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Kurds' dreams of return home shattered by
fight for oil-rich Kirkuk
14.3.2007 |
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March 14, 2007
Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan region (Iraq) ,-- Once a
month, Saman Jabbari braves the kidnappers and the
suicide bombers to make the perilous three-hour
journey south to see the city he calls home but
can't yet return to: Kirkuk, the beloved "Jerusalem"
of the Kurdish people.
Each time he goes, the 30-year-old car mechanic
drives past the ruins of the house where he grew up,
its roof since collapsed by a mortar shell, and
visits those of his relatives who didn't flee the
city when he and his immediate family did 16 years
ago.
Mr. Jabbari had expected that he'd be busy
rebuilding his house by now. Like many of the tens
of thousands of Kurds who were driven from the
Kurdish city of Kirkuk during Saddam Hussein's
repeated attempts to violently "Arabize" the
oil-rich city, he had hoped to return home shortly
after the United States invaded Iraq and overthrew
Mr. Hussein in 2003.
But while some have braved the violence to return,
most remain in the relative safety of the Kurdish
autonomous region, unwilling to expose their
families to the mounting violence in the city. "We
can't go home now; not in this situation," Mr.
Jabbari says. "It's very difficult to see the place
of my birth like this."
Comparatively calm during the first days of the
anti-American insurrection and the Sunni-Shia civil
war that has followed, Kirkuk is rapidly becoming
one of the most dangerous cities in Iraq.
Kidnappings, assassinations and suicide bombings are
becoming increasingly commonplace. Last month, the
city of 800,000 was struck by six car bombs in a
single day, leading to talk that Kirkuk will be the
issue that makes Iraq's civil war a three-way fight,
with Kurds fighting both Sunni and Shia Arabs for
control of the city.
The escalating tension stems from a referendum
scheduled for later this year that is supposed to
decide the future of the ethnically mixed city. If
Kurds get their way, the referendum will show a
restored Kurdish majority in the city, and it will
be appended to the Kurdish autonomous area in
northern Iraq. That has the city's Arab and Turkoman
communities worried, and has led to a series of
attacks and counterattacks among the city's ethnic
groups.
"Holding a referendum in Kirkuk is very, very
dangerous. Only the Kurds are insisting on it; all
the other communities are vehemently against it,"
said Joost Hiltermann, a Jordan-based analyst for
the International Crisis Group. "If the Kurds end up
fighting a war in Kirkuk, tensions may go up
everywhere. It could lead to the cleansing of Kurds
in Baghdad, for example, which could lead to the
cleansing of the Arab refugees in Kurdistan."
Adding to the potential mess, neighbouring Turkey,
which is worried that a successful Kurdish statelet
in northern Iraq will encourage its own Kurdish
population to rise up, has made it clear that adding
the oil wealth of Kirkuk, believed to represent 8
per cent of Iraq's proven reserves, to Kurdistan is
a step too far. It has threatened to invade northern
Iraq to "protect" Kirkuk's Turkoman minority.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan recently
lashed out at Massoud Barzani, president of the
Kurdistan regional government, for saying that
Kirkuk was "the heart of Kurdistan."
"Such an attitude is very wrong with regards to
Iraq's future. I believe such an attitude will
overshadow peace, love and brotherhood in Iraq," Mr.
Erdogan said. "Statements on this issue should be
very carefully made."
Nor are the Kurds innocents in this struggle. As
they have stepped up their campaign to reclaim a
city they see as having been stolen from them, they
have been accused of arson and the killing of
livestock, aimed at forcing Arabs to leave the city.
While Kurdish officials dismiss those charges, they
are more clearly guilty of working to alter the
city's demographics ahead of the referendum. Iraqi
President Jalal Talabani, an ethnic Kurd, and Mr.
Barzani are behind a plan that offers $19,000 (U.S.)
to any Arab families willing to relinquish their
property in the city and their right to vote in the
referendum.
Kurds who fled Kirkuk, meanwhile, say they're under
increasing pressure from their government to return
to the city, even though it's far from safe to do
so.
"They want us to move back so there will be more
Kurds in Kirkuk for the referendum," said Bekhal
Abdullah, a 28-year-old computer engineer. She lives
with her family in a slum for Kirkuk refugees
outside Sulaimaniyah that's slated to be demolished
so that a new development can be built on the site.
Ms. Abdullah said the Kurdish government is trying
to force them to return to Kirkuk, and has decreed
that her children must attend school there instead
of in Sulaimaniyah, which is in the relative safe
zone of Kurdistan region (Kurdish-controlled
northern Iraq).
"The officials who are asking us to move back to
Kirkuk are not risking their own lives and their
families' lives by going there," Ms. Abdullah said.
She said she still wants to return to Kirkuk with
her family one day, but not while the violence is
raging. "Our relatives who are left living in Kirkuk,
their children can't go to school because of the
explosions. Some of them have been killed, injured
or kidnapped," she said. "They advised us not to
come."
theglobeandmail com
**
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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