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Iraqi Kurdistan: Tough Times for Arab
Refugee Kids
21.7.2007
By Najeeba Mohammad in Qaladze and Sulaimaniyah (ICR
No. 228) |
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Children of Arabs, who’ve fled violence in the rest
of the country, struggling to settle in their new
home.
July
21, 2007
Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan region (Iraq)
Karwan Hussein, a 10-year-old Kurdish boy, was
playing with his friends in the town of Qaladze when
his new neighbour called for help. Hussein didn't
respond, he knows better than to help an Arab.
"They're Arab terrorists," he said. "My mother told
me not to be around people who speak Arabic because
they might kidnap me."
He said his parents had told him that former Iraqi
leader Saddam Hussein - "who was an Arab" -
destroyed their majority -Kurdish town in
Sulaimaniyah province during his violent reign.
The suspicion built up over years of brutal rule
from Baghdad endures. Hussein and his family view
their new neighbours, who escaped the bloodshed in
Mosul and fled to Qaladze three months ago, with
suspicion. All the children in the neighbourhood
refuse to play with the Arab family’s two boys.
As the violence has exploded in Iraq, the Iraqi Red
Crescent says at least 4,500 Arab families have fled
to the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, centre of this
province in north eastern Iraq, since June 2006.
This has come as a shock to Sulaimaniyah, which was
seen as one of the most mono-ethnic cities in Iraqi
Kurdistan.
While they are now neighbours, Arab and Kurdish
children aren't mixing, with children like Hussein
maintaining a legacy born of decades of distrust
between the two ethnic groups.
Saddam Hussein and his top aides carried out ethnic
cleansing against Kurds during the Anfal campaign in
the 1980s.
The Kurdish region then achieved autonomy under the
protection of the US no-fly zone that followed the
1991 Gulf War, and became isolated from the rest of
Iraq until Saddam was overthrown in 2003. As a
result, young Kurds have rarely interacted with Arab
Iraqis.
Gona Abdullah, a Sulaimaniyah-based sociologist,
said changing attitudes will take time and effort.
"The way the children are being brought up is a
reflection of the political situation in Iraq, the
disputes between Kurds and Arabs and the [past] wars
between them," she said. "Kurdish and Arab children
feel like strangers because they have been raised to
feel uncomfortable with each other."
Many of the Arabs who have ended up in Sulaimaniyah
are highly-educated professionals, but some are
living in dire conditions. Amir Ali, 12, and his
family fled Baghdad a few months ago. His father is
dead, so Ali dropped out of school when they left
the capital and supports his mother and three
sisters by begging in the city centre.
"I make around 15,000 dinars (11 US dollars) each
day, but Kurdish children often beat me up and take
the money," he said. "It's very hard when you don't
know the language of the people you live with and
they don’t trust you."
Language is a serious barrier between Arabs and
Kurds. Most Kurdish children know very little Arabic
- school lessons are taught in Kurdish, which is
usually the only language spoken at home - and most
Arab children have never been exposed to the Kurdish
language.
An ethnic-Arab doctor in Qaladze who fled from Mosul,
and asked to remain anonymous, said he has trouble
communicating with his patients now that he is
working in Iraqi Kurdistan. He took his two children
out of school because of language problems.
"They don't know Kurdish, and they were coming back
crying from kindergarten everyday because they
couldn't understand what the teachers and the other
students were saying," he said.
Sulaimaniyah has four Arabic-language schools. Kurds
and Arabs study together in these schools, but
teachers say the number of Arab students is growing
significantly. Kamal Mahmood, headmaster of Shorsh
preparatory, where lessons are taught in Arabic,
said that last year just under half of the 630
students were Arabs.
"I spend most days acting as a mediator between the
students and bringing them together because there
are fights between Shia, Sunnis, Kurds - all of
them," he said. "I have told them many times that
there should not be any discrimination among sects,
classes or languages in the school, or we will
suspend or expel them."
And children from mixed families are trapped in the
middle.
Sara Mohammad's father is an Arab from Egypt, and
her mother is Kurdish. She can speak Kurdish and
Arabic fluently, but keeps her Arab heritage a
secret.
"My classmates don't know about it because I don't
want them to look at me differently," said the
11-year-old. "Only one of my friends knows, and she
has promised not to tell anyone."
Najeeba Mohammad is an IWPR trainee from Qaladze.
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