Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro
de la Prensa-Baszn Özeti
NORTHERN IRAQ
JUNE 20, 2004
Kurds Are Reclaiming
Land Held by Iraqi Arabs
ish leaders to resettle the areas for-
B DEXTER FILKINS merly neid by Arabs. It is happening
y
MAKHMUR, Iraq, June 17 -
at a moment when Kurds are threatening
to withdraw from the national
Thousands of ethnic Kurds are pUSh~government if they are not confident
ing into lands formerly held by Iraqi of having sufficient autonomy.
Arabs, forcing tens of thousands of In Baghdad, American officials
them to flee to ramshackle refug~e say they are struggling to keep the
camps and transforming the demo- displaced Kurds on the north side of
graphic and political map of north- the Green Line, the boundary of the
ern Iraq.
The Kurds are returning
Kurdish autonomous region. The
to lands Americans agree that the Kurds defrom
which they were expelled by serve to return to their ancestral
the armies of Saddam Hussein and: lands, but they want an orderly mi.
his predecessors in the Baath P~ty~ gration to avoid ethnic
who ordered thousands of Kurdish political instability.
strife and
villages destroyed and sent waves of But thousands of Kurds appear to
Iraqi Arabs north to fill the area with be ignoring the American orders.
supporters.
New Kurdish families show up every
The new movement, which began day at the camps that mark the
with the fall of Mr. Hussein, appears landscape here, settling into tents
to have quickened this spring amid and tumble-down homes as they wait
confusion about American policy; to reclaim their former lands.
along with political pressure by Kurd~ The Kurdish migration appears to
be causing widespread misery, ~itlf
Arabs complaining of expulsIons
and even murders at the hands of
Kurdish returnees. Many of the
Kurdish refugees themselves are
gathered in crowded camps.
American officials say as many as
100000 Arabs have fled their homes
in ~orth-central Iraq and are now
scattered in squalid camps across
the center o.f the country. With the
anti~American insurgency raging
across much of the same area,the
Arab refugees appear to be receiving
neither food nor shelter from the
Iraqi government, relief organizations
or American forces.
"The Kurds, they laughed at us,
they threw tomatoes at us," said
Karim Qadam, a 45-year-old father
of three, now living amid the rubble
of a blown-up building in Baquba,
northeast of Baghdad. "They told us
to get out of our homes. They told us
they would kill us. They told us, 'You
don't own anything here anymore.' "
Ten years ago, Mr. Qadam said"
Iraqi officials forced him to turn
over his home in the southern city of .
Diwaniya and move north to the formerly
Kurdish village of Khanaqaan,
where he received a free parcel of
farmland. Now, like the thousands of
Arabs encamped in the parched
plains northeast of Baghdad, M.r.Qadam,
his wife and three chlldren
have no home to return to.
The push by the Kurds into the
formerly Arab-held lands, while
driven by the returnees themselves,
appears to be backed by the Kurdish
t
.
Ashley Gilbertson for The New :~ork Times . . ....
A Kurd "at his mother's grave in Makhtnur, in n0r:therh Iraq. He and
thousands of other Kurds, expelled years ago, have returned to the area.
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