Barzani Meets PUK Delegation, Agreement on Electricity Issue

July 15, 2002

Benaslawa, Iraqi Kurdistan -- This dusty refugee camp in the northern no-fly zone is home to several hundred victims of ethnic cleansing -- Iraqi-style.

Most are Kurds from the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, ground zero for a policy they call "Arabization," by which their lands are confiscated and given to Arabs. The refugees, now sheltering in the area carved out for Kurds after the Gulf War in 1991 and protected by U.S. and British warplanes, say Saddam Hussein's regime has intensified the program in recent months in an attempt to solidify its control of the Kirkuk area.

Kirkuk, a Kurdish city, is the center of the Iraqi oil industry and agriculture. Going back as far as the founding of Iraq after World War I, successive Arab-controlled governments in Baghdad have been expelling non- Arabs such as Kurds, Assyrian Christians and Turkomans, say non-Arabs and international rights groups.

"Iraq is accelerating the process so they can control us," said Nasih Ghafoor, a member of the Committee for Confronting Arabization in Kurdistan, based in Erbil. "These areas are very strategic areas, and the economy of Kurdistan depends on them."

According to a 2001 report by two French human rights groups, Kurds living in Kirkuk are subject to "harassment, intimidation, arrests, torture and expulsion."

KURDISH VILLAGES DESTROYED

In recent months, the Iraqi government has reportedly dug wells to smooth the way for the settling of the maximum possible number of Arabs, destroyed Kurdish shops, allocated residential plots of land in Kirkuk and its suburbs to Arab army officers, brought Arab tribes southeast of the city for settlement, and banned Kurdish sheepherders from selling their wares.

In other cases, entire Kurdish villages have been torn down and replaced with government housing for Arabs.

When Great Britain took parts of the crumbled Ottoman Empire and created Iraq after World War I, they included Kirkuk because the fledgling Iraqi state had few natural resources. The decision dashed the hopes of Kurds who wanted an independent state.

"From the beginning of the Iraqi state, they have feared Kurds," Ghafoor said. "They never considered Kurds to be first-class citizens."

Kurds hope that will be remedied once Hussein is gone -- possibly through a much-anticipated U.S. invasion.

Just this month, one of the two main Kurdish groups controlling the self- rule area drafted a wish-list constitution for a post-Hussein state that would divide Iraq into two federal regions -- Arab and Kurd, with Kirkuk acting as the administrative capital of the Kurdistan region, according to the London daily the Guardian.

FEW CHANGING ETHNICITIES

Under Arabization, non-Arabs are required to change their ethnicity on identity cards and census documents. If they refuse, they can be deported to nearby Kurdish-controlled territory.

The invitation to change ethnicities has not had many takers, said Mohammed Osman, a resident of the Benaslawa refugee camp, 12 miles outside Erbil.

"We are Kurds. We refuse to be Arabs," said the 55-year-old truck driver, who lives in a mud-brick, concrete house with a well-tended garden.

Even those who change their classification still face discrimination in Iraq. They are not allowed to work in top government or oil industry jobs and may have to assume an Arabic name.

In Kirkuk, no education in the Kurdish language is offered, and the only media in Kurdish is a two-hour daily television program of propaganda from Hussein's Baath Party.

"When we were in Kirkuk, they forbade Kurds from owning houses or cars or marrying Arab girls. If we wanted a car, we had to register it in an Arab's name," said Azad Ali, 25, who was a high school student when he was evicted from Kirkuk in 1996 and is now a Kurdish soldier.

"The relations with ordinary Arab people weren't bad," he said. "The problem is with the authorities."

In 1996, Ali's father was arrested and held for a month after refusing to change his ethnic classification. Upon release, he was allowed to go home to pack his belongings and accompany his 13 family members to Benaslawa. They were not allowed to take furniture and appliances.

Since then, Ali's mother has been able to visit Kirkuk only once and found an Arab family living in their house.

There are no precise figures on how many non-Arabs have been forced to leave Kirkuk. The Committee for Confronting Arabization estimates that since the 1960s, 190,000 people have been expelled from Kirkuk province.

The committee is preparing a census to get more accurate numbers and expects the results in a few months.

Significant numbers of Turkomans (who are related to Turks) and Assyrian Christians also have been evicted from Kirkuk.

ASSYRIANS DEPORTED

Yonadam Kanna, general secretary of the Assyrian Democratic Movement and a member of the autonomous Kurdish parliament, said Assyrians have been deported who are suspected of allegiance to the two main political parties in the U.N.- protected self-rule zone -- KDP (the Kurdish Democratic Party) and PUK (the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan).

"If you support (KDP President Massoud) Barzani, they push you into KDP territory," he said. "If you say (PUK President Jalal) Talabani, they push you into PUK territory."

The Kurds say that most of the Arabs who move into Kurdish areas receive financial incentives -- a new house with modern amenities, a plot of land to farm, or a better job -- and are even paid to rebury their relatives in Kirkuk to make it appear that the Arab presence has been a long one.

Baghdad also has imported thousands of palm trees into Kirkuk in an attempt to make the city look more like the Arab parts of Iraq, the committee said. The climate refused to cooperate, and the trees died.

Meanwhile, the Kurds are content to remain in their refugee camps until Hussein's removal.

"As long as the Baath Party is in power in Baghdad, I don't want to go back" to Kirkuk, Osman said. "I prefer this area."

 

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