Political IDPs on the rise in Diyala governorate

An estimated 11,300 residents of the towns of Khanaquin and Mandeli in the Diyala governorate in northern Iraq are occupying a football stadium and tents near Baqouba in the south of the governorate, after being forced out of their homes. Residents not considered ethnically Kurdish or Turkmen were asked to leave their houses by the governor of Diyala province recently, Safah Hussein, internally displaced persons coordinator at the Iraqi Ministry of Migration and Displacement, told IRIN. “Their situation is very bad. They need a lot of things,” Hussein said. “Every time we go to check the situation, there are many more people.” In general, Iraqis who originally moved to northern Iraq under former president Saddam Hussein’s “Arabisation” programme have been under attack since the regime fell in April 2003 and US-led troops came in. But the number of homeless people has risen rapidly in recent weeks, he said. People complain to government officials that peshmerga, a militia run by northern Iraq politicians, come to their homes and tell them to leave, Hussein said. Officials agreed that peshmerga have approached people on an “occasional” basis, he said. Under an interim Transitional Administrative Law written by US-led administrators and approved by a former appointed government in November, Arabs who were not from the region could be asked to leave, Rahin Mohammed Amin, a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) office in Baghdad, told IRIN. The PUK’s leader Jalal Talabani controls the northeast region in question. Amin said he didn't agree that the governor of Diyala should force people out, but felt that a turnabout was fair play for a group of people who had forced his family and others to leave their homes over the last 30 years. “Saddam wanted to change the ethnic make-up of this place. He didn’t do it in a legal way,” Amin said. “We aren’t saying Arab people can’t live in Kurdistan. We just don’t want them to live where they never lived before.” People who have been “newly introduced to specific regions or territories” can be resettled, compensated or given land nearby, according to the Transitional Administrative Law. The law also says no final decisions can be made about houses and property before a government is elected and a new Iraqi constitution is approved. An election for a national assembly is scheduled to be held before the end of January. In recent days, US military officials, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and others have suggested compromises to deal with the increasingly dangerous security situation in Iraq. “I am from Khanaquin, and we were kicked out by the Arabs,” Amin said. “That wasn’t done legally. We can solve this legally with negotiations now.” Ministry of Interior officials are expected to make a final decision about the land, Amin said. But to complicate matters, “hundreds” of Kurdish people have been forced out of houses in the towns of Ramadi and Samarrah in the insurgent-heavy “Sunni Triangle” north and west of Baghdad. Many of them want to return to their homes in the northeast region, Amin said. “We were all forced to switch to other cities when it was not our desire,” Amin said. “Now, we have a right to return back.” Meanwhile, ministry officials will open an office in Baqouba to look after the displaced people, Hussein said. Iraqi workers for the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) were also helping the displaced people, he said. Heating oil for the winter months had been distributed to them this week, he added. Aid agencies in the past have fixed up some buildings for families to live in and provided clean drinking water, Hussein said. DRC workers could not immediately be reached - Hussein said foreign workers left the city following a car bomb in Baqouba about a month ago.