UNHCR's ELIGIBILITY GUIDELINES FOR ASSESSING THE ...

government offices, 441 and changing the demographics with the ultimate goal of
incorporating Kirkuk and other mixed areas into the Region of Kurdistan. 442 The Centre for
Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) noted that the Kurdish parties “present the threat
of soft ethnic cleansing in the area of Kirkuk.” 443
It has been reported that KDP offices have been opened in all villages in the Ninewa Plain,
Kurdish armed forces (Peshmerga) patrol the streets of Kirkuk and street signs in Kirkuk
have been changed from Arabic to Kurdish. 444 The issue of return of persons displaced by
the former Government, as foreseen in Article 58 of the TAL, has particularly sparked
tensions and disputes over the ownership of homes and lands and is expected to further
increase in view of the popular referendum. The Kurdish parties have been accused of
being responsible for the return of hundreds of thousands of Kurds to Kirkuk and other
disputed areas, including of persons that had never been expelled by the former regime. 445
&ucat=2&; Christian and Shabak communities claim that in the 15 December 2005 elections, approximately
500 non-resident Kurds entered the polling centre in Bartilla and over 200 had voted by the time MNF
intervened and stopped the illegal voting; see AINA, Kurds Block Assyrians, Shabaks From Police Force in
Northern Iraq *PIC*, 24 June 2006, http://www.betnahrain.org/bbs/index.pl/noframes/read/5520.
441 The Washington Institute reported that persons loyal to the Kurdish parties occupy key civil service
positions in Kirkuk and are paid with funds from the budgets of the KRG. Furthermore, ethnic Kurds control
Kirkuk’s intelligence and security forces. In 2005, the Kurdish chief of Kirkuk’s police said that 40 percent of
Kirkuk’s police force was loyal to the two Kurdish political parties; see: Cagaptay and Fink, see above
footnote 44. Furthermore, Christian and Shabak communities claimed in 2006 that the local police forces in
the districts of Hamdaniya and Tilkaif in the Ninewa Plain were dominated by Kurds loyal to the KDP while
they were underrepresented. Orders by the Ministry of Interior to recruit additional policemen, including from
Ninewa’s minority groups were reportedly delayed by the Kurdish-dominated Governorate Council and the
Police Chief. The order was finally carried out June 2006, however, Christian and Shabak recruits were
assigned to Mosul City instead of their hometowns, which remained under the control of the Kurdish militias;
see AINA, Kurds Block Assyrians, Shabaks From Police Force in Northern Iraq *PIC*, 24 June 2006,
http://www.betnahrain.org/bbs/index.pl/noframes/read/5520.
442 See, for example, Iraqi Turkmen Human Rights Research Foundation (SOITM), Violation of Human
Rights of the Turkmen in Iraq, Report to the Working Group on Minorities, 12 th Session, 30 July 2006,
http://www.turkmen.nl/1A_soitm/OSt.49-G3006.doc; ibidem, Iraqi Turkoman: “US-made” Kerkuk City
Council decides once again in favor of the Kurds, 11 January 2005, http://www.unpo.org/
article.php?id=1718.
443 Anthony H. Cordesman, Iraq’s Evolving Insurgency and the Risk of Civil War, CSIS, Arleigh A. Burke
Chair in Strategy, Working Draft, revised 26 April 2006, p. xii, http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/060424_
iraqinsurgrpt.pdf.
444 Cagaptay and Fink, see above footnote 44. See also: UNAMI HRO, August 2006 Human Rights Report,
p. 13, see above footnote 26; Al-Qaddo, see above footnote 209.
445 Numbers of Kurdish returnees vary, some sources speak of some 120,000 Kurdish families, see ITF, Iraqi
Turkmen: Results Notification of the Consultation Meeting, 5 September 2006, http://www.unpo.org/
article.php?id=5330; SOITM, Iraqi Turkoman, see above footnote 442. Rashad Mandan Omer, the former
Iraqi minister for Science and Technology, in his report to UNAMI stated that “more than 250000 Kurds”
came to Kirkuk after the fall of the former regime; see: Rashad Mandan Omer, The Turkmen Issue of Kerkuk,
report submitted to UNAMI in 2006, published on the website of the SOITM at
http://www.turkmen.nl/1A_soitm/ROM.doc. Ali Mehdi Sadek, a Turkoman member of the Kirkuk
Governorate Council claims that the population increase in Kirkuk Governorate, from 850,000 in 2003 to
1,150,000 in 2006, could only partially be justified by the return of formerly expelled Kurds, saying that an
additional 40,000 Kurdish families had come to Kirkuk; see: ICG, Iraq and the Kurds: The Brewing Battle
over Kirkuk, Middle East Report No. 56, 18 July 2006, p. 12, http://www.crisisgroup. org/library/documents/
middle_east___north_africa/iraq_iran_gulf/56_iraq_and_the_kurds___the_brewing_battle_over_kirkuk.pdf.
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