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

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Revue de Presse-:-PressReview-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basm Özeti
government, which has long advocated
a resettlement of the disputed
area. Despite an explicit prohibition
in the Iraqi 41terim. constitution,
Kurdish officials are settÜl~ up offices
and exercising governmental
authority in the newly settled areas.
The shift in population is raising
fears in Iraq that the Kurds are
trying to expand their controlover
Iraqi territory at the same time they
are suggesting that they may pull out
of the Iraqi government.
American officials say they are
trying to fend off pressure from.
Kurds to move their people back into
the area .."There is a lot of pressure
in the Kurdish politicalcontext to
bring the people who were forced out
.back into their hometowns," said a
senior American official in Baghdad,
speaking on the condition of anonymity.
"What we have tried to do so far,
through moral suasion, is to get the
Kurds to recognize that if they put
too much pressure on Kirkuk and
other places south of the Green Line,
they could spark regional and national
instability."
But local occupation officials appear
in some areas to have accepted
the flow of Kurds back to their
homes. According to minutes of a
. recent meeting of occupation officials
and relief workers in the northern
city of Erbil, an American offi- .
cial said the Americans would no
longer oppose Kurds' crossing the
Green Line, as long as the areas they
were moving into were uncontested.
And Kurdish and American offi- .
cials say the occupation authority
has been financing projects here in
Makhmur, a formerly Arab area recently
resettled by Kurds.
The biggest potential flash point is
Kirkuk, a city contested by Arabs,
Kurds and Turkmen. Kurdish leaders
want to make the city, with its
vast oil deposits, the Kurdish regional
capital and resettle it with Kurds
who were driven out in the 1980's..
To make the point, some 10,000 +~
Kurds have gathered in a sprawling
camp outside Kirkuk, where they are
pressing the American authorities to
let them enter the city. American
military officers who control Kirkuk
say they are blocking attempts to
expel more Arabs from the town, for
fear of igniting ethnic unrest.
"The Kurds are pushing, pushing,"
said Pascal Ishu Warda, the minister
for displaced persons and migration.
"We have to set up a system to
deal with these people who have been .
thrown out of their homes."
. To treat the. burgeoning CriSIS,
American officials last month approved
spending $180 million to compensate
Arab families thrown out of
their homes; earlier they set up a
similar program, with similar fi.
nancing, for the Kurds.
The Americans have distributed
handbills in Arab and Kurdish
camps calling on Iraqis to file clàitns
and produce ownership documents.
But some Iraqi and American officials.
say those claims could take
months or even years to sort out, and:
will provide little immediate help to
the families, Arab and Kurdish, languishing
in the camps.
Some people said American officials
waited too long - more than a
year - to set up a mechanism to
resettle displaced Iraqis. By then,
they said, the Kurds, tired of waiting,
took matters into their own hands.
Peter W. Galbraith, a former United
States ambassador, who has advised
the Kurdish leadership, said he
recommended a claim system for
Kurds and Arabs to Pentagon officials
in late 2002.Nothing was put in
place on the ground untilIast month,
he said, long after the Kurds began to
move south of the Green Line.
"The C.P.A. adopted a sensible
idea, but it required rapid implementation,"
Mr. Galbraith said. "They
dropped the ball, and facts were created
on the ground. Of course people
are going to start moving. If the
political parties are encouraging
this, that, too, is understandable."
Kurdish leaders say they are
merely taking back land that was.
stolen from them over four decades .
Publicly, the Kurdish leaders say
that they are committed to working
within the Iraqi state as long as their
federal rights are assured, and that
no Arabs have been forced from
their homes.
But in the villages and camps
where the Kurds have returned,
Kurdish leaders are more boastful.
They say they pushed the Arab settlers
out as part of a plan to expand
. Kurdish controlover the territory.
"We made sure there wasn't a
.~.\ .'
A Kurdish flag near Makhmur, northern Iraq. Before the war, the area was
mostly Arab. Now Kurds, once displaced
. single Arab léft here who came as
. part of the Arabization program,"
said Abdul Rehman Belaf, the mayor
of MakhmlJr, a large area in northern
Iraq tlHit was emptied of Arabs
and is now being resettled by Kurds.
Mr. Belaf is a member of the Kurdish
Democratic Party, one of the two
main Kurdish political parties active
on the other side of the Green. Line;
virtually all of Makhmur's officials
belong to the party, too.
"We haven't stopped yet," he said.
"We have more land to take back."
Before the war began in 2003,Arab
settlers worked the fields in the
areas surrounding Makhmur. Most
of the settlers were brought north by
successive waves of Mr. Hussein's
campaign to populate the north with
Arabs, killing or expelling tens of
thousands of Kurds.
Exactly what happened when Mr.
Hussein's army collapsed is disputed.
Kurdish officials say the Arab
settlers fled with the army. No expulsions
were necessary, they said.
But some Arab families, like those
who settled around Makhmur long .
ago, have largely been left alone.
"Saddam's people asked me to
take Kurdish lands in 1987,and I said
no," said Salim Sadoon al-Sabawi, a
60-year-old Arab farmer in the village
where his family has lived for
generations. "When the Kurds returned,
they left me alone. There was
no violence. We are like brothers."
Asked what the Kurds did to the
Arabs who migrated into the area
recently, Mr. Sabawi paused, and his
son, Arkan, broke in. "They threatened
people with death," Arkan said.
"They told them to get out."
"Let's be honest," Mr. Sabawi told
his son. "The Arabs who left all came
here as part of the Arabization pro-
by Iraqi Arabs, are returning.
"'.
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