KurdistanObserver.com   Invulnerable, Kurds Await A Vote On Future By Liz Sly Chicago Tribune August 31, 2007 MAKHMUR,(Southern Kurdistan) Fears are rising in this dust-bowl town, where the mercury routinely hits 120 degrees in summer, and hopes are just as high that Makhmur soon will become part of the relatively safe region of Kurdistan. Makhmur currently lies in the mostly Sunni Arab province of Nineveh and is one of several areas that Kurds hope will vote, along with the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, on whether to join the adjacent autonomous Kurdistan region in a referendum due to be held by the end of this year. Among those areas is the mostly Yazidi community near Shingar in northwestern Iraq, which was struck this month by the worst suicide attack of the war so far -- up to 500 people are reported to have died. Though no direct link has been made between that attack and the referendum, Makhmur's own bloody encounter with the war this spring suggests such communities are at increased risk. In May, a suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden truck piled with bags of flour into Makhmur's local government offices, killing 38 people, injuring more than 150 and shattering the relative calm that had prevailed in this corner of Iraq. Five Sunni Arabs were arrested in the attack, one of them from the Makhmur district. The suspects told interrogators that Al Qaeda in Iraq had issued orders to attack areas where the referendum is to be held, to prevent it from going ahead, according to the town's acting mayor, Barzan Said Kaka. The bombings heightened a sense of urgency among the town's mostly Kurdish residents that the referendum should proceed quickly so they can be absorbed into the relatively secure borders of the Kurdish enclave. "We wish they would hurry up. Everyone is getting very upset," said Karwan Qadir, 22, of Karwan's Refreshments on Makhmur's tiny main street. "We are Kurds and we feel like we are part of Kurdistan." The goal of the referendum is first to reverse the process known as Arabization embarked upon by Saddam Hussein, under which Kurds were expelled from Kurdish areas and replaced by Arabs, and then to allow those areas to vote on becoming part of the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan. The referendum is most often associated with the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which is also home to tens of thousands of ethnic Turkmens, Sunni and Shiite Arabs and Assyrian Christians who have differing views on joining Kurdistan. Property claims slow progress Arabization began in Kirkuk in the early 1970s, and the first stage of the referendum process involves untangling a web of competing property claims dating back decades. In Kirkuk, the committee established to implement the referendum is using as its baseline Iraq's 1957 census. That showed a plurality of Kirkuk's residents being of ethnic Turkmen origin, though a majority of those in surrounding villages are Kurdish. Anyone who moved to Kirkuk within the past 50 years could, therefore, be deported. The Kurds say no one will be forcibly removed from their homes, and Arabs who volunteer to leave are being offered $15,000 in compensation, but the process has resulted in thousands of forced departures, according to Arabs and Turkmens in Kirkuk as well as human-rights groups. A delay now seems inevitable, says committee member Ahmed al-Baraq, because there isn't time to resolve the estimated 36,000 remaining property disputes before December. The process was due to have been completed by May, but since the committee was formed a year ago it has settled only about 3,000 cases. There are other issues to be decided, including where the referendum is to be held. The constitution states only that it should take place in "Kirkuk and other disputed territories," leaving open the question of which territories are disputed. The Kurdish regional government has identified at least half a dozen other towns and districts that it claims should be allowed to vote on becoming part of Kurdistan. They stretch along an arc of oil-rich, fertile territory from Khanaqin, to the east of Baghdad in Diyala province, to Shingar in the far northwest. But no consensus has been reached with Arabs and Turkmens on the committee on which locations should vote. In Makhmur, where Arabization did not begin until the late 1980s, the issues are more straightforward. Makhmur belonged to the province of Irbil until 1991, when the town found itself on the wrong side of the front line of the Kurdish uprising that led to the establishment of a UN-protected haven for Kurds. In 1996, Hussein attached Makhmur to Nineveh province. 'It is safer in Kurdistan' Though Hussein's army forced tens of thousands of Makhmur's Kurds from their homes, most of the Arabs who replaced them fled when U.S. forces and their Kurdish pesh merga militia allies arrived in 2003, according to the mayor and Makhmur residents. Human-rights groups reported at the time that many Arabs were forced to leave. Today, Makhmur is a virtual extension of Kurdistan. Though it is about 15 miles beyond the official Kurdish border, Kurdish peshmerga forces control the area alongside Iraqi forces. At Iraqi checkpoints, the soldiers wear Iraqi uniforms, but they fly the Kurdish flag. About 80 percent of Makhmur's residents are Kurdish, and the Arabs who live there are original inhabitants who won't be obliged to leave, said Kaka, the acting mayor, speaking from his temporary office in the Education Department, where the windows haven't been replaced since May's blast nearby destroyed the mayor's headquarters. Arabs interviewed in Makhmur said they would be happy to become part of Kurdistan. "I will vote yes," said Ayub Sabah, 25, pulling from his pocket a document showing that he was registered at birth as a resident of Arbil province, in Kurdistan. "It is safer in Kurdistan and maybe we will get better services." However, the district of Makhmur includes 140 other villages, most with sizable Arab populations whose attitude toward becoming part of Kurdistan is less clear. Safety is the key reason cited by the Kurds in the town of Makhmur for their frustration at the slow progress of the referendum. Because they are part of Nineveh province, they are required to travel to Mosul for all official business, along roads controlled by insurgents. Most residents don't dare go there, and they try to conduct all their affairs across the border in Kurdistan. "If you travel to Mosul you will be kidnapped and no one will ever find you again," said restaurant owner Kameran Haidar, 36. "This area is protected by peshmerga but if you go 10 kilometers [6 miles] from here, it is all controlled by Al Qaeda [in Iraq]."       Copyright © 2002, Kurdistan Observer