Kurdish official says Kirkuk census cause for ‘concern’

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq’s upcoming general population census is a cause for concern for Kirkuk’s Kurdish population due to the large inflow of Arab settlers into the province in recent years, according to a Kurdish official.

“From whatever angle you look at it, we view this process with concern and doubt,” Fahmi Burhan, head of the Kurdistan Region's board for disputed territories, told Rudaw on Wednesday, adding that they are not dealing with legal issues in Kirkuk, but rather political issues.

Iraq will carry out its long-awaited general population census in November. It will be the first general population count in Iraq since 1997, and the first to include provinces in the Kurdistan Region since 1987.

A delegation of the Kurdistan Region's board for disputed territories is set to visit Erbil on Thursday and meet with political parties to discuss the upcoming census and its implications for Kurds in Kirkuk.

Burhan acknowledged that Iraqi federal authorities have made efforts to shield the process from political influence, but “this has not been enough to relieve our concerns.”

“We are all Iraqis in this census, but we want, I want, to at least be an Iraqi with a Kurdish identity,” he noted.

The official said that nine Arab neighborhoods have been created in Kirkuk over the past seven years, inhabited mostly by large families of settlers.

“The arrival of this large number of Arabs to Kirkuk, the creation of all those neighborhoods in Kirkuk, and all these people being included in the Kirkuk census - in 20, 30, 50 years, the world will change, and these people will say we were registered in Kirkuk in the 2024 census; and therefore, we can be considered as citizens of Kirkuk,” he said.

Burhan noted that although only Arabs who were part of the 1957 Kirkuk census can be considered as citizens of Kirkuk in the 2024 census, the new census can impact the future allocation of parliamentary and provincial council seats.

“Kirkuk, Khanaqin, and Shingal are one thousand times more important than any process in Kurdistan. That is why the Kurdistan elections should not distort our vision of national and patriotic struggle,” Burhan added.

Kirkuk is a multi-ethnic city home to Kurds, Arabs, and Turkmen. The city was under joint administration before 2014, when Kurds took full control after Iraqi forces withdrew in the face of the Islamic State (ISIS) group. Kurds held the city until October 16, 2017, when Iraqi forces retook control and expelled Kurdish security forces following the Kurdistan Region’s  independence referendum.

Rebwar Taha from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) was appointed governor of Kirkuk in August, marking the return of a Kurdish governor in the province for the first time since 2017.

Kurdish officials in Kirkuk have accused the Arab component of carrying out demographic change in the province over the past seven years, while Arab and Turkmen officials have accused the Kurdish component of attempting the same process between 2003 and 2017.

Iraq’s 2005 constitution lays out a path to resolve a dispute over whether Kirkuk - and other disputed territory in the provinces of Diyala, Kirkuk, Nineveh, and Salahaddin - should come within the borders of the Kurdistan Region or fall under the control of the federal government. It also includes measures aimed at rectifying Baathist-era Arabization policies.

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