ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - As Iraq prepares for an upcoming census, Kurdish officials have expressed concern that it may further change the demographics of the disputed areas and complicate the status of oil-rich Kirkuk city.
“In the past seven years, there was no oversight on the governor of Kirkuk; he has run the city as an acting [governor], several neighborhoods were built, thousands have come to the city, we are concerned that these Arab brothers will be registered in Kirkuk,” Fahmi Burhan, head of the Kurdistan Region's board for disputed territories, said during an episode of Rudaw’s Legel Ranj program on Sunday.
Rakan al-Jabouri served as acting governor of Kirkuk from October 2017 until August, when Rebwar Taha, a Kurd, was sworn in as governor following months of disagreements on the provincial council after Iraq held provincial elections in December.
The first stage of Iraq's national census began on September 1. It involves surveying buildings and counting the population along with household members. This phase is expected to be completed by October 30. The second stage, starting on October 20, will gather more detailed information from each household. Missing the first stage means exclusion from the second phase.
There are concerns that the Kurdish residents who were expelled from Kirkuk in the past will not be registered in the upcoming census, but the Arab residents will be.
“In Kirkuk and the disputed territories, in this process which has begun since September 1, as far as we know 60 to 70 percent has been completed in Kirkuk, many people from [Kirkuk] have been displaced to Debaga, Makhmour, Erbil, and Sulaimani,” Shwan Jabar, assistant director of the population census in the Kurdistan Region said.
“[W]hat concerns us is that the recent Arab [residents] have been registered but not the Kurdish returnees,” Jabar added.
Iraq’s Ministry of Planning spokesperson Abdulzahra Hindawi, who also participated in the program, said the census is not political; it is focused on collecting population data.
The census is “focused on humans - without considering color, loyalty, ethnicity,” Hindawi said. “[W]e are trying to see what is the population situation of Iraq.”
Kurds have been forced out of oil-rich Kirkuk and other disputed or Article 140 areas through Baathist-era Arabization processes and the events of October 17, 2017, when Iraqi federal forces took control of Kirkuk and the disputed areas from the Kurdistan Region’s Peshmerga.
“If we go back to 1957, Kurds in Kirkuk and the disputed territories were 48 percent, but in [19]97, that percentage dropped to 21 percent, and our Turkmen brothers went from 21 percent to 6 percent. Our Arab brothers, I believe, from 21 percent were increased to 72 percent,” Jabar said.
Due to the demographic changes of the disputed territories, Jabar suggested that a previous census could be useful in places like Kirkuk.
“We have requested that the 1957 census in Kirkuk should be used as the basis, but we feel that our request is being neglected. Also, Kurdish, Arab, and Turkmen enumerators should be working together on the census, but that has not been the case either,” Jabar said, “We have also requested that all information from the census be directly shared with the Kurdistan Regional Government [KRG], but it is still unclear whether this will happen or not.”
Iraqi planning ministry spokesperson Hindawi emphasized that every step taken so far has been in collaboration with the KRG, pointing out that Iraq’s census is well overdue.
“We prepared for a census in 2010; we were not successful in conducting the census. Even brothers in the Kurdistan Regional Government filed a lawsuit against the federal government at the time for failing to conduct a census,” Hindawi said.
The Iraqi official expressed that the country has changed too much to return to the 1957 census.
“I don’t understand logically how can we return to 1957 when six decades or more have passed, at the time population was less than ten million, now it’s 44 million in Iraq. How can we base planning on 1957 [data],” Hindawi said.
This year’s census will be the first general population count since 1997 and the first to include the provinces in the Kurdistan Region since 1987.
The last population census in 1997 counted 19 million Iraqis. A separate count put the population of the Kurdish provinces at 2.8 million. Estimates now put Iraq’s population around 50 million. A census planned for 2020 was postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The ethnicity question had been a key obstacle to conducting a census between Baghdad and Erbil. In April, Iraq said it would carry out the census without surveying its citizens on their ethnicities.
A census could contribute to the resolution of many problems like Baathist-era Arabization, the status of disputed Kirkuk, which is claimed by both the federal government and the KRG, and the KRG’s share of the federal budget.
