SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq — President Saddam Hussein's regime has expelled hundreds of ethnic Kurds and other non-Arab minorities to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq in recent months despite repeated warnings from the U.N., officials say.
Tens of thousands were forced to leave oil-rich areas under the Iraqi leader's control after the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, but the expulsions then slowed. The daily deportations have increased again in the past six months.
In this sprawling, mainly Kurdish-populated city in northeast Iraq, new victims of Hussein's policy are camping in a derelict hotel where there is no heat, no running water, no electricity and little protection from the harsh Kurdish winter.
Jamal Amin Ali, a 26-year-old farmer from the Kirkuk region just to the west, was shaking with anger as he described how he was forced to abandon his home, his land and all his belongings late last month.
"Saddam's police burst into our home with their guns and pointed them to my baby girl's head," he said. "They wanted to know where I was. When my wife said she didn't know, they took her and the baby to prison and told her they would not be given any food till I showed up and we all left Kirkuk for good. If we didn't, we would all be killed instantly, they said."
Fellow deportees from about 120 families sheltering at the rat-infested hotel, where narrow cardboard strips serve as beds and plastic sheeting as roofs, tell much the same story.
They say they have barely enough food to survive, no money, no work and no hope for the future. Most had their ration coupons for U.N. aid confiscated by Iraqi police before they were kicked out.
"If we don't find a warm place to stay, my baby is going to die soon," said a gaunt woman holding up a thin little boy with sunken cheeks, huge dark eyes and a hacking cough.
Iraqi Kurdish officials express doubts that last week's airstrikes by the United States and Britain will affect the deportations.
They say the expulsions are intended to remove non-Arabs from the regions of Mosul and Kirkuk, where most of Iraq's vast oil wealth lies.
According to the Kurdish officials, about 200,000 ethnic Kurds have been forcibly evicted from areas still under Iraqi government control since the Kurds' failed uprising against Baghdad at the end of the 1991 war.
