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The 'Arabization' of Kurdish
Iraq
PRAGUE - No one knows
precisely how many Kurds and members of other minority
groups have been forced out of northern Iraq's
predominantly Kurdish districts of Kirkuk, Khanaqin and
Sinjar, to be replaced by settlers from Iraq's Arab
majority.
But estimates, including one by the US
Committee for Refugees, a human rights group in
Washington DC, put the number at well over 100,000
people during the past 10 years alone. The estimates are
based on rough counts of the number of people who have
fled from these districts into the Kurdish-controlled
enclave on Iraq's border with Turkey and Iran.
The evictions are part of a stepped-up but
already decades-long campaign by the Arab-based
government in Baghdad to change the demographics of a
large swath of northern Iraq, which historically has had
a mixed but predominantly Kurdish population.
Hiwa Osman, a London-based independent
journalist who frequently visits northern Iraq, says
Baghdad's goal is to create an Arab-populated belt that
would secure its northern oil fields from the country's
Kurdish minority and neighboring states: "They basically
wanted to create this buffer of new Arab settlers in the
Kurdish areas to the south of the Kurdish-controlled
[enclave]. The security belt is to protect the oil
fields."
The region targeted for this
"Arabization" campaign runs from Iraq's northwestern
border with Syria, through the northern cities of Mosul
and Kirkuk, to the northeastern border with Iran. It
lies outside northern Iraq's self-governing Kurdish
enclave, which has been protected by a US and
British-patrolled no-fly zone since the 1991 Gulf War.
Most of the population expulsions occur in areas
which Baghdad considers to be of particular strategic or
economic importance, such as the urban center of Kirkuk,
potential oil fields and fertile agricultural land. The
forced population movements have been carried out
intermittently by authorities in Baghdad since the late
1930s and were accelerated after the Baath Party, with a
pan-Arab nationalist ideology, seized power in 1968.
Hundreds of thousands more Kurds fled into the
Kurdish-controlled enclave after the Kurdish rebellion
against Saddam Hussein following the Gulf War.
In recent years, the deportation program often
has taken the form of Iraqi officials giving Kurds and
members of other minorities in the area a choice of
either changing their officially listed ethnic identity
to "Arab" or leaving their homes. Those who refuse are
immediately deported to the Kurdish-controlled enclave.
Those who agree are permitted sometimes to stay in their
homes, but more often are relocated to areas of southern
Iraq that have an Arab majority.
Mike Amitay,
head of the Kurdish Institute in Washington DC, says
that the decades of expulsions have changed the
demographics of the city of Kirkuk to the point that
today it is unclear whether it retains its traditionally
predominant Kurdish character: "There is no doubt that
the demographics of the city have changed significantly,
and it very well might be that there is no longer a
Kurdish majority in that city."
The Washington
Times recently reported that, according to official
Iraqi figures, Kirkuk's Kurdish population fell from 47
percent of total to 38 percent from 1957 to 1977. At the
same time, the proportion of Arabs rose from 28 percent
to 44 percent. No newer census figures are available.
What has happened in Kirkuk is likely to pose a
major challenge to establishing a new order in Iraq
should Baghdad refuse to shut down its its suspected
weapons of mass destruction programs and Washington
pushes ahead with plans to attack.
Amitay says
that many of those who have been forcibly expelled from
Kirkuk are living in makeshift camps or housing in the
Kurdish enclave and are eager to return to their
original homes. But those homes are now occupied by Arab
settlers who have been given incentives, or in some
cases been pressed, by Baghdad to move there.
"It [poses] the question of what will happen to
post-Saddam, whether people will move back to their
homes in Kirkuk. The Kurdish governments have not been
able to resettle all of these people. Many of them are
still in IDP [internally displaced persons] camps and
would be very eager to return to their homes, but many
of their homes are occupied by Arab settlers. So the
question is what will the disposition of all these
issues become once the regime changes."
Another
key problem is who would administer Kirkuk in any new
Iraqi order. The two major Kurdish factions endorse a
federal solution for Iraq and last month agreed between
themselves on a draft constitution that envisions a
Kurdish administration in the northern region. The
Kurdish leaders also have called for making the oil-rich
city of Kirkuk their regional capital.
The call
for making Kirkuk part of a federal Kurdish region is
almost certain to make the city once again the
centerpiece of Kurdish-Arab tensions in Iraq.
Correspondent Osman says that past Kurdish
revolts against Baghdad have often been tied to
frictions over Kirkuk, and that subsequent peace
negotiations have frequently fallen apart while
attempting to define the city's status. "There has
always been a dispute over the identity of Kirkuk
between the Kurds and the various central governments.
No Iraqi government has been opposed to the Kurds being
wherever they are today [in the Kurdish-controlled
areas]. The whole issue of dispute has been Kirkuk. So
many past negotiations fell apart because of the
non-agreement over the status of Kirkuk."
The
Iraqi opposition in exile has yet to make a unified
statement on the issue of Kirkuk or the larger issue of
the decades-long Arabization campaign in northern Iraq.
But Jalal Talibani, leader of one of the two Kurdish
factions, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), has
said he believes many predominantly Arab groups oppose
the expulsion policy. He said this includes the
opposition umbrella group the Iraqi National Congress.
As Kurds and Iraqi Arabs face the issue of how
to administer Kirkuk - with some form of multiple
administration by the Kurds and the central government
as one possibility - other challenges loom over what
Iraq's powerful neighbor Turkey will accept.
Turkish officials have repeatedly warned that
they will not tolerate the creation of anything that
looks like a Kurdish mini-state in Iraq with control
over key oil resources around Kirkuk that would make it
economically self-sustaining. Turkey fears that this
might incite its own restive Kurdish minority to seek
autonomy, too.
Turkey's Prime Minister Bulent
Ecevit said last week that Ankara would intervene to
prevent Kirkuk becoming a Kurdish-controlled city. He
said, "There's no need for an intervention at the moment
... [but] it will be out of the question to approve of
an arrangement in northern Iraq that runs contrary to
Turkey's national interests."
If US officials go
ahead with plans to topple Saddam's regime and replace
it with an interim coalition authority - as some top US
officials have suggested - balancing the conflicting
interests over Kirkuk could ultimately fall to
Washington.
But in a Sunday interview with
Istanbul's Milliyet newspaper, Turkish Foreign Minister
Sukru Sina Gurel again warned the US against supporting
an independent Kurdistan. "US officials say they do not
want an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq, but
developments there show a de facto state has been set
up," Gurel said. "This raises suspicions about whether
the United States is trying to provoke Ankara by
supporting these developments. Proclamation of an
independent Kurdish state ... will meet with Turkish
intervention."
Zalmay Khalilzad, the special
assistant to the US president for the Near East,
Southwest Asian and North African Affairs, said last
week that Washington could install a US-led military
government in Iraq to assure a transition to an elected
civilian government. He said that under such plans a
US-led coalition "will assume ... responsibility for the
territorial defense and security of Iraq after
liberation." He did not say how long such an authority
might remain in place.
Copyright (c) 2002.
RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC
20036.
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