PM Barzani condemns attacks on Kurdish villagers in Kirkuk

He condemned attacking the Kurdish residents of the village through “fear and terror”.

Kurdistan 24 2023/04/21 21:56

Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani speaking during a conversation at the first Youth Forum in Duhok, March 12, 2023. (Photo: KRG)

Kurdistan Masrour Barzani Krg Kirkuk Disputed Territories Kurdistan Region

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani on Friday evening condemned the attacks and attempts to change the demography of the Kurdish-populated villages of Kirkuk through “terror and fear”, according to a statement.

Nearly 400 resettled Arabs attacked the Kurdish-majority Palkana village west of Kirkuk on Friday, resulting in at least 10 causalities among the population. The attack coincided with the first day of Eid al-Fitr following the holy fasting month of Ramadan.

The attack on the village is a “futile attempt to disrupt the positive atmosphere that we are trying to create with [Iraqi] Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ Al-Sudani to resolve the issues and bring about stability and peace,” Barzani wrote in a statement.

He condemned attacking the Kurdish residents of the village through “fear and terror”, emphasizing the implementation of the Iraqi constitution’s Article 140 to resolve the outstanding issues, the premier said.

The Article of the 2005 constitution lays out a mechanism to settle the disputed territories between Erbil and Baghdad. The due date to implement the article was December 2007.

As part of the former Ba’athist regime’s Arabization program, Arabs from different parts of the country were resettled in the Kurdish-majority Kirkuk province and other territories, evicting their Kurdish denizens and confiscating tens of thousands of hectares in a bid to change its demography.

Following the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, those resettled population, who were farming on Kurdish agricultural lands, were awarded compensation in order to return to their places of origin.

After the withdrawal of Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the areas in 2017, resettled Arabs began to claim those lands whose Kurdish ownership had been documented by the Ottoman Empire authorities, according to the Kurdish farmers.