Kurds aiming for final agreement next week

'Saddam will not stop me being a Kurd' 

The Observer 

Stripped of their homes and rights, refugees wait in
the desert for war - and a chance to settle old scores 

Jason Burke, Barda Qaraman refugee camp, Northern Iraq
Sunday August 18, 2002

When they came for Mohamed Omar he wouldn't go. Not when
they ordered him to report to the local police station to 'readjust'
his nationality, not when they told him they would confiscate all
his property, not when they threatened to imprison him and to
deport his family. 

Now Omar has spent the past three months in jail and his family
have been sent to live in a town out in the desert nearly 300
miles to the west. His home, where his family had lived for
generations, has been given to a local supporter of Saddam
Hussein. Omar is a Kurd, from the minority who dominate the
northern part of Iraq. The man who has taken his house is an
ethnic Arab, like Saddam and almost his entire regime. 

Omar is a victim of Saddam's Arabisation programme. When the
Gulf war ended, an autonomous Kurdish region was established
in the north of Iraq under the protection of British and US
warplanes. Since 1991 Saddam has forced tens of thousands of
Kurds, whom he sees as a threat, out of the areas that he still
rules and into the new self-governing enclave. 

Once the Kurds have gone, their homes and properties are given
to loyal Arabs from the Ba'ath party - Saddam's political vehicle.
The demographics of key strategic regions of Iraq are thus
dramatically altered. 

Omar was one of the very few to resist the Arabisation
programme. His story was told to The Observer by friends and
neighbours who had all decided to flee rather than risk the
consequences. 

'He is the only man I know who refused to do what they said,'
said one. 'We all say no at first but to resist them is useless.
They will just jail you, break up your family or worse.' 

Even refugees who reached the relative safety of the Kurdish
autonomous areas more than a year ago are still frightened.
Many refused to give their real names and did not want to be
photographed. 'I have relatives over the border. It would put them
in danger,' one man said. The name Mohamed Omar is false.
The details of his case are not. 

But though they are keen to help the Kurds, one consequence
of Saddam's Arabisation programme is troubling the British and
US officials drawing up plans for a military strike to remove him.
It is an issue that could make the construction of a stable state
after a conflict extremely difficult. For though tens of thousands
of Kurds have been forced from their homes, few have given up
hope of returning to them. The prospect of a nationwide settling
of old scores is very real. 

Like many of those in the eastern part of the Kurdish
autonomous zone, Uria Mustafa comes from Kirkuk, a city of
550,000 in the centre of a major oilfield. 

The 28-year-old confectioner was forced to leave his house in
June. Two months earlier local government officials had told him
it was time he became a member of the Ba'ath party. He would
have to sign legal papers to 'correct' his nationality to Arab, they
said. Uria refused. 'I was born a Kurd and I will die one,' he said.
Uria's elder brother was then seized by armed officials and taken
to jail. The family were told that only when they arrived at a
police station with all their goods in a truck and handed over
their identity cards, ration books and the deeds to their home,
would they be able to leave. 

Uria followed his instructions - though he bribed an official to be
allowed to keep his precious ration book. He even signed the
paper saying he was 'volunteering' to go. With an armed guard
the family were dumped in the desert on the frontline 80 miles to
the north. The house was given to a Ba'ath party employee. 'I
want it back,' Uria said. 

A new family arrives at the Barda Qaraman refugee camp, set
on a desolate rocky hillside south of the city of Sulaymania,
each week. In August, temperatures reach 50 C. A health clinic
operates twice a week and there is a small government-run
primary school. 

Officials from the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) - the two political groups that
govern the 3.5 million Kurds in northern autonomous zones -
estimate 3,000 to 4,000 people are deported by the Baghdad
government each year. 

Successive governments in Baghdad have mounted military
campaigns against the Kurds which have forced huge population
shifts. 

Saddam has pursued Arabisation systematically. In 1988 he
used chemical weapons against the north-eastern town of
Halabja and destroyed thousands of villages. 

Combined with the deportations, continuing violence has made a
huge demographic impact. According to one PUK official, Arabs
comprised only 10 per cent of the population of Kirkuk province
50 years ago. Now Kurds are in the minority. 

Most of those in the Barda Qaraman camp were happy at the
prospect of US military action. 'I have to ask myself if God is
really good enough to grant us that,' said Umaid Latif, 43. All
were looking forward to reclaiming their homes and property. The
Arabs living in them would have to flee or they would be
expelled, they said. 'We will not go out to revenge ourselves but
they are all Ba'ath party people. Once the regime has gone they
will have to go. They will become refugees themselves, Latif
said. 

But for some at Barda Qaraman, military or political
manoeuvring is of little interest. The most recent arrival in the
camp, a 52-year-old peasant farmer who did not want to be
named, said he was 'just a poor man and not interested in such
things'. 

He and his wife and their six children had arrived two days
earlier. He was still suffering from the month he had spent in a
prison after his initial refusal to be deported. There were 175
people in his cell and insufficient food. 

'I cannot express what I feel. I am not an educated man. We
have always been poor,' he said. 'Now we are here, and now we
are just waiting for some luck.'