Al-Hayat had noth­ing new to report about Kirkuk except the week old news about the Haw­ija [Kirkuk sub­urbs], tribes ready to con­front the Kurds.

Mem­ber of the “Iraqi List”, Osama Al Hujaifi revealed that the Amer­i­cans are excis­ing pres­sures on the Kurds.

News­pa­per albayyna reported about what kind of pres­sure; it was a direct warn­ing, saying:

The Amer­i­cans warned Barzani of the con­se­quences of dic­ta­tor­ship, sec­tar­ian and dis­crim­i­na­tion men­tal­ity, shift­ing every­thing to the Kurds interests.

Azza­man added more; the deci­sion to adjourn the meet­ings on Kikuk until Sep­tem­ber is dic­tated by U.S. ambas­sador, British ambas­sador and the UN:

Iraqi sources asked to stay anony­mous revealed to the news­pa­per that the Amer­i­can ambas­sador Robert Ford, the British ambas­sador and the UN par­tic­i­pated in the par­lia­ment dis­cus­sion and pro­posed to post­pone the decision.

Who are Kirkuk-Arabs?

A mis­lead­ing cam­paign started by the Kur­dish par­ties and adopted by the west­ern media call­ing Arabs in Kirkuk as “strangers” brought to the city by Sad­dam in his Kirkuk-Arabazation campaign.

It is true, there were dis­placed fam­i­lies, and that includes Arabs, Turkomen and Kurds, not only for polit­i­cal rea­sons, but for admin­is­tra­tive and eco­nomic rea­sons also.

Whole vil­lages removed and fam­i­lies dis­placed because they live beside oil­fields, irri­ga­tion project or gas sources…etc. There­fore these fam­i­lies and vil­lagers are com­pen­sated and relo­cated into other areas.

Dri­ven by the sep­a­ra­tion project of their lead­ers, what hap­pened is that only the Kurds demand the “right to return”.

Ba’ath party issued a law say­ing that all Kud­ish fam­i­lies set­tled in Kikuk after 1957 must return to their orig­i­nal area, that means the following:

These Kur­dish fam­i­lies are already dis­placed from their homes in Kirkuk’s neigh­bor­ing provinces.

It is true, there was an Arabaza­tion cam­paign in 1986, but the Arabs immi­grated to Kirkuk at that time are the 20% — 15% of the Arabs in Kirkuk province. The 80% of Kirkuk-Arabs are tribes lived in the province for centuries.

Three Immi­gra­tions

The 17th century

While the Kurds — North Iraq — recent Kur­dis­tan — were sup­ported by the Ottoman Empire to play a vital role as the first defense line against the grow­ing power of Qajar Empire — Per­sia — recent Iran -, the area between Kirkuk and Tikrit was the Ottomans weak­est line.

The Ottomans started to attract Arab Tribes from sur­round­ing areas to immi­grate to “Kirkuk province” to play the same defense role of the Kurds, most of these tribes are Sunnis.

Among these tribes are:

- Jubour — sta­tioned in Haw­ija, one of the most pow­er­ful tribes.

- Obaid — Orig­i­nally from Samara, derived away to Kirkuk by the “Shimr” tribe, sta­tioned in Him­reen Valley.

- Nua’im — Sta­tioned in Kirkuk, some of the tribes became Turkomen.

- Ham­dan — Sta­tioned in Dibs area.

- Hadidi — First sta­tioned at the out­skirts of Kirkuk city, later they moved inside.

Early 20th century

Oil dis­cov­ery in Kirkuk pro­vided work oppor­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple from west and Mid­dle Iraq, most of them Shi­ites brought as unskilled work­ers. Also mostly Shi­ites army troops brought to the area to pro­vide secu­rity to the oil fields, sta­tioned in Kirkuk with their fam­i­lies after the fin­ish of the mil­i­tary hous­ing project.

Shi­ite Arabs inte­grated very eas­ily in the region because of the already exis­tence of Shi­ite Turkomen in Kirkuk, there are even few Shi­ite shrines in Kirkuk.

Late 20th century

These are the “strangers” Iraqi Arabs who came later in 1986, fol­low­ing the deci­sion (42) of the Rev­o­lu­tion Com­mand Coun­cil, which autho­rized the gov­er­nor of Kirkuk to give each fam­ily will­ing to set­tle in Kirkuk a piece of ground and 10,000 dinars to build a house.

These are mix af Sun­nis and Shi­ites, there are even Chris­tians among the immi­grants, came from var­i­ous regions to Kirkuk. Known as “The Arrivals”, they are about 20% — 15% of the orig­i­nal Kirkuk-Arabs.