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Arabs leave Kirkuk ahead of referendum
26.2.2007 |
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February 26, 2007
KIRKUK, Iraq-Kurdistan border, February 26,---
Sheikh Muhssin al-Zaidi, 45, is sad to be leaving
Kirkuk, the northern city he has lived in since the
early 1980s. He disagrees with the 'Arabisation'
policy of former president Saddam Hussein's
government that brought him there but now he has
agreed to comply with the current government's
decision that he and tens of thousands of other
Arabs move back.
"Leaving the city where we raised our children and
which we got used to is not an easy decision but as
along as there is an historic mistake that was made
by Saddam's regime and we are its victims, then we
have to go back to our homes," said al-Zaidi, a Shia
Arab who was part of Saddam's campaign to flood
Kirkuk with Arabs and cleanse the city of Kurds, who
the Baathist government deemed a threat.
Twenty years ago, al-Zaidi was given thousands of
dollars in cash and a free apartment in Kirkuk to
move from his home in Baghdad, which is 290km to the
south. Now, his family is among 6,850 Arab families
who recently agreed to a decision by a governmental
committee early in February to relocate tens of
thousands of mostly Shia Arabs.
The Iraqi Higher Committee for the Normalisation of
Kirkuk decided that 20 million Iraqi dinars (about
US $15,000) compensation would be given to those who
arrived in Kirkuk during the 'Arabisation' campaign
and who would move out now. In addition, they would
be given land in their home towns. Yet the
committee's decision still needs to be endorsed by
the
Iraqi cabinet.
Monetary compensation
"All the Arabs who moved to the city from other
parts of Iraq after 14 July 1968 and until 9 April,
2003 will be returned to their original towns and
given monetary compensation," said Sadiq Kaka Rash,
a member of the governmental committee.
Saddam's Ba'ath party took power Iraq in a military
coup in 1968 and it fell following the US-led
invasion of Iraq on 9 April, 2003.
"They [the Arabs] have to relocate themselves as
soon as possible before this year's referendum as
they have no right to take part in it," Rash added.
Iraq's current constitution, which was approved in a
national referendum on 15 October, 2005, calls for a
separate referendum on Kirkuk's future by the end of
this year. The Kurds, who say that Kirkuk is
Kurdish, want to incorporate the city and its rich
oilfields into their self-ruled region - a move
which has been strongly opposed by the Turkomen and
Arabs.
Tens of thousands of Kurds and non-Arabs fled Kirkuk
in the early 1980s and during the 1990s when
Saddam's government implemented its 'Arabisation'
policy. Kurds and non-Arabs were replaced with
pro-government Arabs from the mainly Shia but
impoverished south.
After the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003
brought Saddam's rule to an end, Kirkuk was widely
seen as a tinderbox as Kurds and other non-Arabs
streamed back with their house keys in hand only to
find their homes were either sold or given to Arabs.
The returning Kurds became displaced in their own
hometown as they found nowhere to live except in
parks and abandoned government buildings. At the
same time, many Arabs were forced to leave the city,
despite Sunni and Shia Arab leaders pleading them
not to.
In danger of violence
"We don't want to put our children and women in
danger of violence," said Qader Haqi Tawfiq, 50,
who, like al-Zaidi, is an Arab who has decided to
move his family out of Kirkuk.
"We hope that our Kurdish brothers don't get us
wrong and that they fully understand that we were
living in a hard time [under Saddam's rule] when we
benefited from the privileges which were given to
Arabs," Tawfiq added.
But other Arabs do not agree and still claim right
to Kirkuk.
"Kirkuk is my home and they [Kurds] will not take my
house unless they kill me," said Jaber Farhan
Mohammed, 43, a Shia Arab supermarket owner who came
to Kirkuk in 1983. "We will fight until the last
drop of our blood. There are still land [around
Kirkuk] that can be given to the Kurds if the
government wants to help them," Mohammed added.
The oil-rich city of Kirkuk was long considered a
microcosm of Iraq with its diversity of ethnic and
religious groups. With Turkomen, Kurds, Assyrians,
Chaldeans and Arabs living together in peace, it was
a melting pot of the various communities that
reflected Iraq's demographic makeup.
But this is no longer the case. In the past three
weeks, Kirkuk has suffered a wave of bombings;
including six car bombs on one day alone. Some of
the bombings took place in Kurdish neighbourhoods
and others in Arab ones. Nearly 50 civilians have
been killed as a result and more than 100 wounded.
No accurate figures are available for Arabs in
Kirkuk but the last ethnic breakdown census in Iraq,
which was conducted in 1957, showed that there were
178,000 Kurds, 48,000 Turkomen, 43,000 Arabs and
10,000 Assyrian-Chaldean Christians living in the
city.
irinnews org
**
The former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein forced
about 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up their
homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city
and the region's oil industry.
Kirkuk city is a Kurdistani 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.
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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