ePaper_2nd Edition_October 12, 2016

10
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2016
DT
World
INSIGHT
In fight against IS, Kurds expand their territory
• Reuters, Iraq
Like many houses in this northern
Iraqi town, the drab concrete
building used to be owned by an
Arab family. Abu Suhail, a Kurd
who owns a small shop, lived down
the block. He and his family shared
glasses of tea with their Arab neighbours;
his two sons played with
Arab kids in the streets.
But after Islamic State seized
Zumar during its lightning sweep
through northern and western Iraq
in 2014, most Kurds fled, leaving
the town to the Sunni militant
group. Two months later, the Kurds
hit back, pushing Islamic State out.
Now, Zumar is populated almost
entirely by Kurds, many of whom,
like Abu Suhail, have had no qualms
about seizing homes. He said the
Arab who owned the house he has
taken supported Islamic State.
The same shift can be seen in
towns and villages across the ethnically
mixed ribbon of land that
divides the autonomous Kurdish
area in the north of Iraq from the
Arab-majority part in the south. As
the peshmerga – Iraqi Kurdistan’s
fighting force – have battled Islamic
State, many Arabs have been forced
from their homes.
Ordinary Kurds have come in behind,
seizing properties, destroying
buildings, and grabbing farmland.
In total, Kurds have increased the
size of the region they control in
Iraq by around 40% since 2014.
This is how the map is being redrawn
across Iraq and Syria: Groups
fighting Islamic State are using the
battle to settle older disputes and
expand their territory.
Tensions have been rising in
the past few months as Iraqi government
forces, Kurds and Iranian-backed
Shi’ite militias gear up
for an offensive to drive Islamic
State from its stronghold in the city
of Mosul. The members of the uneasy
alliance share a common enemy,
but they agree on little else.
Falah Mustafa, the head of the
Kurdish department of foreign relations,
agrees. Many peshmerga
have died fighting Islamic State,
he said. The Kurdish government
“cannot allow the sacrifices to be
in vain by reinstituting Arabisation,
which is the policy of the former
regime. Definitely the Arabisation
process has to be reversed.”
A troubled past
Kurds see consolidating their territory
as an important step to statehood,
which they have wanted ever since
European powers carved up the Ottoman
Empire a century ago. The
new borders defined modern Iraq
but spread the Kurdish people between
it and three of its neighbours.
In Iraq, Kurds were regularly repressed,
especially under Saddam.
Zumar is a case in point. The old
village was submerged in the 1980s
during the construction of Mosul
dam, Iraq’s largest. When water levels
in the dam are low, the tops of the
tallest buildings can still be seen.
Saddam built a replacement village
on land that the Kurds say was
taken from them. There, and in
Kurdish areas across northern Iraq,
he spent the next two decades resettling
Arabs.
Things changed after the US-led
invasion in 2003 toppled Saddam.
After the first Gulf War in 1990, the
Kurds had carved out an enclave
that was protected by a no-fly zone
backed by a US-led coalition. With
Saddam finally gone, the Kurds became
more powerful. Many returned
to their villages, or what remained of
them. Arabs left, sometimes under
duress, often of their own accord.
A new constitutional provision
called for a referendum on the future
of the border areas. But the
process festered because Iraq’s
fractious political class could not
agree how to implement it.
The arrival of Islamic State in
August 2014 revived old fears. In an
interview last year, Kurdish President
Masoud Barzani told pan-Arab
daily al-Hayat that many Iraqi
Sunnis were using Islamic State to
strengthen their own claims.
Kurds forced Islamic State out of
Zumar in October 2014. The town
is now tightly controlled by camouflage-wearing
Kurdish security
forces known as Asayish. Remaining
Arab residents say they fear
retaliation if they speak out. But
quietly some say that Kurdish security
forces have expelled hundreds
of people accused of links with the
militants. Kurds have taken over
entire streets and areas that once
belonged to Arabs.
Amnesty International puts the
number of Arab residents barred
from returning to their homes in
all disputed areas – from the Syrian
border in the west to the Iranian
frontier in the east – in the tens of
thousands.
The Kurds say only those with
links to Islamic State are not allowed
back, and point to the Arab
communities who remain as proof
there is no policy of demographic
change.
Kurdish officials deny targeting
Arab property. They say the damage
was done by coalition airstrikes
and fighting against Islamic State
militants.
History repeats itself
The man in charge of security in
Zumar is Colonel Noruz Balati,
who spent 17 years in prison during
Saddam’s rule for his role in the
Kurdish independence struggle.
Balati said as much as 80% of Zumar’s
Arab population had joined or
supported Islamic State when they
occupied the town. Most of them,
he said, had been settled in the area
by Saddam and were not “original”
Arabs whose families had been
there for generations.
Only 50 Arab families, a minority
of the town’s former population,
have been allowed to return to Zumar,
he said. He admits that others
are displaced within Kurdish territory
and have not been allowed
home. “We are suspicious of them,”
he said.
At the same time, Kurds whose
own homes in villages outside Zumar
were damaged or are still close
to the front line have moved into
the town.
“History repeats itself: The
Kurds were displaced and now
they have returned,” said Adnan
Ibrahim, 39, a tailor’s tape measure
draped over his neck. “Things have
returned to their natural order.”
Zumar’s commercial district used
to be predominantly Arab. Now
shops have been renamed to reflect
their new Kurdish proprietors.
A middle-aged Kurd arranging
goods on a shelf in a small supermarket
said the shop was not his but
he felt entitled to it because his own
business had been destroyed by Islamic
State. Earlier that day, the real
owner of the shop had come to ask
for rent, but the Kurd had refused
to pay, reasoning that the money
could end up in the wrong hands
because the Arab’s brother is living
in Islamic State territory.
The Arab, whose house has also
been occupied by Kurds, confirmed
his brother is living under the jihadists’
rule, but said he was trapped
there and did not back them. He
later obtained permission from the
Asayish to collect the rent, but the
Kurd still refused to pay, he said.
‘Duhok supports me, Peshmerga
protect me’
Zumar officially remains under the jurisdiction
of Baghdad, which pays the
salaries of most state workers, makes
official appointments and is meant to
fund local government budgets.
But there is little doubt who
controls the town. The Iraqi flag is
nowhere to be seen and Zumar’s
administration is increasingly integrated
into the neighbouring Kurdish
province of Duhok.
Ahmed Jaafar, the Kurd who
heads the Zumar sub-district, said
Baghdad had done nothing for the
area. But Duhok had given him a 50
kilowatt electricity generator, ambulances
and medicine.
“Administratively, officially, I
belong to Nineveh province, but in
practice Duhok supports me and
the peshmerga protect me. This is
the reality.”
Some Arabs living under Kurdish
rule support the Kurds. “They
A member of the Kurdish Peshmerga forces gestures in Zumar, Iraq
THE KURDS
HDP
The Kurdistan Democratic Party
(KDP) was established in 1946. Its
leader. Massoud Barzani. is the
president of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Gorran, the second-largest
Kurdish party in Iraqi Kurdistan,
split off from the PUK in 2009,
undermining the PUK and KDP's
dominance in Kurdish politics.
The Peoples' Democratic
Party (HDP) is a pro-minority
opposition party, wrth 59
seats in Turkey's 550-seat
parliament. HOP has criticised
the government's handling of
milrtancy in Turkey's primarily
Kurdish southeast.
KDPI
KDP
GORRAN
POLITICAL
PARTY
PYD
The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)
was founded in 1975 by Jalal Talabani. The
civil war between the KDP and PUK
tasted from 1994 to 1998.
The peshmerga are Iraqi Kurdish
military forces. Many brigades are
under the Ministry of Peshmerga
Affairs' control, though some serve as
milrtary wings of the PUK and KDP.
The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), founded in
1978 by Abdullah Ocalan. waged an insurgency
against the Turkish state from 1984to 2013. Turkey
broke the cease-fire. in 2015 when it bombed PKK
camps in Iraqi Kurdistan.
The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK) claims
to be separate from the PKl< but is in fact the
PKI