Theycmove into anywhere they can find -- looted buildings, military sites, warehouses, a sports stadium or camps -- in a city where they once had homes.
Kurds and others expelled from Kirkuk under former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's "Arabization" policy are returning to this disputed northern city, demanding restitution of land and houses that the former Baathist government gave to Arab settlers.
Arabs mutter that far more Kurds are flooding to Kirkuk than ever left, to tilt the demographic balance the other way.
Saddam ripped at the ethnic fabric of Kirkuk to ensure its dominance by Arabs, and not Kurds, Turkmen or Assyrian Christians who all see the city as part of their ancestral birthright.
Now that the US-led invasion has turned the tables, the city is groping to avoid the nightmare of ethnic conflict as its diverse communities seek to right past wrongs.
"Everyone here sees themselves as victims," Colonel William Mayville, US commander of the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Kirkuk, said.
"Kirkuk is the confluence of every challenge you can find in Iraq," he said.
Kirkuk's dusty streets and crumbling citadel give few hints as to why it should be so intensely coveted.
But the surrounding province contains 40 percent of Iraq's oil reserves -- more than six percent of the world total. These riches help explain why Kurds are so intent on including Kirkuk in an autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan in a federal postwar Iraq.
The region's oil wealth also helps to account for why Saddam was so determined to stamp an Arab identity on it.
Now Kurdish flags flutter in many parts of the city. A bewildering array of political parties and private associations has emerged, with signs in Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic and Siriyani, a language used by Assyrian and Chaldean Christians. Some schools are experimenting with teaching those tongues.
Jalal Jawhar, local leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), says 250,000 Kurds were driven from the province during more than three decades of Baath party rule and replaced by a similar number of Arabs, mostly Shi'ites from the south.
He says they, and the Turkmen victims of Arabization, must return, but acknowledges that the Arabs brought to Kirkuk were forced to come and deserve a just solution within the law.
Existing law is itself a problem, as the Baathists used legal devices to cover forced population movements.
"Everyone has a piece of paper giving them title to the same land," Mayville said.
Irfan Kirkuki, a Turkman who is assistant governor in Kirkuk with responsibility for "de-Baathification," or removing senior Baathists from government posts, said Saddam's party had sown discord among the province's ethnic groups for 35 years.
"Their program was Arab nationalism, so they were against all non-Arabs, but even Arabs suffered from their policy."
Figures compiled by the British-funded Iraqi aid agency Reach show that nearly 50,000 people have returned to Kirkuk since the war. About 80 percent are Kurds who had been displaced to the northern provinces of Arbil and Sulaimaniya, said Hafeez Abdul Aziz, Reach's acting program manager.
But they have not been resettled and are squatting in makeshift, often unsanitary, accommodation.
"It's a political issue," Abdul Aziz said.
"The last decision by the CPA [Coalition Provisional Authority] was to do no resettlement, only emergency aid until March 2004," he said.
Mayville said he had been told that 34,000 people had returned to the Kirkuk area, but added that reliable figures were harder to come by now that security fears had forced international relief agencies to scale back their presence in northern Iraq.
"If it isn't 34,000, it soon will be," he declared.
After decades of Baathist manipulation, every population statistic is suspect -- and politically sensitive.
Mayville said he estimated the city's 850,000 people at 40 percent Kurds, 35 percent Arabs, 20 percent Turkmen and five percent Assyrian and Chaldean Christians.
"But you won't find any of them will agree on that," he added.
He said Kirkuk's problems could not wait for a transitional Iraqi government to take power in June, let alone for the two years it might take for a new constitution to be ratified, postwar Iraq's political shape settled and elections held.
"We can't just keep the lid on, we must move forward. It will be very difficult for Iraqis to solve alone." he said.
He suggested creating a special Iraqi board to work with the US-led administration to "protect Kirkuk from itself."
Even if problems created over decades could not be solved in weeks or months, any hard-won progress would win some credit for communal leaders and for the US-led authorities.
Jawhar, the PUK leader, said Saddam's legacy of persecuting Kurds and Turkmen in the name of Arabism, or Shi'ites in the name of Sunni Islam, would take a long time to overcome, but problems must be solved by negotiation, not force.
"Iraqis must be aware that the former regime spread a racist disease ... on the basis of one party and one leader. We have to replace this mindset," he said.
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