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Arabs are being compensated to leave Kirkuk so
that displaced Kurds, such as this family, can return home |
KIRKUK, 26 February 2007 (IRIN) - Sheikh
Muhssin al-Zaidi, 45, is sad to be leaving Kirkuk, the northern city he has
lived in since the early 1980s. He disagrees with the ‘Arabisation’ policy of
former president Saddam Hussein’s government that brought him there but now he
has agreed to comply with the current government’s decision that he and tens of
thousands of other Arabs move back.
“Leaving the city where we raised our children and which we got used to is not
an easy decision but as long as there is an historic mistake that was made by
Saddam’s regime and we are its victims, then we have to go back to our homes,”
said al-Zaidi, a Shia Arab who was part of Saddam’s campaign to flood Kirkuk
with Arabs and cleanse the city of Kurds, who the Baathist government deemed a
threat.
Twenty years ago, al-Zaidi was given thousands of dollars in cash and a free
apartment in Kirkuk to move from his home in Baghdad, which is 290km to the
south. Now, his family is among 6,850 Arab families who recently agreed to a
decision by a governmental committee early in February to relocate tens of
thousands of mostly Shia Arabs.
The Iraqi Higher Committee for the Normalisation of Kirkuk decided that 20
million Iraqi dinars (about US $15,000) compensation would be given to those who
arrived in Kirkuk during the ‘Arabisation’ campaign and who would move out now.
In addition, they would be given land in their home towns. Yet the committee’s
decision still needs to be endorsed by the Iraqi cabinet.
Monetary compensation
“All the Arabs who moved to the city from other parts of Iraq after 14 July 1968
and until 9 April, 2003 will be returned to their original towns and given
monetary compensation,” said Sadiq Kaka Rash, a member of the governmental
committee.
Saddam’s Ba’ath party took power Iraq in a military coup in 1968 and it fell
following the US-led invasion of Iraq on 9 April, 2003.
“They [the Arabs] have to relocate themselves as soon as possible before this
year’s referendum as they have no right to take part in it,” Rash added.
Iraq’s current constitution, which was approved in a national referendum on 15
October, 2005, calls for a separate referendum on Kirkuk’s future by the end of
this year. The Kurds, who say that Kirkuk is Kurdish, want to incorporate the
city and its rich oilfields into their self-ruled region - a move which has been
strongly opposed by the Turkomen and Arabs.
Tens of thousands of Kurds and non-Arabs fled
Kirkuk in the early 1980s and during the 1990s when Saddam’s government
implemented its ‘Arabisation’ policy. Kurds and non-Arabs were replaced with
pro-government Arabs from the mainly Shia but impoverished south.
After the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 brought Saddam’s rule to an end,
Kirkuk was widely seen as a tinderbox as Kurds and other non-Arabs streamed back
with their house keys in hand only to find their homes were either sold or given
to Arabs.
The returning Kurds became displaced in their own hometown as they found nowhere
to live except in parks and abandoned government buildings. At the same time,
many Arabs were forced to leave the city, despite Sunni and Shia Arab leaders
pleading them not to.
In danger of violence
“We don't want to put our children and women in danger of violence,” said Qader
Haqi Tawfiq, 50, who, like al-Zaidi, is an Arab who has decided to move his
family out of Kirkuk. “We hope that our Kurdish brothers don’t get us wrong and
that they fully understand that we were living in a hard time [under Saddam’s
rule] when we benefited from the privileges which were given to Arabs,” Tawfiq
added.
But other Arabs do not agree and still claim right to Kirkuk.
“Kirkuk is my home and they [Kurds] will not take my house unless they kill me,”
said Jaber Farhan Mohammed, 43, a Shia Arab supermarket owner who came to Kirkuk
in 1983. “We will fight until the last drop of our blood. There is still land
[around Kirkuk] that can be given to the Kurds if the government wants to help
them,” Mohammed added.
The oil-rich city of Kirkuk was long considered
a microcosm of Iraq with its diversity of ethnic and religious groups. With
Turkomen, Kurds, Assyrians, Chaldeans and Arabs living together in peace, it was
a melting pot of the various communities that reflected Iraq’s demographic
makeup.
But this is no longer the case. In the past three weeks, Kirkuk has suffered a
wave of bombings; including six car bombs on one day alone. Some of the bombings
took place in Kurdish neighbourhoods and others in Arab ones. Nearly 50
civilians have been killed as a result and more than 100 wounded.
No accurate figures are available for Arabs in Kirkuk but the last ethnic
breakdown census in Iraq, which was conducted in 1957, showed that there were
178,000 Kurds, 48,000 Turkomen, 43,000 Arabs and 10,000 Assyrian-Chaldean
Christians living in the city.
