Iraq Stepping Up Expulsions of Ethnic Kurds

President Saddam Hussein’s regime has expelled hundreds of ethnic Kurds and other non-Arab minorities to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq in recent months despite repeated warnings from the U.N., officials say.

Tens of thousands were forced to leave oil-rich areas under the Iraqi leader’s control after the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, but the expulsions then slowed. The daily deportations have increased again in the past six months.

In this sprawling, mainly Kurdish-populated city in northeast Iraq, new victims of Hussein’s policy are camping in a derelict hotel where there is no heat, no running water, no electricity and little protection from the harsh Kurdish winter.

Jamal Amin Ali, a 26-year-old farmer from the Kirkuk region just to the west, was shaking with anger as he described how he was forced to abandon his home, his land and all his belongings late last month.

“Saddam’s police burst into our home with their guns and pointed them to my baby girl’s head,” he said. “They wanted to know where I was. When my wife said she didn’t know, they took her and the baby to prison and told her they would not be given any food till I showed up and we all left Kirkuk for good. If we didn’t, we would all be killed instantly, they said.”

Fellow deportees from about 120 families sheltering at the rat-infested hotel, where narrow cardboard strips serve as beds and plastic sheeting as roofs, tell much the same story.

They say they have barely enough food to survive, no money, no work and no hope for the future. Most had their ration coupons for U.N. aid confiscated by Iraqi police before they were kicked out.

“If we don’t find a warm place to stay, my baby is going to die soon,” said a gaunt woman holding up a thin little boy with sunken cheeks, huge dark eyes and a hacking cough.

Iraqi Kurdish officials express doubts that last week’s airstrikes by the United States and Britain will affect the deportations.

They say the expulsions are intended to remove non-Arabs from the regions of Mosul and Kirkuk, where most of Iraq’s vast oil wealth lies.

According to the Kurdish officials, about 200,000 ethnic Kurds have been forcibly evicted from areas still under Iraqi government control since the Kurds’ failed uprising against Baghdad at the end of the 1991 war.

Two rival Kurdish groups have controlled northern Iraq since April 1991, when the United States and its allies declared a “no-fly” zone over Iraqi territory north of the 36th parallel. The Kurdish “safe haven” is protected by U.S., British and Turkish warplanes stationed at a NATO air base in southern Turkey.

Jalal Talabani, the leader of the Kurdish factions that control Sulaymaniyah, accused Hussein in a recent interview of “systematically deporting and murdering Kurds in Iraq.”

He said he raised the issue with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright earlier this year.

The Kurdish leader was referring to his September trip to Washington, where he signed a peace agreement with his archrival, Masoud Barzani, ending four years of factional fighting. The deal, viewed as crucial to U.S. efforts to revive Iraqi opposition to Hussein’s regime, was signed in Albright’s presence.

So far, Hussein has ignored repeated United Nations warnings to stop the deportations, which also target Assyrian Christian Arabs and ethnic Turks known as Turkomans.

Mustafa Ziya, the president of a coalition of Turkoman parties in Iraq, said about 5,000 deported Turkomans are currently living in what he described as “subhuman conditions in northern Iraq.” He said at least 20,000 others have made their way illegally to Europe over the past seven years to flee persecution by the Baghdad regime.

In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly last month, Max van der Stoel, the U.N. official responsible for monitoring the human rights situation in Iraq, said that “well over 150,000 persons of Kurdish origin have been evicted from the oil-rich region of Kirkuk. . . . This is the continuation of a long-running policy to change the ethnic composition of the oil-rich region and thereby to secure its wealth for the regime.

“Eviction of families from Kirkuk is a daily phenomenon at the present time,” he said.