City Trench that Bars way to Arab Refugees
and Killers
Mar 31, 2007 The
Times
Erbil, (Southern Kurdistan) --
Cars clog the narrow, pitted road that leads into Erbil, the capital of the
Kurdistan region of Iraq, connecting the city with the rest of the country.
Nervous and exhausted passengers clutch their identification papers as they inch
towards the Kirkuk checkpoint. One by one, the vehicles are searched and male
travellers are patted down.
“Every day about 2,000 to 3,000 people are trying to get into Erbil. About 80
per cent of them are displaced people,” said Ahmed Khalil, in charge of the
city’s two checkpoints.
Thousands of Iraqis are fleeing the incipient civil war and heading for
sanctuary in Kurdistan region (the Kurdish part of northern Iraq). The Iraqi Red
Crescent Society estimates that about 160,000 Iraqis have moved there.
Once through the security checkpoints, Iraqis must provide the name of a Kurdish
guarantor. Without it, they will be turned away. And it is much harder for Arab
Muslims to be allowed in than for Christians or Kurds. Mr Khalil said that 60
people a day are turned away for having no guarantor.
“The fighting and bloodshed is practically on our doorstep,” said an official
who did not want to be named. “Mosul and Kirkuk are less than an hour away. The
terrorists are Arabs. It’s no wonder the Kurds don’t want any more Arabs in.”
The Kurdish region is enjoying growing prosperity and safety. There is relative
unity in the autonomous region. Security is the highest priority. It is tight
and effective, so bombings and other attacks are rare.
The Kurds have dug a trench, 5m wide and 4m deep (16ft by 13ft), around the
city, patrolled by Kurdish militia.
“All we have is manpower and our brains to try to outwit the terrorists — and
our hearts to make sure this land is kept safe. We would do this work for
free if we had to,” Mr Khalil said, adding that terrorist attacks have decreased
since the trench was built.
He said that dozens are arrested attempting to cross the trench every day.
Terrorists, he said, send animals over with explosives strapped to them, but
they cannot cross the trench.
At the checkpoints, up to 50 guns are confiscated a day. Even families carry
arms, for many have braved perilous journeys to get here.
There were no weapons in Farrah Abdul’s car because the driver had dropped off
the pistol in a nearby town on the way. It took Mrs Abdul and her 14-year-old
daughter, Barah, three days and several cars to get to Erbil from her home in
Amariya, a Sunni neighbourhood of Baghdad. Her husband, a Shia, had already fled
with their two sons when he received death threats. A week later gunmen fired at
her house and a bullet narrowly missed Barah’s head. “We’ve seen so many friends
and family killed. We were running away from death,” Mrs Abdul said.
With the influx of Iraqis into the region, rents have rocketed. Families have
also become entangled in Iraq’s pervasive bureaucracy. Mrs Abdul’s children
cannot enrol in school here because in the panic to leave Baghdad they did not
have time to pick up the documents required to change schools.
“It’s too dangerous for us to go back to Baghdad to get the school certificate,”
Mrs Abdul said. “Friends of ours got their neighbours to pick up the certificate
for them. When they left the school they were shot dead for being traitors — for
helping Shias to escape.”
Families cannot get monthly food rations until they reregister, which takes six
months.
Christian Iraqis, however, are welcomed with aid. They receive £45 a month from
the regional government and, in some cases, land in their villages of origin.
The move is viewed as a tactical one to swell the non-Arab population and gain
support from the West as the region asserts its independence from the rest of
Iraq.
“It used to make no difference if you were Sunni, Shia, Christian or Kurd. Now
it does,” Mrs Abdul said. “I just want to go home. The problem is, I no longer
have one.
