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Kurds taking arab revenge north { April 18 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,939139,00.htmlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,939139,00.html
Arabs face evictions as Kurds take revenge
Once-repressed group say they are only reclaiming what is theirs
Michael Howard in Daqouq, Iraqi Kurdistan
Friday April 18, 2003
The Guardian
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."
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