Ethnic Cleansing: Not just for Baathists
The Iraqi government will soon begin relocating Arabs who were moved to Kirkuk under an edict by Saddam Hussein to force Kurds out of the disputed northern city, officials said Saturday.
The controversial step for the oil-rich city could help determine whether it becomes part of an autonomous Kurdish region, but critics warned that it would stoke sectarian tensions.
Iraq’s cabinet on Thursday endorsed a committee’s recent recommendation to compensate eligible Arabs who voluntarily leave the city, said Sadiq al-Rikabi, a political adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Those who choose to move will receive about $15,000 and a plot of land in their home town. Officials will soon accept applications to determine eligibility, he said.
Now, there’s much to be said for restoring homes that were taken away, and redressing the wrongs of the former regime. At the same time, we can all see the problems with trying to sort out the age-old question of “Who was here first?” If homes have changed hands since the original injustice, this creates obvious problems for the new owner. If people have since established roots in the city and had kids and established families and businesses, even though they were the beneficiaries of an unjust policy, forcible (or “voluntary”, with an emphasis on the scare quotes) relocation isn’t necessarily going to bring about a terribly clean or just outcome.
And if this is used as a pretext for yet another attempt to change the demographics of a city (especially in advance of elections), well, I think we all see the potential problems. For instance:
Hossam Abdullah, leader of the Patriotic Turkmen Movement in Kirkuk, stated his opposition more bluntly: “All the Turkmens will become suicide bombers to defend the Turkmen identity of Kirkuk,” he said.
Oh, yeah, this is going to be great!
And wouldn’t you know, it just happens that Turkey (never a fan of Kurdish independence) has declared itself a defender of its ethnic brethren in Kirkuk.
My only advice is this: No matter how unjust the past might have been, no matter how recent the injustice might have been, peace won’t come until enough people are willing to put aside the question of “Who was here first?” I know that it’s easy for me to say that from the comfort of my apartment on land taken from Native Americans, I know that putting the question aside rewards all sorts of bad behavior, and I know that putting it aside might not ease certain raw feelings. Be that as it may, I don’t see any good outcomes as long as that question remains on the front burner.
This is some messed up stuff.
Comment by Barry —
April 1, 2007 @ 11:40 am
This has been brewing for a while, BTW.
Comment by Mona —
April 1, 2007 @ 2:36 pm
When I was very young, I went through an Irish-American phase of “Give Ireland back to the Irish,” and then sanity took me in its grips. Whatever the Brits still needed to do to make the situation fair, it was not going to include having Orange Irish people descended from invaders 500 years ago “go home.” They are home.
Failure to accept this could only mean that there would be no end to breaking things and killing people in that part of the world.
Comment by Kevin Hayden —
April 1, 2007 @ 3:38 pm
Dividing Iraq into three was probably always the plan. Per usual, it shafts the Sunnis and makes Turks nervous.
But if Bush didn’t see this eventuality, he should have paid attention to Schwarzkopf, Powell and his old man.
Comment by Jean —
April 1, 2007 @ 4:00 pm
Mona: I think that the Planters were descended from Irish immigration to Scotland.
Myself, I want my square meter of the Rift Valley…
Comment by Leonard —
April 1, 2007 @ 7:36 pm
What’s the standard of living in Iraq? Is $15k a lot of money there for a house or not?
I think a strictly voluntary program like this is a good idea, at least to the extent that ethnic groups feel they cannot live together in peace. Clearly that is true of Arab Sunni and Arab Shia in the new improved Iraq. I’m not sure how the Kurds relate to the Arabs.
Comment by Thoreau —
April 1, 2007 @ 7:52 pm
Leonard-
In general, I’d agree that public assistance with truly voluntary relocation is probably the least bad way to deal with tension in ethnically mixed areas with a history of forcible property transfers. (Yes, there’s still the standard libertarian problem with the public nature of the assistance, i.e. tax money, but that’s why I said “least bad”, not “best”.)
I see a few potential problems, however:
1) Even if participation is truly voluntary, what if the effect is to homogenize Kirkuk and thereby determine the outcome of some key votes on the status of Kirkuk? In that case, the central government basically bribed a bunch of people to exempt themselves from the election on the status of a border city with oil fields. The potential for backlash is clear.
What if, for instance, a US administration offered cash assistance for significant numbers of people who relocated out of Florida? Florida is a very closely divided swing state with lots of electoral votes, and if this cash assistance was targeted to a particular demographic with known partisan leanings, the effect would be to basically pay a bunch of people (with a known political bias) to vote somewhere other than in a key state.
I imagine there’d be some backlash, regardless of which way the partisan bias ran.
2) Given some of what I’ve heard about Kurdish treatment of Arabs, I wouldn’t be surprised if this “voluntary” program is basically a good cop intended to complement a bad cop. “So, Mr. Al-Sabri, I’m curious to hear why you don’t want to take the $15,000 that the central government offered you. $15,000 could certainly buy a nice house in Basra. I also hear that reconstructive surgeons are charging about that much these days.”
It may very well be that this is still the least bad course of action, but I also wouldn’t be shocked if there are some nasty consequences from a central government siding with a faction’s efforts to push certain ethnic groups out of their territory.
Comment by Thoreau —
April 1, 2007 @ 8:04 pm
Then again, if the central government is doing this, perhaps they’ve already decided on a partition, and this is their way of easing the transition. I just pray that somebody in the central government has enough brains (insert standard libertarian snark here
) to paper over the partition with a convenient legal fiction. Outright secession would prompt a Turkish invasion, but a highly decentralized federal republic with 3 “self-governing” regions might fly.
And for God’s sake, I hope the Kurds are smart enough to treat the Turkmen with kid gloves.
Comment by quasibill —
April 2, 2007 @ 8:40 am
“The quality of justice is mercy.”
No, it’s not a legal precept, however, the extent that a culture (or person, depending on your viewpoint) accepts it as a guiding principle is usually a very good indication of whether there will be constant strife one hand, or peace and order on the other.
Whatever your conception of justice is, the inclination to forgiveness is more important than any legal or procedural framework that regularizes the violence of retribution or even violent re-compensation. Without the inclination, litigation merely is a public band-aid over the wound, and people will eventually find “extra-legal” methods to continue their vendetta. With the inclination, regardless of the litigation, people move on.
Comment by Barry —
April 2, 2007 @ 8:45 am
The problems are that (a) there’ve been Kurd-Turkish warfare for a number of years and (b) if the Kurds loaded the Turks onto trucks, shipped them across the ‘border’ and dumped them out, teling them not to come back under pain of death, that *would* count as treating the Turkmen with kid gloves, in the current situation in Iraq.
Comment by Leonard —
April 2, 2007 @ 9:21 am
My impression of the piece is that they are trying to relocate only Arabs, presumably people who were settled into Kirkuk as a matter of policy under Saddam. Not turkmen.
This sort of thing demands close watching to make sure it does not turn into a pogrom. But in the abstract, “ethnic cleansing” (really, “ethnic separatism” is probably a fairer label) is sometimes the only way to peace. The question is one of means: almost all ethnic separation is carried out via immoral means, for rather obvious reasons. Forced separation earns the epithet “ethnic cleansing”. But that does not mean it cannot be done morally.
Yes. It is the best they can do. It’s pretty clear that at least the Kurds are intent on this, at the local and national level. So I am not surprised to see them cutting deals with the Shia state to ease the process. There is only one reason for them to stay in the state with the others: to avoid being attacked both by the rest of Iraq and Turkey. But that’s a pretty good reason, so long as their autonomy is not seriously impugned. And so far as I can tell, they are basically completely autonomous now. I.e. they have internal borders with the rest of Iraq and they don’t let in Arabs without a reason.