By Omed Barin
Migration by young people from the impoverished countryside to the urban city centers has radically changed the demographic shape of Iran’s Kurdish region over the past three decades, doubling the size of some Kurdish cities while halving or emptying out hundreds of villages.
“The urbanization is very much out of control by now,” said Diako Khayat, a Kurdish economist in Iran, who warned that the cities cannot absorb the vast majority of this young labor force.
“It has destroyed agriculture in the villages and degraded the wider industry sector in the cities,” according to him.
But the pattern is the same throughout the country, where especially young people migrate to cities in search of better jobs -- in a country with over 20 percent unemployment.
Iran’s pre-revolution ruler, the Shah, launched his famous land reforms in the 1960s as great plots of land throughout the country were seized from powerful landlords and given to farmers in an organized attempt to reverse the migration back to the villages.
Of Iran’s then 19 million population, statistics show, 13 million lived in the villages, compared to 71 percent in recent times.
“I think the government should immediately offer state insurance to those working within the agriculture industry and grant them reasonable loans and even buy their products at a realistic price so that they can go on living in their villages,” Khayat suggested, offering long-term solutions.
But the migration is even faster from smaller towns to big urban centers. One official estimate shows that as of 2000, more than 150,000 people left the Kurdish town of Bijar in quest of better life in greater cities. According to a 2010 study, Bijar’s population is now close to 100,000, meaning that the vast majority of city residents now were not there before 2000.
Kurdish activists in Iran blame “discriminatory state policies” for the wide migration of the youth from Kurdish towns.
“Most administrative and government positions and jobs are given to the ethnic Azeris,” a Kurdish activist told Rudaw on condition of anonymity. “Young Kurds have no other choice than leaving the Kurdish areas.”
This trend has affected most cities in Ilam, Kemashan, Sina and Lorestan. Unofficial estimates show that nearly 2 million Kurds from the eastern parts of Iran -- known to Kurds as Eastern Kurdistan, have already left the area for better job prospects in Tehran, Iran’s 12-million large metropolis.
Iran’s official statistics show that as a direct outcome of the migration, more than 40,000 villages have more or less completely emptied. This, according to the data, has led to a fast urbanization of most Kurdish cities, including Urumiye, Saqiz, Xoy, Sina, Kemashan and Bokan.
Khayat said the government’s systematic attempt to revive the village known as “Hadi” has failed, since state policies have not been able to give incentives to peasants and the agriculture industry.
“The government must heavily compensate villagers in terms of better working conditions, or prepare itself for an even greater exodus,” he warned.
