Kirkuk, Kurds holy city

BY: Kurdo Rahim Bamarni

Ireland

March 29, 2005

Many things have been said about Kirkuk, so I am not going to add more to this contentious issue, but I will pose the following thoughts and questions:

Let us assume that Saddam in his drive to reduce Kurdish population and density in Kurdistan has moved hundreds of thousands of Kurds to a Shiite towns and cities.

Now, the wave of the newly arrived deportees; and not settlers enticed with money, livestock and property like those found in Kirkuk, has tilted the balance of the demography and population distribution in favour of the Kurds.

This has led the indigenous Shiite people to become a minority within their own original land.

Then as the newly arrived deportees are Sunni by faith, the town or the city, which always has been Shiite throughout history, has now a Sunni majority.

Let us also assume that after the downfall of the Ba’th regime those Sunni Kurds were coming out in their hundreds of thousands to chant anti-Shiite slogans and denouncing Shiite parties as well as threatening any move towards making the town and city they were planted in part of southern federation.

The last of these thoughts, which God forbid and thankfully never materialized, what would the political movement of Shiite has said and do about moves by the newly arrived Sunni Kurds to forge alliances and ties with anti-Shiite elements?

If this scenario was faced by the Shiite political movement in their sacred heartlands and holy cities, what they would have said to the Kurdish political movement at the negotiating table?

Then, what would have been said about the Kurds if they were to embrace a small anti-Shiite element which has been vociferous in their enmity to Shiite and plotting against them with a neighbouring country?

Before answering this question please put in mind that Shiite Coalition embraced the Turkoman Front without a question been asked or conditions being attached.

If we were to assume that God forbid this has taken place I am sure that not only the same relentless campaign to discredit the Kurds would have been waged, such as the one we are seeing now, but also it might have, God also forbid, led to many unfortunate tragedies.

Let us be clear, Kirkuk has always been sacred to Kurds as Karbala and Najaf to Shiite Muslims and all other Shiite cities and towns. 

So what would have happened if the Kurds insisted on sticking to the Saddam’s legacy of having Sunni Kurds in Shiite areas running a mock with the true inhabitants of the cities and towns?

Why then they seem to agree to what Saddam has wrought upon parts of Kurdistan and its sacred heart Kirkuk, and why they unashamedly accept the results of Arabization?

It seems that one of the advantages of Saddam’s ethnic cleansing project is too good to let go off, and that is the Shiite political movement has now a foothold in rich Kurdish land, thanks to Saddam’s invitation for people from the south to conquer other people’s land and property.

It is high time for all Iraqis, politicians, writers, intellectuals, human right campaigners, or those who claim to be working for good against evil to clearly show either they are against Saddam’s ethnic cleansing project or with it.

And if they are against it they should work with Kurds to rectify and cleanse the lands and cities of Kurdistan from its vestiges.

Or thank Saddam for giving them an opportunity to have a political foothold and say in the future of a city which they have never had any relation with or remotely connected with.

There is no two way about this.

Those who write anti-Kurdish rhetoric and fill air-waves and internet sites with racist articles about Kurds should make effort to release their fallen hero, Saddam Husayn, the champion of their cause, the project of ethnically cleanse Kurds from Kurdistan.