Fleeing violence, Iraq’s Arabs flock to Kurdistan

By Ibon Villelabeitia

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq (Reuters) – Fed up with car bombs and
death threats, Lazem Hamid, an Iraqi doctor from one of
Baghdad’s most violent neighborhoods, decided one day to pack
his bags and take his family north to Kurdistan.

“I had to leave it all and come here. There was no chance
for us in Baghdad. The day we left, our neighbors came out to
congratulate us. Life is good here. I have made Kurdish
friends,” said the 50-year-old microbiology specialist.

Thousands of Arabs like Hamid have arrived among the ethnic
Kurds of the soaring northern mountains, fleeing the violence
gripping much of Iraq since the bombing of a Shi’ite shrine in
February pushed the country to the brink of civil war.

The trend is a stunning reversal for Iraq’s Kurdistan, home
mainly to non-Arab Kurds. During the 1980s, tens of thousands
of Kurds were killed in the region during Saddam Hussein’s
military campaign, which emptied entire villages.

In June, Hamid set up a private clinic in Sulaimaniya, in
partnership with a cardiologist and an orthopedics specialist
– both of whom are also from Baghdad, 205 miles to the south.

It is not only doctors and academics who have fled north,
leaving once-prestigious hospitals and universities in Baghdad
without qualified specialists and scholars.

Arab laborers from the Shi’ite south and the Sunni
heartland have also sought refuge from the violence. Now,
hundreds sleep on cardboard boxes in Sulaimaniya’s public
parks, scratching out a living in the booming construction
sector or working as porters for Kurdish merchants.

There are no official figures for the number of Arabs who
have resettled in Kurdistan, but anecdotal evidence suggests it
has become a magnet for those who can’t afford to go abroad.

PEACE IN THE PARK

Iraq’s Kurdistan has been semi-autonomous since a failed
uprising against Saddam in 1991 that led the United States and
Britain to establish a no-fly zone across the region.

The 2003 fall of Saddam, who is on trial for genocide for
the seven-month campaign against the Kurds in 1988, deepened
the region’s autonomy and its relative calm set it apart even
more.

Many of the Arab laborers — Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims
alike — come from regions where their communities are at each
other’s throats. More than 3,000 people were killed in
sectarian bloodshed in July alone.

But in the crowded parks of Sulaimaniya they seem to live
in harmony. They pray together in the old mosque, share meals
and sleep on the withered grass, head to toe, their few
possessions — usually spare sandals and an extra shirt —
lying nearby.

“I left my home because I was scared of getting killed. I
feel safe here and have a job,” said Hassan Ali Mohammed, a
Sunni who arrived in June from Baquba, a city north of Baghdad,
which has seen some of the worst violence in the country.

Mohammed, who makes $10 a day working as a mason, said
Kurds were kind and local police didn’t bother them as long as
they stayed away from the city’s main park, which is across the
street from a hotel frequented by foreigners.

“We are all poor in this park, Shi’ites and Sunnis. We get
along. We all want to work,” said Mohammed Hassad, a Shi’ite
from Hilla, south of Baghdad, who arrived in August.

While violence has left much of Iraq’s economy in tatters,
cities in Kurdistan are prosperous with building cranes popping
up and foreign firms looking for bases. Rents have soared, the
region offers tax breaks to firms, profits can be transferred
out of Kurdistan and foreign companies can own land.

Kurds seem generally happy that their economy is expanding
enough to absorb the labor of their Arab neighbors, although
many Kurds are also unemployed, especially in the countryside.

But some Arabs complain of feeling unwelcome in the far
north and Arab-Kurd struggles for control of the northern oil
city of Kirkuk remain a potential flashpoint for conflict.

“THE DOCTOR IS NOT HERE”

According to Iraq’s Ministry of Displacement and Migration,
about 200,000 people have fled their homes due to sectarian
violence since the bombing of the Samarra mosque in February.

But the number of refugees is likely to be far higher
because ministry figures do not include those who flee abroad
or resettle in other parts of Iraq.

The population shift is consolidating a de facto partition
along ethnic and sectarian lines. In religiously mixed Baghdad,
officials and residents talk gloomily of the emergence of a
Shi’ite-Sunni “Green Line,” with the Tigris River as a border.

The drift north is also creating a brain drain.

Iraqis living in Baghdad and in other cities find it
increasingly difficult to track down a surgeon or dentist. Many
are turned away at emergency rooms with the words: “The doctor
is not here. Go to Jordan or Kurdistan to get treated.”

In the 1980s, Iraq boasted some of the best doctors in the
Arab world and many traveled to Baghdad to be treated.

Hamid, the microbiologist, said he has no plans to return
to Baghdad any time soon and that he has even learned some
Kurdish. He said the doctor who replaced him at his Baghdad
hospital was kidnapped for a $40,000 ransom.

“I still have a house in Baghdad,” he said. “One day I will
return. But only when there is security.”

(Editing by Clar Ni Chonghaile)