Political, ethnic tensions halt IDP resettlement in Kirkuk

International NGOs planning major projects to help internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the northern city of Kirkuk have had to suspend work after an agreement reached by the city's three main ethnic groups collapsed amid mutual recriminations. In the absence of any leadership on the part of the central government in Baghdad, and with the number of families returning since last year's war swelling to an estimated 14,000, the leaders of Kirkuk's Kurdish, Turkoman and Arab communities came together this July to set up an IDP committee. At first, the new body's work went well. But with over 3,000 families, mainly Kurdish, living in tents, and the city's stadium and 20 of its schools full of IDPs, the situation became untenable. By mid-August, committee members had agreed that they should work with the international forces and NGOs to concentrate IDPs in two places in the city: the disused military camp at Faylakh and an area on the Kirkuk-Laylan road, freeing up public buildings and land occupied by squatters, in some cases, since the previous summer. NGOs were to be given free rein in constructing houses and basic infrastructure at the two sites. Then, a month ago, the agreement broke down. In a city where inter-ethnic politics often reportedly resembles a game of Chinese whispers, the details of the split are not entirely clear. One senior US military official closely involved in the committee described it as a "silly quibbling over details". "Kurdish representatives argued that areas of temporary settlement should be extended beyond the two agreed areas," he told IRIN in Kirkuk. "Their Turkoman colleagues insisted Faylakh and Laylan should be filled with IDPs before looking elsewhere. The Arabs backed them up." It was at that point that the Turkoman representatives walked out of the committee. Widely seen as a moderate, Tahsin Kehiya, secretary of the Kirkuk branch of the Iraqi Islamic Turkoman Union and head of Kirkuk's city council, gave a similar analysis. "I don't think anybody would oppose the return of people forced out by the former regime," he told IRIN in Kirkuk. "But that return must not be done at the expense of anybody else. That is why we agreed on Faylakh and Laylan, both state-owned land, to build temporary accommodation." But he also complained that IDPs continued to return in an arbitrary way, cooperating only with the Kurdish authorities that are strong in the northern half of the city, rather than with the local government as a whole. Like everybody else, he added, Iraq's Kurdish parties had political designs on oil-rich Kirkuk. It was this, he explained, that made their ongoing distribution of land in Faylakh and elsewhere so provocative. "My feeling is that the dispute can only be resolved by good cooperation," he said. The Turkoman delegates on the IDP committee had another suggestion: the formation of a multi-ethnic commission to verify IDPs' claims to have lived in Kirkuk before allowing them back to the city. The form to be used by the commission is in the process of being drafted. It is the concept, though, that irks the Kurds. Kurdish officials deny giving Kirkuk returnees the money and building materials they have handed out to families returning to other Arabised areas whose Kurdishness is beyond doubt. But they acknowledge that, faced with the failure of either the Coalition authorities or Baghdad to do anything to "remedy the injustices" of Arabisation as promised in this March's Temporary Administrative Laws, they have done nothing to prevent people going back. "That doesn't mean some of the returning families have never lived in Kirkuk," said Rizgar Ali, IDP committee member for the Sulaymaniyah-based Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). "The only people claiming that are former Baathists and the racist Turkoman parties." He was referring to the Iraqi Turkoman Front, an umbrella of staunchly nationalist parties known for their close links to Turkey. "I was kicked out of Kirkuk in 1963 and my children were born in Sulaymaniyah, with Sulaymaniyah written on their ID cards," he added. "According to this form they are preparing, I would be allowed to come back, but they would not. Is that fair?" Despite the two sides' strong language and apparently diametrically opposed positions, officials said they thought a new compromise was not far off. Others are less sure. As one international NGO worker following the negotiations put it: "On paper, there is a new agreement, but it appears the old cracks are just papered over. We need a stronger resolution than that, before we can start working." It's a pessimism shared by Irfan Kerkukli, secretary of the Iraqi Turkoman People's Party and a member of Kirkuk's city council. "The major issue in Kirkuk is that both Kurds and Turkomans feel that historically they have been wronged," he said. "To overcome the problems that causes, we need as much outside help as we can get, starting with Baghdad."