As Arab Births in Hawija Change Kirkuk Demography, Kurds Stand to Lose Out
KIRKUK, Kurdistan Region - When you walk through Hawija you rarely see a woman not holding a baby in her arms. The secret of so many newborn babies is the policy that might eventually attach Kirkuk to Baghdad.
Hazim Sulatan is Arab and a member of the Hawija district council. He has only one brother and four sisters, but his family during the last three decades has dramatically expanded to 17 sons and nine daughters from two wives. Currently, Sulatan lives in a 15,000 square meter compound with 43 grandchildren, not including the children of his daughters.
In contrast, Ahmed Khurshid, a Kurdish member of the same council, had 16 siblings but has only six children.
Najiba Isa, a Kurdish housewife in Hawija, gave birth to eight children. She says a married son and daughter have three children between them, and are not planning on having more.
During a recent visit to Kirkuk’s Azadi hospital, which is in a Kurdish neighborhood, most of the women in the maternity ward were Arabs.
Khalida Mohammed, an Arab woman accompanying her brother’s wife to the hospital, said she has 13 siblings and six children, and that she had decided not to have more because the overall situation was not good.
Throughout my visits to Kirkuk I did not meet a single Kurdish woman who preferred to have more than three children.
Energy-rich Kirkuk is awaiting a territorial resolution between Erbil and Baghdad to determine whether a referendum -- at a yet undetermined date -- will attach it to the autonomous Kurdistan Region or to the Shiite Arab central government in Baghdad.
On the ground, the situation is thus: On the one hand, through economic force and by building roads and a transportation network, Erbil is trying to bring Kirkuk closer to itself. On the other hand, through childbirth and increasing the Arab population, Hawija is trying to move Kirkuk closer to Baghdad.
For Hawijans, it is not important if their road to Kirkuk is not good, or if they do not have a single park for children to play in. Hawijans have established a “maternity farm” unique in the world. What is important for Hawijans is to implement the plan set in 1929, when the commander of the Iraqi army in Kirkuk called for settling Arabs in Kirkuk in order to Arabize the city.
According to the 1965 census, the population of Hawija was 38,632 people. In 2012, after 47 years, the population of Hawija increased to 275,559. The growth rate of Hawija’s population from 1997 to 2008 is estimated at 7.7 percent, compared to 3 percent for the rest of Iraq.
According to article 140 of the Iraqi constitution, the issue of disputed territories is to be resolved in three stages: Normalization, census, and referendum. But 10 years later, the situation of the disputed lands has not been normalized, and the properties of Kurds and Turkmen have not been returned. In fact, the Kurds of Hawija are forced to leave their lands and properties.
The longer the referendum is put off, the greater the possibility of the Kurds being outnumbered by the Arabs.
According to the official food rationing system in Kirkuk, 58 percent of the provincial population is Kurdish, while Arabs, Christians, and Turkmen comprise 42 percent. But 53 percent of the province’s employees are Arabs, Turkmen count for 23 percent, Kurds comprise 19 percent and the other ethnicities together make up 5 percent of employees.
Sources say that following the fall of Saddam Hussein’s Baath regime in 2003, 26,000 Kurdish families took their food ration coupons back to Kirkuk, while still residing in cities in the Kurdistan Region. This helped to increase the Kurdish votes in the previous elections, but in fact their number is not very large.
Raad Rushdi, a Turkmen member of the Kirkuk Provincial Council, provided details of the massive movement of Kurds to Kirkuk right before elections, whereas at other times very few Kurds visit Kirkuk.
Since 2004 there have been no elections. Therefore, since the fall of the Baath regime only 5,805 Kurds have returned to Kirkuk from the cities of Sulaimani, Erbil, and Duhok. When preparations began for the Iraqi legislative elections, in 2004 and 2005, 114,649 people returned to Kirkuk. In 2006, no elections were held, so only 3,719 returned to Kirkuk from the Kurdistan Region, while 89,753 people returned right before the 2010 Iraqi legislative elections.
The Kurds have focused on electoral games, to the point that one wonders whether this is regarded as a national case or is just about having more seats in the two councils.
The electoral games are failing as well. Election results prove this point. In the 2005 Iraqi legislative elections, Kurds received over 312,750 votes. After five years, and during the 2010 Iraqi legislative elections, the Kurds together received over 274,000 votes, which was 38,750 (12 percent) less than the Kurdish votes in 2005.
Before the 2010 Iraqi legislative elections, 26,000 Kurdish families from Kirkuk were residing in the Kurdistan Region and refused to return to Kirkuk. During the last few years, the Kurds of Kirkuk have been moving out of the city. Currently, 45,000 Kurdish families of Kirkuk are living in the Kurdistan Region.
Should the referendum be held under the current circumstances, it is highly probable that Kirkukis might decide to join Baghdad at the expense of the Kurdistan Region.
Under these circumstances, there are only two options for Kurds: First is to postpone the referendum, which is difficult to hold at this time; the second option is to be honest with the people of Kirkuk and ask for their support in making Kirkuk an independent region, rather than being attached to Baghdad.
http://rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/13012014
