Iraq Backs Arab relocation for Kirkuk
Mar 31, 2007
By STEVEN R. HURST, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD - Iraq ‘s government has endorsed plans to relocate thousands of Arabs
who were moved to Kirkuk as part of Saddam Hussein ‘s campaign to force ethnic
Kurds out of the oil-rich city, in an effort to undo one of the former
dictator‘s most enduring and hated policies.
The plan was virtually certain to anger neighboring Turkey, which fears a
northward migration of Iraqi Kurds — and an exodus of Sunni Arabs — will inflame
its own restive Kurdish minority.
Kirkuk, an ancient city that once was part of the Ottoman Empire, has a large
minority of ethnic Turks as well as Christians, Shiite and Sunni Arabs,
Armenians and Assyrians. The city is just south of the Kurdish autonomous zone
stretching across three provinces of northeastern Iraq.
Justice Minister Hashim al-Shebli said the Cabinet agreed on Thursday to a study
group‘s recommendation that Arabs who had moved to Kirkuk from other parts of
Iraq after July 1968 should be returned to their original towns and paid
compensation.
"There will be no coercion and the decision will not be implemented by force,"
al-Shebli told The Associated Press.
After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Kurds and other non-Arabs
streamed back, only to find their homes were either sold or given to Arabs. Some
of the returning Kurds found nowhere to live except in parks and abandoned
government buildings. Others drove Arabs from the city, despite pleas from Sunni
and Shiite leaders for them to stay.
"Kirkuk is an Iraqi city and I‘m Iraqi," said the father of nine. "We came here
as one family and now we are four. Our blood is mixed with Kurds and Turkmen."
There were fears that a referendum that was likely to put Kirkuk, 180 miles
north of Baghdad, under Kurdish control could open a new front in the violence
that has ravaged Iraq since shortly after the U.S.-led invasion. On March 19,
several bombs struck targets in Kirkuk and killed at least 26 people.
He said he would continue in office until the Cabinet approved his resignation.
Ali al-Dabbagh, spokesman for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said al-Shebli
quit before he could be fired in a coming government reshuffle. Neither al-Dabbagh
nor al-Shebli would say if the minister had resigned over the Kirkuk issue.
In late February, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Iraq should
delay the Kirkuk referendum because the city was not secure.
Turkey fears Iraq‘s Kurds want Kirkuk‘s oil revenues to fund an eventual bid for
independence that could encourage separatist Kurdish guerrillas in Turkey, who
have been fighting for autonomy since 1984. That conflict has claimed the lives
of 37,000 people.
Al-Shebli said local authorities in Kirkuk would begin distributing forms soon
to Arab families to determine who would participate in the relocation program.
He said he could not predict how long the process would take.
Planning Minister Ali Baban said the relocation plan was adopted over the
opposition of Sunni Arab members of the Shiite-led government, members of the
Iraqi List and at least one Cabinet minister loyal to radical Shiite cleric
Muqtada al-Sadr.
"We demanded that the question of Kirkuk be resolved through dialogue between
the political blocs and not through the committee," he told the AP earlier this
week. "They say the repatriation is voluntary, but we have our doubts."
Osama al-Nujaifi, a Sunni lawmaker with the Iraqi List, also denounced the
decision, saying it fails to address key issues, including how to deal with
property claims.
"There are more than 13,000 unsolved cases before the commission in charge of
this point and it just solved no more than 250 of them," he said of the property
claims. "The other thing is the huge demographic change in Kirkuk as more than
650,000 Kurds have been brought in illegally over the past four years. We
contest these resolutions and we will raise to the parliament to be discussed."
