SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region – An important government program, to return Iraqi Kurds to areas from where they were displaced under Saddam Hussein’s “Arabization” program, is underfunded, unfair and not working, Kurdish critics charge.
In the city of Kirkuk, one of the places where Saddam expelled large numbers of Kurds and replaced them with Arab families in order to tilt the balance of power against the large ethnic Kurdish population, thousands of Kurdish families are still waiting for the promised cash and help with resettlement by the Iraqi government.
Large swaths of Iraq’s northern regions remain designated as “disputed territories,” claimed both by the central Arab government in Baghdad, and the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
According to Article 140 of the 2005 constitution that was drawn up two years after Saddam was ousted, Arab or Kurdish ownership of the areas will be determined by a referendum.
But before the plebiscite, the constitution says that displaced Kurds will be given compensation and a chance to resettle in their old homes, and Arabs who were brought in by Saddam will likewise be compensated to return to their old homes.
Critics say that the resettlement and compensation programs have not gone as planned, and have taken too long in places like Kirkuk, which is highly coveted by both the Arabs and Kurds for its vast energy reserves.
Sidiq Kaka Rash, director of the office responsible for implementing Article 140 in Kirkuk, says that in the current year’s fiscal budget 172 billion Iraqi dinars have been allocated for resettlement issues. “This allocated sum can be used to compensate 17,000 families,” he said.
Under the article, 37,000 Kurdish families have been compensated with 10 million Iraqi dinars and 12.3 thousand Arab families have been compensated with 20 million dinars. However, “there are still 61,000 Kurdish families and 7,000 Arab families, waiting to be compensated” says Rash.
Over the past decade, the article has caused disputes between the KRG and the Iraqi Government.
“This compensation process is not working. As far as I know, only 30 percent of the Arab families have returned to their places of origin,” says Rebwar Saidgul, an official from the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU) and the deputy head of the Kirkuk city council.
He alleged that Arab families receive twice as much as Kurds for resettlement, in addition to a home. “Why did the Kurds accept this?” he asks.
“Many Arab families have cheated the system. They receive the compensation, sell the house they have occupied, and go buy another house in the city’s outskirt,” Saidgul claims.
“The article’s budget, which is only 300 billion dinars, has always faced some difficulties” says Bayazid Hassan, a legislator from the opposition Change Movement (Gorran) in the Iraqi parliament.
Ali Balo, former head of the Oil and Gas Committee in the Iraqi parliament, believes that the Kurdish MPs must pressure their colleagues in parliament to allocate a bigger budget for compensation and resettlement.
“All the money needed for the implementation of the article can be raised from just two days of oil sales,” says Latif Shaikh Mustafa, an Iraqi MP from Gorran.
But for thousands of residents waiting to return to volatile and violent Kirkuk, compensation is not the only concern.
