Irak, etnie,
arabi, curdi
Demografia – Gli arabi iracheni vedono un improbabile riparo
con i nemici di un tempo
EDWARD WONG
Decine di migliaia di famiglie arabe stanno spostandosi alla
ricerca di un luogo sicuro:
fuori dal Kurdistan quasi 39 000 famiglie (molte più di
27 000, la cifra ufficiale del governo iracheno a luglio) sono state sradicate
dalla violenza settaria tra sunniti e sciiti.
Nonostante i decenni di brutale domino arabo sulla minoranza
curda, molte stanno insediandosi nelle province del Kurdistan iracheno, governata
come un paese separato dal governo regionale, preferito ad enclave settarie di
Baghdad o a città omogenee per etnia come Falludja (per i sunniti) e Najaf (per
gli sciiti). Il Kurdistan attira gli arabi più laici perché i curdi, (1/5)
degli iracheni, sono spesso non conservatori per religione, e perché qui non ci
sono gli americani.
Nel processo a Saddam è stato ricordato ad agosto il massacro
di almeno 50 000 curdi e la distruzione di 2000 villaggi nella campagna
militare del 1988.
L’afflusso degli arabi crea tensioni tra i curdi e i leader
regionali stanno discutendo se relegare gli arabi in aree abitative separate o
in campi.
Gli arabi che emigrano in Kurdistan devono registrarsi
presso le agenzie di sicurezza; da esse risulta ad esempio che a Sulaimaniya,
la maggiore città dell’Est Kurdistan, si sono trasferite circa 1000 famiglie
arabe, e che altre migliaia si sono stabilite nel Nord, per la maggior parte
arabi sunniti.
Alcuni profughi sono braccianti poveri, ma molti appartengono
alla piccola borghesia (medici, ingegneri, e professori); ci sono anche membri
del partito Baath, esso fuori legge, e ex ufficiali della sicurezza o dell’intelligence.
Se hanno uno sponsor curdo ricevono il permesso di abitare a Sulaimaniya, anche
se sono baathisti.
L’arrivo di arabi della piccola borghesia ha fatto
lievitare gli affitti del 50%. L’attuale ondata migratoria degli arabi ricorda ad
alcuni la politica di arabizzazione di Saddam dell’area curda, con l’espulsione
di oltre 100 000 curdi per modificare la demografia della regione, soprattutto
attorno ai giacimenti petroliferi di Kirkuk.
Nyt 06-09-02
Demographics
– Iraqi Arabs See Unlikely Haven With Old Foes
By EDWARD WONG
SULAIMANIYA, Iraq — Along with a Ferris wheel
and ice cream stands, the park at the heart of this Kurdish city has a monument
listing the names of dozens of Kurds killed in a torture compound here by
Saddam Hussein’s intelligence officers.
Yet, there was Sabah Abdul Rahman, a former
intelligence officer, strolling just yards from the monument with his family on
a recent evening.
Driven from Tikrit, Mr. Hussein’s hometown, by
violence and their resentment of the American military, the family had arrived
here that very day and found a $30-a-night apartment.
“This is the only safe place in all of Iraq,”
said Mr. Abdul Rahman, himself a Sunni Arab, as children scampered around him.
“There’s terrorism elsewhere and the presence of the Americans.”
– With sectarian violence
boiling over in much of Iraq,
tens of thousands of Arab families are on the move, searching for a safe place
to live. Surprisingly, given the decades of brutal Sunni Arab rule over the
Kurdish minority and the continuing ethnic tensions, many like Mr. Abdul Rahman
are settling in the secure provinces of Iraqi Kurdistan,
run virtually as a separate country by the regional government.
– The influx of Arabs has made many Kurds nervous, and regional
leaders are debating whether to corral the Arabs into separate housing estates
or camps.
“For
the Kurdish people, it’s a sensitive issue,” said Asos Hardi, the editor of
Awene, a newspaper that has run editorials in favor of segregating the Arab migrants. “Of course,
everybody supports those people who have left their lands and their homes
because of violence, but we don’t want it at the expense of giving up
our land or changing the demographics of
our land.”
– Across Iraq,
growing numbers of Arabs have been fleeing their hometowns in search of basic
security. Outside Kurdistan,
nearly 39,000 families have been uprooted by the Sunni-Shiite sectarian
violence, a figure far higher than an estimate of 27,000 released by Iraqi
officials in July, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Migration and
Displacement. Families usually move from mixed areas to cities or neighborhoods
where their sects dominate.
– But some are choosing Iraqi Kurdistan even over sectarian
enclaves in Baghdad
and homogeneous cities like Falluja, for Sunnis, and Najaf, for Shiites.
Besides having greater security, Kurdistan might appeal to more secular Arabs
because the Kurds, who make up a fifth of Iraq, are often not religious
conservatives.
Arabs moving to Kurdistan are required to
register with security agencies, which track how many arrive and where
they live. The chief security officer for Sulaimaniya, the largest city in
eastern Kurdistan, said about 1,000 Arab families had moved into this area, and that
thousands more families had settled in other parts of the Kurdish north.
Most are Sunni Arabs, said the officer, Sarkawt Hassan Jalal.
– Some Arab migrants here
are poor labourers. Dozens can be seen sleeping
every night outside the Qadir Mosque in downtown Sulaimaniya. But many migrants come from the
professional class — doctors, engineers and professors.
– Also among them are
members of the ousted Baath Party and former security or intelligence officers like Mr. Abdul Rahman, who may be fleeing persecution by other
Iraqis or arrest by American soldiers.
“We
know the parents of families who come here are Baathists, but they’re allowed
to live in Sulaimaniya if they have a Kurdish sponsor,” said Muhammad Bayer
Arif, the principal of the Jawahiri
School, the only primary
school in the city where classes are taught in Arabic. Enrollment has jumped to
more than 1,500 for this school year from 1,250 last year.
Many Kurds are not as sanguine as Mr. Arif. They are all too aware of the bitter
history of Arab rule over the Kurds, which was brought to the fore in late August
when Mr. Hussein and six aides began to stand trial on charges of killing at
least 50,000 Kurds and annihilating 2,000 villages in a 1988 military campaign.
Some Kurds fear that the Arab migrants will
bring with them suicide bombers. In
addition, the arrival of middle-class Arabs has driven up rental costs of homes
by as much as 50 percent, Kurdish officials say.
Some Kurds also say the wave of migration evokes Mr. Hussein’s “Arabization” policy, in which
he moved Arabs into Kurdish territory and expelled more than 100,000 Kurds in
order to change the demographics of the region, especially around the Kirkuk oil fields.
“This will be another form of Arabization,”
said Mr. Hardi, the newspaper editor.
Anwar Abu Bakr Muhammad, a schoolteacher
chatting with friends in the city’s main square, said: “If they’re separated
from us and live in their own camp, there won’t be any problems. We don’t want
the same violence that exists elsewhere in Iraq to take place here.”
But, to some those fears seem unfounded.
“Until now, there’s been no problem,” said Mr. Jalal, the security official,
when asked about the possibility of suicide bombers and other violence.
– Many of the Arabs praise the hospitality of the Kurds. “The people
are very good to us, and we have more freedom here,” said Mr. Abdul Rahman, the
former intelligence officer. “There are no Americans. Tikrit is very bad —
there are mass arrests, curfews, no services, no electricity.”
He and his wife, who is half-Kurdish, brought
along their two children and Rusol, a young girl whose father was arrested by
the Americans after the invasion. No one knows his fate. Rusol’s older sister
died of “crying and too much depression,” Mr. Abdul Rahman said.
“We moved here to find a doctor for this
girl,” he said as Rusol cracked a shy smile.
On this late summer evening, there were many
other Arabs gathered in Freedom
Park.
A young woman in a red blouse stepped off a
dizzying ride of whirling swings. She and a girlfriend had just been screaming
their heads off. The woman, Arij Abdul Qadir, said she moved here recently from
a Shiite slum in Baghdad
with her husband, their children and her sister.
The husband found work as a hotel
receptionist, so the family has free lodging. Ms. Abdul Qadir, 30, said one of
the biggest boons was the relative abundance of electricity — Sulaimaniya usually has 15 hours a day,
while Baghdad
sputters along with 6.
– “There’s no life, no electricity, no security in Baghdad,” she said. “We’ll stay here as long
as there’s no security. When there’s security, we’ll go back.”
Ms. Abdul Qadir said she had learned a few
words of Kurdish, and she had enrolled some of her children in the Jawahiri School, the elementary school where
lessons are taught in Arabic.
Over at the school, the principal, Mr. Arif,
said the surge in enrollment had strained his resources. By the time classes
start in mid-September, there could be as many as 1,700 students, Mr. Arif
said. With only 12 classrooms, the school plans to run two shifts a day.
Enrollment has also soared at the two
intermediate schools in Sulaimaniya that teach in Arabic.
That has raised concerns among Arab parents
like Naseer al-Yasiri, a construction manager from Baghdad who recently enrolled two children in
the schools.
“How will they teach all those students?” he
said as he sat in a trailer on a construction site at the city outskirts. A
television was tuned to the genocide trial of Saddam Hussein.
Kurdish neighbors recently invited the family
on an overnight trip to a mountain resort. The children have frolicked at Freedom Park and at the Azmar Hotel, perched
high in the hills above the city. “They were like birds freed from a cage,” Mr.
Yasiri said.
“Of course I miss Baghdad,” he added. “But when you see it now,
it’s a ghost city. Who’s left there? Terrorists?”
Yerevan Adham contributed reporting for this
article.
The New York Times