IRAQ: Ethnic violence forces more Arabs to flee Kirkuk

16 Sep 2007 09:15:04 GMT

Source: IRIN

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KIRKUK, 16 September 2007 (IRIN) – Iraqi Arab residents of the
northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk, some 250km from Baghdad, say scores
of Arab families are fleeing the city as ethnic violence increases
there.

"The attacks on our community have worsened since February 2007. We
are being forced to leave the city almost empty-handed and the
government isn’t taking any action to support us," said Ali Akram
Mahmoud, a spokesperson for Kirkuk’s Arabs Association (KAA), formed
in 2003 with the aim of safeguarding the rights of Arabs who had
settled in the city.

"The number of [Arab] families fleeing the city has increased by 20
percent on previous years. Their flight will seriously affect the
upcoming referendum in which Kurds will have a majority not because of
their numbers but because, with guns in their hands, they will have
forced all Arabs to flee the city. It is absolutely unfair," he said.

The December 2007 Kirkuk status referendum is due to decide whether
the city becomes part of the Iraqi Kurdistan region.

"The most common scene in Kirkuk is of families filling cars with
their relatives and fleeing the city in the early morning," said Jihad
Muhammad, a political analyst at Mustansiriyah University.

Kirkuk was long considered a microcosm of Iraq with its diversity of
ethnic and religious groups. However, former President Saddam
Hussein’s "Arabisation" policy in the early 1980s and during the 1990s
forced tens of thousands of Kurds and other non-Arabs to flee. They
were replaced with pro-government Arabs from the impoverished south.

Following the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, tens of thousands
of Kurds returned to Kirkuk, with their house keys, to find their
homes either sold or given to Arabs. This led to attacks by Kurds on
Arabs.

Advised to flee south

A local Iraq Red Crescent senior official, who prefers anonymity for
security reasons, said since June 2007 at least 2,000 Arab families
had fled Kirkuk. "Hundreds of families are fleeing the city without
their belongings." They had been forced to search for displacement
camps and many had joined the nearly one million displaced families in
southern governorates, whilst others were staying on roadsides or in
poor areas, he said.

In a local police station IRIN witnessed dozens of families begging
for help from police after being forced from their homes by Kurdish
militias. They were all told the same thing – that they could not be
given individual protection and that they would be best advised to
find more secure accommodation in southern Iraq.

The city, a multi-ethnic mix of Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians, Turkomans and
Armenians, has plenty of oil, but may not have much time left to avoid
being dragged into sectarian bloodshed.

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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress