Iraqi Arabs Seek Sanctuary in Kurdish North
The Associated Press
Sulaimani, (Southern Kurdistan)
Feb 7,
2007
As snow
fell outside, the smell of frying eggplant and onions burned Umm Ali's eyes as
she cooked in her kitchen — which doubles as the family bathroom. There's not
much else: one other room for her, her husband and four children.
Still, she says, it's better here than at the family's home in Baghdad, 260
kilometers (180 miles) south, at the center of Iraq's bloodshed.
"Even if we were living in a tent, without a real roof over our heads in this
snowy weather, we'd still be happy to be away from that intimidation," said the
41-year-old Shiite housewife.
Some 2 million Iraqis have fled to neighboring countries in the past three years
and up to 3,000 more flee abroad everyday, according to the U.N. refugee agency.
But Umm Ali and her husband, Hussein Jawad, are among nearly 85,000 Iraqi Arabs
who have chosen, instead, to flee to the autonomous Kurdish region of northern
Iraq.
There, they too find themselves in what feels like a foreign country: Kurdistan
has been autonomous since 1991, and Kurds have run their own affairs. While
Arabic is still an official language, it is all but eclipsed by Kurdish.
But Iraq's Kurdistan also has largely been spared the relentless car bombings,
suicide attacks and Shiite-Sunni slayings that have killed thousands in Baghdad,
central Iraq and the south. People here also are mostly free of the daily crime,
kidnappings, death threats and fear present in Baghdad.
The result has been an economic boom in the three provinces that make up
Kurdistan, with numerous jobs in construction for Iraqis from the south.
"Our joy comes in feeling secure," said Jawad, who took his family from the
Baghdad district of Dora after a note was left at their house calling the family
"Shiite infidels" and warning that the children would be "slain like sheep" if
the family didn't leave.
"I didn't care about my house," he said. "I just felt my children and I needed
to live our lives." He now works as an electrician in a new three-star hotel
here.
The influx has strained social services in the north, however, and fueled rising
housing prices. It also comes at a time when Kurdish-Arab tensions are
increasing in the city of Kirkuk, just outside the Kurdish zone, over Kurdish
attempts to include it in Kurdistan. Similar Kurdish-Arab tensions have arisen
in the northern city of Mosul.
That makes the current, peaceful migration of Iraqi Arabs to Kurdish cities like
Sulaimaniyah somewhat unusual in the country's history. Under the regime of
Saddam Hussein, Kurds were terrorized and repressed and Saddam tried to send
Arab residents north in some cases to displace Kurds in key cities.
But so far, the flight of Iraqi Arabs to the three Kurdish provinces has not
sparked significant ethnic tensions. In fact, the governor of Sulaimaniyah, Dana
Ahmad Majeed, has invited more Iraqis to flee north rather than leave Iraq
altogether.
Still, he said the federal government needs to give Kurdistan more medical
supplies, fuel and electricity in order to handle the flood of refugees.
"The support these displaced people are getting is so slim compared to the
skyrocketing numbers of these emigrants (to Kurdistan) everyday," he told The
Associated Press.
Of the nearly 85,000 Iraqis displaced from farther south who now live in the
three Kurdish provinces, about 30,000 live in Sulaimaniyah province, said Anita
Raman, an official of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees monitoring Iraqi
refugees.
UNHCR has been providing emergency help for the most vulnerable, including
kerosene, lanterns, blankets and food, Raman said.
Majeed said at least 10 more families enter Sulaimaniyah everyday — on top of
some 25,000 Arabs who have come simply looking for jobs rather than fleeing
violence. The region's pre-refugee exact population is not known.
At the "border" between Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq, Kurdish fighters at
checkpoints now stop and search the cars of entering Arabs. Families are allowed
in without permits, but single men must have a Kurdish sponsor and a work permit
to pass — a security measure to prevent militants from entering, Kurdish
authorities say.
Those who come have to make adjustments — to the high rents, scarce housing,
cold winter weather and language barrier. The Kurdish language uses the Arabic
alphabet, but is an Indo-European language unrelated to Semitic Arabic.
"We couldn't even read the signs in the streets," said Jawdat al-Obaidi, a Sunni
Arab from the town of Youssifiyah, just south of Baghdad. "I am trying to learn
the language so I can find a decent job and settle here."
The 46-year-old engineer fled Youssifiyah two months ago after Shiite militiamen
scrawled "death to terrorists" on his house.
Now he's thrilled to have found the Jawahiri Elementary School — Sulaimaniyah's
only Arabic language school, where he has enrolled his three sons.
Near the school one recent day, a Kurdish street vendor selling cookies and
chocolates stood surrounded by a dozen Arab schoolchildren. Hussein Mazin, a
12-year-old Shiite, struggled to find a way to ask the vendor whether he sold a
particular kind of potato chip.
"I speak some Kurdish," Mazin said, smiling. "But obviously not very good."
Mazin's family fled the southern city of Basra after his brother was snatched
near his school for ransom. The kidnappers then threatened to seize his younger
sister, too.
"We are not afraid of the kidnappers anymore," Mazin said.
