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Kirkuk: Minorities Lose Out in Classroom
31.8.2007
By Samah Samad in Kirkuk (ICR No. 231) |
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Central authorities accused of failing to support
non-Arabic language education in northern town.
August
31, 2007
Kirkuk, Kurdistan region border with (Iraq),
-- Tara Emad, 10, walks home after class, singing a
song in her native Kurdish that she recently learnt
at school.
The scene would have been unimaginable just a few
years ago. During Saddam’s reign, the only language
taught and used in Iraqi schools was Arabic, the
exception being the autonomous Kurdistan** region,
of which Kirkuk* — Tara’s hometown — was not a part.
Thousands of children like Tara were deprived of the
right to speak and be educated in their mother
tongue, be it Kurdish, Turkoman or Assyrian.
As part of the Baath party’s attempt to eliminate
ethnic diversity in Iraq, languages other than
Arabic were mostly banned from schools,
universities, media and public places.
For instance, in Kirkuk — which has a substantial
Kurdish community, as well as smaller minority
groups, such as Turkomans and Assyrians — schools
delivered only one lesson in Kurdish, but only after
10th grade.
In 1974, the Iraqi government agreed to open several
Turkoman schools, but reneged on the move after a
year.
Following the fall of the regime in 2003, minorities
were granted the constitutional right to be educated
in their mother tongues.
It was essential that the likes of Tara attend a
Kurdish school. She grew up speaking mainly Kurdish
at home. But when she started school aged six, all
the lessons were in Arabic — as a result of which
she failed her first year.
“My teacher always reproached me for not speaking
Arabic well,” she recalled.
Now some of the lessons in her school are conducted
in Kurdish, which makes it much easier for her to
keep up.
After the fall of the regime, Iraqi provinces were
given powers to run local education affairs, with
support from central government. But Kurdish
officials say the latter provided them with little
backing for mother-tongue schooling.
Yousif Saeed, in charge of Kurdish studies at the
Kirkuk education office, accuses the ministry in
Baghdad of neglecting an important constitutional
right of non-Arab nations.
“The ministry does not provide [Kurdish language]
schools and departments with the necessary
[education materials], nor with the teaching staff,”
he said.
The demand for classes in languages other than
Arabic in the Kirkuk region is high. In 2007, 305
schools offered classes in Kurdish; 148 in Turkoman;
four in Assyrian; while 700 taught only in Arabic.
Saeed pointed out that so far all Kurdish schools in
Kirkuk are funded by the Kurdistan region’s
education ministry. It has allocated 4.5 billion
Iraqi dinars for new schools, and pays the salaries
of their staff, who number around 6,000.
The Turkoman schools suffer from the same
shortcomings as the Kurdish schools. Farook Fuad
Abdul Rahman, manager of Turkoman studies at the
Kirkuk education office, stresses how important
studying in their mother language is for Turkoman
students, but also complains about a lack of support
from central government.
He says textbooks and other educational materials
used by Turkoman schools are provided by rich
Turkoman donors.
For Fawziya Awanees, head of Assyrian studies at the
Kirkuk education office, studying in one’s native
language is an important means of “reviving the
heritage… of Kirkuk’s various nations”.
But not all students from minority groups prefer
education in their native language. Some choose to
go to Arab-language schools because many of the
universities in the region only offer programmes in
Arabic.
Ali Talib, an Arab-language teacher in Kirkuk,
insists that though studying in your mother tongue
is a legitimate right, Arabic remains the core
language of education and culture in the Middle
East.
So students at schools now making provision for
teaching in non-Arabic languages will have at least
two weekly lessons a week in Arabic.
Talib believes the situation in higher education
will change, with some universities in future
providing Kurdish and Turkoman departments.
For the moment, though, concerns are very much about
how under-resourced non-Arabic teaching is in the
Kirkuk area, with local education officials placing
much of the blame on Baghdad.
Kurdish teachers continue to be paid and trained by
the Kurdistan Regional Government and there is only
half the quota of 400 Turkoman teachers needed to
teach their community’s 28,000 students.
An illustration of the tensions between Kirkuk and
Baghdad is that the latter wants teachers from the
former to come to the capital to mark final-year
Kurdish-language exam papers, under the supervision
of the education ministry.
Because of the poor security situation in the
capital, Kirkuk teachers say they would prefer not
to travel to Baghdad — but the authorities there are
digging in their heels over the matter.
Saeed, the official responsible for Kurdish studies
at the Kirkuk education office, distrusts the
central authorities and sees a clear strategy behind
the education ministry’s slow response to his
demands and those of his colleagues. “ People from
the former regime have infiltrated the government
[and] are opposing those who want freedom and
democracy in the new free Iraq,” he said.
IWPR asked the ministry of education to respond to
the claims made by Kirkuk officials, but no one was
available for comment.
Dr Alaa Makki, a Sunni parliamentary deputy and head
of the education committee of the Iraqi parliament,
said that so far his committee hasn’t received any
complaints from Kurdish, Turkoman or Assyrian
education officials from Kirkuk.
Makki added that non-Arabic language education is
currently under discussion in the assembly, and
Kirkuk officials should get back to the committee,
"so that we can determine whether the government is
indifferent or not".
Samah Samad is an IWPR trainee in Kirkuk. Hazim
al-Shara, also an IWPR trainee, contributed to this
story.
Source: iwpr net
* 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.
The former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein forced
over 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up their
homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city
and the region's oil industry.
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.
** Since 1991, the Kurds of Iraq achieved self-rule
in part of the country. Today's teenagers are the
first generation to grow up under Kurdish rule. Most
Kurds don’t speak Arabic, especially the younger
generation, the 2nd language in Kurdistan after
Kurdish is English language. In the new Iraqi
Constitution, it is referred to as Kurdistan region.
Kurdistan region has all the trappings of an
independent state -- its own constitution, its own
parliament, its own flag, its own army, its own
border patrol, its own national anthem, its own
education system, even its own stamp inked into the
passports of visitors.
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