Iraqi Kurdistan: Tough Times for Arab Refugee Kids

Iraqi Kurdistan: Tough Times for Arab Refugee Kids: "Iraqi Crisis Report
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Iraqi Kurdistan: Tough Times for Arab Refugee Kids

Children of Arabs, who’ve fled violence in the rest of the country, struggling to settle in their new home.

By Najeeba Mohammad in Qaladze and Sulaimaniyah (ICR No. 228, 20-July-07)
Karwan Hussein, a 10-year-old Kurdish boy, was playing with his friends in the town of Qaladze when his new neighbour called for help. Hussein didn't respond, he knows better than to help an Arab.

'They're Arab terrorists,' he said. 'My mother told me not to be around people who speak Arabic because they might kidnap me.'

He said his parents had told him that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein - 'who was an Arab' - destroyed their majority-Kurdish town in Sulaimaniyah province during his violent reign.

The suspicion built up over years of brutal rule from Baghdad endures. Hussein and his family view their new neighbours, who escaped the bloodshed in Mosul and fled to Qaladze three months ago, with suspicion. All the children in the neighbourhood refuse to play with the Arab family’s two boys.

As the violence has exploded in Iraq, the Iraqi Red Crescent says at least 4,500 Arab families have fled to the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, centre of this province in north eastern Iraq, since June 2006. This"