Iraq Report
26 April 2002
By: Michael Rubin

The Iraqi government's ethnic-cleansing campaign against the country's non-Arab citizens has accelerated, according to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) Kurdish-language daily "Kurdistan Nuwe" on 17 April. "Daily, the Iraqi government further intensifies the policy of ethnic cleansing and deportation of Kurds in the regions under its own control," reported "Kurdistan Nuwe." The article continues, "Whenever the global problems become more intricate and more threatening, the Iraqi government finds it an opportune time to further implement its schemes against the Iraqi people in general and the Kurdish people in particular." 

The same article said that the Iraqi government had recently begun construction of 200 houses to be reserved for Arab families transported from southern Iraq. "On 5 January 2002, [Saddam Husseyn's] Presidency Council issued a directive through the Interior Ministry, to the Kirkuk Governorate in which it called for probing into the causes of death of all the Kurdish citizens from 1991 to 1996 in Kirkuk, for the purpose of expelling...the families and relatives of the Kurds who were martyred in the battles for liberating Kirkuk...," the report said. The battles for liberating Kirkuk refer to the brief seizure of Kirkuk by Iraqi Kurdish forces during the abortive March 1991 Kurdish uprising. 

Since the beginning of this year, "Kurdistan Nuwe" reported, the Iraqi government has "decided to allocate vast areas of land" to Arabs exclusively. This land includes plots in between the Zewiya and Azadi districts, around the football stadium in Azadi, and between the Iskan and Karama districts. Land behind the Pepsi Cola plant in Rahim Awa is now allocated only "to the Arab [Ba'th] party comrades." Numerous Arab families have been relocated to the surrounding villages of Hafta Chashma, Omara Gada, and Qara Ways, the report said. The Regional Secretariat of the Ba'th Party has further ordered that ethnic Kurds may not purchase contracts for shops and businesses. 

There are also reports in the Kurdistan Democratic Party's (KDP) press concerning the Iraqi government's continuing ethnic-cleansing campaign. The 19 April issue of the KDP Arabic-language daily "Khabat" reported: "Within the framework of the continuing Arabization policies implemented by the central [Iraqi] authorities in Kirkuk...the authorities decided to auction some of the government-owned houses in Kirkuk. Instructions allow only Arabs to buy these houses, preventing the indigenous Kurdish, Turkoman, and Assyrian inhabitants from doing so." The article continued, "Observers say that the city's Kurdish, Turkoman and Assyrian inhabitants are considered second-class citizens and are deprived of any legal or constitutional rights." Thousands of Kurdish and some Turkoman Iraqis expelled from Kirkuk, Khanaqin, and Sinjar live in tent cities near Chamchamal, or in temporary housing in Kifri and Kalar, as well as in abandoned Iraqi military facilities in Irbil and Sulaymaniyah. Iraq is one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the Arab world. There has been no widely accepted census in almost 50 years, but most estimates place the non-Arab population of Iraq at between 25 and 30 percent of the country.