave.
"I didn't care about my house," he said. "I just
felt my children and I needed to live our lives." He
now works as an electrician in a new three-star
hotel here.
The influx has strained social services in the
north, however, and fueled rising housing prices. It
also comes at a time when Kurdish-Arab tensions are
increasing in the city of Kirkuk, just outside the
Kurdish zone, over attempts to include it in
Kurdistan.
But so far the flight of Iraqi Arabs to Kurdistan
has not sparked significant ethnic tensions. In
fact, the governor of Sulaimaniyah, Dana Ahmad
Majeed, has invited more Iraqis to flee north rather
than leave Iraq altogether.
Still, he said the federal government needs to give
Kurdistan more medical supplies, fuel and
electricity.
"The support these displaced people are getting is
so slim compared to the skyrocketing numbers of
these emigrants everyday," he told The AP.
Of the nearly 85,000 Iraqis displaced from farther
south who now live in the three Kurdish provinces,
about 30,000 live in Sulaimaniyah province, said
Anita Raman, an official of the U.N. High
Commissioner for Refugees monitoring Iraqi refugees.
UNHCR has been providing emergency help for the most
vulnerable, including kerosene, lanterns, blankets
and food, Raman said.
Majeed said at least 10 more families enter
Sulaimaniyah everyday — on top of some 25,000 Arabs
who have come simply looking for jobs rather than
fleeing violence. The region's pre-refugee exact
population is not known.
At the "border" between Kurdistan and the rest of
Iraq, Kurdish fighters at checkpoints now stop and
search the cars of entering Arabs. Families are
allowed in without permits, but single men must have
a Kurdish sponsor and a work permit to pass — a
security measure to prevent militants from entering,
Kurdish authorities say.
Those who make it have to make adjustments — to the
high rents, scarce housing, cold winter weather and
language barrier. The Kurdish language uses the
Arabic alphabet, but is an Indo-European language
unrelated to Semitic Arabic.
"We couldn't even read the signs in the streets,"
said Jawdat al-Obaidi, a Sunni Arab from the town of
Youssifiyah, just south of Baghdad. "I am trying to
learn the language so I can find a decent job and
settle here."
The 46-year-old engineer fled Youssifiyah two months
ago after Shiite militiamen scrawled "death to
terrorists" on his house.
Now he's thrilled to have found the Jawahiri
Elementary School — Sulaimaniyah's only Arabic
language school, where he has enrolled his three
sons.
Near the school one recent day, a Kurdish street
vendor selling cookies and chocolates stood
surrounded by a dozen Arab schoolchildren.
Hussein Mazin, a 12-year-old Shiite, struggled to
find a way to ask the vendor whether he sold a
particular kind of potato chip.
"I speak some Kurdish," Mazin said, smiling. "But
obviously not very good."
Mazin's family fled the southern city of Basra after
his brother was snatched near his school for ransom.
The kidnappers then threatened to seize his younger
sister, too.
"We are not afraid of the kidnappers anymore," Mazin
said
AP
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