15 August 2005
KurdishMedia.com - By Dr.  Pary Karadaghi

he Al Tash Iranian Kurdish refugees hope that they will finally be given a chance to have free and safe lives after spending more than twenty years in the squalor of the Al Tash refugee camp in Iraq’s Anbar governorate, the country’s westernmost province commonly known as a site of violence and instability. Of the 12,000 Al Tash refugees, 3,000 have relocated to Kalar, Kifri, and Bareka in the Sulaimaniya governorate in Kurdish autonomous region in Iraqi Kurdistan. Approximately 1,200 others have sought refuge in Jordan, and approximately 800 living in the Ruweished refugee camp in Jordan, located some 60 km from west of the Jordan’s border with Iraq. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has increased its efforts to relocate these refugees by providing housing assistance in the region and working with NGOs to assist with refugee reintegration and resettlement. Desperate to be safe and acquire new refuge, these families have been moving for months. The trickle turned into a flood as violence in Iraq, concentrated in the Anbar governorate and other areas populated primarily by Sunni Arabs, peaked between the coalition and Iraqi security forces and various terrorist groups. Since the 2003 liberation of Iraq and the subsequent conflict, Al Tash residents have been attacked by insurgents and experienced frequent water, food and supply shortages, introducing further danger and hardship into the refugees’ already difficult lives. Over the last few years, some of these refugees were resettled to third countries after receiving asylum, and some refugees are still struggling and are considered “irregular movers”[1] stranded in Van, Turkey as they await decisions to be made on their fate.

A majority of the Al Tash refugees were forced to leave Iran as early as the 1979 Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a revolution that seemingly made killing Kurds legal. Since this revolution, Kurds have faced violent oppression at the hands of the Iranian regime for both ethnic and religious reasons, as the majority of Kurds are Sunni Muslims living under a Persian and Shi’i regime. We now see reenactment of similar ethnic cleansing once again as violence flares up in the Iranian cities of Mahabad, Sanandaj, Prinshar, Mariwan, Bana, and Saqiz. The people of Iranian Kurdistan have been engaging in mass protests against the Iranian regime’s repressive policies for more than a month at the current time.

According to KurdishMedia.com and the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI)[2] the government’s security forces and the military have taken heavy-handed steps to crush the mass protests, which to the present date has resulted in the deaths of over fifty Kurds. In addition, a large number of Kurds have been arrested, including prominent Kurdish human rights and women’s rights activists, journalists and writers.

Many of those who have been injured are afraid of going to the hospitals for medical care, fearing arrest and further reprisals from the security forces. A new flow of refugees is to be expected if the situation in Iranian Kurdistan continues to worsen.

According to the same sources[3] the Iranian state has implemented de facto martial law in many parts of Iranian Kurdistan. Furthermore, the state has extended its military presence in Kurdistan since the protests began, and has reportedly deployed over 100,000 troops and helicopter gunship to the region. In one incident on August 3, 2005, in the city of Saqiz, a military helicopter gunned down civilians. The number of dead and injured is rising, among them a number of women and children. In a statement dated August 5 2005, Amnesty International[4] expressed alarm at the cycle of violence in Iranian Kurdistan and called for an investigation into the killing of demonstrators, and furthermore demanded that officials suspected of responsibility for human rights violations such as extrajudicial executions should be brought to justice in accordance with fair trial procedures.

As these events, which will likely increase the magnitude of the Iranian Kurdish refugee issue, occur in Iran, a chronic refugee population in Al Tash continues to exist. Al Tash is in an extremely dangerous location, close to the city Ramadi, capital of the restive Anbar governorate, which has been a stronghold of terrorist organizations in Iraq. In this dangerous region, the refugees are being dragged into violence that has nothing to do with them. These refugees and their families left their country of origin and then experienced the first Anfal campaign of the early 1980s. Deported the Al Tash camp, they awaited execution and lived were forced to live in squalor conditions. They became pawns of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s political games before the International Red Cross and UNHCR intervened. Since the liberation of Iraq from Saddam’s regime in 2003, these refugees have remained in the Al Tash camp, where they are now susceptible to attacks by the attacks by terrorists that plague much of Iraq. Approximately 3,500 refugees still live in Al Tash despite persistent danger due to the security situation in the region and inhuman living conditions. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been unable to meet their needs due to instability and increasing terrorist attacks on humanitarian relief workers in Iraq.

During a recent trip to Iraqi Kurdistan, I had the pleasure of visiting the refugees and talked to their team and village leaders, called Anjumans, and saw first hand their dire conditions and needs. Each Anjuman or team leader is responsible for approximately 30 to 50 families and speaks for them. They are without legal papers, have menial jobs, mostly in construction, if they can compete with workers brought in from Fallujah and other places who have agreed to work for very little. Many of their children and now their grandchildren have been born into the life of a refugee, knowing only the living conditions of a refugee camp. They have not received the education or the skills they need to succeed in life and become self-sufficient and contributing members of society; they have only known a life of struggle for basic necessities that we take for granted. Local universities and vocational training institutions in the University of Salahuddin in Erbil governorate and the University of Sulaimaniya now stand ready to take those who seek higher education.

In the little village of Bareka, where I met with a few of the team leaders, close to Sulaimaniya, approximately 250 houses have been built for these refugees through UNHCR funding as well as the efforts of the international donor community and non-governmental organizations. An additional 300 units are needed to meet the needs of remaining homeless refugees in the region. An additional 500 units with support services, income generation and health services could assist the remaining Al Tash families in a transfer to safe territory and facilitate their local integration. The host communities of Kalar, Kifri, and Bareka, will welcome these refugee families. The community leaders, Anjumans, teachers of schools, the little under equipped health clinic, they are all in favor of the relocation of these families to their respective communities. They are willing to share the little they have. Neighborhoods are packed with “guests from Al Tash” and the schools can be expanded to take in more children. This is the “Kurdish hospitality” we can see across all borders in Kurdistan on all levels. We saw it following the influx of refugees into Iranian Kurdistan, who were stranded in the cold mountains after the failed uprising that followed the 1991 Gulf War. We see similar hospitality in Diyarbakir, Mardin, Silopi, Zakho, Duhok, Sulaimanya and Erbil. We Kurds must welcome the Al Tash stranded refugee families with proverbial open arms, continuing a proud and noble Kurdish tradition of hospitality.

The safety and well being of the remaining Kurdish refugees in Al Tash is in jeopardy. They need to know a life without intimidation, attack and intolerable living conditions. Freedom and opportunity are the basic rights that the Al Tash refugees have requested for the past twenty years. The UNHCR and the US government stand ready to help make the transition of these refugees to safer regions within Iraq smoother. The Al Tash refugees will face increasingly dire conditions if this opportunity to assist them is ignored. To save their lives, they must not be forgotten. They need secure shelter and life’s daily necessities. They ask for a chance to live their lives with security and hope, a chance that other Al Tash refugees and many Anfal Kurdish victims never received. Let us not walk away from this responsibility. In a speech made earlier this year regarding world poverty, South African former President Nelson Mandela and 1993 Nobel Peace laureate said, “Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that generation.” The new generation of Kurds in many parts of Iraqi Kurdistan knows freedom, and the generation of Kurds who comprise the political and social leadership in today’s Iraqi Kurdistan know both the trials and tribulations of living under a constant threat without basic rights and the feeling of liberation after a lifetime of dedication to the Kurdish cause. It is now time for both of these generations to make the necessary steps to aid their brothers who are living in terror, poverty, and uncertainty in Al Tash.

Dr. Pary Mustafa Karadaghi is the Executive Director of the Kurdish Human Rights Watch.

Footnotes:

[1] Irregular movers, UNHCR term for refugees moving from one country (Iraq in this case) to another country Turkey.

[2] PDK-I

[3] Several Killed, Martial law still in force across Eastern Kurdistan, KurdishMedia.com article August 9, 2005

[4] Amnesty International