Kurds reposessing their homes

[renata]

I heard a story on NPR today ( no link, sorry). Apparently, in hundreds of villages in Northern Iraq, armed Kurds are returning to the homes from which they were exiled in the 80's and 90's and kicking out Arabs which settled those places. Saddam's policy was to exile Kurds from their homes nad resettle with Arab families. There are cases of Kurds trying to get Arabs to leave entire villages, and there are cases of individual Kurds going to the very homes they had to leave and kicking out current owners.

Do Kurds still have property claims after 10-20 years? Is it fair that Arabs who lived in their homes for 20 years should leave? Is this a form of reverse ethnic cleansing?

[patnray]

Whenever there is collapse of civil authority, these kinds of old wounds come to the surface. I don't know the facts, but I assume the Kurds were not compensated for their loss, nor do we know what investment, if any, the new occupants have made in the properties. Clearly they have decided to act before there is any authority in place to adjudicate the rights of both sides.

Hard to say what legal argument they have, or what limits there are on property claims. But, historically, displaced peoples cling to a desire to return for a very long time. The Palestinian claim of the "right of return" to areas in Israel is still a hot issue after 60 years...

[Baker]

Originally posted by renata
I heard a story on NPR today ( no link, sorry). Apparently, in hundreds of villages in Northern Iraq, armed Kurds are returning to the homes from which they were exiled in the 80's and 90's and kicking out Arabs which settled those places. Saddam's policy was to exile Kurds from their homes nad resettle with Arab families. There are cases of Kurds trying to get Arabs to leave entire villages, and there are cases of individual Kurds going to the very homes they had to leave and kicking out current owners.

Do Kurds still have property claims after 10-20 years? Is it fair that Arabs who lived in their homes for 20 years should leave? Is this a form of reverse ethnic cleansing?

Saddam did remove them from there homes in the Oil rich area’s of the north they should have some claims to the land but at the same time its not fair to those people living there now it’s a tough call.

[renata]

Here is an article about this
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64190-2003Apr20.html


KIRKUK, Iraq, April 20 -- It's been a decade since Abd Ali Hamid moved to this northern Iraqi city, eager to start a new life. The Iraqi government had promised him a plot of land in Kirkuk and a loan the equivalent of $20,000, an irresistible offer for a poor Arab fisherman from the south. Hamid built a roomy, two-story home with mint-green walls and black-speckled tile floors.

But with the fall of President Saddam Hussein's government, Hamid suddenly is homeless. The fisherman left Kirkuk during the recent U.S. bombardment. When he returned a few days ago, he found his home taken over by Kurds. Now, Hamid's family of 11 is crowded in with relatives across town, worried that they and other Arabs will be pushed from this city.

"Our children are in school here. All our relatives and colleagues are living here. We don't have people in the south anymore," protested Hamid, 60, a tall man with charcoal eyes wearing a black-and-white checkered headdress and flowing gray robe.

Added his wife, Jundiya: "If it stays like this, the results could be very bad. All the Arabs will be kicked out."

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Iraqi Arabs are being ousted from their homes in and around this ethnically mixed city as Kurds retaliate for decades of repression by Hussein's government. The newly emboldened Kurds deny this is "ethnic cleansing;" they say they are merely reclaiming lands seized from them in the past 30 years. The property was often given to Arabs whom the government resettled here to blunt Kurdish influence.

But the evictions are creating a new group of homeless, Iraqis who in some cases have lived in this area for decades. And the problem could escalate as thousands of displaced Kurds return from refugee camps in the north.

....

The Kurds are an ethnic and linguistic group that inhabits the mostly mountainous area where the borders of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria converge. They number at least 25 million and had been promised their own country after World War I.

Kurds have claimed to be a majority in this key oil city and its surrounding countryside, but Kirkuk also has significant numbers of Arabs, Assyrians and Turkmen. Hussein tried to tilt the balance by expelling the rebellious Kurds and resettling Arabs from the south. Now, the militia-backed Kurdish parties are saying the Arabs should go home, though not through force.

That message, however, hasn't trickled down. Human Rights Watch estimates 2,000 Arabs were forced to leave four villages south of Kirkuk after the area was seized April 10 by Kurdish militia fighters working with the U.S. military. Now, some Kurds are starting evictions inside this city of 1 million, according to Arab witnesses.

Hamid said he, his brother and his cousin have all had to leave their homes in the Shorja neighborhood in eastern Kirkuk on the orders of Kurdish neighbors, some of them armed. "They accuse us, 'You belong to Saddam's regime. You have to leave,' " he said, clicking his black plastic worry beads as he sat cross-legged on the floor of his relative's house.

Hamid's journey has been difficult. He belongs to the country's Shiite Muslim majority, which was also repressed under Hussein's government. He lost his livelihood in his native Maisan province, near Basra, when authorities drained the area's lakes and marshes to deny Shiite rebels a hiding place.

The government offered him a chance to start over, he said, with an empty plot of land on the outskirts of Kirkuk and the loan. Forty families from Hamid's tribe accompanied him, getting similar benefits. "I sold my wife's gold jewelry, and some furniture" to finish the home, said Hamid. He showed a visitor an official document printed in Arabic. "Look, I have an ownership certificate," he said.

But Hamid arrived in Kirkuk as part of a brutal effort to redraw the city's ethnic map. The government banned non-Arabs from purchasing property, prohibited businesses from using non-Arab names and even ordered the script on tombstones replaced with Arabic. Since 1991, according to Human Rights Watch, 120,000 people, mostly Kurds, were driven from their homes in Kirkuk and the surrounding area.

Among them was Nasrin Jafar. The young mother said her family was forced out of the city in 1991, after a Kurdish uprising. Their home was blown up, one of 2,000 destroyed in the Shorja neighborhood, according to Kurdish officials. The family eventually returned but had to bribe Baath Party members, she said. With the U.S.-led invasion, Jafar now has new freedoms, new hopes and, at last, a house.
...


Hamid's wife and children tried to return to the house after the war. But the neighbors screamed that they were not welcome.

"They wanted to come back," said Jalal. "But all the neighbors say, 'We don't want anything to do with these people. We do not want them here. In the past, they behaved badly.'"

In particular, the couple said, Hamid and his family were active members of Hussein's Baath Party who informed security agencies that neighborhood people were linked to the Kurdish guerrillas. A neighbor sitting in the living room, Serbast Yunus, 17, said Hamid had accused his brother of robbery and ties to Kurdish rebels, resulting in his spending a night in jail and having to pay a large bribe to Baath Party officials.

Asked whether he had been a Baath Party member, Hamid said no. But he added, "If you didn't join, you couldn't get a government job. You would be hated. That's why most people had to join. I am the only person who did not."

Hamid said he would be willing to return to southern Iraq if he and his tribe had guarantees they could get housing and jobs.

Kemal Kerkuki, a senior Kurdish official here, said a committee would be formed at some point to look into providing compensation for Arabs who were leaving the city. But, he added, it would be better if they left as soon as possible, since many Kurds were impatiently waiting to recover their property.

"Arabs who came under the Arabization campaign have to leave. But we exclude the use of force," said Kerkuki, the top local representative of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

...

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by renata
I heard a story on NPR today ( no link, sorry). Apparently, in hundreds of villages in Northern Iraq, armed Kurds are returning to the homes from which they were exiled in the 80's and 90's and kicking out Arabs which settled those places. Saddam's policy was to exile Kurds from their homes nad resettle with Arab families. There are cases of Kurds trying to get Arabs to leave entire villages, and there are cases of individual Kurds going to the very homes they had to leave and kicking out current owners.

Do Kurds still have property claims after 10-20 years? Is it fair that Arabs who lived in their homes for 20 years should leave? Is this a form of reverse ethnic cleansing?

Just one more mess in a world with plenty of them. Saddam deliberately encouraged these people to move there, for the explicit purpose of reducing the power of the Kurdish minority.

Hopefully, some common sense and humanity will prevail. 10-20 years is not that long ago, and I think they should be allowed to return. However, there should also be some form on compensation to those evicted to allow them to start a new life.