SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region – In Kirkuk province the arrival of Arab refugees fleeing the fighting in Iraq’s interior has the Kurdish population worried.
They fear the refugees will settle and tilt the demographic balance in Arab favor, before a future referendum that is to decide whether the Kurds or Arabs control the energy-rich province.
“The movement of refugees to Kirkuk will eventually lead to its Arabization,” fears a member of the provincial council in Kirkuk, where Kurdish authority is visible in the local government and police. “They (the refugees) should not be allowed to stay in Kirkuk,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Over the past six weeks fighting between the Iraqi army and the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Sunni Anbar province has sent thousands of refugees fleeing, some of them to Kirkuk.
Security forces had pledged to keep control of who enters Kirkuk, but other provincial officials complain that the refugees have been allowed to enter uncontrolled. “Every day they come to Kirkuk and settle there,” the provincial council official complained.
He expressed fear that some of the newly arrived were trying to gain a permanent foothold to remain in the province.
In Iraq, where all problems are complex, Kirkuk is among the most intractable.
Kirkuk city, the capital of 900,000, is claimed as their own by the Kurds, Arabs and Turkomen.
The province’s demographic puzzle is a legacy of Saddam Hussein’s forced resettlements program, which was aimed at tipping the population in Arab favor.
Kirkuk is also at the center of the so-called “disputed territories,” which are claimed by Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Region in the north and the Arab central government in Baghdad.
A long-delayed referendum, whose prerequisite is that Saddam’s forced resettlements are reversed after paying compensation, is to determine whether Kirkuk and some other lands will become part of Kurdistan.
For more than a decade, Kirkuk’s Kurdish administrators have complained that some 10,000 Arab families continue to stay on even after receiving government compensation under the scheme.
Security officials, meanwhile, say they are trying to keep track of the new arrivals, to prevent them from trying to settle permanently. They also worry that refugees might try to disappear into the populations.
Ahmad Askari, a member of the Kirkuk provincial council’s security committee, said there were no figures for refugees arriving from Anbar. He said that district chiefs and representatives had been asked to report new arrivals.
Officials also say they fear that Islamic extremists, who are locked in fighting with government forces in Sunni-majority Anbar, might also try to slip in with refugees.
“People of Anbar have helped us during our harsh times, and now we have to be very welcoming. But at the same time we have to be vigilant because there might be some terrorists among them waiting for an opportunity,” Askari said.
Kirkuk police chief Jamal Tahir said that refugees cannot stay permanently because “they receive a temporary letter to stay.” But he confessed that police might not be able to control and observe all of the arrivals.
Rebwar Talabani, vice president of Kirkuk’s provincial council, said that according to a committee drawn up to keep tabs on arriving refugees, the number of arrivals is not very high. “so far, more than 500 families have taken refuge in Kirkuk,” he said.
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