Comment: A Kurdish Jerusalem

Throughout the 40 years of the Kurds' armed struggle against a succession of Iraqi governments, their political leaders have always ranked control of the city of Kirkuk top on their list of priorities.

Kurdish political parties raised the issue of Kirkuk time and again, calling the oil-rich city "the heart of Kurdistan", and more recently "the al-Quds (or Jerusalem) of Kurdistan".

But these long-touted political slogans have not translated into practical action on Kirkuk since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. The two main Kurdish parties have done little of significance to reverse the impact of decades of ethnic cleansing in the Kirkuk governorate.

The two appear to have once again placed party interests above the people’s by competing against each other for political dominance in Kirkuk, instead of forming a united front to reverse the area's artificially created ethnic situation.

Through their inaction, they have allowed a de facto endorsement of decades of ethnic cleansing.

High on the agenda of the political parties, we hear, is the return of Kirkuk to its natural demographic state - in other words, to a population mix resembling the position before the ethnic cleansing of Kurds, Turkoman and Christians, and the influx of Arabs from the south, that began in the early Sixties.

This reinstatement is made all the more imperative as talk of a census circulates and the country moves toward elections in January.

As a first step to addressing the ethnic cleansing, the old administrative map of Kirkuk that existed before the Baath party came to power in 1968 should be restored.

But Kurdish leaders, along with the whole of the former Governing Council, voted to defer the issue when they accepted the wording of the Transitional Administrative Law, TAL.

The former Baathist regime altered Kirkuk's demographic profile through a three-pronged approach.

First, they expelled Kurds and other minority groups through a variety of mechanisms, both subtle and crude. Second, they settled poor Arabs in the Kirkuk governorate, mostly through a series of incentives.

The third point, and the one that is now most relevant, is the redrawing of regional boundaries by the Baathist government. This was achieved by slicing off Kurdish-dominated areas of the governorate, such as Chamchamal, Kifri and Kalar, and assigning them to other governorates. At the same time, boundaries were revised so as to incorporate Arab areas, for example Hawija, from neighbouring governorates.

At a stroke, this carefully conceived gerrymandering administratively detached hundreds of thousands of Kurds from the Kirkuk governorate, and added Arabs.

This three-pronged process must be reversed.

Expelled populations must be allowed to return; the "brought Arabs", as we Kurds call them, should be given opportunities to go back to their original homes where that is possible; and, most importantly, the governorate must have its original administrative contours reinstated.

On the first point, the Kurdish political parties have verbally encouraged the return of the displaced Kurds and others, such as Turkomans and Christians, but they have done little more.

Kurds in Kirkuk read this as a betrayal of the cornerstone of the parties' long-term agendas.

On the second point, under the TAL, Kurds who find that their lands have been occupied by Arabs can take legal action to reclaim their property - although to date no one has won such a case.

Another group of Arab migrants brought in by Saddam are less likely to move, because they were settled on government-owned land. One such community lives in a large urban quarter of Kirkuk city known as the "10,000 dinar area" - after the money (roughly 500 US dollars) each member of the group was given, along with free housing, to settle here. That alone resulted in a substantial demographic shift.

The third pressing need - redrawing the boundary lines - suffered a grave setback when Kurdish representatives on the former Governing Council signed the TAL and thus gave their consent for provincial borders existing as of March 2003 - in other words as altered by the Baathist regime - to stay as they are, at least for now. Article 53 of the TAL says, "The boundaries of the eighteen governorates shall remain without change during the transitional period." It later states that changes may be included in a permanent constitution, once that is adopted.

The TAL also postpones discussions on the status of the governorate, "The permanent resolution of disputed territories, including Kirkuk, shall be deferred until... a fair and transparent census has been conducted and the permanent constitution has been ratified."

The problem is that a permanent constitution may be many years away, but the census that will have a crucial influence on any future decisions that are made about Kirkuk may be imminent.

It appears that the Kurdish leadership in Baghdad did little to lobby for a swift redrawing of governorate boundaries.

Inexplicably, they have also failed to help communities in Kurdish areas cut off from Kirkuk to lobby for reinstatement of their former position. Chamchamal - a district that was lopped off the eastern side of Kirkuk and added onto Sulaimaniyah governorate - has a population of about 180,000. That number of people, if reintegrated into Kirkuk governorate, would radically alter the result of a census, since it is close to the total of Kurds expelled from Kirkuk city in the Nineties. And Chamchamal is just one of several such areas.

If a census is held in Kirkuk in the next few months, it will simply set in stone a demographic situation that was artificially created by the former regime. It will not be the "fair" census envisaged by the TAL.

That is unacceptable to the Kurdish people - one wonders why it is not unacceptable to their leaders.

Twana Osman is an editor with the Hawlati newspaper in Sulaimaniyah.