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21 Apr 2003 15:33:56
GMT
| By Mike Collett-White
KIRKUK, Iraq, April 21 (Reuters) - Some Arab families living
in mainly Kurdish districts of Kirkuk said on Monday that armed
Kurds had ordered them to leave their homes as ethnic tensions
simmered in the northern Iraqi city.
Dozens of Arab men and women crowded outside the main
administrative building in the centre of the oil-rich city of
700,000 to complain about mistreatment including looting and threats
by Kurds.
Mithad Abdul Rahman Mohammad Amin, a 37-year-old taxi driver,
said three Kurdish militiamen carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles
had given him three days to hand over his home or face the
consequences.
"They said that they would kill us if we did not leave," he
said at the house, where he lives with his extended family. "I built
this home with my own bare hands, so how can I just abandon it?"
Amin is one of several Arab families living in the mainly
Kurdish district of Shorja in Kirkuk, a strategic city claimed by
the Kurds and Iraq's Turkish-speaking Turkmen minorities but largely
controlled by Arabs during Saddam Hussein's rule.
Amin moved to the city in 1987 when Saddam's ruling Ba'ath
party gave him land to build on, part of an Arabisation programme
aimed at diluting Kurdish influence over a city surrounded by huge
oil reserves.
He said he understood Kurds' thirst for revenge after decades
of suffering under Saddam's rule that included random imprisonment
and murder, ethnic cleansing and attacks using chemical weapons.
"But this was not someone's home before," he said in his
defence. "I built it myself and have the documents to prove it."
A woman ran crying from a nearby street to make a similar
complaint.
"We have been threatened by five men carrying guns, and now I
am frightened for my life," said Sadaq Abdul Saada.
NEW HEADACHE FOR U.S.
When Iraqi government troops fled their positions in Kirkuk
earlier this month after weeks of bombardment by U.S. warplanes,
hundreds of Kurdish fighters streamed into the city amid scenes of
jubilation and relief.
But the celebrations masked underlying tensions between Kurds
in Kirkuk and other ethnic groups including Arabs and Turkmen.
Turkey was also alarmed, fearing that Kurdish control of Kirkuk and
its oil reserves could embolden its own Kurdish minority.
Most of the Kurdish fighters quickly left the city under
pressure from the United States, but some have remained to patrol
the city along with a small number of U.S. troops.
Officials in Kirkuk admit it is difficult to curb Kurdish
excesses, as hundreds of families seek to return to homes they were
forced to flee for the safety of the Kurd-controlled northern Iraqi
enclave just to the east.
"The problem is that this is all to do with retaliation,"
said Rozgar Ali, a representative in Kirkuk of the Patriotic Union
of Kurdistan, one of two main Kurdish factions in Iraq.
"During the last 40 years the Ba'ath party has abused many
people, taking land, killing and imprisoning. What is happening here
is very difficult to control."
He said sporadic looting, including of oil facilities, was
still being reported, but the city was mostly calm.
He said a committee including the four main ethnic groups in
Kirkuk -- Kurds, Turkmens, Arabs and Assyrians -- and headed by the
U.S. military was meeting weekly to try to control the situation.
"The problem is that we don't know who is in charge of the
city," said Amin. "Who do I turn to if I have a complaint?"
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