KIRKUK, Kurdistan Region – Kurdish residents in two neighbourhoods of Kirkuk say they are being forced from their homes, which they say are being handed to Arab families, because of unpaid rent. A member of parliament accused the administration of exploiting the situation in a disputed city that has a history of Arabization and tensions between its multiethnic populations since the 1960s.

Yousif Khalil lives in Kirkuk’s Kobane neighbourhood in a home built for poor Kurdish families in 2014 by former governor Najmaldin Karim. He claimed he has been forced out of his home and threatened by the man who moved in, who said he was given ownership of the house by the provincial government.

Under former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Arab families were brought to Kirkuk from elsewhere in Iraq as part of an Arabization process in the disputed, oil-rich province. After 2003, Iraq began a policy of de-Arabization to reverse the demographic changes and return land to the Kurdish inhabitants. But since 2017, when Kurds lost military and administrative control of the province, there have been multiple reports of renewed Arabization. In September last year, Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani said his government was concerned about the reports and monitoring the situation.

Rent in the Kobane neighbourhood is a reduced 30,000 Iraqi dinars ($20), but because of financial crises, conflict, and the COVID-19 pandemic, some homeowners haven’t paid rent for years. Last November, the World Bank Group estimated the poverty rate in Iraq will increase from seven to 14 percent, pushing up to 5.5 million Iraqis below the poverty line.

Some residents in Shoraw neighbourhood say they too have been ordered to leave their homes and have asked to pay their rent in installments.

A Kurdish MP in the Iraqi parliament said this is discrimination against Kurds. She also asked people to pay their rents.

“Some of the houses have been traded and some others have rent owing. Therefore, the administration has come and exploited the situation in a clearly chauvinistic way to act against the citizens of Kirkuk. They ask them to empty their houses. We assure people that we will help them, as we did in the last couple of years,” said MP Almas Fazel.

Rudaw