Years after they were dispossessed under Saddam Hussein, Kurds are taking what they say is rightfully theirs, evicting Iraqi Arabs and seizing their homes in northern Iraq

"We're homeless," complained Sadi Qader Muhammad, whose family was ordered out of their four-room house by a group of Kurds in this largely Kurdish city. The new Kurdish occupants took over the house in the days of confusion immediately after the April 10 collapse of Baghdad's authority in Kirkuk. They claim the land was theirs before Saddam evicted them in the 1980s. "It was our land," said Khader Rashid Rahim, a trader who plans to move his wife and seven children to this house. "Years ago, three of my brothers were killed by Saddam's government. They took all of our property and forcibly moved us away." Of all the legacies of Saddam's years of rule, none might be quite so difficult and explosive as his removal of ethnic minorities from oil-rich areas. Years ago, Saddam intensified a long-standing Baghdad policy of Arabization by evicting thousands of Kurds living in the northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul and handing their property over to Arabs from other parts of Iraq. An estimated 400,000 Kurds were displaced from Kirkuk. Many ended up in refugee camps and dedicated their lives to retrieving their lost property. Kurds have long vowed to return to their lost lands and homes once Kirkuk was freed. Kurdish leaders have sought to assure the United States and Arab countries that the process of return will be a lawful one.