Property claims in north threaten security

The return of displaced Kurds and other minority groups to northern Iraq following the fall of Saddam Hussein threatens security in the area, as land disputes between Kurds and Arabs continue, according to experts in the field. "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 on Thursday from Washington, noting that Kurdish displacement would be protracted since it could take months to resolve the competing property and land claims. "Many of the Kurds who are returning are becoming internally displaced again," she added, noting that the necessary institutions to address this issue were not in place and successive Iraqi governments destroyed many of the title deeds, land registers and other documents needed to establish claims. Her reaction came two days after Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a new report entitled "Claims in Conflict: Reversing Ethnic Cleansing in Northern Iraq" and revealing the increasing frustration of thousands of displaced Kurds, Turkomans and Assyrians awaiting a resolution of their property claims. "Our concern is a conflict between Kurds coming back to their homes and Arabs still living in the same areas for the past 30 years," Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW executive director for the Middle East and North Africa division, told IRIN from New York, noting that to avoid a conflict the property disputes should be addressed soon. As part of the so-called Arabisation process, which started in the 1970s, some 250,000 Kurds and other non-Arabs were forced to leave their homes by Saddam's regime to place Arabs in oil rich areas such as Kirkuk in the north. Furthermore, during the 1990s an estimated 120,000 people were forcibly expelled from their homes and the former Iraqi government brought in landless Arab settlers from the nearby al-Jazeera desert and other parts of Iraq to consolidate its control over the region. "Now we have a very difficult situation," the HRW official asserted, explaining that the Kurds who were moved out their lands were moving back and there was no judicial mechanism to resolve their land claims. "Justice must be done for the victims of what was effectively an ethnic cleansing campaign to permanently alter the ethnic make-up of northern Iraq," Whitson said, adding that many of the Arabs interviewed by HRW were willing to move if they were adequately compensated. "There needs to be some resettlement, there is no other way around it." Cohen expressed her concern over the Arab settlers, noting that resettlement could be very difficult for those who had been living for decades in northern areas. "Arabs settlers should enjoy the right to choose whether or not to return to their original villages or relocate in another part of the country." "Solutions are needed for the interim period," she added, explaining that the policy should be based on the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, which set forth the rights of internally displaced people and the responsibility of governments toward these populations. "The policy should make clear that persons expelled from their homes on ethnic grounds, like the Kurds, have a right to return to their land and homes and to receive restitution," Cohen stressed. The HRW official maintained that both multilateral forces and the new Iraqi interim government had the responsibility to implement the necessary judicial mechanisms to resolve this problem and make sure that the Iraqi Property and Claims Commission (IPCC) begins to function. "The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) failed to address the rising tensions in northern Iraq and to implement a strategy to resolve the claims and needs of the different communities there," the HRW report stated. Meanwhile, US officials maintained that the issue was being addressed through the IPCC, which was set up in January, and now being run by the Iraqi government. According to the HRW report, with more than 6,000 land claims reportedly lodged at IPCC offices in 10 of the 18 governorates in Iraq, "the judicial mechanism put in place for the adjudication of these property disputes has still not been implemented".