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Iraq polls could heighten tensions over
Kirkuk
26.1.2010 |
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January 26, 2010
KIRKUK, Iraq's border with Kurdistan region,
— Iraqi Kurd Kamal Aga's face lights up when he
recalls his childhood on a farm in Daquq, south of
Kirkuk, where wheat and cotton fields stretched to
the horizon and farmers of different ethnicities
lived side by side.
That chapter of his life ended in his 20s when the
lands of his prominent tribal family were seized in
the 1970s, first in agrarian reform and then in the
Baath party's push to move fellow Arabs into areas
home to Kurds and other minorities.
Today, Aga lives in the disputed city of Kirkuk,
working in a dingy office where he heads a
commission seeking to settle some of the
approximately 41,000 property claims like his own.
Only 7 percent of the claims have been resolved
since the 2003 invasion, reflecting the challenges
Iraq faces as it heads toward a March election which
could help ease Kurd-Arab tensions over areas like
Kirkuk or thrust Iraq back into open war.
The dispute over Kirkuk and other areas, which pits
Iraq's Arab-led government against the largely
autonomous Kurdistan region in the north, has
festered since Saddam's ouster in 2003.
It is now seen as the chief threat to Iraq's fragile
security as U.S. forces prepare to end combat
operations in August ahead of a full withdrawal by
the end of 2011.
Kurds, who want to fold the region U.S. officials
say may contain 3-4 percent of world oil reserves
into their enclave, are likely to end up as
kingmakers after the March 7 vote.
They may extract concessions for helping other
factions form the next government, a prospect that
frightens Kirkuk's Turkmen and Arabs, who say Kurds
have treated them unfairly in their effort since
2003 to reverse Saddam Hussein's "Arabization".
Many Kirkukis say tensions stem from national
politics and not from the realities on the ground.
"This is a feud among political powers treating
Kirkuk like a cow that gives milk," said Waleed
Saman, an Arab businessman.
"My brothers and I should be the decision makers.
Close the door and give us 24 hours, and we'll come
out with a solution."
LANGUAGE BARRIER
Yet changes forced on the city since 2003 do not
promise a future in which Arabs and Kurds will mix
easily.
The Kirkuk Central School, a well-regarded boys
school where Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd,
studied more than 50 years ago, is one example of
the city's historic diversity.
All students at the school study Arabic and Kurdish,
and can pursue other languages if they choose.
"We don't raise students to discriminate. We teach
them to be brothers," said school official Mahmoud
Majdab al-Rafaii.
But in Kirkuk's segregated neighbourhoods where more
recent arrivals live, schools teaching at least
partially in minority languages like Kurdish or
Turkman have taken root since 2003.
Some 460 schools, of a total of about 1,390 across
the province, are funded by the government of
northern Kurdistan, using its curriculum and books
and teaching entirely in Kurdish.
The aim was to give minorities a chance to study in
their own language. Yet the schools are producing
future generations unable to communicate fluently
with their Arab countrymen -- and Kurds brought up
to believe disputed areas are theirs by right.
Kurdish textbooks identify Kirkuk as "the most rich
oil-producing area in Kurdistan. Most residents are
Kurds but Arabs, Turkmen, Assyrians and Chaldeans
also live there" -- a controversial claim in an area
whose ethnic feuds have held up a national census
and where no reliable demographic figures exist.
Fawzia Abdullah Awanees, a top education official,
supports the language experiment but warns it could
widen social gaps.
"We need integrated schools, which offer different
languages, so people can live alongside one
another," she said.
At the Kirkuk Property Disputes Commission, the
process of sifting through thousands of complex,
multigenerational and often overlapping property
claims proceeds at a glacial pace.
Beyond the 41,000 claims the board is working
through dating from 1968-2003, many more have sprung
up after 2003, when Iraqis fleeing violence became
squatters and Arabs brought into Kirkuk under Saddam
fled in fear of Kurdish retaliation.
U.N. officials are trying to facilitate settlement
as a step in building consensus needed to reach a
solution on Kirkuk.
This week, parliament approved changes to expedite
the slow claims process. Until the reforms take
effect, Aga's hopes of reclaiming at least part of
the family lands,www.ekurd.netoccupied
by Kurdish squatters after Arab families fled in
2003, are on hold.
"We still don't have one metre of land there," he
said.
Copyright, respective
author or news agency,
Reuters
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