| New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com |
Kurds taking names
Looters tore through the offices, emptied drawers and carted off furniture. Someone dragged a heavy safe into the lobby and cut through its outer shell before giving up. But the most valuable thing the bureau held from the point of view of the Kurds, who claim this city as their ancient capital, are detailed records of thousands of Arab settlers brought here by Saddam Hussein's government. The Arabs came and Kurds were forcibly relocated to other parts of the country under a government program aimed at diluting Kurdish claims on oil-rich Kirkuk as well as their potential power in northern Iraq. The documents list the names of birthplaces of thousands of Arab settlers, say employees of the registration bureau who moved them to a nearby hotel for safekeeping ahead of the first wave of looters. "If, tomorrow, the new government says these people belong to Kirkuk, we will say no, we have the documents," said Irach Hamasherif, a Kurd and head of the security at the bureau. "These people belong to the south." Longstanding anti-Kurd policies were intensified after the Kurds rebelled following the 1991 Gulf War. Kurds say hundreds of thousands of them have been expelled from their lands, and Arabs brought in to replace them. Reparations demanded "The property has to be given back to the Kurds," says Hoshyar Zebari, head of foreign relations of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. "Don't forget that this racist regime was turned against us." The fate of Kirkuk was a headache for the United States even before the refugee question arose. Nearby Turkey is concerned that the Kurds, if they control the city and its oil, will declare an independent Kurdistan that Turkey's large Kurdish minority would want to join. The White House has assured Turkey that the city will be under American control, and the Kurds have agreed to abide by American orders. But the Kurdish parties in control of northern Iraq have made the return of displaced Kurds - many of whom still hold their original land titles - a central demand in a postwar Iraq. The Arab settlers, though, have no place to go - and they say that they, too, are victims. "We thought we were coming to Kirkuk to live, not to make a difference with the Kurds," said one who asked that his name not be used. The settlers came for a better life, only to find poverty, said a woman named Hamid, who came to Kirkuk in the 1980s. Unless the government gives them money to move, Hamid and her neighbors would like to stay. The only problem with their community in Kirkuk is its name - Saddam Town. "Maybe we will call the neighborhood 'Freedom Town,'" said one neighbor. |