ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Once a main subject of the former Iraqi Baath regime’s Arabization movement in the 1970s, the historically Kurdish-populated district of Khanaqin in Diyala province is now once more under the threat of another wave of demographic change as thousands of Kurdish families have left the district since the Peshmerga forces’ withdrawal from the area, being replaced mainly by Arab families arriving from central and southern Iraq.
According to the 1965 consensus of Iraq, Kurds made up 72 percent of the population of Khanaqin, while Arabs made up 26 percent. This number drastically changed by the time of the 1977 consensus, in which Kurds made up only 45 percent of the population, while Arabs made up 48 percent, according to a book published by former Minister of Disputed Territories Affairs in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) - lands claimed by Erbil and Baghdad - Mohammed Ihsan.
The massive shift was attributed to the large-scale Arabization movement as a part of former Iraqi president and dictator Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime campaign against the Kurds, in which Arab families would be resettled in areas of dispute in hopes of establishing the Arab population as the majority.
After Hussein was toppled in 2003, efforts to reverse the effects of Arabization began in Khanaqin, with more and more Kurds returning to their ancestral homes, and masses of Arab families leaving the district as well.
Nonetheless, the prevalent threat of the Islamic State (ISIS) in the areas since 2014, combined with the Iraqi forces retaking control of Khanaqin in 2017 following the withdrawal of the Peshmerga forces, have led Kurdish families to abandon the district once again with the Arab population rising in the area.
“From the beginning of this year, nearly 500 families from villages and areas outside Khanaqin have transferred their documents to Khanaqin,” Rawa Samir, head of Khanaqin’s office for the Region’s general board of disputed territories told Rudaw’s Ranj Sangawi on Saturday.
There are “24 villages” around Khanaqin that “nearly 4,280 Kurdish families” have left due to ISIS activities and lack of security, he added.
Suzan Mansour, an MP of the Iraqi parliament said the Kurdish government and the ruling parties of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), share the blame for the current Arabization of Khanaqin.
“The criticism is not only for PUK and KDP, but unfortunately is for the entire Kurdistan Regional Government, I am not saying they have not done anything for this city, but unfortunately they have shortcomings,” she said.
Mansour added that scores of Arab families who are not native to Khanaqin have transferred their documents to the district in recent times.
Akbar Haidarkhan, deputy head of the KDP office in Khanaqin, denied the accusations that the Kurdish parties have ignored Khanaqin, but said that the KRG does not want to tackle the issues in the district through violence as it has been “occupied by force and by weapons.”
“The Kurdistan Regional Government does not want to address this situation with war, martyrs, blood, weapons, and fighting. It wants to fix the issue by sitting at the dialogue table and using dialogue,” he added.
Lamia Ahmed, a civil activist, decried the poor security conditions in Khanaqin since 2017, citing it as one of the reasons for the Kurdish exodus. Another factor addressed by Ahmed was the lack of Kurdish education in Khanaqin and the scarcity of job opportunities for Kurdish students from Khanaqin in the Kurdistan Region.
“Many Kurdish schools have been closed. There is a school that only five students have registered for the first grade, if they become four then the school will shut down,” she said, adding that the number of Kurdish families enrolling their children into Arabic public schools is rising.
Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution has been one of the most controversial topics relating to the disputed areas in the war-torn country since the drafting of the constitution in 2005, as the failure to fully implement it has been cited as one of the main reasons for the continued attempts at demographic change.
The article calls for the dispute over areas in the provinces of Diyala, Kirkuk, Nineveh, and Salahaddin to be resolved, and includes measures aimed at rectifying Arabization policies implemented under the rule of Hussein. It specifies that this process needs to be implemented by no later than the end of 2007, yet it remains to be fully applied around 15 years after that date.
.webp&w=3840&q=75)