As immigrant Arabs flee, Kurds start to go home

Thousands of Arab families are fleeing their villages in northern Iraq, leaving behind only a few sheep dogs and donkeys, as the Iraqi army retreats and Kurds return to land from which they were expelled.

The exodus, started by the disintegration of Iraqi government control, may be among the largest in the Middle East for many years as 300,000 Kurds, deported or forced to leave their homes in Kirkuk and Mosul provinces, go home.

"I feel happy the Arabs have left our land," said Mahmoud Ramazan, the mukhtar or village leader of Gurilan village east of Mosul. For 30 years there have been two Gurilans, a shabby Kurdish village and a more modern Arab settlement of the same name.

Mukhtar Mahmoud, a grizzled 48-year-old in Kurdish uniform, said: "My father and grandfather farmed this land, though I have not seen it since we were expelled in 1974. They replaced us with Arabs from al-Jezira near the Syrian border. They took away all their furniture, but the last left this morning and they shot at us."

The Arabs had built their own village on Kurdish-owned land. Yesterday its little white-painted mosque and the school were shuttered and deserted. The local Kurdish government, fearful of Turkish intervention, has told people to await instructions before going home. They have forbidden their peshmerga to head for Mosul or Kirkuk. But Mr Mahmoud and the other Kurdish villagers were armed and looked as if they knew how to use their sub-machine-guns. One villager said: "We don't need anything except that Saddam Hussein should leave us alone."

The Iraqi army has been falling back, from a broad swath of territory, north of the road linking Mosul and Kirkuk. A few soldiers remained in the town of Bahra on the western approaches to Mosul.

Twenty miles from Gurilan Amir Sheikani was at another empty Arab village, Shamanar, south of the Kurdish capital, Arbil. He said: "I left in 1987. Iraqi forces came and chased us out. Then the Arabs came and built this one."

The abandoned Arab houses of Shamanar looked very different from a Kurdish village, each with a little tower to give ventilation and access to the roof. "We will not live in their houses," Mr Sheikani said. "We are 160 families now and when we return we will live in tents."

It will be difficult to prevent the Kurds returning to their lost lands despite the efforts of the Kurdish government, the United States and the Turks to stop them. Peshmerga checkpoints make little difference because the country is criss-crossed by dirt tracks used by smugglers bringing cheap fuel from Iraq.

A real crisis may come over the fate of Kirkuk, which Turkey considers a red line. Kurdish leaders have promised the US they will not try to take the city, but if the Iraqi army disintegrates Kurds in north Kirkuk city will inevitably return and Arabs, living in the south, may flee.

Patrick Cockburn is the co-author, with Andrew Cockburn, of 'Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession'