Focus on displacement in Kirkuk

There are reports of the continuing displacement of Arabs from Kirkuk in the north of Iraq, many of whom are living around old military bases 10 km north of the city, according to local aid agencies. Others have taken refuge in abandoned schools inside Kirkuk or in small villages after being forced out by the Kurds. "The Kurds have been forced by Kurdish officials to return to the city before a national census takes place in October 2005," officials of the Islamic Arabic Union in Iraq told IRIN in Kirkuk. The organisation is helping the displaced by providing food, but say that much more aid is needed. "We lost everything," Khalid Raja, 46, an Arab father of six living in an abandoned school, told IRIN in Kirkuk. "They do not have the right to take us away from what we have built on the land. We cannot live in these conditions. We are all suffering from the heat and are afraid because we are living in an open space and anyone can enter this building at any time," he added. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said there were difficulties in assisting the displaced Arabs since they were widespread and their numbers were not known. "This situation should be taken care of by the government as soon as possible," Ahmed Rawi, an ICRC spokesman, told IRIN in Baghdad. Arabs have been living in Kirkuk since the 1970s when Saddam Hussein started his Arabisation programme, putting members of his ethnic group into oil rich areas and displacing Kurds that had dominated the city of Kirkuk. However, since Saddam was ousted in April 2003, Kurds have been returning to reclaim land. In addition, US troops were accompanied by Kurdish fighters (Peshmerga) when they took control of Kirkuk last April, giving the impression that the Kurds could go back and take control of the area, rather than living together with Arabs. The Kurdish government says its aim is to ensure a favourable ethnic balance before the start of a national census and a planned referendum on Kirkuk's future, to be held in early 2005 as part of the national election. Some international observers have raised concerns about the tense ethnic situation and warn of further displacement. "Unmanaged returns can lead to ethnic strife and political instability [in the north]," Roberta Cohen, senior fellow and co-director of the Brookings School of Advance International Studies (SAIS) project on internal displacement, told IRIN in an earlier interview. She noted that Kurdish displacement would be protracted since it could take months to resolve the competing property and land claims. There are reports that Kurds are moving back to the city and are waiting for houses in tents, in the hope that houses are being vacated. "There were more than 800 here but every day dozens more are arriving," Kharish Rozbayani, who deals with resettlement issues under the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party, told IRIN in Kirkuk. "More then 250,000 Kurds were forced to leave here for the sake of Saddam's inspiration of independence, and we are preparing to get our rights to return to our land," Rozbayani said. "We are from Kirkuk and we are back now," he added. Many of the displaced Arabs have gone to live with relatives in southern Iraq, particularly Nasiriyah and Basra, but others who don't have a place to go are living in unused or damaged buildings, according to some humanitarian organisations. Their living conditions are said to be bad due to the absence of sanitation and potable water. Some Arabs claim they didn't have time to move their belongings as the Kurds pushed them out. "Saddam forced us to go in and now the Kurds have forced us to leave, and we didn't get anything but suffering for our family," Ahmad Abo-Abdu, 55, whose displaced family now lives at the military base near Kirkuk city, told IRIN. Arab leaders in Kirkuk claim that some people refusing to vacate their houses have been abducted by Kurds. "The [political]parties are pushing the population back and trying to kick out the Arabs," Mohammed Khalil al-Jaboury, 38, an Arab city council member, told IRIN. He added that the local authorities in Kirkuk were not doing anything to help them and had made false promises. "The central government must solve the problem and I think that it will take a really long time since some of them [the displaced] have nowhere to go. We are working out what to do, but there is little we can do for them since the places where they were living are now under the control of the Kurdish people," the Kurdish governor of Kirkuk, Abdul Rahman Fatah, told IRIN. An Iraqi NGO working for the homeless has said that the situation is becoming critical and that the government needs to take immediate action to prevent discontent from turning into violence. "Arabs started to get angry and want their rights, the right to have a home and we are really afraid that things may turn nasty," Abbas Kubaissy, spokesman for the NGO, told IRIN. The Ministry of Migration and Displacement said it has been trying to find out how many families have left Kirkuk and gather information about those left displaced around the city, but that it will take time. The government has established the Iraqi Property Claims Commission (IPCC), which started accepting claims this June. The idea is to restore property to its original owner while providing some sort of compensation to those forced to leave. The problem is that no one knows exactly how it will work in practice as no cases have yet been adjudicated. Funding is also a problem, according to officials. The commission currently has a budget of US $180 million for claims all over the country. But if a claim involves multiple owners who have all made improvements to the property, one claim could be worth up to a million dollars. According to a Human Rights Watch report in August this year, more than 6,000 land claims had been reportedly lodged at IPCC offices in 10 of Iraq's 18 governorates since the fall of Saddam.