The Displacement of the Population of the Kirkuk Region

Especially by the Current Iraqi Regime

                                                                                               

Dr. Nouri Talabany

 

An analysis of the policy of the current Iraqi regime in the Kirkuk region necessitates a brief review of the history of that region.  We must study international documents, the writings of historians and even the works of poets who wrote about the changes which occurred there. 

 

The first international document, which led directly to the division of Kurdistan, was the Treaty of Kaser Shireen - Zahab, signed in 1639 between the Ottoman and Safawid Empires.  From that date, the Kurdish Emirates, which were either wholly, or partially, independent, were obliged to seek protection from one or either of these two powers if threatened by external aggression or in the face of internal unrest caused by conflict between the ruling families.  The Sultans and the Shahs and their representatives actively encouraged such conflicts with the express intention of weakening the Kurdish Emirates. For example, Abdul - Rahaman Baban, during his rule from 1789 to 1813, was forced to cede his power to various relatives on more than one occasion, partly as a result of Safawid and Ottoman intervention.[1]  Consequently, the power of these emirates was systematically undermined and, by the mid - nineteenth century, they had ceased to exist. The last Kurdish emirates were the Ardalan (617 - 1284 Hi) whose capital was the city of Senna, and the Baban (1106 - 1267 Hi) whose capital was Sulaymani.  These two Kurdish emirates deserve special mention because the Kirkuk region, or a part of it, once belonged to either one or the other of them for various periods. 

 

The celebrated Kurdish poet from Kirkuk, Sheikh Rezza Talabany (1835 - 1910), who wrote his verse in Kurdish, Persian, Turkish and Arabic, mentioned this in a narrative poem written in Kurdish, in which he recalled his childhood in the Kurdish Emirate of Baban before it was ruled by either the Persians or the Ottomans.[2]  As a young man of twenty-five or so, our poet went to the Ottoman capital, Constantinople, and in the course of his journey, he visited the grave of the Kurdish Sufi, Sheikh Nouradin Brifkani.  At the graveside he recited a long poem in Farsi, telling of how he had journeyed from Sharazur, of which Kirkuk was its capital, to visit the ‘The Roman Country’ as the Kurds referred to Turkey at that time.  In 1879, when the Ottoman Empire annexed the Wilayet of Sharazur to the Wilayet of Mosul, Sheikh Rezza expressed his sadness and disappointment in a poem, in Turkish, in which he told the people that Mosul had now become the capital of their Wilayet and Nafi’i Effendi its Wali.[3]

 

As well as Sheikh Rezza Talabany’s poetic testimony to the history of the city of Kirkuk, we have the words of the Ottoman explorer Shamsadin Sami, author of the celebrated Encyclopaedia “Qamusl Al A’ala’m”, who wrote of Kirkuk: ‘It is located within the Wilayet of Mosul which is a part of Kurdistan.  It is at a distance of 25 pharsings (100 miles) southeast of the city of Mosul.  It is situated amidst a range of parallel hills next to an extended valley called the Vale of Adham. It is the administrative center for the Sharazur Wilayet and has a population of 30,000 ‘.[4]  As regards the ethnic composition of the city, Shamsadin Sami asserts that ‘three quarters of the inhabitants are Kurds and the rest are Turkmans, Arabs and others.  Seven hundred and sixty Jews and four hundred and sixty Chaldeans also reside in the city’.[5]

 

Under Ottoman rule, Turkman families were encouraged to settle in the city and were given preferential treatment by the Ottoman rulers.  The post of ‘mutassallim’, or governor, and many other prestigious positions and titles were accorded them, and the majority of Kirkuk’s civil servants came from among the Turkman community with the result that the Ottoman rulers enjoyed continued support.[6]  The Encyclopaedia of Islam states: ‘Whatever the circumstances of their coming to the region, the Turkmans of Kirkuk always provided strong support for the Ottoman empire and its culture and an abundant source of Ottoman officials.’[7]  But despite all this, the city of Kirkuk retained its distinctive Kurdish character.      

 

The Wilayet of Mosul remained a part of the Ottoman Empire until the end of the First World War when it was occupied by British troops under the command of General Marshall on 17th May 1918.  He withdrew his troops on 27th May, only to re-occupy it at the end of October that same year, after the signing of the Modrus Agreement between Britain and the Ottomans.  Secret British documents revealed that the Foreign Office had warned General Marshall not to advance on the Wilayet of Mosul.[8]  With the exception of the Sulaymani region, the greater part of the Mosul Wilayet was occupied by the British army and governed by British political officers.  The decision to remain in the Wilayet was taken by the British when they discovered oil in the region of Kirkuk, which is an important part of the Wilayet of Mosul. Under the terms of the secret Sykes Picot Agreement, signed in 1916 between France and Britain, this Wilayet was given to France.  According to the later San Remo Agreement between France and Britain, France gave it to Britain in return for a share in the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC) which was established by the Ottomans and the Germans to exploit the oil in the two Wilayets of Baghdad and Mosul.  This discovery eventually led to the annexation of the Wilayet of Mosul to the newly created Iraqi State after a decision taken by the League of Nations in 1925.  To encourage support for this annexation, King Faisal the First visited most of the Wilayet, including Kirkuk, in December 1924, and urged the people to demand to join the new Iraqi State created in 1921.[9] Most Iraqi researchers are agreed that the Wilayet of Mosul became a part of Iraq with the help of the British.  It was in their economic and strategic interest to annex it so as to be able to send oil from Kirkuk through Iraqi territory to the Mediterranean ports and from there to Europe and the West.  Because of the bad relations between Britain and Turkey caused by Turkey’s claim that the Wilayet of Mosul was part of its territory, it was difficult at that time to send it through Turkish territory.[10] 

 

The annexation of the Wilayet was sanctioned by international agreement, but this agreement was conditional on both Britain and Iraq honoring the wishes of the Kurds that civil servant in the Kurdish area be Kurds and that Kurdish was to be the official language.[11]  In reality, successive Iraqi governments ignored this international agreement and proceeded to implement a policy which was completely opposed to it, especially in the Kirkuk region.  This became abundantly clear during the direct British rule of Kirkuk when Turkish remained the official language in administration and education as it had been under the Ottomans, and when important positions in the city continued to be given to the Turkmans. [12] Later, when the Iraqi Petroleum Company (IPC), which was run by the British and which had its headquarters in Kirkuk, began operating, it brought the majority of its employees in from other parts of Iraq.  Many thousands of technicians and other professionals, as well as small tradesmen, came to live in the city, bringing their families with them.[13]  To accommodate them, hundreds of housing units were constructed and new districts developed, mostly for Arabs, Assyrians and Armenians.  Research suggests that, between 1919 and 1968, there was a fivefold increase in the population of Kirkuk.[14]  Although the Kurds remained the majority in both the city and the governorate, far fewer of them were employed by the company than were members of other ethnic groups.[15] In 1921, when Britain occupied Iraq, they estimated the ethnic composition of Kirkuk as 75,000 Kurds, 35,000 Turks, 10,000 Arabs, 1000 Jews and 600 Chaldo/Assyrians.  The 1957 census gave the figures as 48.3% Kurds, 28.2% Arabs, 21.2% Turkmans.

 

During the years of the monarchy, all Iraqi governments encouraged non-Kurds to settle in Kirkuk and prohibited the use of the Kurdish language in education there.  In the mid 1930s, the government of Yassin Al Hashimi brought Arabs from the Al-Ubaid and other nomadic tribes to settle in the Hawija district in the southwest of Kirkuk.[16]

 

The July 1958 coup d’etat of General Kasim encouraged the Kurds to hope that these discriminatory policies would be reversed, and they asked that Kurdish be used as the language of instruction in the primary schools, at least in those districts which remained wholly Kurdish.  But their hopes were dashed when extreme Arab nationalists were appointed to prominent positions in Kirkuk and they felt convinced that the situation would never change.  This conviction was strengthened when General Tabakchali, the new Commander of the 2nd Division stationed in Kirkuk, took several decisions which were to the obvious advantage of the Turkmans.  He began by ousting the Kurdish mayor and appointing a Turkman in his place.  He then sent a number of secret memoranda to the Ministry of Defense in Baghdad - the real power in Iraq at that time - accusing the Kurds of causing unrest and of trying to found a so-called ‘Kurdish Republic’ which would be joined later by other areas of Kurdistan.[17]  His ‘evidence’ for this was the request by Kurdish intellectuals to establish an Education Department to supervise Kurdish education in the Kurdish region.  During General Tabakchali’s command, from July 1958 to March 1959, he concentrated all his efforts on creating tensions and divisions between Kurds and Turkmans.[18]

 

The appointment of a new leftist commander, General Al- Janabi, in mid-March 1959, brought yet another change.  During his short command the Kurds felt relaxed and celebrated Nawroz openly for the first time in the city’s history.  However, three months later, General Al- Janabi was dismissed and the situation steadily deteriorated until Kurds and Turkmans clashed in July 1959.  From then on, the Kurds were once more subjected to ever increasing discrimination.  This period is considered as a time of fear and forced expulsion of Kurds from Kirkuk.  It marked the beginning of a period of terror for the Kurds when they were forced to leave the city.  Special terrorist groups were formed from Turkmans, collaborating with the security forces, whose task it was to assassinate prominent Kurdish figures in the city.  This situation continued until the coup d’etat by the Ba’ath party on 8th February 1963.  From then on, the campaign of terror against the Kurds, led by the ‘National Guard’ of Turkmans and Ba’athists, intensified.  Several densely populated districts were demolished and 13 Kurdish villages located near Kirkuk and the IPC oil installations were destroyed.  The inhabitants of 33 villages in the Dubs district, close to Kirkuk, were forced to leave and Arab tribes were brought in and settled there.[19]   Other measures taken by the regime against the Kurds in Kirkuk were:

 

        ·          Dismissing many Kurdish employees of the Oil Company or transferring them to facilities outside the governorate, and even transferring low-ranking civil servants to southern and central Iraq.

        ·          Hiring large numbers of inexperienced Arabs as local police and oil workers.

        ·          Surrounding the city with military observation posts and creating “security zones” near the oil plant and planting mines there.

        ·          Settling armed Arab tribes in evacuated Kurdish villages and forming ‘irregular units’ from them to help attack Peshmarga and Kurds in the area around Kirkuk.

        ·          Re-naming city streets and schools in Arabic and forcing businesses to adopt Arab names.

        ·          Conducting a terror campaign and forcing people to abandon their villages so as to settle Arabs there.

 

The Ba’ath party returned to power in a second coup d’etat in 1968.  Shortly after seizing power, the regime instigated a policy deliberately designed to change the ethnic character of Kirkuk and of the governorate.  Civil servants, schoolteachers and oil company employees who had escaped the previous expulsions, were transferred and replaced by Arabs.  Any Kurd, having once left Kirkuk, is never allowed to return, and this is what happened to most of those transferred.

 

The regime also took the following measures:

 

        ·          Kurdish districts, schools, streets, markets and businesses were given Arabic names.

        ·          Houses were demolished in Kurdish neighborhoods to allow for the unnecessary construction of wide roads and the owners were not allowed to buy other property.

        ·          The names of “Arab new-comers” were added to the 1957 census so that it appeared that they had lived in Kirkuk since before 1957.

        ·          Kurds were only allowed to sell their properties to Arabs and were not permitted to buy other property.  Permits to build or renovate were refused.  In the early eighties, these measures were extended to the Turkmans also.

        ·          False charges were laid against Kurds so that they left the city and their homes and belongings were confiscated.  Kurdish youths were arrested and imprisoned by the security police without trial.  Police vehicles were seen taking corpses clad in Kurdish costumes to a cemetery called “Ghariban” near the Kirkuk-Sulaymani road.

        ·          The governorate’s administrative offices and the headquarters of the trade unions and other organisations were moved to the arabized section of the city.

        ·          Thousands of residential units were built for Arab workers near the Kirkuk-Hawija-Tikrit, Kirkuk - Baghdad and Kirkuk - Laylan roads.

        ·          The ancient citadel of Kirkuk, which contained several mosques and a very old church, was demolished.

        ·          The city and surrounding area was transformed into a military camp, and military fortifications were built inside and around Kirkuk.

        ·          Tens of thousands of Arab families were brought in, with guaranteed jobs and housing.  The government offered money and housing to Kurds who would leave Kirkuk for central or southern Iraq, or a free plot of land if they went to the ‘Autonomous Region’.[20]

 

The Iraqi regime’s policy of the ethnic cleansing of Kurds began in 1963 and became much harsher in 1968.  In the mid-eighties it directed this policy against the Turkmans.  The Chaldo/Assyrians and Armenians were simply considered as Arabs!

 

After the nationalization of the IPC in June 1972, the regime changed the historic name of Kirkuk to ‘Al Tamim’, meaning ‘nationalization’.  In 1976 it also reduced the area of the governorate by annexing four Kurdish areas to the neighboring governorates, thus making the Kurds a minority in the Kirkuk governorate.

 

Where the regime was unable to settle Arabs, it destroyed all the Kurdish villages and forced their inhabitants into concentration camps.  The Anfal operations of 1988 claimed the lives of about 182,000 Kurdish civilians, most of whom were from the Kirkuk region.  The villagers in that region lived far from international borders and were unable to reach Iran and Turkey and so they surrendered to the army and secret services and were later sent to the south of Iraq where they were massacred.

 

The Iraqi regime’s policy of ethnic cleansing continued without comment or challenge from either the Iraqi opposition or the international community until very recently.  Its measures were far more severe than those seen in other countries, for instance, in Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor, which have been condemned by the international community.

 

By the end of the eighties, Kirkuk city had lost its historic character as the Arab settlers had become dominant and were ruling the city and its administration.  Security and the army were all under their control, and most of the best agricultural land was given to them.[21]  It should also be remembered that a vast irrigation project, called the ‘Saddam Irrigation Project’, had already been established at the end of the 1970s to irrigate tens of thousands of hectares of land, which was given to the Arab settlers.  It was evident to everyone that people from outside the area were in charge and that the original inhabitants had become strangers in the city and region.

 

This state of affairs continued up to and beyond the Gulf War in 1991.  After the Iraqi regime’s defeat in Kuwait, Ali Hassan Al Majid, then Minister of Defense, took many measures in the city.  For example, he arrested more than 30,000 Kurds and held them for several days in confined spaces, without water or food, as a result of which many of the elderly and sick died.  He also ordered the destruction of a number of Kurdish sectors of the city.  After fierce fighting, the city was taken by the Kurds on 21st March 1991.  During three days of street battles, many Kurdish civilians, among them women and children, were killed in the bombardment by Iraqi artillery and helicopter gun-ships.

 

Because of Kirkuk’s strategic importance to the regime, determined efforts were made to re-occupy it with the collaboration of the ‘Mujahidin Khalk’, a group from the Iranian opposition supported by Saddam Hussein, whose members act as mercenaries for him.  Some of these mercenaries succeeded in entering the city by disguising themselves as Peshmarga.  From the 27th to the 29th March 1991, Kirkuk was subjected to such an intense bombardment that its inhabitants were forced to evacuate the city, leaving behind their possessions which were looted by the Iraqi army and the Arab settlers who returned with military help.

 

Most of the Kurds and Turkmans forced to leave Kirkuk were unable to return for fear of arrest.  It can be said that the collapse of the uprising of March 1991 was a further reason for many Kurds and Turkmans leaving their city.  Those who did return, especially the young people, faced intimidation and arrest.

 

During negotiations between the Iraqi regime and representatives of the ‘Kurdistan Front’ in May 1991, the regime agreed to allow the citizens of Kirkuk to return to their homes, but this promise was only partially honored.  After the collapse of the negotiations, and especially after the withdrawal of the Iraqi administration from three governorates of Kurdistan in September 1991, the Kurds became the target of a renewed reign of terror. This intensified during the years from 1994 to 1996 and was particularly severe at the beginning of 1997 during the preparations for a new census.  The methods used by the Iraqi regime exceeded even those used during the apartheid era in South Africa.  Kurds were issued with official forms on which they were required to declare that they had been wrongly registered as Kurds in previous censuses.  They were told that anyone refusing to sign these forms would be expelled from the city and, in this way, the regime ensured that thousands of Kurds were expelled from Kirkuk.  Even after this census, the regime continued its policy of expulsion.  In declarations made by Izzat Ibrahim, vice-president and responsible for arabization in Kirkuk, it was publicly declared in September 2000 that no non-Arab would be permitted to remain in Kirkuk.[22]  Tens of thousands Kurdish families have been expelled from the areas under the control of the regime, especially from Kirkuk.  Most of these people are now living in camps in appalling conditions and are dependent on aid from international relief organizations.  As a result of their continuing misery, some of them, especially the young people, try to make their way to Europe illegally and many lose their money, and sometimes their lives, before arriving there.

 

Sadly, the international community still ignores the plight of these people.  It puts no pressure on the Iraqi regime to halt this racist policy which is completely contrary to Security Council Resolution No. 688 of 1991 and against all those international documents to which, as a member of the UN and its organizations, Iraq is a signatory.  Meanwhile, some of the nationalist Arab groups in the Iraqi opposition still refuse to condemn the regime’s policy that endangers co-existence between Kurds and Arabs in Iraq. 

 

The recent declarations of Turkish leaders that they will occupy Mosul and Kirkuk in the event of an attack on Iraq, under the pretext that they have an historic right to do so and a duty to protect the Turkman minority there, contradict the terms of the Treaty of Ankara, signed on 5^th June 1926 by Turkey and Iraq, and by Britain as a mandatory power on Iraq at that time Under this Treaty the present border between Turkey and Iraq was fixed and Turkey relinquished its demand for the former Wilayet of Mosul.  According to the census of 1957, which is the only reliable census taken in Iraq; the percentage of Turkmans in the governorate of Mosul is about 5% of the population there and 21,4% in the Kirkuk governorate.  This proves that the Turkmans have always been a minority in these two governorates.   

 

From the Iraqi regime’s ability to continue expelling the people of Kirkuk from their homes, in flagrant violation of international law and Resolution No.688, which condemns this policy, it is obvious that it will not stop unless forced to do so by the resolve of the international community.  Only in this way will those expelled be able to return to their homes and the Arab settlers sent back to the parts of Iraq from which they came originally.  This will only happen when the Kurdish regions which remain under the control of the regime, especially Kirkuk, come under the control of the international community until Saddam Hussein’s regime ends and democracy is established in Iraq.  This would provide the only guarantee of protection for the civilian population there.  The request for this was made by 122 Kurdish civil organizations and political parties, both inside and outside Kurdistan, supported by several organizations and public figures in Europe, in a memorandum presented to the Security Council, other international organizations and western states on 29th December 2000.[23]  The memorandum also stressed that such a measure would contribute ‘to the establishing of peace and security in the otherwise turbulent Middle East’.           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nouri Talabany:

 

• Born in the city of Kirkuk, Iraqi Kurdistan and completed his elementary education, intermediate and secondary school in the same city.
• Received the Bachelor of Science degree in Law from the University of Baghdad.
• Received his Doctorate (Ph.D.) in Law from the Sorbonne (France).
• Has taught at a number of Iraqi universities, including the University of Baghdad (College of Law) from 1968 until he was retired in 1982 for political reasons.
• Is the author of numerous publications and research studies in Kurdish, Arabic, French and English.
• Is the author of the first dictionary of legal terms in Kurdish/Arabic/French/English.
• Member of the High Legal Kurdish Committee in 1992 and proposed a draft Constitution for the Iraqi-Kurdistan Region.
• Translated the book of Basil Nikiteen, ‘Les Kurdes’, from French to Arabic.
• At present, he is the Director of the Kirkuk Trust for Research & Study (London).