Mariwan Nadir, a Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) lawmaker in the Iraqi parliament, said that more than 50 Arab households were settled in Haftaghar village and the surrounding area. He said that the move came after a decision from acting Sunni Arab governor Rakan al-Jabouri.
Another PUK official said the Arabs were being settled in the same places that had been subject to Arabization under the Baathist regime.
"Today, the federal police opened up its lines and have returned a number of imported Arab families to the area of Albou Saraj village, near Haftaghar," Ghafour Salih, deputy head of PUK's office in Kirkuk, told Rudaw.
"This step was taken under the direct order of [Governor] Rakan Saeed and with the assistance of the Iraqi forces, whose Humvees and men guarded these imported Arabs," he added.
Kurds and Turkmen from the area have recently formed a committee and have met with the Iraqi president to discuss the problem, according to Salih.
The committee also includes the district mayors of Laylan and Yayji.
They will meet tomorrow with the supreme commander of the Federal Police and Torhan Mofti, secretary of Iraq's Council of Ministers and Iraq's Minister of Agriculture.
"The steps of Arabization have restarted and the Kurdistan Regional Government has to have a serious position because the matter isn't legal, but political," said the PUK MP Nadir.
This was a “very dangerous Arabization alarm,” he added, vowing that Kurdish MPs in the Iraqi parliament will take a “serious position” on the matter.
Mam Khalid owns a parcel of land in this area, handed down from his forefathers.
"These three tribes have always to deal with this. Back in the day, they brought imported Arabs and turned these into a security strip," he told Rudaw, explaining the newcomers had been brought in on Saddam Hussein’s orders.
He urged President Barham Salih to intervene, asking “Why doesn't he come to resolve our issue?"
The Kurdish villager decided to stage a demonstration against the interlopers, but it was blocked by the federal police.
"[They are doing this] because they are in control, the mayor and the governor being theirs. That is the thing. We can't do anything at all. We can't even leave our yards. Our situation is very bad," added another resident of the villages.
The new wave of Arabization first began after Iraqi forces took control of the disputed Kirkuk province in October 2017. In response, a committee was formed to bring Kurds, Arabs, and Turkmen together to resolve the land-ownership issue. But the Kurds and Turkmen soon withdrew, after Arab committee members demanded the return of lands first appropriated under Arabization and returned to the original owners in the de-Baathification process.
Governor Jabouri – installed by former Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to replace ousted Kurdish governor Najmaldin Karim – described settling Arabs in Kirkuk as a humanitarian act, saying he was sheltering people whose homes had been destroyed in the war with ISIS.
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