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Friday, April 18, 2003

By Borzou Daragahi, Special to the Post-Gazette

QADASIA, Iraq -- A modest, four-room, single-level house in this suburb of Kirkuk has become a battleground in what is certain to become a continuing postwar conflict among Kurds, Arabs and Turks in northern Iraq.

	Kurd Khader Rashid Rahim, center, stands in front of the home he took during the liberation of Kirkuk from Arab Qaseem Muhamad Bamed, left, as an armed peshmerga fighter stands in front of the house. Despite Kurdish assurances that the return of displaced Kurds will be orderly and legal some are taking the law into their own hands. (Kevin Frayer, Canadian Press/AP)

A few days ago, armed Kurdish men ordered Sadi Qader Muhammad to leave her home, saying the land had been taken from Kurds by Saddam Hussein.

"For years, we've worked hard from morning until night, and getting kicked out of our home is the fruit of our labor," wailed Muhammad, a nurse and mother of six.

The new Kurdish occupants grabbed her house in the confusion after the April 10 collapse of Saddam's authority in northern Iraq.

"It was our land," said Khader Rashid Rahim, a trader who plans to move his wife and seven kids into the place. "Years ago, three of my brothers were killed by Saddam's government. They took all of our property and forcibly moved us away."

Of all the legacies of Saddam's years of rule, none may be trickier to unravel than the forcible deportations of ethnic minorities from oil-rich areas.

Long ago, Saddam evicted thousands of Kurds and Turkomen living in Kirkuk and Mosul and handed their properties over to more regime-friendly Arabs from other parts of Iraq. An estimated 400,000 Kurds were displaced from Kirkuk.

Longtime residents of Kirkuk say the neighborhood called Qadasia was once an agricultural district owned by Kurdish landlords. But the Arab residents, mostly civil servants who took advantage of cash incentives Saddam offered them to move north in the 1980s, say they had no idea the land had ever been owned by anyone.

"No Kurdish people were displaced from this neighborhood," said Seyed Aqel Musawi, a Qadasia neighborhood leader. "This was a no-man's land."

Whatever the truth of that, the Arabization policy has divided all the local ethnic communities.

Atop the dilapidated Kirkuk Castle yesterday, Turkoman and Kurdish residents hurled claims at each other for the once-gracious neighborhood, which is among the most long-inhabited settlements in the Middle East. Saddam destroyed it in 1991 and evicted what most agree was a colorful mix of Turkoman, Kurdish, Christian and Arab residents.

"The Iraqi Army destroyed all the houses and threw us out," said Nushat Muhamad, 32, a Turkoman schoolteacher. "This was declared a military zone and we weren't allowed to come to visit the mosques or our old homes. Now we're coming back and declaring it a Turkoman neighborhood."

Many displaced Kurds wound up in refugee camps, learned how to shoot Kalashnikovs and committed themselves to avenging their families.

The Kurds, who provided the main force that chased Saddam's remaining fighters out of town last week, have long sought to assure the United States and Iraq's neighbors that the process of return would be a lawful one. Turkey has threatened to march on Kirkuk if the Kurds sought to simply take over.

"The return of displaced people has to be done through an orderly process, hopefully, an international process, that will take into consideration the rights of all the communities of Kirkuk," said Barham Salih, prime minister of the autonomous Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq.

Law and order were little in evidence early Wednesday afternoon in Qadasia. The two families at the little house in the suburbs both claimed ownership, though only one was armed.

Sadi wept as her husband, Qassem Muhamad Bamed, a grammar school teacher, removed their clothes from the bedroom. Rahim, the Kurdish trader, stood watching as he held his Kalashnikov.

Musawi, speaking at a noisy meeting of Sunni, Shiite and Christian Arabs, voiced a litany of complaints about acts of Kurdish reprisals against the Arab neighborhood and proclaimed a march through the streets of Kirkuk after prayers today.

The Arabs say Kurds claiming to belong to the two main factions governing the autonomous Kurdish region had looted their homes, assaulted their sons, taken their weapons and fired random gunshots at their houses.

Armed Kurds have seized at least three houses in the Qadasia neighborhood, spray-painting "girow," Kurdish for "taken," on homes they've occupied.

"If this humiliation against us continues, we are going to defend our properties and our homes ourselves," Musawi said.

Kirkuk's Arabs say the takeover of the city's municipal government and police department by Kurds has left them vulnerable and with no legal recourse to Kurdish property claims. Many of the Kurdish cops patrolling the streets were displaced and got jobs with the autonomous Kurdish government.

Asked to show proof that he owned the little house in Qadasia, Rahim couldn't come up with any. He blamed Saddam.

"They destroyed all of our papers," he said. "It's just our land."