ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Around 13,000 settler families who were relocated to Kirkuk as part of the Baathist regime’s policy to demographically change the province, do not want to leave despite receiving financial and land compensation.
“No, we do not accept it because we have been here, our people have been on this land and we will die on this land. Our descendants will die here. Our people are all workers and tired. They sell fruits and vegetables on the streets, they lay bricks. You know how the situation is for workers,” Intisar village chieftain Faisal Hameed told Rudaw.
Intisar is one of the villages that was built after Kirkuk’s Kurdish-led administration was removed following the Kurdistan Region’s 2017 independence referendum.
The Baathist regime’s Arabization campaign sought to establish an Arab majority in disputed areas by relocating Arab families and displacing Kurds and Turkmen. After the fall of the regime, the 2005 constitution outlined a process to reverse the demographic change. Under Article 140, settler families receive 20 million Iraqi dinars and a plot of land in their province of origin.
Residents of Intisar want to stay and are asking the government to bring services to their village.
“Where do we go in this difficult situation? We hope that the government looks upon us more highly and paves our roads because we do not have any services,” said resident Sami Mohammed.
The Kirkuk office for the implementation of Article 140 wants to prohibit the settlers who have received compensation from staying.
“Those who did not return, it seems it was [because of] the political situation in Kirkuk… Rakan [al-Jabouri], who was acting governor at the time, was backing them,” Kaka Rash Siddiq, head of the office, told Rudaw on Wednesday.
He said they are working to identify and locate the families who have received compensation, but do not have the official documents. “There was hiding and we have not been able to identify and find them,” he said.
Currently, around 5,600 settler families are still to receive compensation.
Rakan al-Jabouri was named acting Kirkuk governor in 2017. During his tenure, he was accused of attempting to revive the Arabization policy and marginalizing the Kurdish population, while others praised him for breathing life back into previously neglected Arab neighborhoods.
Fahmi Burhan, head of the Kurdistan Region’s board for disputed territories, said in April that over 92,000 Arab settlers were relocated to Kirkuk after 2017 and warned that their relocation posed a serious threat to the disputed city’s demography.
On Wednesday, Kurdish politician Rebwar Taha was sworn in as the new governor of Kirkuk, after seven months of disputes between council members. He said his primary objective is to turn the province into an exemplary model for peace and coexistence.
As one of his first orders as governor, Taha signed a decree to retire Jabouri who had reached Iraq’s legal retirement age of 60.
Hiwa Hussamadin contributed to this report.
