- Iraqi Arabs claim they are being forcibly expelled from
homes and villages in and around the northern city of Kirkuk by Kurds who
are bent on undoing years of their own forced expulsion at the hands of
the Iraqi regime.
-
- As many as 2,000 people from four villages near the town
of Daqouq, about 17 miles south of Kirkuk, are reported to have left property
and land that once belonged to Kurds, after being served with eviction
notices by an official from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan - which took
control of the area following the fall of Kirkuk on April 10.
-
- The Arab villagers have sought refuge in the homes and
tents of fellow members of the Shummar tribe in a larger village nearby.
-
- "This is the legacy Saddam left us," said Walid,
a farmer from the village of al-Untasir, who came to Daqouq to plead his
case with PUK officials. "Now we have no safety, no land and no future."
He said he and his family had been forced from his home by gunmen who then
stole his tractor.
-
- With the US military struggling to retain even a tenuous
grip over Iraq's northern cities, a wave of reprisals by the Kurds against
their former Arab oppressors is sweeping the region.
-
- In Kirkuk, Arab residents of the Qadassiyah district
say they have been the target of looting and a drive-by shooting by Kurds.
They said three houses in the area had been seized by armed men who then
spray-painted the word girow , Kurdish for "taken", on the outside.
-
- PUK officials yesterday denied that expulsion represented
their official policy, but conceded that some Kurds may have pretended
to be PUK officials in order to "pursue criminal activities".
-
- "The Arabs are our brothers," said Juma Ahmed
Majid, head of the PUK's Daqouq office. "But Kurds used to own, farm
and live on all this land and were driven off it by Saddam in the 1970s.
We have long dreamed of being able to return and it is our right."
-
- In a conciliatory message to Arab tribal leaders in and
around Mosul and Kirkuk, Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic
party, condemned the attacks and promised to bring to justice any Kurds
caught looting Arab villages.
-
- "No Kurd is allowed to attack the property, life
or integrity of any Arab citizen in any village, district or in the centre
of main cities," he said. "The Arabs have full right to self-defence
in such incidents."
-
- Settling claims over displaced people and confiscated
property in Iraq is one of the most sensitive and potentially explosive
issues facing post-war authorities in the country.
-
- For Kurds, Kirkuk has become a symbol of their repression
and arouses great passion.
-
- Since the 1991 Gulf war, the Iraqi regime has systematically
expelled an estimated 120,000 people - mostly Kurds, but also Turkomans
and Assyrian Christians - from Kirkuk and other towns and villages in this
oil-rich region in a process known as "Arabisation".
-
- There are thought to be as many as 400,000 displaced
people in northern Iraq.
-
- Yesterday's outcry from the Arab community in the north
is likely to add to growing criticism of the US and British forces for
what is increasingly looking like an ad hoc strategy for defusing Iraq's
political and social minefields.
-
- With the past week's looting, violence and unrest in
Mosul and Kirkuk, US forces who have arrived from fighting against Iraqi
troops are now being asked to play the role of peacekeepers.
-
- But it is debatable whether there are enough of them
to make a difference, or whether they are adequately prepared for the role.
-
- "They had a long time to plan for issues such as
this, but it seems nothing was done," said Hani Mufti, London director
of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch.
-
- She said the Kurds' right of return to property and land
seized by the Ba'athist regime should be recognised, but warned: "If
a plan for the gradual and orderly return of these displaced citizens is
not drawn up and implemented soon there is a real possibility of inter-ethnic
violence."
-
- She said that the Kurds in Kirkuk should not take the
law into their own hands. "Right up until the collapse of the regime
they were the victims of terror," she said.
-
- "Now they should not turn around and do the same
thing to the Arabs. They were also victims of Saddam."
-
- A senior Kurdish official called yesterday for an international
commission to settle the issue of internally displaced people in the north.
-
- "This has to be an organised process," said
Hoshyar Zebari, foreign relations chief of the Kurdistan Democratic party,
one of the two Kurdish groups controlling the self-rule area.
-
- "Kurds have been the victims of the Arabisation
process for so many years. There should be an international committee headed
by a prominent personality to supervise the return of displaced people
to their homes, while at the same time not encroaching on human rights."
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,939139,00.html
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