KIRKUK, 16 September 2007 (IRIN) - Iraqi Arab residents of the northern oil-rich
city of Kirkuk, some 250km from Baghdad, say scores of Arab families are fleeing
the city as ethnic violence increases there.
"The attacks on our community have worsened since February 2007. We are being
forced to leave the city almost empty-handed and the government isn't taking any
action to support us," said Ali Akram Mahmoud, a spokesperson for Kirkuk's Arabs
Association (KAA), formed in 2003 with the aim of safeguarding the rights of
Arabs who had settled in the city.
"The number of [Arab] families fleeing the city has increased by 20 percent on
previous years. Their flight will seriously affect the upcoming referendum in
which Kurds will have a majority not because of their numbers but because, with
guns in their hands, they will have forced all Arabs to flee the city. It is
absolutely unfair," he said.
The December 2007 Kirkuk status referendum is due to decide whether the city
becomes part of the Iraqi Kurdistan region.
"The most common scene in Kirkuk is of families filling cars with their
relatives and fleeing the city in the early morning," said Jihad Muhammad, a
political analyst at Mustansiriyah University.
Kirkuk was long considered a microcosm of Iraq with its diversity of ethnic and
religious groups. However, former President Saddam Hussein's "Arabisation"
policy in the early 1980s and during the 1990s forced tens of thousands of Kurds
and other non-Arabs to flee. They were replaced with pro-government Arabs from
the impoverished south.
Following the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, tens of thousands of Kurds
returned to Kirkuk, with their house keys, to find their homes either sold or
given to Arabs. This led to attacks by Kurds on Arabs.
Advised to flee south
A local Iraq Red Crescent senior official, who prefers anonymity for security
reasons, said since June 2007 at least 2,000 Arab families had fled Kirkuk.
"Hundreds of families are fleeing the city without their belongings." They had
been forced to search for displacement camps and many had joined the nearly one
million displaced families in southern governorates, whilst others were staying
on roadsides or in poor areas, he said.
In a local police station IRIN witnessed dozens of families begging for help
from police after being forced from their homes by Kurdish militias. They were
all told the same thing - that they could not be given individual protection and
that they would be best advised to find more secure accommodation in southern
Iraq.
The city, a multi-ethnic mix of Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians, Turkomans and
Armenians, has plenty of oil, but may not have much time left to avoid being
dragged into sectarian bloodshed.
