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Iraq Supports Plan To Move Arabs From
Kurds' City of Kirkuk
1.4.2007 |
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April 1, 2007
Kirkuk, (Iraq-Kurdistan region) border, --
Iraq's government has endorsed plans to relocate
thousands of Arabs who were moved to Kirkuk as part
of
Saddam Hussein's campaign to force ethnic Kurds out
of the oil-rich city, in an effort to undo one of
the former dictator's most enduring and hated
policies.
The contentious decision was confirmed Saturday by
Iraq's Sunni justice minister as he told The AP he
was resigning. Almost immediately, opposition
politicians said they feared it would harden the
violent divisions among Iraq's fractious ethnic and
religious groups and possibly lead to an Iraq
divided among Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shiites.
TURKEY BACKLASH
The plan was virtually certain to anger neighboring
Turkey, which fears a northward migration of Iraqi
Kurds - and an exodus of Sunni Arabs - will inflame
its own restive Kurdish minority.
Kirkuk, an ancient city that once was part of the
Ottoman Empire, has a large minority of ethnic Turks
as well as Christians, Shiite and Sunni Arabs,
Armenians and Assyrians. The city is just south of
the Kurdistan autonomous zone stretching across
three provinces of northeastern Iraq.
Iraq's constitution sets an end-of-the-year deadline
for a referendum on Kirkuk's status. Since Saddam's
fall four years ago, thousands of Kurds who once
lived in the city have resettled there. It is now
believed Kurds are a majority of the population and
that a referendum on attaching Kirkuk to the Kurdish
autonomous zone would pass easily.
CABINET AGREES
Justice Minister Hashim al-Shebli said the Cabinet
agreed on Thursday to a study group's recommendation
that Arabs who had moved to Kirkuk from other parts
of Iraq after July 1968 should be returned to their
original towns and paid
compensation.
Al-Shebli, who had overseen the committee on
Kirkuk's status, said relocation would be voluntary.
Those who choose to leave will be paid about $15,000
and given land in their former hometowns.
"There will be no coercion and the decision will not
be implemented by force," al-Shebli told The
Associated Press.
Tens of thousands of Kurds and non-Arabs fled Kirkuk
in the 1980s and 1990s when Saddam's government
implemented its "Arabization" policy. Kurds and
non-Arabs were replaced with pro-government Arabs
from the mainly Shiite impoverished south.
A referendum on joining the other three provinces
recognised as Iraqi Kurdistan is to be held this
year.
HOMES SOLD OR STOLEN
After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003,
Kurds and other non-Arabs streamed back, only to
find their homes were either sold or given to Arabs.
Some of the returning Kurds found nowhere to live
except in parks and abandoned government buildings.
Others drove Arabs from the city, despite pleas from
Sunni and Shiite leaders for them to stay.
There were fears that a referendum that was likely
to put Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, under
Kurdish control could open a new front in the
violence that has ravaged Iraq since shortly after
the U.S.-led invasion. On March 19, several bombs
struck targets in Kirkuk and killed at least 26
people.
Al-Shebli, a Sunni Arab, also confirmed he had
offered his resignation on the same day that the
Cabinet approved the plan. He cited differences with
the government and his own political group, the
secular Iraqi List, which joined Sunni Arab
lawmakers Saturday in opposing the Kirkuk decision.
He said he would continue in office until the
Cabinet approved his resignation.
The Iraqi List is led by former Prime Minister Ayad
Allawi, a secular Shiite. The group holds 25 seats
in the 275-seat parliament.
AP
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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