|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Iraq’s Policy of Ethnic
Cleansing: Onslaught to change
national/demographic characteristics of the Kirkuk Region Nouri Talabany Professor of Law Prefaced by Lord Eric
Avebury London 1999 Table of Contents
PREFACE I am very glad to have
been invited to write this preface to Dr. Nouri Talabany’s important study of
demographic engineering in the region of Kirkuk. According to the
latest report of the UN Special Reporter on Iraq, Max van der Stole, Iraq
remains by far and away the state with the largest number of cases of
disappearance. There are hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees in Iran,
Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and tens of thousands more are de facto refugees in
Jordan. But in addition to those who vanished into thin air, or fled into
exile, there are uncounted numbers of internally displaced. The Marsh Arabs
of the south are not the only victims of Saddam’s terror, as Dr. Talabany
shows, and the systematic alteration of the population mix in Kirkuk region
has been going on for much longer. It began almost immediately after the
Bathi’st assumed power by coup d’etat in 1968, and in the process, tens of
thousands of Kurdish families have been forcibly transported into exile. This
atrocity, in the worst tradition of the late Joseph Stalin, has been
unaccountably overlooked in the west, yet it has profound implications for
any post-Saddam settlement in Iraq. Will the dispossessed be restored to
their homes and lands, as we insist in the case of Bosnia? Or is ethnic
cleansing permissible when it is done quietly enough? Dr. Talabany has done
the world a valuable service in exposing Saddam’s ethnocidal designs against
the Kurdish people of Kirkuk. Let this be added to the list of crimes against
humanity for which, one day, Inshallah, he will be made to pay ! Lord Avebury Chairman, Parliamentary Human
Rights Group House of Lords. April 10, 1995 INTRODUCTION The Kirkuk
region, rich in its oil fields and farm lands, has been one of the principal
obstacles to finding a peaceful solution to the Kurdish question in Iraq. Geographically, the
region straddles the strategic trade routes between Anatolia, Iran and Iraq.
This has been the main reason for attempts by former ruling powers to settle
Turkmans in the region. However, the discovery of vast quantities of oil in
the region after World War I supplied the impetus for the annexation of the
former Ottoman Wilayet of Mosul (of which the Kirkuk region was a
part), to the Iraqi kingdom established in 1921. Since then, and particularly
from 1963 onwards, there have been continuous attempts to change the ethnic
make-up of the region. To understand the
reasons for this policy one needs, briefly, to consider the geography,
history and demography of the Kirkuk region. An analysis of the
situation both before and after these attempts, should clarify it. To obtain information
regarding the region’s history and geography for this study, we have
consulted, and cited as reference, the most objective sources available,
regardless of whether these sources were in Turkish, Arabic, Kurdish, French
or English. For instance, Shamsudin Sami, the Turkish historian, explorer and
author of the Ottoman "Qamous al-A`ala’m," a comprehensive
dictionary of history and geography, cannot be considered a supporter of the
Kurds, yet his writings have been used as a source. The same is true of the
Iraqi author Shakir Khesback, who is well known for his scholarly integrity.
One can affirm the same kind of impartiality for the many Western scholars
and researchers who have contributed to the section on Kirkuk in the
Islamic Encyclopedia, as well as for the two prominent Kurdish scholars
Mohammed Ameen Zaki and Tawfiq Wahbi. This book is mainly
devoted to a study and analysis of the open and deliberate attempts by
various Iraqi regimes to change the ethnic and demographic composition of the
region. The task of discovering accurate information, especially during the
last two decades, was fraught with difficulty because of the problems in
gaining access to the numerous confidential, official regulations, memoranda
and special orders that would substantiate this work. However, this was
overcome through a variety of factors, viz :I am, myself, a native of the
city of Kirkuk and have noted these practices since the present Iraqi
regime began implementing them. Furthermore, they were usually carried out
openly as the enforcement of official acts. In addition, I have had the
opportunity to examine some statistical studies on Iraq, together with
several studies on the Kurdish region prepared by Kurdish organisations and
individuals. As a matter of policy,
the present Iraqi regime has always tried to keep all secret documents,
directives, and other acts pertaining to the region, as confidential, and
therefore unavailable to persons who were not considered to be part of the
regime. Thus, most of the directives and secret orders issued by the
"Revolutionary Command Council", the "Committee for the
Affairs of the North" and the "National Security Council",
plus those of the many security apparatuses, the military intelligence, and
the Ba`ath Party organs, as well as those from regional administrative
offices, remained inaccessible, with the exception of the very few which
found their way into the hands of the Kurdish political organisations. This all changed,
however, after the uprising of March 1991. The Peshmarga (Kurdish
partisans) succeeded in removing from the offices of the Ba’ath Party and all
the security services in Kurdistan, tons of secret documents relating to
Kurdish political parties, organisations, and individuals dating from the
1960s to 1991. Over 18 tons of these were shipped to the Library of Congress
in the United States to be classified, documented, and studied in cooperation
with "Human Rights Watch". In addition, this organisation secured a
copy of a digital database of the 5.5 million-page collection produced by the
Defence Intelligence Agency of the USA. These secret files will be opened to
the public for the first time under the auspices of the Human Rights
Initiative at the University of Colorado at Boulder Archives. Early studies of them,
in particular those regarding the notorious "Anfal" operations,
have shown them to contain a wealth of information relating not only to the
regime’s efforts to change the ethnic composition of the Kirkuk and
other Kurdish regions in the Governorates of Mosul and Diyala, but also to
criminal acts which fall within the definition of genocide in accordance with
the Paris Convention on Genocide of December 9th, 1948. They reveal the
extent of the genocidal campaign against the Kurds and the repeated use of
chemical weapons. These secret files contain data on government policies,
directives and decrees, military operations and troop movements including the
use of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War and against the Kurds, the
elimination of villages, the Arabization campaign for Kurdish areas and the
political and human rights situation during the crisis over Kuwait.
Statistical data revealing the number, infrastructure, and demography of
Kurdish villages demolished during the past two decades, as well as
information regarding the new residential developments built in the city of Kirkuk
to house and settle the so-called "new arrivals" have been
obtained either from official Government documents or from research based on
these documents prepared by some Kurdish organisations. I would like to
express my gratitude to my many friends who, regardless of political
allegiance and ethnic origin, offered valuable comments, and to the many
Kurdish organisations who provided numerous confidential documents. Without
their continued assistance and support, this study would not have been
possible. Finally, I crave the
reader’s indulgence for any shortcomings in this work, and hope that it will
stimulate further study on the subject by other specialists. This book was first
published in Arabic in 1995. It has also been published in Kurdish. This
particular study of the book was translated from the Arabic at the end of
1996. -I- A SYNOPSIS OF THE HISTORY
AND GEOGRAPHY OF THE KIRKUK REGION The Kirkuk
region lies between the Zagros mountains in the north-east, the
Lower Zab and the Tigris rivers in the west, the Hamreen
mountain range in the south, and the Sirwan (Diyala) river in the
south-west. It is thought to be the region known during the Sassanic reign as
Garmakan, that is, "the land of warmth" or "hot
region". In Syriac chronicles
it appears under the name of Beth Garma’i shortened to Bagarmi,
then Arabized into Bajermi or Jermakan, which also means
"warmth" or " the land of warmth". The area has always
been of strategic interest to all the powers who have occupied it throughout
the ages because of the trade routes which criss-cross its vast plains and
their proximity to the many mountain passes such as the Bazyan, the Basrah
and the Sagerma.(1) Consequently, these occupying powers established military
garrisons in the nearby cities of Kifri, Dooz-Khurmatu, Daqooq,
Altoon-Kopri (Perde’) and Kirkuk city itself, both to defend these cities
and to protect the trade routes. These strongholds were used not only for
military action against enemies, but also as headquarters for the collecting
of customs duties from caravans travelling between western Anatolia, Iraq and
Syria, and cities in south western Iran such as Senendaj(Sena), Kermanshah
and Hamadan. In the famous dictionary "Qamous Al-A`ala’m",
published in Istanbul in 1896 [1315 Hijri], the city of Kirkuk is
described as follows: : "It is located within the Wilayet of Mosul which
belongs to Kurdistan; it is at a distance of 160 km south-east of the city of
Mosul. It is situated amidst a range of parallel hills next to an extended
valley called "Adham valley". It is the administrative centre for
the Sharazour Sanjak and has a population of 30,000; it has a
citadel [fort], 36 mosques, seven schools, 15 Takias, 12 Khans,
1,282 shops, and eight public baths."(2) The same author
describes the demography of Kirkuk in a subsequent section as: :
"three quarters of the inhabitants are Kurds and the rest are Turkmans,
Arabs, and others. Seven hundred and sixty (760) Jews and four hundred and
sixty (460) Chaldians also reside in the city". The city of Kirkuk,
as described in the "Encyclopedia de l`Islam" is characterized as
follows: : "It is bordered by the Lower Zab on the north-west,
the Hamreen mountains on the west, the Diyala river on the
south-west, and the Zagros mountains on the north-east". (3) According to S.H. Gadd
and Sidney Smith, "the present city of Kirkuk stands on the site
of the old city of "Arrapha".(4) They add that the
Sassanides called the area Garmakan (mentioned earlier) and that the
region was often attacked by mountain peoples who inhabited its north-western
territories during the Babylonian and Assyrian empires. Throughout history,
the conquerors of Kurdistan have tried to destroy the existing Kurdish
emirates one after the other. One may consider the time of occupation of
Kurdistan by Saffawis during the reign of Shah Ismail as the point in time at
which the enforced settlement of Turkman in the area began. The Saffawid
tried to impose the Shi`ite "Kezelbashi" faith on the Kurds, in an
attempt to replace the Sunni Moslems whom they did not trust. (5) The Ottomans, who
followed the Saffawis, tried at first to befriend the Kurds so as to incite
them to rise against the Shi’a Saffawis. This allowed the Kurdish emirs to
win back their sovereignty in some parts of their emirates, including the
regions of Arbeel and Kirkuk, which were regained by Said Beg
Shah Ali, the emir of the Soran emirate. (6) Kurdistan became a
battleground for a long period between the Shi’a Saffawis, whose capital was
Tabreez, and the Sunni Ottomans. This was especially true during the reigns
of Shah Tahmasib, Shah Abbas, and Shah Tahmasib Kuli Khan - also known as
Nader Shah - and the Ottoman Sultans Sulaiman Qanooni and Murad the Fourth. Kirkuk's
strategic location caused it to change hands many times during these wars. -II- THE HISTORY OF THE TURKMANS’
SETTLEMENT IN THE REGION Soon after the Ottoman
occupation of Kurdistan, the Sultans realised the importance of Kirkuk
for the vital trade and transport routes that passed through it and which
connected Anatolia to Iraq and Iran, much as the Saffawis had discovered.(7)
Thus, both sides tried to control this strategic route because of its
logistical importance during war and its importance to trade during peace. As
a result, both sides encouraged their subjects and military personnel to
settle in the cities and towns which dotted the route. The route began at
Tel`Afar and Mosul in the north, passed through Arbeel, Altoon-Kopri(Perde’’),
Kirkuk, Daqooq and Kefri until it reached Baghdad on the
one hand, and the cities of Khanaqeen and Mandali on the present
Iraq-Iran border on the other. It then continued through Iran to Kermanshah,
Hamadan, and other Iranian cities. It was called the Sultan’s route by
many historians. The Iraqi historian
Abdul-Razzak Al-Hassani asserts that the Turkmans of this region are :
"part of the forces of Sultan Murad the Fourth who recaptured Iraq from
the Saffawis in 1638 and remained in these parts to protect this route
between the southern and northern Ottoman Wilayets ".(8) It should be noted
that the Turkish Encyclopedia uses the name "Turks" for the
inhabitants of these parts rather than the name "Turkmans" as used
in Iraq. That means it considers them as Turkish rather than Turkmans.(9) The power in these
areas was normally in the hands of the military who had no direct contact
with the indigenous Kurds. Some of the military personnel who settled
permanently in these cities began to engage in commerce and to work in their
professions. The military power which they held facilitated their settlement,
their engagement in trade and their acquisition of large tracts of
agricultural land. Their settlement in these areas eventually led to
interaction with the local inhabitants and as a result, there was an exchange
of cultural values and social traditions- something that was especially
promoted by intermarriage. Another view regarding
the origin of the Iraqi Turkmans traces them back to remnants of the Turkman
soldiers who served under the Abbasids, the Atabekiens, and the Ottomans.(10) According to the
Turkmans themselves, they migrated to Iraq during the Amawi and Abbasid eras
because they were in demand by these rulers as a result of their prowess in
battle; however, they acknowledge that this period of their residence in Iraq
was one of introduction rather than settlement and, therefore, the Turkmans
of that era were integrated into the existing population.(11) They believe
that real settlement began during the Seljouki era and was later expanded
during the Ottoman era. But this cannot be so as many emirates, most of them
Kurdish, were established in the region during the period following the end
of the Seljouki reign, a situation that greatly diminished their numbers. As a chronicle of the powers that ruled the region, the Islamic
Encyclopedia states : "The real rulers of the region were the local
Kurdish chieftains of the region of Ardalan. The Ottomans were able later to
subdue the city - that is Kirkuk - with the aid of the Pashas of the Sharazour
Ayalat".(12) It goes on to relate : "An Ayalat was made up of
32 Sanjaks; and Kirkuk, which was one of the Ayalats, became
the official headquarters for the Pasha of Sharazour after his palace
was destroyed by Shah Ismail Safawi [1571 - 1642]. In 1732, Nader Shah
besieged the city of Kirkuk in vain; this was followed the year after
by a major battle near the city of Kirkuk in which the Turks met with
a crushing defeat. In 1743 the Saffawis recaptured Kirkuk, and it then
reverted to the Turks after the peace treaty of 1746. After that, Kirkuk
remained a part of the Ottoman empire until the end of World War I when
British forces entered it in May of 1918 ".(13) At the end of World
War I, the remnants of the Ottomans on the border of the Mosul Wilayet tried
to make contact with Kurdish and Turkman leaders in the region in an effort
to regain the Mosul Wilayet and to restore their influence in the area. They
dispatched large numbers of former Ottoman military officers, particularly
those of Kurdish origin, as emissaries to Sheik Mahmoud Hafid who ruled large
areas of southern Kurdistan at that time, and to other Turkman dignitaries,
to persuade them to remain within the Ottoman empire. During this period the
Kurds were trying to persuade the western countries to pass a resolution that
would include the implementation of the terms of the Sevres treaty, which was
ratified on August 10, 1920, and which stipulated the establishment of a
Kurdish entity in Ottoman Kurdistan in two stages. They had dispatched
General Sheriff Pasha as an envoy to Paris to contact the participants of the
Versailles Conference that was held at the end of World War I. British policy in the
area underwent a change at this period. The British started to work actively
for the annexation of the former Ottoman Wilayet of Mosul to the newly
established Iraqi kingdom which, until then, was comprised of the former
Wilayets of Baghdad and Basrah only. The British administration responsible
for Iraq and southern Kurdistan organised a referendum in 1921 to determine
whether emir Faisal bin Hussein was acceptable as king. The great majority of
the people of the Kirkuk region, which was directly administered by
British political officers, rejected this proposal. Other Kurdish areas,
notably the Sulaimania region, refused even to take part in the
referendum. Kirkuk later became a part of the Iraqi kingdom when the
League of Nations, in its 37th Assembly of December 16, 1924, in Geneva,
decreed that all the land below the "Brussels Line" should revert
to the Iraqi kingdom. This decision was based on the recommendations of a
fact-finding commission sent to the area by the League of Nations.(14) The Islamic Encyclopedia describes the ethnic composition of the Kirkuk
region, with particular reference to the Turkmans, as follows : "The
Turkmans of some of the villages belong to a nonconformist and heretical sect
called Kizilbashi". It goes on to relate the history of the Turkmans and
the chronology of their habitation there, and states : "It is thought
that their passing presence in Kirkuk and the origin of this presence
precedes the conquering of the city by the Ottoman Sultans; therefore, one
must look to the Turkish garrison that the Caliph installed there in the
third century Hijri [ninth century AD], or to the migration of the
Seljoukies, the Beckties, and the Atabikies in Arbeel, for an answer.
Whichever the case may be, these Turkmans always supported the Ottoman empire
and were a good source of civil servants for them".(15) It then
describes the administration of the Kirkuk region during the last
phase of the Ottoman rule thus :"Kirkuk was the centre of the Sharazour
Ayalat which was comprised of the present day "Liwa" of
Kirkuk, Arbeel, and Sulaimania. Later , the Sanjak
of Kirkuk was called Sharazour and the Liwa of Kirkuk
was annexed to it while the historic Sharazour (Sulaimania)
remained outside the new Sanjak. In 1879, the Wilayet of Mosul was
founded and made up of the three Sanjaks or (Liwas) of Mosul, Kirkuk,
and Sulaimania with Kirkuk retaining its military significance.
In 1918 three districts north of the Lower Zab were detached from the
ethno-geographic district of Kirkuk to form the new Liwa of Arbeel".(16) After the inception of
the Iraqi state in 1921, the Wilayet of Mosul was annexed to it in
1925. Kirkuk then became a Liwa that was comprised of four districts :
The district of central Kirkuk', and the districts of Kifri, Chamchamal
and Gill. From the above, one
can conclude that focci of Turkmans have been present in the region since the
time of their enforced settlement in the area by the Saffawis and Ottomans, each
of whom wanted their own subjects to colonise the cities surrounding the
strategic trade and military routes between Anatolia, Iraq and Iran. The fact
that there are no Turkman concentrations outside these cities corroborates
our view. The response that these regions, i.e., "the regions between
Tel`Afar and Mandali, were inhabited by Turkmans many centuries earlier, and
that the reason for their presence in these lands is that of choice" has
no historical or logical foundation. It is not logical for the indigenous
Kurds to have bequeathed these lands to the remnants of the Seljoukies, just
because " it agrees with their choice" and "it is also known
that the Turkmans prefer fertile plains that have an abundance of
water...".(17) The origin of the
Turkmans who live in the cities around the strategic Sultan routes can be
ascertained by a quick look at these Turkman concentrations. Less than half
the Turkmans living in these cities belong to the Shi`ite Kizilbashi sect of
the Safawis; the rest belong to the Sunni (Hanafit) sect which was the
official sect of the Ottoman rulers. Most of the indigenous
Kurds are Shafi`it/ Sunnis. The Shi’a Turkmans have their own culture, and
have rituals of their own which differ from those of the Sunni Turkmans. The
two sects have different dialects also; the Shi’a Turkmans' dialect is more
akin to that of the Azeri Turkmans. On the whole, one can
make the following observations about the Turkman minority, both Sunni and
Shi’a, who live in the region : 1.
Estimated number of Turkmans in Iraq: Estimates of the
number of Turkmans made public during the twenties and thirties, put them at
2.1 - 2.4 % of the total population of Iraq at that time.(18) In the Iraqi
official 1957 census, this approximate percentage was basically confirmed,
and the results revealed that Turkmans made up 2.16% of the total
population.(19) However, this percentage decreased in later censuses because
the authorities deliberately ignored the Turkmans' ethnic origin and classed
many of them as Arabs. Thus in the official 1977 census, they became 1.15 %
of the total population of Iraq.(20) This fall in percentage figures was for Kirkuk,
as well as for the other Governorates where Turkmans resided, especially the
Governorate of Niniva (Mosul). Thus, whereas the Turkmans’ percentage in Kirkuk
was 21.4 % in the 1957 census, it became 16.75 % in the 1977 census.(21) The
same was true for the Governorate of Mosul, which was 4.8% in 1957 and became
0.99 % in 1977.(22) This declining trend clearly demonstrates the results of
the Arabization policies of the Iraqi regime, especially towards Kurds and
Turkmans during later years. 2. Ethno-geographic distribution of the Turkmans: Most of the Sunni
Turkmans live in the city of Kirkuk, while the Shi’a Turkmans live in
the smaller towns that are centres of districts and sub-districts, or in a
few villages nearby.(23) The Sunni Turkmans
also comprise a small percentage of the city of Arbeel (capital of
Iraqi Kurdistan) and of the towns of Altoon- Kopri /Perde’ and Kifri,
both of which are in the Kirkuk Governorate. They accounted for less
than 5 % in the city of Arbeel in the 1957 census. This percentage
remained basically unchanged in later censuses, and was 6 % in 1965 and 6.5 %
in 1977. The same thing happened in the town of Kifri : it went from
7.7 % in 1965 to 5.7 % in 1977.(24) In the town of Altoon- Kopri,
which is the centre of a sub-district that belongs to the district of Kirkuk,
there are some Sunni Turkmans. They also make up a majority in the villages
of Yaichi, Topzawa, and Blawa which were annexed to the Kirkuk
municipality in recent years. Most of the Shi’a
Turkmans live in the hubs of the districts and sub-districts that are part of
the Kirkuk Governorate and in a few village centres such as the
village of Tssin (Arabized to Al-Tiseen), a village that is very close to the
city of Kirkuk and that was later annexed to it. They also live in the
centre of the Layla’n sub-district, which lies twenty kilometres to the
south-east of Kirkuk, and in the centre of Taza-Khormatou,
which is the hub of a sub-district lying ten kilometres to the south of Kirkuk
on the main Kirkuk-Baghdad road, and in a few villages that belong to
it. There is also a Shi’a Turkman majority in the town of Daqooq (Tawooq),
which lies thirty kilometres south of Kirkuk on the main road to
Baghdad and which had a total population of one thousand nine hundred and
twenty six according to 1957 census. The Shi’a Turkmans now
make up about one-third of the population of the town of Dooz-Khurmatu.
This town later became the hub of a district and was annexed to the
Governorate of Salahadeen (Tikreet) in 1976, despite its geographic distance
from it, in order to lower the percentage of Kurds in the Governorate of Kirkuk
and to redistribute them into other Governorates. Two new sub-districts,
Sulaiman Beg and A`merli, were also set up in the district of Dooz-Khurmatu.
The Bayat tribe, who are Moguls ethnically, live in the villages in this
area. Most of these people lost their original language as a result of intermingling
with the Arab tribes living south of the Hamreen mountain range. The Shi’a Turkmans
also live in the town of Qarateppa, which is the hub of a sub-district that
belongs to the district of Kifri and which is surrounded by a number
of Kurdish and Arabic villages. 3. Vocations and trades of the Turkmans: The majority of the
Shi’a Turkmans are farmers. Those who are town and city dwellers engage in
handicrafts and other trades and commerce. The Ottoman rulers paid little
attention to this segment of the community; they were not actively recruited
into the civil service, and, therefore, their standard of living remained
below that of the Sunni Turkmans. In that, they were treated much like the
Kurds (despite the Kurds’ Sunni affiliation) in contrast to the Sunni
Turkmans who always enjoyed a better standard of living. This higher standard
of living and their residence in larger towns and cities allowed them to send
their children to school (which was then only possible in large cities), to
educate them and to groom them for civil service positions- a privilege that
Sunni Turkmans enjoyed for the duration of the Ottoman rule and those of the
monarchical and republican regimes. However, when the entrance to the civil
service in Kirkuk was restricted to ethnic Arabs only, many of the
Turkman civil servants were transferred to other parts of Iraq. Despite that,
the Sunni Turkmans still dominate commerce and trade in the city of Kirkuk. They also held senior
positions in IPC (the Iraqi Petroleum Company). In contrast, the Kurds were
assigned secondary jobs in the company for decades, before they were all
gradually eliminated. The nationalisation of the oil industry in 1972 led,
eventually, to the discharge of the Kurdish workers first, followed later by
the dismissal of most of the Turkman employees as well. 4. Changes in ethnic identity of some Kurds, Arabs,
and Turkmans: One result of the
Turkmans’ monopoly of the civil service and commerce in Kirkuk during
both the Ottoman and Iraqi rules was a change in the national-ethnic identity
of some Kurdish families who had ambitions of becoming civil servants and/or
attaining a prominent role in trade or commerce. This phenomenon began during
the Ottoman rule and continued into monarchical Iraq. Consequently, some Kurds,
particularly those living in Turkman quarters, did not declare their
national-ethnic origin or else deliberately registered themselves as Turkmans
during official censuses. Intermarriage, especially between migrants from
Kurdish villages and Turkman city dwellers, further promoted this phenomenon.
This has been confirmed by many of the elderly of Kirkuk who assert
that many Turkman families, even among the notables, are originally ethnic
Kurds. For instance, the family of Yaqubi is originally from the Zangana
Kurdish tribe. The same situation
arose among some of the Arab families who migrated to Kirkuk in search
of work, particularly at IPC . Many families migrated from the Arab cities of
Tikreet and Mosul and adopted Turkmani as their language. They were later to
play a prominent role in the regime’s efforts to Arabize the city of Kirkuk;
their descendants joined the Ba`ath party and were rewarded with sensitive
civil service jobs. Muzhir Al-Tikreeti was the first person of Arab origin to
assume such a position; he was appointed Mayor of Kirkuk in 1969, an
appointive office that has been monopolized by Arabs ever since ( i.e. the
Mayor was not elected, but chosen by the minister of the interior). The
direction of ethnic identity changes was reversed after the Ba`ath Party came
to power in Iraq. Many Kurds and Turkmans registered themselves as Arabs to
avoid enforced relocation or administrative transfer to other Governorates,
or to protect their employment or commercial interests. 5. The city of Kirkuk during the Ottoman
period and the Iraqi monarchy: The Ottoman policy of
encouraging their subjects to populate the region by awarding them civil
service positions or other privileges, has already been mentioned. Suffice it
to say here that the franchise for pumping petroleum from the Baba-Gurgur oil
fields near Kirkuk city itself and selling it for local consumption,
was granted to the Turkman family of Nafitchi-zada. Despite this, the
Ottomans did not expel the Kurds from the city, nor did they deny the ethnic
make-up of the city as being one in which a Kurdish majority co-existed with
Turkmans and other ethnic groups. Therefore, they usually appointed a Kurd or
a Turkman to the sensitive position of Mayor, a position that is normally
awarded to a member of the majority group. Monarchical Iraq
followed the same general policy, but they awarded sensitive positions, such
as that of Governor or General Commanding the Second Army Division stationed
in Kirkuk, to Arabs, and occasionally to Kurds. Of the Kurds who were
appointed Governor, one can mention Saeed Kazaz, Rasheed Najeeb and Mustafa
Karadaghi while citing Marshal Bakir Sedki [the leader of the 1936 coup
d`etat in Iraq] and General Saleh Zaki Tawfiq, as Kurds who commanded the
Second Army Division. Some Turkmans, such as
Majeed Yaqubi, have also been appointed Governor while others, such as
General Khalil Zaki and General Mustafa Raghib, have been appointed
Commanders of the Second Army Division. On the other hand, the post of Mayor
has mostly been awarded to Kurds, and in only a few instances to
Turkmans.(25) In general, however,
most cabinets of monarchical Iraq encouraged Arabs to settle in Kirkuk.
For instance, the cabinet of Yaseen Al-Hashimi in 1935 (during King Ghazi's
rule) even plotted to resettle the Arab Ubeid tribes in the Haweeja
(part of the Kirkuk region), as will be seen later. It is worth noting
that, throughout the monarchical period, two-thirds of the members
representing the Kirkuk Governorate in the House of Representatives
(Parliament) were Kurds and the other one-third were Turkmans and, sometimes,
one Arab. This representation in the Iraqi Parliament reflected, to a great
extent, the ethnic composition of the Governorate before the policy of
expelling Kurds and settling Arabs in their place began in the early sixties. 6. Relations between the Sunni and the Shi’a Turkman
sects: In general, relations
between the two sects remained cool until the late fifties. This may have
been the result of differences in cultural practices and customs as well as
linguistic differences. However, sectarian differences have been the main
reason for their divergence, a factor that has led to a lack of intermarriage
among them. For instance, Shi’a Turkman men, in recent years mainly the
elderly, do not shave or trim their moustaches; also they consider the Imam
Ali ibn Abi-Talib to be a saint, as does the extreme Shi’a group, the
"Al Haq". In fact, even relations between the Shi’a Turkmans and
their religious superiors in Al-Najaf (the saint’s city in southern Iraq)
were lukewarm until the early fifties when clerics from Al-Najaf began to
visit them and to preach to them, particularly during some special Shi’a
religious rites. 7. Political orientation of the Turkmans: The Turkmans have a
number of political organisations. The Sunni Turkmans usually sent their
children to Turkey for their university education, where they were accepted
whatever their marks. These graduates of Turkish universities would return
with ideas of Turkism, and later try actively to propagate these ideas;
indeed, some of these same graduates became, and are now, leaders of some of
the ethnic Turkman political parties. For the most part the Sunni Turkmans
are conservatives who had advocated collaboration with the powers that be
throughout contemporary Iraqi history, whereas a few young Shi’a Turkmans
have mostly inclined to the left; a fact that gave Communist Party organisers
a free hand from the time of the monarchy, particularly in the small towns of
Qarateppa and Dooz- Khurmatu. As a generalisation,
one can say that the Sunni Turkmans are more inclined towards Turkey and the
Ottomans, while the Shi’a Turkmans lean towards Iran, beginning, expressly,
in 1979 when the clergy deposed the Shah and assumed power.(26) The present-day
Turkman parties all possess nationalistic and Turkmanistic ideas; their
leaders now reside in either liberated Iraqi Kurdistan, or outside Iraq,
especially in Turkey where they receive considerable support from the Turkish
authorities. The Shi’a Turkmans still incline towards Iran and have their own
political organisations. 8. Relations between the Kurds and the Turkmans in
the region: The Ottoman policy of
favouring and sponsoring Sunni Turkmans over Shi’a Turkmans and Kurds created
feelings of animosity and bitterness among the Kurds and Shi’a Turkmans.
Despite this, there are no records of bloodshed among them except for the
bloody riots which took place in Kirkuk in 1959 during the first anniversary
celebration of the July 1958 revolution. In a later section, we shall discuss
the reasons for this clash in which both the Iraqi Government and other
groups played an infamous role in fomenting discord between Kurds and
Turkmans and in inciting them to riot. What is unfortunate is
that some of the leaders on both sides were actually provoking the rioters,
mainly because of their political narrow-mindedness. What the Turkman
political leaders should realise now is that it is in the interest of their
own people to strengthen the spirit of racial harmony between them and the
Kurds, inasmuch as both groups live in a region known as Kurdistan both
historically and geographically. Anything else will produce discord and
conflict among them. Bitter experience has shown that misguided leadership
can only be of benefit to third parties who wish to take advantage of both
sides and, in the process, to eliminate them. Unfortunately, the majority of
the Turkman leaders maintain a very strong relationship with the Turkish
authorities who support them by every possible means. Nevertheless, a small
minority of them now realise that the Turkish authorities are using them for
their own ends and, for that reason, are beginning to distance themselves
from Turkey and to accept that they are a part of the people of Iraqi
Kurdistan. They have established their base in Sulaimania. -III- ATTEMPTS TO ARABIZE THE Kirkuk REGION On October 31, 1918,
the British entered the city of Kirkuk following the "Modros
truce". The British army, under General Marshall, had previously
occupied this city on May 17, 1918, and left it on the 27th of the same month
only to reoccupy it at the end of October of the same year following the
signing of the Modros Peace Treaty. The British forces
stayed in Kirkuk under the direct command of political officers and it
seems that the discovery of large oil reserves in Kirkuk led to a
fundamental change in British policy towards the Kurdish question in general
and the Kirkuk region in particular. At first, there was a
tendency among some British officers in the region to favour the creation of
a Kurdish state that would extend northward to Lake Van, or about one hundred
and fifty-five kilometres north of the current borders of Iraq, as proposed
by Captain Noel, a British political officer who had travelled throughout the
Kurdish region. Then the policy changed to one of working actively to annex
the Wilayet of Mosul (currently Iraqi Kurdistan) to the Kingdom of Iraq.(27) Successive Iraqi
governments tried to change the ethnic character of the Kirkuk region
with the help, at first, of the oil company which began operating under a
purely British administration in 1925 by employing large numbers of Arabs,
Assyrians, and Armenians brought in from other provinces.(28) Then the aim of
changing the ethnic character of Kirkuk in particular and the entire
Kurdish region in general, became a permanent policy of all the successive
regimes that have ruled Iraq since the coup of February 8, 1963, and
especially since the second Ba’ath coup of July 1968. In order to
explain the extent of this campaign and its various phases, we have divided
the Arabization of the Kirkuk region into three stages: A. The period of the
monarchy B. The first
republican period (1958 - 1968) C. The second
republican period (1968 - to the present) A.
The period of the Monarchy: The Ottoman Mosul
Wilayet, of which the Kirkuk region is a central part, was annexed to
the Iraqi Kingdom at the end of 1925. King Faisal the First visited Kirkuk,
after visiting Mosul in December 1924, urging the population to demand to
join the new Iraqi state. The visit was used as the occasion to raise the
Iraqi flag on the Government building in the city. The administration of the
province was in the hands of British political officers assisted by local
officials, the majority of whom were Sunni Turkmans. These officials
continued to hold their positions even after the annexation of the province
to the Iraqi Kingdom. Later, however,
successive Governments invariably appointed Arabs to the key positions of
Governor of the province and Commander of the Iraqi army’s Second Division,
stationed in Kirkuk. From the very outset, the Government, in
cooperation with the British oil company operating in Kirkuk, brought
large numbers of workers from other provinces to work in the company and then
to settle in the city. The role of the oil company in changing the ethnic
character of Kirkuk The discovery of vast
quantities of oil in Kirkuk was the reason for its annexation, as part
of the Mosul Wilayet, to the newly-created Iraqi state. That there was oil in
the Baba-Gurgur area near Kirkuk was known from ancient times. Using
primitive methods, the Ottoman army had extracted oil from this area for
local consumption since 1639. The systematic and organised exploitation of
the Kirkuk oil fields didn’t start, however, until March 1925. The
Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC), which was established in 1914 in Istanbul
was granted the concession to exploit the oil fields in the Mosul and Baghdad
Wilayets by the Ottoman state. Before the end of 1925 the company, in which
Britain had a substantial share, began conducting geological surveys and
constructing roads and essential buildings. Initially, the company employed
about fifty British and two thousand five hundred Iraqis and began work in an
area near Dooz-Khurmatu, south of Kirkuk. It inaugurated
the excavations by holding a huge celebration attended by King Faisal on
the First of April 1927. Oil began to flow on October 27, 1927, from the
Baba-Gurgur oil fields near Kirkuk.(29) From 1927 to 1931, the company
focused on drilling for oil and conducting geological surveys together with
building essential facilities such as warehouses, workshops and housing for
its employees, especially the foreigners.(30) The name of the company was
then changed to the Iraqi Petroleum Company (IPC), which was able, around
1931, to exploit most of the land in north-eastern Iraq. The headquarters of
the company were moved permanently from Dooz- Khurmatu to Kirkuk.
The exporting of crude oil began at the end of 1934 and, in 1935, the dual
pipeline was opened to transport crude oil from Kirkuk to the ports of
Haifa and Tripoli on the Mediterranean coast. The annual production for 1935
reached about four million tons, making Iraq the eighth largest oil producing
country in the world, and the level of production rose steadily from then on.
Most of Iraq’s oil was extracted from Kirkuk as it still is today. The
establishment of the petroleum industry in Kirkuk led to a significant
change in the social and ethnic character of the city, for the oil company
employed a large number of people, most of whom were brought from outside the
area. This led, in a relatively short time, to the creation of self-contained
neighbourhoods within the old quarters of the city and new neighbourhoods
made up mostly of Assyrians and Arabs in the area near the oil company’s
facilities. The percentage of Kurdish workers employed by the company was
lower than all the others. As further proof of this, at the beginning of the fifties,
hundreds of housing units were built in an area called "Arrapha"
or new Kirkuk. Most of the occupants of these new housing units
were Assyrians, Armenians, Arabs and Turkmans, causing the Kurds to feel
cheated from the outset because so few of them were employed by the company
compared to their percentage of the total population of the city and
Governorate of Kirkuk. Thus, the exploitation of the oil fields in Kirkuk
and the area around it led to the permanent settling in Kirkuk of a
large number of people from other provinces. Another measure used
by the government to settle Arabs in the Kirkuk province was the
building of the Haweeja irrigation project. The building of the
Haweeja irrigation project to settle Arab tribes In the mid thirties
the Government took another step towards settling Arab tribes on the
Haweeja plains, which lie to the south west of Kirkuk. This
settlement project took the form of "investment units" on the
agricultural lands on the plains after water was brought to them by the
construction of a large canal that carried water from the Lower Zab. This
canal was built mostly by the inmates of the Kirkuk central prison
which is why it took almost ten years to complete. This was planned by Yaseen
Al-Hashimi’s cabinet during king Ghazi’s reign as a way to settle the Arab
tribe of Al-Obeid, which was then leading a nomadic life in the southern
parts of the plains. The lack of water and the problems of cultivating the
arid land made it difficult for anyone to settle there. Kurdish farmers from
the nearby villages used to take their livestock there in the spring, just as
some nomadic Arab tribes, like the Al-Obeid and Al-Juboor would use its
southern parts as grazing land for their livestock during the same season. Since the area relies
entirely on winter rains, the only kind of agriculture that exists there is
the cultivation of cereal crops such as wheat and barley. It was difficult
not only for Kurdish farmers, but even for landowners, to cultivate such arid
land due to the lack of agricultural machinery. They relied on animals for
ploughing and for this reason, most of the land of the Haweeja plains
remained uncultivated. The problem of the
Haweeja plains before their revitalisation was similar to that of the
Qaraj plains situated in the southern part of the Arbeel Governorate,
and the Qarateppa plains, in the southern part of the district of Kifri,
in the Kirkuk Governorate, where members of nomadic Arab tribes roamed
in the spring. Then the Government gave them the opportunity to settle there
and this led to the establishment of groups from the Al-Qurwi and Al-Leheb
tribes on the southern Qarateppa plains. Also, other Arab tribes mixed
with the Bayat tribe, which was settled on the plains between Kifri
and Dooz-Khurmatu extending to the Awa’ Sipi(Aq Su)
river. In the same way, groups from the Tay and Al Juboor tribes settled
south of the Qaraj plains, south of the Makhmour district in
the Arbeel Governorate, between the Upper and Lower Zab
rivers. The existence of some
branches of the Al-Obeid Arab tribe in the southern Haweeja plains and
their continuous clashes with the Al-Azzah Arab tribe, which was settled in
the neighbouring Diyala Governorate, was used as a pretext to settle them
there, as, after the completion of the Haweeja irrigation project, the
Government distributed the land made arable by it, exclusively to members of
the Al-Obeid and Al-Juboor tribes and others. Because these tribes had not
previously engaged in agriculture but had lived a nomadic life following
their livestock and camels in search of grazing land, the Government assigned
a number of advisers to teach them agricultural skills. Instead of
distributing these arable lands to everyone, Arab and Kurd alike, the
Government in brought Arab tribes who knew nothing about agriculture and who
had never engaged in farming before, built modern villages for them and
distributed the land among them! This was the first Arab settlement in the Kirkuk
province, planned and executed by various Iraqi governments during the era of
the monarchy. According to the 1957
census, the population of the Al-Obeid tribe reached eleven thousand ten
years after it was settled in the south western part of the Haweeja
project, in an area of about one thousand square kilometres. The population
of the Al-Juboor tribe, according to the same census, reached twelve thousand
five hundred and ninety five (12,595). This tribe was settled from the start
in the area located between the Lower Zab river and the western part of the
irrigation project, amounting to some nine hundred (900) square kilometres.
As for the Albu-Hamdan tribe, numbering two thousand one hundred and forty
(2,140) according to the 1957 census, they settled in the area between the Lower
Zab river and the road joining Haweeja with Kirkuk and
lived in fourteen villages in an area of about one hundred square kilometres.
Some people from the towns of Tikreet and Al Door settled in the district
centre of Haweeja and in five villages on each side of Hafrul-Qubal
within an area of one hundred square kilometres. The total population of the
Arab tribes who were settled in the district of Haweeja, according to
the 1957 census, was twenty seven thousand seven hundred and five
(27,705).(31) The Government declared this area a sub-district (Nahia) named
Haweeja (Malha) within the jurisdiction of Kirkuk. In 1963, the
Ba’ath regime elevated it to a district by the same name with two
sub-districts in its jurisdiction, firstly Al-Riyadh and later Al-Abassiah. Regrettably, the
members of the Arab tribes who were settled on the Haweeja plains from
the mid-forties onwards participated, with the exception of a few of the
Al-Obeid tribal leaders like Sheik Nazim Al-Assi and his brother Muzhir, in
the armed attacks waged by the army on Kurdish villages in 1963 and
thereafter. They were formed into irregular units under the name of the
‘Knights of Khaled bin Waleed" and used, together with Kurdish
mercenaries known as "Knights of Salahadeen," and alongside army
units, in the attacks on Kurdish villages, on the pretext of there being
Kurdish Peshmargas there or that the villagers were helping the
Peshmargas.(32) B-
The period from 1958 to 1968: In 1958 following the
July 14 revolution and the change in the system of government, the military,
headed by of a group of army officers, assumed real power in Iraq. The
cabinet, headed by Brigadier Abdul-Karim Qassim, who was also Defence
minister, and Colonel Abdul-Salam Arif, deputy prime minister and interior
minister, became the highest authority in Iraq with both executive and
legislative powers. Shortly after the
revolution, Brigadier Nazim Al-Tabaqchali was appointed Commander of the
army’s Second Division which had its headquarters in Kirkuk. All units
in the north of Iraq from Mosul to Sulaimania came under his command and,
although the new regime appointed a number of new Arab governors to
administer the northern Governorates, the real power remained in the hands of
the military in the person of the Commander of the army’s Second Division in Kirkuk. Al-Tabaqchali came
from an Arab family in Baghdad (originally from Syria) known for its
nationalistic views. He was known in particular for his nationalistic-Islamic
views, as was Colonel Arif.(33) His wife was a Turkman from
Tel’Afar. As mentioned before, the Sunni Turkmans living in Kirkuk and
other areas are known, for the most part, for their conservative and
right-wing views; therefore, they were on good terms with the regime during
the monarchy. For this reason, those of them who had government positions under
the Ottoman rule kept these positions during the monarchy. Since the new
Second Division Commander was also known for his conservative political
views, there was an immediate rapprochement between him and prominent Turkman
personalities and the Turkman community in Kirkuk generally. Thus,
Al-Tabaqchali would accept their invitations, attend their dinner parties and
banquets, and meet with them regularly. This meant that the situation in the
city remained unchanged as most Turkman government officials retained their
positions. The only step he took, though, was to ask the interior ministry to
remove the Kurdish Mayor of the city and to replace him with a Turkman mayor,
the lawyer Nuradeen Al-Wa’iz, a leading member of the "Moslem
Brothers" in the city, even though he was of Kurdish descent. In order to give a
clear picture of the thinking and ideas of the new Second Division Commander
regarding the situation in the city and the Kurdish region as a whole, we
include, in an appendix to this study, a number of official memoranda bearing
Brigadier Nazim Al-Tabaqchali’s signature and addressed to the relevant
authorities in the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry which was in charge of
the country during that period.(34) These official
memoranda reveal clearly the Second Division command’s attitude towards the
Turkmans and the Kurds. They also include inaccurate and sometimes false
information supplied to the country’s military and political leadership in
order to distort the reputation of the Kurds and their leadership and their
alleged demand to establish a "Kurdish Republic" which would be a
nucleus for other parts of Kurdistan. The truth is that these ideas did not
exist, except in the imaginations of the Second Division Commander and his
command group - a group of nationalistic Arab officers opposed to all the
aspirations of the Kurdish people. Even the simplest ones, such as using
Kurdish as a medium of instruction in schools, promoting Kurdish culture,
opening a university in Kurdistan, and establishing a special education
department to supervise Kurdish instruction in the region - issues that were
mentioned and discussed in the many memoranda submitted officially during
that period to the prime minister and the ministry of education, and some of
which were later implemented - were regarded by the Second Division Command
as an attempt to "resurrect the Kurdistan region" or to establish
the "Republic of Kurdistan," which would "include most of the
area located east of the Tigris river to the Gulf of Basrah"! Indeed, during his
tenure of office as the Second Division Commander, Al-Tabaqchali took no
measure in Kirkuk or in the entire Kurdish region that would indicate
a change in the country. On the contrary, the security forces in the region
continued to hunt down the same people they had pursued before and on the
same charges. This situation continued until March 1959, when an attempted
coup took place in Mosul led by Colonel Al-Shawaf, the base Commander there,
and supported by a number of army officers in Mosul, Kirkuk, and
Baghdad. The Arab nationalistic and Islamic elements supported the coup
attempt, the failure of which led to the charge being brought against them
and a number of Arab nationalistic officers, in addition to officials of the
government of Syria, (which was then part of the United Arab Republic), of
setting up a broadcasting station in Mosul a few days before the coup
attempt. The announcement of the coup by Al-Shawaf was broadcast by the
Damascus and Cairo radio stations before its broadcast by the local Mosul
radio station. The leaders of the
Turkmans in Kirkuk were apparently aware of the planned coup attempt.
Thus, its failure caused a rift in the close relationship that had always
existed between the influential circles of the Turkman community and the
regime. Following the failure of the coup, Brigadier Nazim Al-Tabaqchali and
his staff officers in the Second Division were dismissed. Later, they were
arrested and a special commission of inquiry was set up to investigate. On
his arrival in Kirkuk the newly-appointed Commander of the army’s
Second Division, Brigadier Dawood Al-Janabi, who was known for his leftist
views, promptly set up a second commission of inquiry headed by Colonel Kamal
Majeed. Its task was to investigate Al-Tabaqchali’s associates and those in
close touch with them, among them a number of prominent Turkmans. The
commission ordered the arrest of a large number of people of various
nationalities -Kurds, Turkmans, Arabs, and others - as it broadened the scope
of its inquiry and began to examine anyone suspected of disloyalty to the new
republican regime. There were, certainly, excesses committed by some
commission members during the investigation of the accused, especially by
Lieutenant Fakhri Karim, the division’s chief of military police and a
communist from Baghdad. A large number of Kurdish landowners from the other
Kurdish Governorates were also arrested on the pretext of their being
supporters of the deposed monarchy and opponents of the new regime. On the recommendation
of the commission of inquiry, the Military Governor General at the Ministry
of Defence issued an order transferring to Baghdad some of those arrested and
sending others, including some Turkman officials, into exile in cities in
southern Iraq. It is true to say that the short period from March to June
1959 was a difficult time for the Turkman leaders because they were subjected
for the first time to persecution by the authorities, including arrest and
exile. During this same
period, the Communist Party supporters took control of the youth
organisations, trade unions, and professional associations. They were also
able to infiltrate the ranks of the armed forces, assisted in their efforts
by Brigadier Dawood Al-Janabi, Commander of the Second Division. These conditions
were not unique to Kirkuk but were prevalent throughout Iraq.(35) It seems that the
increased influence of the Communist Party in the armed forces and its
control of most of the trade unions, youth and professional organisations,
including the armed organisations known as the "Popular
Resistance", in addition to the excesses and violations committed by
some communists in many parts of Iraq at this time, caused Brigadier Qassim
to change his policy of depending on and using the leftists to strike at
groups opposed to him, such as the Arab nationalists, the Ba’athists, and
Islamists. So on June 11th, 1959 he declared an amnesty for most of the
political prisoners and exiles, including the Turkmans, and in the middle of
the same month in his office in the Ministry of Defence, he received the
Turkman leaders whom he had just released and affirmed his support for them.
He also ordered the return to their original posts in Kirkuk of those
government officials who had been transferred. He had already dismissed
Brigadier Dawood Al-Janabi at the beginning of June, 1959, and had
transferred most of his associates to units outside the Second Division and
appointed Colonel Abdul-Razzaq Mahmoud, who was then the Commander of the
third brigade of the same division, as Acting Commander. Colonel Mahmoud was
known to be an Arab nationalist despite his pretence of loyalty to Lt.General
Qassim.(36) The reference to the
changes in the Second Division’s leadership during this time is necessary in
order to explain the situation prevailing in Kirkuk before the first
anniversary of the July 1958 revolution. These rapid changes created a
turbulent atmosphere throughout the area due to the intense conflict between
the Kurds and leftists, aided by the retired division Commander on the one
hand, and the Turkmans and conservative circles in Kirkuk, including
Kurds and others who had the support of the new division leadership and the
security apparatus, as well as of the high-ranking officials in the Ministry
of Defence, on the other. The Turkman leaders just released from goal or
returned from exile, looked with deep hatred upon the communists for causing
their arrest or banishment. For their part, the communists and members and
supporters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, although still in full control
of the trade unions and all youth and professional organisations in Kirkuk,
and in control of the streets too, were unhappy about the new
developments.(37) It was as if the two sides were just waiting for something
to happen so that each could demonstrate the extent of its power and
popularity and the degree of the regime’s support for it. The first anniversary
of the July 1958 revolution provided just such an opportunity to settle the
contest. Due to the lasting consequences of the bloody and regrettable events
that took place in Kirkuk during the celebrations of that anniversary,
we will try to discuss the reasons that led to these events, the
circumstances that affected them and how they erupted, in a special appendix
to this study.(38) Following the return
of relative calm to the city on the evening of July 15, 1959, a number of
military units arrived from Baghdad and, later, took certain measures whose
repercussions for Kirkuk and the whole area are still evident today.
The Ministry of Defence ordered the transfer to southern Iraq of entire units
of the Second Division, including the fourth brigade, most of whose members
were Kurds. From then on there prevailed an air of suppression and terror
against the Kurds. Following the afore-mentioned events and on orders of the
Military Governor General of Iraq, a special commission of inquiry was set up
to investigate. Included in its membership were Arab nationalistic officers
headed by a Turkman officer named Colonel Abdulla Abdul-Rahman.(39) From the
moment the commission arrived in the city, there was collaboration between
some of its members and certain Turkman lawyers and other officials in the
Governorate to indict various individuals, specially leaders of youth and
professional organisations and trade unions. As a result, the commission
ordered the arrest of a large number of people, most of whom were brought
before military tribunals in Baghdad on charges of assault and incitement to
murder. The tribunals passed the death sentence on twenty seven Kurds and one
Turkman from among the leaders of the various organisations. In addition,
heavy sentences were imposed on many others, most of whom were affiliated to
the Communist Party or to the Kurdish Democratic Party. Following the coup of
February 8, 1963, those leaders sentenced to death were publicly executed in
a square in Kirkuk. That we have touched
briefly on these events is because most of those who have written about them
have neglected to discuss, objectively and impartially, the reasons behind
them and the manner in which they occurred. Indeed, their writings and
memoirs were published in Iraq after the Ba’ath party seized power there.
However, there are a number of scholars who have discussed them with complete
impartiality. Notable among them is Hanna Batatu, a Palestinian writer and US
citizen, who visited Iraq during the mid-sixties when he was able to study
many confidential documents and memoranda from the security service and other
sources in Baghdad and Kirkuk.(40) A friend living in the United
States told me that, on meeting Batatu a few year ago, he had asked him
whether, during that visit, he had met any communists or Kurds to ascertain
their views. His answer was in the negative because the Baghdad regime had
not allowed him to do so. The Arab nationalistic
newspapers which Lt.General Qassim permitted to be published during this
period conducted an intense attack on the Iraqi left, thus assisting the mass
media in the Arab countries and Turkey to carry out a deliberate campaign of
distortion and exaggeration. Indeed, Lt.General Qassim’s speech in the Mar
Yousif Church in Baghdad on the evening of July 19, 1959, in which he accused
the left of being behind the matter even before the investigation had begun,
influenced the investigating process and the commission of inquiry charged
with examining the causes leading to them and putting those responsible for
them on trial.(41) Lt.General Qassim later retracted his accusation when he
learnt the truth. This was one of the reasons why the death sentences passed
on the accused were not carried out.(42) This whole episode had
far-reaching and negative consequences whose danger the Kurdish and Turkman
leaders were unaware of till later when the regime began the Arabization of Kirkuk
and the entire region, targeting first the stronger group - the Kurds - and
later the Turkman as well. For two decades, many Turkmans were used as tools
to carry out the Arabization policy before this same policy began to be
implemented against them also at the beginning of the eighties. Another dangerous
repercussion of the Kirkuk events, which nobody has mentioned, was the
formation of secret Turkman terrorist organisations who conspired with some
officials in the security service, like the director, Noori Al-Khayat, to
assassinate well- known Kurds. The first to be killed was a fifty-year-old
named Mohammed Ameen Sharbatchi, who was shot in front of his shop even
though he was not a member of any political party, union or organisation.
These killings led many Kurdish families to leave Kirkuk and to move
to other cities. During the same
period, terrorist organisations were formed in Baghdad and elsewhere mostly
among members of the Ba’ath Party. Their purpose was to threaten families
known for their left-wing views and to compel them to leave some parts of the
city, so as to convert these parts later into "closed
neighbourhoods" where weapons were stockpiled to be used against the
regime of Qassim. This same phenomenon infected Kirkuk also, where
secret Turkman organisations in league with groups in Baghdad and Mosul
opposed to the regime, would intimidate Kurds in the same way so as to create
"closed neighbourhoods" there too. To accomplish their aims, they
resorted to killing, to burning homes, shops and business establishments and
even to spraying the faces of their victims with sulphuric acid. These
systematic attacks forced many Kurds to leave the city for good, or to
abandon their homes in the affected neighbourhoods as they were unable to
sell them no matter how low the price. The number of Kurds
who were victims of assassination and attack in the aftermath of the Kirkuk
events exceeded the number of Turkmans killed during that time. The
cooperation between some people in the security service and the leaders of
those Turkman organisations particularly responsible for the killings and
attacks was evident from the fact that the authorities made no arrests and
the criminals remained " unknown" or " unidentified,"
which encouraged them to commit further crimes. This wave of violence
and terror forced a large number of Kurdish civil service workers to ask to
be transferred to other cities. In addition, the Governorate’s authorities
transferred to cities in southern and central Iraq, Kurds who did not request
a transfer, including elementary and secondary schoolteachers. The security police in
the Governorate increased the pressure not only on Communist Party supporters
and sympathizers, but also on Kurdistan Democratic Party members and
supporters and on other Kurds who were not affiliated to any political party
or were totally disinterested in politics. These assaults continued until the
February 1963 coup. Following that coup, the Kurds, irrespective of political
affiliations or inclinations, were subjected to a further systematic campaign
of arrest and assault leading to the uprooting of many and the arrest of
thousands of others, as we will make clear later. Parallel to this, and
as a result of full-scale cooperation between the security apparatus in Kirkuk
and the secret Turkman organisations during that time, there appeared
youthful Turkman elements who were in contact with the leaders of the coup
and who participated actively in it from the start. In the aftermath of the
1963 coup, the Kurds in Kirkuk were subjected to wholesale abuse at
the hands the participants in the coup and members of the "National
Guard," which was made up of, and controlled, by Turkman youths. The
first act of the "National Guard", in collaboration with the
security apparatus in the city, was to demolish a whole neighbourhood called
"Koma’ri" ( Republican ), which was home to impoverished Kurds.
Taking part in the destruction was all the city’s mechanized force under the
supervision of the "National Guard". The regime, with the
assistance of most Turkmans, intensified its retaliatory acts against the
Kurds inside the city of Kirkuk and in the towns of the Governorate
after the resumption of the fighting in Kurdistan in June 1963. The army, the
"National Guard" and the mercenaries, conducted an aggressive
campaign against all Kurds with the exception of a small minority who were
co-operating with the regime. Measures taken by the
February 1963 coup organisers in the Kirkuk Governorate The measures taken by
the organisers of the February 1963 coup included the following :
The policy of
deportation, the destruction of Kurdish villages in the Governorate, the
demolition of Kurdish neighbourhoods in the city of Kirkuk which
compelled their inhabitants to leave the city for good, and the transferring
of the majority of the Kurdish civil servants and workers to southern and
central Iraq became a permanent policy of successive Iraqi governments from
the beginning of 1963 to 1968. Furthermore, those same governments encouraged
some Kurds to become mercenaries in order to divide the Kurds and to play off
one group against another by forming irregular units from among the
mercenaries and offering them financial inducements. Large sums of money were
offered to those carrying arms for the regime and threats made to demolish
their villages if they refused to do so. C.
The period from 1968 to the present: The Arab Ba’ath
Socialist Party returned to power in a military coup on July 17, 1968. The
leader of the coup tried at first to reassure the public and promised not to
copy the violent behaviour or use the methods practiced following the
February 1963 coup. Their aim was to improve their image both at home and
abroad due to the gross violation of human rights they had committed
following their seizure of power in 1963. However, the Ba’ath
policy of Arabizing Kirkuk and giving the Arabs a numerical majority
did not change at all. On the contrary, that policy took on a more pervasive
character and continued to be carried out according to a systematic and calculated
plan and a fixed state policy. To this end, leading members of the Ba’ath
party were appointed as governors of Kirkuk and granted wide and
extraordinary authority for the purpose of implementing this Arabization
policy which, in the words of one of the former Kirkuk governors,
"has become part of official policy at the highest levels of
government."(43) Shortly after seizing
power, the regime began to take the following measures in order to change the
ethnic character of the city of Kirkuk and the entire Governorate. Measures taken by the regime
in the city of Kirkuk
A. Six hundred housing units built in the area between
the two Kurdish quarters of Azadi and Iskan, near the road between Kirkuk
and Sulaimania and given the Arabic name of "Al-Karamah". An
army camp was built near the newly-constructed quarter to protect its
residents. This was all done in 1970, a short time after the signing of the
March 11, 1970, agreement between the regime and the Kurdish movement. B. Between 1972 and 1973 five hundred
residential units were built near the Al-Karamah quarter and given the
Arabic name of "Al-Muthanna." This quarter is located three
kilometres from the Second Division’s ammunition depot on the Kirkuk -
Yarwali road. C. Between 1981 and 1982 two hundred
residential lots were distributed to the relatives of "Saddam’s
Qadissiyah Martyrs" near the Kirkuk- Sulaimania road and
building grants and interest- free loans made available to them from the
real-estate bank. The great majority of these people were Arabs. D. A neighbourhood was built under the Arabic name of
"Al-Andalus" near the Kurdish neighbourhood of "Rahim Awa’"
close to the Kirkuk-Arbeel road for those Arabs employed at the Coca
Cola factory, located on the same road. The Arabic name
"Al-Andalus" was given to both the new neighbourhood and "Rahim
Awa’" in order to Arabize the old name. E. About two thousand housing units were
built in New-Kirkuk(Arrapha) in 1979 by a state company for
contracts, and four thousand more units were built in the same area by a
foreign construction company. F. A large military airfield was built in
Arrapha neighbourhood, south-west of the Kirkuk-Dubz road,
opposite the street which runs through the headquarters of the Second
Division of the First Corps now stationed in Kirkuk. G. Over one thousand more housing units were built on
both sides of the Kirkuk- Dubz road for the sulphur extraction
company workers and for the oil refinery employees, all of whom are Arabs.
This group of homes is called "Public Work Housing." H. Five hundred more homes were built in the
"Officers’ Quarter" located throughout Kirkuk’s military
fort and military airport. These homes are located alongside the entire
length of the fort up to the railway and the Kirkuk railway station.
Some of these homes were built in front of the main entrances of the military
airport and the headquarters of the Second Division, for the high-ranking
officers. I. Several residential neighbourhoods were
built in the area between the Kirkuk fort and the railway station up
to "Al-Tiseen" quarter and the Kirkuk-Haweeja-Tikreet
road, and also between the Kirkuk-Baghdad road and the television
station up to the Khasa river in the following formation : a. More than eight hundred houses in a
quarter named "Al-Ba’ath". b. Several hundred houses in the area
between the Kirkuk-Tikreet road and the Kirkuk television
station, given the Arabic name of "Al-Wasiti." c. About four hundred and fifty houses in the
"Al-Sekak" quarter. d. More than one hundred houses in the
same area given the Arabic name of "Al-Ishtirakiyah" quarter. e. Several hundred houses on the left
-hand side of the Kirkuk-Baghdad road up to the Khasa river, called
the "Al-Gharnata" quarter. f. About one thousand houses on the other
side of the Khasa river opposite the Kirkuk television station, south
of the city on the Kirkuk-Layla’n road given the Arabic name
"Al-Hajaj" quarter. g. Several hundred houses between Kirkuk’s
abattoir and the district of "Al-Hajaj", under the Arabic name of
"Al-Uroobah". h. Several hundred housing units south of
the new Arab "Qutaibah" quarter for the newly arrived police, under
the name of "Al-Shurtah" (Police). i. Several thousand residential plots
beyond the military checkpoint on the Kirkuk-Layla’n road were
distributed to the first wave of incoming Arabs to be settled in the area and
each family was granted nineteen thousand dinars to build on these plots. In
the second phase, several thousand more residential plots were distributed
extending eighteen kilometres on both sides of the road between Kirkuk
and Layla’n as far as to the Layla’n district itself. j. Four hundred apartments were built
between the Musalla quarter and the old abattoir. Each Arab family was
given ten thousand dinars provided they transferred their census registration
records to Kirkuk. k. Two hundred plots in the Kurdish
neighbourhood of Imam- Qassim were given to a group of Arabs and each
of them received ten thousand dinars as a grant, in addition to a loan from a
real estate bank, in order to build on those plots. l. Over two hundred other houses were
built in the same area which was given the Arabic name of
"Al-Wuhdah" quarter. Over one hundred and fifty others were built
under the Arabic name of Al-Hurryah and over two hundred and twenty more
between the Al-Hurryah quarter and the Kurdish quarter of Shorija were
built and called "Door Al-Amn".(44) During the March 1991
uprising and before the city of Kirkuk was liberated on March 20,
1991, Ali Hassan Al-Majeed, then Iraqi minister of Defence, directed and
supervised the arrest of thousands of Kurds, among them military men who were
in Kirkuk on leave. They were taken to prison in Tikreet and Mosul
where they were deprived of food and water for many days. As a consequence
many of them died and those who survived were not released until later. At the beginning of
March 1991, he personally supervised the destruction of about eighty homes
belonging to Kurds and Turkmans in the Almas quarter near the Gawurb’aghi
quarter. Later, in June of the same year, he also supervised the destruction
of numerous homes in the Kurdish quarter of Shorija. The regime continues
to deport Kurdish and Turkman residents of the city of Kirkuk. It
gives the Kurdish citizen a choice between going to southern Iraq, in which
case he is allowed to take his possessions with him, or going to the
liberated region of Kurdistan, in which case all his possessions, including
real estate, are confiscated. This policy continues to this day and the
Kurdish Organisation for Human Rights in Britain has launched many appeals to
the Secretary General of the UN and members of the Security Council and
others about this matter. Further mention of some of these appeals is made in
the Appendixes to this study. In the latter part of
1996, the new governor of Kirkuk, Ali Hassan Al-Majeed, the first
cousin of Saddam Hussein, tried to force all the Kurds and Turkmans resident
in the region to register themselves as Arabs. Failure to do this meant
banishment to southern Iraq. Thousands of Kurdish
families were prevented from returning to Kirkuk after they were
forced to flee the city because of aerial bombardment and shelling by the
Republican Guard and Special Forces units which retook the city from the
Kurdish Peshmarga at the end of the Gulf war. Even though the agreement
signed by the Kurdish leaders and the Iraqi regime in May 1991 clearly
stipulated that those forced to flee their homes be permitted to return to
their former places of residence, which they had left due to the unusual
circumstances, most Kurds were not allowed to return to their homes in Kirkuk.
On top of that, their homes, businesses and possessions were confiscated.
Most of these Kurds’ businesses and homes in Kirkuk and other Kurdish
cities were looted by the Republican Guard, Special Forces, and the new Arab
settlers in Kirkuk, after their return to the city in May 1991. Today, tens of
thousands of Kurdish families from Kirkuk live in tents and camps in
the liberated area of Kurdistan in extremely harsh conditions which results
in the death of many, especially among the children and the elderly. They
depend for their survival on assistance from relief organisations and
international aid. The Kurdistan regional government has asked the United
Nations agencies operating in liberated Kurdistan to intervene with the Iraqi
government to permit Kirkuk residents to return to their homes under
the supervision of international observers in accordance with the 1991 UN
resolution 688, but the regime totally rejected the idea. Till now the regime
not only continues to refuse to do this, it also insists on expelling
hundreds of families from Kirkuk city and other regions still under its
control. These, briefly, are
some of the arbitrary measures which the regime took to Arabize Kirkuk.
What follows is a discussion of the measures taken by the regime in order to
Arabize the whole Governorate. Measures taken by the regime
to Arabize the Kirkuk
Governorate Some of the measures
taken by the regime to change the ethnic composition of the entire Kirkuk
Governorate were: 1. Changing the name
of Kirkuk Governorate to the Arabic "Al-Ta’meem" (meaning
nationalisation) to mark the nationalisation of the foreign oil companies
operating in Iraq on June 1st, 1972. The change in name was for the purpose
of Arabizing the name of the Governorate since nationalisation applied to the
oil companies operating throughout Iraq, not to Kirkuk alone.(45) 2. Continuing to bring
in thousands of Arab families to be settled in Kirkuk and its
environs. Despite the fact that
a lot of rigging of the figures by the registrars took place in some of the
Kurdish neighbourhoods in Kirkuk in the 1957 census, we regard that
census as a basis for the determining of the ethnic composition of the Kirkuk
Governorate.(46) The following Table
clarifies this further: Table No.6 Kirkuk population according to mother tongue based on the 1957 censuses
A quick comparison of the contents of this table with the other
censuses held in Iraq following the Arabization programme in the Kurdish
region, especially in the Kirkuk Governorate, shows clearly the extent
of the Arabization programme which the regime has implemented. As a result,
the percentage of Arabs in the Kirkuk Governorate has increased from
28.2% of the total population according to the 1957 census to 44.41% according
to the 1977 census. At the same time, the percentage of the Turkman
population has decreased from 21.4% according to the 1957 census to 16.31%
according to the 1977 census.(47) The population of the Kurds decreased
during the same period from 48.3% to 37.53%. The following table makes this
clear:
Ethnic composition of the Kirkuk Governorate: A comparison between the 1957 and 1977 censuses No official statistics
are available to us concerning the ethnic composition in either Kirkuk
city or Governorate after 1977. However, the fact is that the regime
continues to settle Arabs in the city and its environs and to drive out Kurds
and Turkmans en masse, as we will show later. 3. The regime resorted
to bribery and intimidation to buy agricultural land from some Kurdish
landowners. In Daqooq sub-district, for instance, the regime offered, through
its agents such as Ali Daham Al-Obeid, to buy their land for fantastic prices
while threatening others with the destruction of their villages if they
refused to sell. It then took it upon itself to distribute the land to Arab
tribes along with government land and other land that was requisitioned for
distribution according to the Agrarian Reform Law. A number of new villages
were also built for these Arab tribes and police stations and military
observation posts set up to protect them from Kurdish Peshmarga attacks. The
regime also proceeded to arm them while forbidding Kurdish farmers of the
neighbouring villages to own any kind of weapon. 4. All the area around
Kirkuk and the oil fields and oil installations in the Governorate was
declared a military and security zone. It was then planted with land mines to
prevent any possible approach. This measure was preceded by moving the
inhabitants of the villages close the area and setting up hundreds of
military posts and fortifications alongside it and the roads leading to it,
and even along those connecting Kirkuk to the nearby towns. 5. Detaching, from the
Kirkuk Governorate, four out the seven districts that had once
belonged to it and attaching them to the neighbouring Governorates in order
to make the Kurds a minority there. Thus, the two exclusively Kurdish
districts of Chamchamal and Kala’r were attached to the
neighbouring Sulaimania Governorate, while the Kifri district, where
the Kurds constitute a great majority, was attached to the Diyala
Governorate, and the Dooz-Khurmatu district with a Kurdish majority
was attached to the far-away Salahadeen (Tikreet) Governorate. The object of this
reshuffle was not administrative reform. For instance, the Haweeja district,
which is close to the Salahadeen Governorate and has an Arab majority
population, was not attached to that Governorate, whereas the more distant Dooz-Khurmatu
district was, because there is oil in some parts of it. Moreover, the Chamchamal,
Dooz-Khurmatu (formerly Gill) and Kifri districts and Kifri
districts had belonged administratively to the Kirkuk Governorate from
the time of the Ottomans till 1976. The main aim, obviously, was to strip the
Kirkuk Governorate of these Kurdish districts thereby ensuring that
the Kurds were in a minority there. In addition, it destroyed most of the
villages that were, administratively part of the city of Kirkuk, or
settled Arabs in those from which the Kurdish inhabitants had been expelled.
This also applied to the Dubz district, where villages have been Arabized
since 1963. As for the Haweeja district, Arabs have been brought in
and settled there since the mid-forties. Thus, the three districts that are
still, administratively, part of the Kirkuk Governorate have been
largely Arabized while the other four have been stripped from it. 6. For the same
purpose, some Kurdish villages were detached from the Altoon-Kopri
(Perde’) sub-district, which adjoins the Arbeel Governorate, and attached
to the Qush-Tapa sub-district, which belongs to the city of Arbeel. At
the same time, the regime attached to the district of Dubz several
Kurdish villages that belonged to the Kandinawa sub-district in the Arbeel
Governorate after the Kurds were driven from them, following the discovery of
oil. It also tried to attach the Taqtaq sub-district in Koysinjaq
district to the city of Kirkuk, following the discovery of oil there.
This paved the way for the destruction of all the villages of this
sub-district and reduced Taqtaq to no more than a small town with no
villages remaining as part of it. Nine villages in the Pala’ni area,
which belong to the Qarateppa sub-district in Kifri district
were detached and then attached to the Jalawla sub-district in Diyala
Governorate. Their Kurdish inhabitants were moved to Al-Anba’r Governorate
and members of the Al-Qurwi Arab tribe were settled there. 7. The regime not only
brought Arab tribes from southern and central Governorates and settled them
in the Kirkuk Governorate, it distributed agricultural land to them,
granted them numerous privileges and armed them; it also destroyed hundreds
of Kurdish villages and some sub-districts where, for security reasons, it
was not possible to settle Arab tribes. Whole populations of these villages were
placed in detention camps in other sub-districts, districts and Governorates
and forced to live there with no means of livelihood and without even the
minimum resources for survival. They were put in these camps which, in the
majority of cases were given Arabic names such as "Al-Sumood,"
"Al-Quds," and "Al-Qadissiyah," .. etc., and kept under
the surveillance of the security service so as to prevent anyone from
entering or leaving without approval. These camps resemble the concentration
camps set up by the Nazis and Fascists during the Second World War. The following is a
list of the villages and sub-districts that were destroyed in Kirkuk
Governorate from 1963 to the end of 1989. A. The district of Kirkuk Centre: The following
sub-districts belong administratively to the Kirkuk district centre : Altoon-Kopri(Perde’),
Shuwan(Redar), (Qara-Hanjeer), Layla’n(Qara-Hassan), Taza-Khurmatu, and Yaichi. 1. Altoon-Kopri (Perde’) sub-district: The town of Altoon-Kopri(Perde’),
situated on the Lower Zab river on the main road between Kirkuk
and Arbeel, is the seat of this sub-district. According to the 1957
census - the only official census we rely on- the population of the town was
3,855. The majority were Kurds and the minority Turkmans. The total
population of all the villages that belong to this sub-district was around
148,639, all of whom were Kurds. In 1969, 1986, and
1988, all the villages that belonged to this sub-district, including the
villages on both sides of the main Kirkuk-Arbeel road, were
destroyed and their inhabitants moved to detention camps in Arbeel Governorate.
Several large military forts were built between Kirkuk and Altoon-Kopri
and hundreds of homes constructed inside each of them to house their staff.
These military forts include the following : A. The Daraman Fort, near the sizable Daraman
village, which was destroyed in 1987. B. The Saqezli Fort. C. The Alton-Kopri Fort. D. In 1974, using volunteer civilian labour, the regime
built a housing development comprising about one thousand housing units near
the Daraman area to house members of the police force. This camp is
now uninhabited. E. An army camp, a citadel, and one
hundred modern homes near the citadel for members of the Air Force. F. Another army camp and another citadel
were built near the destroyed village of Galwaza. Two settlements were
built, the first consisting of one hundred homes for non-commissioned
officers and the second of fifty homes for officers. G. Kitka
army Fort with forty homes, built in 1976. H. Gurzayi Fort with
forty homes also built in 1976. It should be noted
that these large army camps were built on fertile agricultural land owned by
Kurdish farmers, thus causing the destruction of thirty-one (31) Kurdish
villages where two thousand and ninety-two (2,092)farming families lived,
some of whom were wiped out during the notorious Anfal operations.(48)
Since then, the high-ranking military officers and officials of the
Governorate have had the agricultural land around the army camps cultivated
for their private use. 2 -Shuwan(Redar)
sub-district: This sub-district is
located on the main road between Kirkuk and Koysinjaq. The regime
began the destruction of some of the villages that belong administratively to
this sub-district , such as Qezilqaya and Wali Pasha and others
in 1963. Later, all the villages belonging to this sub-district were
destroyed, including the sub-district seat, Redar (Shuwan). In
all, about seventy (70) villages were destroyed and their two thousand six
hundred and fifty (2,650) members of the farming families living there were
moved during 1987 and 1988 to the detention camps in the Arbeel Governorate.(49) Army camps were built
in the sub-district seat and in the area around it, thus making the entire
area a restricted, military zone with prohibited entry, and cultivation
forbidden except by military personnel or officials of the Governorate. 3- Qara-Hanjeer
sub-district (which was Arabized to "Al-Rabeegh"): The town of Qara-Hanjeer
lies on the main road between Kirkuk and Sulaimania, a few
kilometres from the city of Kirkuk. It was like a resort for Kirkuk
residents due to its many orchards and temperate summer weather. This town
was made the sub-district seat under the Arabic name of
"Al-Rabeegh". Hundreds of small homes were built there to house the
inhabitants of the Kurdish villages which had been destroyed and to
accommodate hundreds of other Kurdish families expelled from the city of Kirkuk.
In addition a large number of Arabs were assigned there to control the
sub-district and the detention camp. The number of villages
destroyed in this sub-district was forty-one (41) with a population of about
two thousand two hundred and thirty(2,230) farming families during 1969,
1977, 1987 and 1988.(50) 4- Layla’n
(Qara-Hassan) sub-district: Layla’n, the seat of this sub-district,
is located twenty kilometres south east of the city of Kirkuk.
According to the 1957 census, it had a population of one thousand three
hundred and one (1,301), approximately half of them Kurds and the others
Shi’a‘
Turkmans. The population of the sub-district’s villages, according to the
same census, was twelve thousand five hundred and nine (12,509), all of whom
were Kurds. Some of the sub-district’s villages, such as Lower Terkashkan and
Tarjeel, became a target of Arabization in 1970 and 1971. In the same year,
the regime built a settlement for the Arab buffalo farmers near Tarjeel,
which they then abandoned in 1983 after it was attacked by the Peshmargas. In
1987, it built homes for about three hundred Arab families in the town of Layla’n
itself. The villages belonging
to this sub-district, a total of forty five (45), some large and some small,
were all destroyed in 1986, 1987, and 1988. The number of farming families
expelled from these Kurdish villages and forced to settle in detention camps
in the Chamchamal district was around two thousand four hundred and
twenty-nine (2,429).(51) Living in the
sub-district seat and the neighbouring Yahyawa village were some Shi’a¢ Turkman families who constituted about half the population. These
families were engaged in farming and were on good terms with the Kurds living
in the town. 5-Taza-Khurmatu(Taza)
sub-district: This is one of the
newly-created sub-districts near the city of Kirkuk with Taza-Khurmatu(Taza)
as its seat located a few kilometres south of the city, on the main Kirkuk-Baghdad
road. Shi’a¢ Turkmans constituted a majority
of its population before it was subjected to Arabization. As usual, large
numbers of Arab tribes were brought in to be settled in the sub-district seat
and in other settlements around it after the regime distributed agricultural
land among them and provided those who did not engage in agriculture with
other means of livelihood. Thus the Turkmans became a minority compared to
the Arabs there and in the two villages of Cherdaghlu and Basheer, which were
part of the sub-district. 6- Yaichi
sub-district: This, too, is a
newly-created sub-district situated near the Kirkuk - Haweeja
road. It used to have as part of it three mainly Turkman villages, Yaichi,
Topzawa, and Terkalan. Then several settlements were built in
the sub-district and named the "Al-Jumhuriah" settlement,
which was made up of over one hundred homes built for Arabs brought from
southern Iraq. A military airfield was built in the area and the indigenous
people were moved out. This brief review
makes clear what happened to all the Kurdish sub-districts and villages and
to some of the Turkman villages of Kirkuk in terms of their total
destruction and the removal of their inhabitants to detention camps. Areas
which the regime was able to provide with security were Arabized. The
majority of these sub-districts and villages were totally destroyed ,
including some sub-district seats, such as Shuwan. The regime implemented
this policy according to a calculated plan under the direct supervision of
the ruling Ba¢ ath party and its military and
other oppressive organisations and with the participation of the previous and
current Arab settlers in the area. Two hundred and eighteen (218) villages
were part of the Kirkuk administrative district centre, with a
combined population of sixty one thousand three hundred and ninety four
(61,394) at the time of their expulsion. Most of them were farmers and
agricultural workers. This figure does not include, of course, those Kurds
forced to move out of the city of Kirkuk since 1959 on various
pretexts. Whole families were expelled simply because one of their members
had been imprisoned for political reasons, or had fled from doing military
service or had deserted from the army, or had avoided serving in the ranks of
the Ba‘
athist "popular army", or because a very distant relative had
joined the Kurdish revolution or had fled abroad, etc. It is worth noting
that the regime forced Kurds who had lived in the city of Kirkuk since
1958 to return to the district and sub-district seats of the Kirkuk
Governorate without allowing them to transfer their registration records of
the 1957 census to the city registry. As has been previously stated, it
transferred the registration of tens of thousands of new Arab settlers in
Kirkuk to the 1957 census register to give the impression that they had been
living there since then (i.e.1957) . In order to carry out this fraud, a
number of specialised Ba’athist officials were transferred to the Kirkuk
Census Office, (currently the Civil Status office of the Kirkuk Governorate)
from other Governorates, while all the Kurdish and Turkman officials from
that office were transferred to other government departments or other
Governorates. B. Dubz district , Arabized
to "Al-Dibiss": As mentioned before,
the inhabitants of all the Kurdish villages belonging to this district,
roughly four thousand two hundred and fifteen (4,215) farming families in
1963, were expelled in the middle of that year and Arab tribes, especially
the Al-Juboor and Al-Delem, were brought in and settled there. The regime also
settled groups from Al-Juboor tribes in other Kurdish villages such as
Jastan, Darband, Sarbashakh, Barkana, Saralu, Kesma, Chart, Tal Halala,
and Garwashan. The village of Sarkaran was made the sub-district
seat and named "Al-Quds", (Jerusalem) and one hundred and fifty
(150) housing units were built for the sub-district officials and members of
the security service and the Ba¢ ath party members. The area was
transformed into a large military base with many camps and settlements to
house the troops and members of the security and intelligence services, and
the sulphur factory and oil refinery workers. Following is a detailed account
of the building programme:
C. Haweeja
district: This is a new district,
created for the purpose of settling members of the two Arab tribes of
Al-Ubeid and Al-Juboor and others on the Haweeja plains. Large sums of
money have been spent since 1963 to build numerous agricultural projects and
large poultry farms in addition to service facilities in this district. Many
Kurdish families had settled in this district in search of a livelihood, but
were expelled at the beginning of 1995. D. Chamchamal district: This is one of the old
districts that had belonged to the Kirkuk Governorate since the
Ottoman rule. It is located between Kirkuk and Sulaimania and
has the two sub-districts of Aghjalar and Sangaw within it.
According to the 1957 census, the district’s population was thirty four
thousand two hundred and ninety nine (34,299), all of whom were Kurds. All
the villages that belong to this district were destroyed. They numbered one
hundred and sixty-four (164), and included one hundred and two (102) schools,
one hundred and fifty-seven (157) mosques, and four small clinics. Nine
thousand eight hundred and sixty six (9,866) farming families were expelled
from these villages, comprising fifty one thousand seven hundred and ninety
seven (51,797) members.(52) Following is a detailed breakdown: 1- Sangaw
sub-district: This sub-district had
seventy (70) villages as a part of it, all of which were destroyed in 1987
and 1988, including the sub-district seat. There were two thousand six
hundred and forty eight (2,648) farming families in these villages. There
were also twenty-eight elementary (28) schools and two small clinics.(53) 2- Aghjalar
sub-district This is an old
sub-district of seventy-five (75) villages with sixty-six (66) schools,
seventy-three (73) mosques, and two small clinics. A number of these villages
were destroyed more than once by the Iraqi army. After being rebuilt, they
were burnt down or destroyed yet again. The six thousand seven hundred and
thirty one (6,731) farming families living there were forced out and put into
detention camps built especially for them near the main road linking Kirkuk
and Sulaimania. Some of these families fell victim to the Anfal
operations,(54) and several of the villages were the target of chemical and
poisonous gas attacks in May 1988, which caused the deaths of hundreds of
children and old people, most especially in the villages of Askar, Gawrad,
and Mutlija.(55) Since the Chamchamal
district falls within the liberated part of Iraqi Kurdistan, the inhabitants
of these destroyed villages have gradually begun to return there to rebuild
their homes and resume farming. E. Dooz-Khurmatu district
Arabized to "Al-Tooz": The seat of this
district used to be in the Gill region in the village of Koshk
during the Ottoman rule and the beginning of monarchic Iraq. Then the
government made the town of Daqooq a district seat and later Dooz-Khurmatu,
which lies on the main Kirkuk-Baghdad road, became district seat.
According to the 1957 census, the population of the district seat was eight
thousand nine hundred and seventy eight (8,978), made up of Kurds and Shi’a¢ Turkmans. The population of the district and its villages and
sub-districts was sixty eight thousand five hundred and fifty two (68,552),
the majority of whom were Kurds, followed by Turkmans and Arabs. The regime began
Arabizing some of the villages of this district in the mid-seventies, then
destroyed the great majority of them because of the difficulty of protecting
the new settlers. From 1986 to 1988, nine other villages belonging to the
same district seat were destroyed, involving a population of one thousand and
fifty eight (1,058) farming families.(56) In 1976, this district
was annexed to the Salahadeen (Tikreet) Governorate, which is at some
distance from it, after detaching the Daqooq sub-district from it and
annexing it to the Kirkuk district. Several Arab settlements were built
there, among them the Yafa settlement near the village of Albusabah to which
about three hundred (300) Arab families were brought in 1977. The Al-Muslawi
settlement, near the town of Dooz-Khurmatu was built to accommodate
five hundred (500) Arab families but it is now uninhabited. This district
included the following sub-districts within its previous administrative
boundaries: Daqooq, Qadir Karam, Nawjol, Sulaiman Beg and A’mirli. 1. Daqooq
(Taooq) sub-district: The old town of Daqooq
lies south of Kirkuk on the main Kirkuk-Dooz Khurmatu-Baghdad
road. According to the 1957 census, in addition to Kurds, a population of two
thousand seven hundred and six (2,760) Shi’a Turkmans live here. The Kurds
live mainly in the villages of this sub-district. Their population, according
to the same census, was ten thousand five hundred and sixty seven (10,567),
while the population of Arabs was some one thousand three hundred and seventy
(1,370) in the village of Shobecha and other neighbouring villages. The Arabizing of the
villages in this area, known for its fertile land, began in the early
seventies with the purchase of agricultural land from Kurdish landowners in
fifteen (15) villages in the area belonging to the Kakayi and Dawooda tribes.
The regime then began distributing this and other state-owned land to the
Bedouins and members of the Arab tribes. It built the following settlements,
which were covered by the Kirkuk Irrigation Project, now known as the
"Saddam Irrigation Project". A. The Mahawish settlement, which houses thirty (30)
farming families from the Al- ‘Alga’wi tribe. They were settled there
in 1979 in thirty housing units. B. The Al-Assriyah settlement, near the
village of Haftaghar, where numerous Arab tribes have been settled in
480 homes since 1976. C. The Hussein Agha settlement,
where about four hundred (400) homes were built in which to settle Arabs. D. Another settlement between the villages of Albu-Saraj
and Haftaghar . E. The Daqooq settlement, near the
main Kirkuk-Baghdad road, with over five hundred (500) homes for
Bedouin Arabs in 1982. F. The Klesa settlement, which is
next to Daqooq, with 25 homes for Bedouin Arabs. G. Two others, near the Al-Assriyah settlement, each
with one hundred homes built in 1980 for Bedouin Arabs. H. All the Kurdish farmers in the village of Leheb
were expelled and Arabs were settled in their place. It should be noted
that numerous police stations, with military observation posts, were built
near these settlements to guard against attacks by the Kurdish Peshmargas.
The Arab tribes were armed and the Kurds stripped of their weapons in a
number of villages that were not targeted for Arabization. In 1973 and 1987
six villages that belonged to this sub-district were destroyed and their
eight hundred and sixty (860) farming families expelled.(57) The members of
the Quaky Kurdish tribe were registered as Arabs in the 1977 census.
They still live in their own villages, which were spared destruction as were
some other Kurdish villages. In the same 1977 census, members of the Brazing
Kurdish tribe living in some areas of the Governorate, specially in Nadir-Karam
and Krepchina were also registered as Arabs. At the end of 1996, Izat
Al-Doori, the Iraqi vice-president, gathered together the notables of the
Kurdish great families in this district, and later in the whole of the
Governorate, and asked them to register themselves as Arabs. This was in
preparation for the Census of 1997 when they registered most of the Kurds as
Arabs. The names of those who refused to do so were noted for expulsion to
other regions. 2. Qadir Karam
sub-district: This very large
sub-district lies in the north east of the district. Before its destruction,
it possessed two hundred and eighty one (281) prosperous villages with one
hundred and sixty (160) schools, one hundred and ninety (190) mosques and
twenty one (21) small clinics. According to the 1957 census, the population
of the sub-district was thirteen thousand four hundred and twenty six
(13,426), all of them Kurds. During 1987 and 1988, eleven thousand six
hundred and ninety four (11,694) farming families with sixty one thousand
three hundred and ninety four (61,394) members were expelled from its
villages and sent to detention camps while others fell victim to the
notorious Anfal operations. The regime had burnt many of the villages
during the years of fighting between it and the Kurds. It destroyed all these
villages later during the two years of the Anfal.(58) 3. Nawjol
sub-district: This is one of the new
sub-districts created after drilling for oil began in the area of Zanboor.
When the regime began destroying the villages of Kurdistan, it also destroyed
the villages belonging to this sub-district, which were thirty-nine (39) in
total, with twenty-eight (28) schools, thirty-two (32) mosques, and two small
clinics. A total of one thousand nine hundred and sixty nine (1,969) farming
families were expelled and sent to detention camps at the district centre
between 1985 and 1988.(59) 4. Sulaiman Beg
and A’mirli sub-districts: The Sulaiman Beg
sub-district lies south of the Dooz-Khurmatu district on the main Kirkuk-Dooz-Hamreen-Baghdad
road. The A’mirli sub-district was created later, and is close to the same
road between Sulaiman Beg and the Hamreen mountains. Members of the
Mongol tribe of Bayat (originally called Piawoot), live in its villages, most
of whom were Arabized through mixing with the incoming Arab tribes
from southern Iraq . The Hamreen mountain range, which forms the
natural border of Kurdistan in the south, runs south of A’mirli
sub-district.(60) F. Kifri district: This is an old
district which was known during the Ottoman rule as "Salahiyah".
It is situated in the south east of the Governorate. According to the 1957
census, its population was sixty four thousand one hundred and thirty five
(64,135) made up mostly of Kurds, followed by Turkmans and Arabs. In 1976, it was
attached to the Diyala Governorate as part of the strategy of stripping
important parts from the Kurdish Kirkuk Governorate and attaching them
to the neighbouring Governorates in order to reduce the number of Kurds
there. The district of Kifri
includes several sub-districts, some of which were attached to the Kala’r
district, which was newly created and attached to the Sulaimania
Governorate. The sub-districts which make up this district are: 1. Sarqala
(Sherwana) sub-district: This sub-district is
located north east of the town of Kifri on the main road between Kifri
and Kala’r, with Sarqala being its seat. The 1957 census showed
the population to be twenty three thousand three hundred and seventy one
(23,.371) all of them Kurds. When the process of destroying it began, there
were twenty-five (25) villages, with seventeen (17) schools, eighteen (18)
mosques and one small clinic in the sub-district seat. A total of nine
hundred and eighty two (982) farming families were expelled in 1987 and 1988
and moved to the Al-Sumood settlement, which was built in the newly-created
district of Kala’r to house all the Kurds who were driven from the
villages.(61) 2. Kokez
sub-district: This is a
newly-created sub-district. It was once a part of Qarateppa which had
numerous villages, including those of the Zanga’ba’d area. All its
twenty-six (26) villages were destroyed in 1976, 1987 and 1988, along with
twenty (20) schools, twenty (20) mosques, and one small clinic located in the
sub-district seat. One thousand seven hundred and twenty-seven (1,726) farming
families were expelled and sent to a detention camp called
"Al-Sumood," an Arabic name, in new Kala’r.(62) Members
of the Al-Qurwi Arab tribe were settled in a number of the villages
after the Kurdish farmers were expelled from them, as in the case of the
following villages: Qala, Benabagh, Seelawni, Sheik Baba, Darwesh
Mohammed, Abbas Mahmoud, Safar, Awrahman-Kam, and Rashid Bejan. The
inhabitants of all these villages are from the Kurdish Zand tribe, and
all were moved to the Al-Anba’r Governorate. Oil was discovered in the
village of Chalaw Khalid. It is known as the Gumar Oil Field. 3. Jabara
sub-district: This is another
newly-created sub-district, lying south of Kifri, near the railway
connecting Aski-Kifri with Jalawla and Baghdad. The inhabitants
of some of the villages here were forced to abandon them in order to settle
Arabs in their place. The remaining villages were destroyed, with the
exception of Galabad, Ayn Shukr and Sari-Koy, which are
inhabited by members of the Kurdish Gej tribe, who were compelled to
register themselves as Arabs belonging to the "Al-Qaisi" tribe!
Some of the recently settled Arabs would occasionally rent out the
agricultural lands distributed to them to their former Kurdish owners, who
then worked on the land as labourers for their new masters! This phenomenon
was common in many districts and sub-districts where villages were destroyed
and their inhabitants expelled in order to settle Arab tribes there, most of
whom had never before worked in agriculture as they were Bedouins. The
destruction in this sub-district included thirty Kurdish villages, with
twenty-three schools, twenty-one mosques and four small clinics. One thousand
six hundred and twenty-seven (1,627) farming families were expelled in 1987
and 1988 and forced to live in the Al-Sumood detention camp in New Kala’r
and in the Qarateppa camp.(63) 4. Qarateppa
sub-district: This is one of the old
sub-districts which lies in the south of Kifri district. Members of the
Al-Juboor, Al-Leheb and Bani-Zaid Arab tribes live in the southern and
western villages, while Kurdish farmers live in those of the north and east.
In 1988, all the villages of this sub-district, including Gakhur,
Qaraytagh, Gej, Ayn-Faris, and others were destroyed. Turkmans and Kurds
lived together without problem in the sub-district seat and its suburbs.
According to the 1957 census, the population was twenty seven thousand nine
hundred and forty two (27,942). They all, Kurds, Turkmans, and Arabs lived
peacefully together until the regime began to Arabize the sub-district
according to their, by now, well-established methods, causing racial and
ethnic hatred among them all. G. Kala’r
district: This district was
created after attaching the Kifri district to the Diyala Governorate
in 1976. All the villages were then destroyed in 1987 and 1988. The number
destroyed in this district’s seat was sixteen (16),with their sixteen (16)
schools, sixteen (16) mosques, and one small clinic. One thousand one hundred
and seventy-four (1,174) farming families were expelled and sent to the
Al-Sumood detention camp. The following sub-districts belong to this
district. 1. Pebaz(
Bawa-noor) sub-district: This is one of the old
sub-districts which was part of the Kifri district but which was then
attached to the newly-created Kala’r district. The sub-district seat
is the town of Pebaz, on the Sirwan river on the main road
between Darbandi-Khan and Kala’r. According to the 1957
census, the population was six thousand eight hundred and eighty six (6,886),
all of whom were Kurds. All the fifty-two villages, which had twenty-nine
(29) schools, twenty-three (23) mosques, and one small clinic in the
sub-district seat were destroyed. One thousand and forty five (1,045)
families were expelled and forced into the Al-Sumood detention camp in the
district seat.(64) 2. Teelako
sub-district: This is a
newly-created sub-district. All the one hundred and thirteen (113) villages
that belonged to it were destroyed, including forty-seven (47) schools,
forty-two (42) mosques and one small clinic. In 1987 and 1988 one thousand
six hundred and fifty nine farming (1,659) families were expelled and moved
to the Al-Sumood detention camp.(65) Most of Kala’r
district’s sub-districts and large parts of the Kifri district now
fall within liberated Kurdistan. This is why the Kurdish farmers have begun
gradually to return to their ruined villages to rebuild them and to resume
farming despite being targets for the Iraqi artillery units stationed in the
area. -IV- The RESULT of THE
arabization and destruction of the Kirkuk REGION It can be seen from
this quick review of the forced relocation, destruction, and Arabization
directed at the villages of the Kirkuk Governorate’s districts and
sub-districts, including some district and sub-district seats, that the
number destroyed, especially during 1987 and 1988, amounted to seven hundred
and seventy nine (779). Some district and sub-district seats were converted
into relocation centres or detention camps and farmers who were expelled from
their villages were forced to live there with no work or means of livelihood
except a residential plot of land and a small sum of money to build a house.
In most cases, their cattle and pack-animals were looted by those responsible
for the relocation operations, i.e. senior military officers, Ba‘ ath party officials, security
service officials and high-ranking officials of the Governorate, and some
Kurdish mercenary chiefs. The following table shows the destruction that took
place in the districts and villages of the Kirkuk Region:
Given that the total
number of villages destroyed in Kurdistan by the end of 1989 was three thousand eight hundred and
thirty nine (3,839), including one thousand nine hundred and fifty seven
(1957) schools, two thousand four hundred and fifty seven (2,457) mosques and
two hundred and seventy one (271) small clinics, and that the total number of
families expelled from their villages and towns was two hundred and nineteen
thousand eight hundred and twenty eight (219,828), mostly farming families,
it becomes clear that the number destroyed in the Kirkuk Governorate
amounts to one-fourth of the total number of villages destroyed in Kurdistan.
A map of the villages and towns of Kurdistan that were destroyed or Arabized,
which is appended to this study, shows the degree of destruction that the
Kurdish region has suffered during the last quarter of this century,
especially during 1987 and 1988, the two years during which the Anfal
operations were carried out. The various Iraqi
regimes have made persistent efforts to Arabize the Kirkuk region because of
its oil reserves and its vast, fertile plains. The practices followed by
these regimes are no different from those pursued by other racist regimes in
many parts of the world. The fact is that the current Iraqi regime resorted
to the destruction of the majority of Kurdish villages and small towns in the
Kirkuk Governorate, and the homes of farmers and other citizens, the
places of worship, schools, and the few dispensaries and small clinics that
were there, as well as burning farms and orchards and dynamiting wells, in
order to wipe out any trace of them and to deny their existence were there
ever to be an international inquiry into their fate. For the same purpose
even the cemeteries were obliterated. It began a process to reorganize the
Governorate for the purpose of making the Kurds a minority in it. So, in
1976, the regime attached the Chamchamal and Kala’r districts
to the Sulaimania Governorate and attached the Kifri district to the Diyala
Governorate. It the attached the Dooz-Khurmatu district to the
newly-created and far-off Tikreet Governorate. Thus, no districts remained as
part of the Kirkuk Governorate, (whose name was changed to the Arabic
"Al-Ta’meem"), except for Haweeja, which had been Arabized
since the mid-forties, and Dubz(Al-Dibiss), which had been Arabized
since 1963. As for the city of Kirkuk itself, the military and
security machine of Qassim’s regime began its Arabization at the end of 1959.
Successive regimes continued to force thousands of Kurdish families to leave
the city and large areas of the Governorate in order to bring in Arab tribes
and to settle them there, providing them with work and housing. The process
continues to this day as the city of Kirkuk and wide areas of the
Governorate remain under he control of the Iraqi regime. The regime has
undertaken a huge project to irrigate the vast agricultural lands on the
plains of Dubz, Daqooq and Dooz-Khurmatu south of the
main Kirkuk-Baghdad road to the Hamreen mountains, by bringing
water from the Lower Zab river. It irrigates tens of thousands of
Donem (a Donem is approximately two thousand five hundred square metres) and
was originally named "The Kirkuk Irrigation Project". Later,
it was re-named "The Saddam Irrigation Project". No one benefits
from this huge undertaking except the Arab farmers who were recently settled
there. This project is separate from the Haweeja irrigation project. The Arabization of the
Kirkuk Governorate by the Iraqi regime was carried out in a two-fold
process, each stage complementing the other. In the first phase of
this process, the Kurds were forced to move out of the city of Kirkuk
and the rest of the Governorate and to go to other Governorates, either
through administrative transfer of those who were government civil servants,
and workers or through the coercion of others. We must keep in mind that the
Kurd who leaves Kirkuk voluntarily or involuntarily, is not allowed to
return even though he is registered in the Governorate’s "Civil Status"
census registry. This is precisely what happened to those civil servants and
workers who were transferred and wanted to come back to Kirkuk and
live there after they were pensioned off or their services were terminated.
Added to them were a large number of people expelled from their villages and
towns between 1962 and 1990 along with thousands of others who were forced to
flee the city because of bombing by units of the Republican Guard when it
recaptured the city following the collapse of the uprising in April 1991. As for the second
phase, it was accomplished by bringing tens of thousands of Arab families
from central and southern Iraq and settling them in the city of Kirkuk
and nearby areas. They were provided with housing and were employed there in
various installations or in the repressive government machine, such as the
police department, the military, intelligence, the security service, the Ba‘ ath Party organisation and the
"Popular Army", which, together with the army, guard the city
outskirts from their military observation posts and defensive positions that
surround the city on all sides. The regime called them "incoming
Arabs". Local people called them by other names such as "the
ten-thousand-dinar people", or "the twenty-thousand-dinar
people" depending on the size of government grants they had received
in addition to other privileges. The regime was unable
to settle Arabs in the northern and eastern areas of the Kirkuk
Governorate because of the difficulty of protecting them there, so it destroyed
more than seven hundred villages in those areas. The destruction continued in
large Kurdish neighbourhoods, or parts of neighbourhoods, in the city of Kirkuk.
For instance, hundreds of homes in the Shorija, Almas, Blagh, Piryadi,
Mussalla, and Bar-Takia neighbourhoods were destroyed on the
pretext of building wide streets through them. The owners of those demolished
homes were first forbidden to buy other houses or residential plots in the
city of Kirkuk and then forbidden to live in the city altogether. Any solution to the
Kurdish problem in Iraq will remain incomplete and liable to explode at any
time if it does not include a clear mandate for the return of all Kurds and
Turkmans expelled from the city of Kirkuk and all the villages,
sub-districts, and districts of the Kirkuk Governorate to their
original places. Moreover, all the Arabs who have been settled in the city of
Kirkuk and all parts of the Governorate since the beginning of 1963
must be returned from whence they came. What happened in Kirkuk during
the March 1991 uprising which enveloped all of Kurdistan and large areas of
Iraq, in that the majority of the "in-coming Arabs," or
"settlers," fled the city, is a clear indication that their
staying there is contingent upon the survival of the dictatorial regime.
These "incomers" were able to return to Kirkuk only
with the protection of the Republican Guard forces and the armed Iranian Mujahidin-Khalq
mercenary group, which regained control of the city and its environs
following random missile and artillery attacks. Additionally, the
administrative boundaries of the Governorate must be restored to their
pre-1976 status by restoring to the Governorate all the districts and
sub-districts that were stripped from it. It goes without saying that the
Kurdish and Turkman villages and towns that were destroyed must be rebuilt
and their residents compensated for all the losses they suffered as a result
of their farms and orchards being burned down and their loved ones being
killed or made homeless. The Kirkuk
region, which was and is an integral part of Kurdistan, and the city of Kirkuk
which has been its important centre since the Ottoman rule, must have its
natural prominence restored. All the effects of destruction must be removed
from it and the effects of the racist Arabization operations ended. With regard to the
Turkmans, the hated Arabization policy that was practiced against them must
stop, too. The Kurdish authority in the liberated areas of Kurdistan must
recognize the national and cultural rights of the Turkmans, and make them
permanent by writing them into law and by devising institutions to ensure the
practice of them in a democratic fashion. In return, the Turkman political
party leaders must not rely on some regional governments, especially Turkey,
and turn them against the Kurds by accusing them of trying to establish a
"Kurdish state" with the backing of the West. As for the claim by
some of them that the Kurds "don’t have a good feeling about the
Turkmans", it must be said that, not only is this claim without any
foundation, but that it also does not contribute to a climate conducive to
the recognition of their rights.(66) Kurds, Turkmans, and Assyrians, must all
learn a lesson from the painful events they have suffered since the end of
the fifties. Those tragic events have proved that the chauvinistic Iraqi
regime’s aim is, ultimately, to remove them all from the region. To this end,
it began by expelling the Kurds from the Kirkuk region, using certain
elements of the Turkman nationalists against them. When the regime imagined
it had rid itself of the Kurds, it turned against the Turkmans and made them
the new victims of its racist policies. The policy of
oppression and discrimination extended even to the long-time Arab inhabitants
of the region, that is, those who had been living there before the migration
of the "Arab new-comers". When these newcomers had seized
control of power in the army, administration, Security and Intelligence
Services and the Ba’ath Party, as well as controlling most agricultural land
and economic establishments, professional and trade union organisations and
institutions, they began to treat the indigenous population - Kurds,
Turkmans, Assyrians and long-established Arabs - with contempt. A quick look
at all those establishments and institutions reveals clearly that a group of
people with no ties whatsoever to the area has taken it over completely and
become absolute rulers, while the legitimate inhabitants have become as
foreigners and subject to oppression and disdain. For decades, the Kurds
have been faced with the charge of "separatism" because they demand
their national rights as Kurds. They don’t want their homeland, Kurdistan,
given to people who have no historic ties with it, as they have seen happen
elsewhere. On the other hand, if the situation remains as it is now after
Saddam Hussein’s regime ends, the region would be in danger of erupting at
any time. The events taking
place in the world, and in the Middle East in particular, have shown that the
practice of two or more peoples co-existing will end in failure unless it is
based on the co-operation and mutual understanding of all parties. A union
that is based on forced assimilation and the control of the minority by the
majority, as practiced by the Iraqi regime, is doomed to failure. The
repressive measures practiced by successive Iraqi regimes, especially since
the beginning of the sixties, are illegal and in violation of the most basic
international laws and principles. They are based on coercion and subjugation
and stem from racial hatred. It is incumbent upon
all Iraqis concerned with preserving the Iraqi entity, to condemn the policy
of Arabization carried out in the Kirkuk region since 1963 and to
demand a return to the status quo. The lack of a clear
condemnation of this racist policy puts the question of trust between Arab
and Kurd under a severe strain. Failure to find a solution to this problem in
the manner suggested would lead to the total destruction of that trust and
threaten the survival of the Iraqi entity. REFERENCES
and FOOTNOTes:
APPENDIXES 1. The 16th Special Schedule for the classification of
population according to gender and mother tongue for the Kirkuk
Province, in the Official General Census for 1957 in Iraq. 2. The texts of some of the secret correspondence from
the Second Division Command (of the Iraqi army) in Kirkuk at the end
of 1958 and the beginning of 1959. 3. Concerning the events in Kirkuk in 1959. 4. Maps: A. The map of Iraq before the changing of its
administrative boundaries by the regime. B. The map of the Kirkuk Governorate after
truncating its administrative boundaries in 1976. C. The third map shows the areas destroyed or
Arabized in Iraqi Kurdistan by the Iraqi regime. 5. An Appeal from the
Kurdish Organisation for Human Rights in the UK. appendix -I- The 16th Special Schedule for the classification of population
according to gender and mother tongue for the Kirkuk Province, in the
Official General Census for 1957 in Iraq. Appendix -II- The following is the exact text of the secret correspondence from the
Second Division Command (of the Iraqi army) in Kirkuk addressed to the
Ministry of Defence, Baghdad, at the end of 1958 and the beginning of 1959. The First Document The Second Division
Command Intelligence No. H. SH. 3. 914 Date: 9/9/1958 Highly confidential
and personal To:
The Directorate of Military Intelligence at the Ministry of Defence. Subject:
The Memorandum from Kurdish teachers to the Ministry of Education concerning
raising the standard of education, particularly in Kurdistan. Enclosed is a
copy of the above memorandum for your perusal. On page 15, under the
title: B - Implementation, Article 1, the following is stated: "The
designation of the Kurdish educational area so as to include the provinces of
Sulaimania, Arbeel, Kirkuk, Khanaqeen and the Kurdish districts
of Mosul". We would like to draw your attention to the dangers of the
above designation and we offer the following observations: 1. To agree to a boundary for the Kurdistan educational
area means, in effect, recognizing the aim of the Kurdish teachers, that is,
the declaration of Kurdistan as a political entity. 2. The inclusion of the Kirkuk province (which
is not Kurdish according to interpretation of the memorandum, as there is a
majority of Arabs, Turks and Christians) in the Kurdish Educational area,
reveals the desire to take over the oil, which is the national wealth for the
Iraqi Republic which liberated this vital source for the life and the future
of Iraq. Also, the claim in the memorandum to the Kurdishness of Kirkuk
means the assimilation of other nationalities in the province and this is
contrary to the spirit of the Iraqi Republic's constitution. 3. It is not in the public interest to establish the
Kurdistan Educational Directorate and it is not appropriate that its
headquarters be in the city of Kirkuk. 4. The post of Director of Education in Kirkuk
must always be assigned to an Arab, on condition that he be neutral and will
work for the public interest and that he serve education without bias towards
any nationality or ethnic group. 5. As to the remainder of the memorandum, we leave it
to the Ministry of Education, because it is imposing conditions, not
suggesting reforms. I hope the relevant
authorities are aware of the dangers posed by the telegraphed memorandum in
the name of reform. We do not deny our Kurdish brothers their right to make
demands so long as they are in the public interest, which is the guiding
principle of all those faithful to this country. Signed, Lt. General Nazim
Al-Tabaqchali Commander of the Second
Division The Second Document The Second Division
Command Intelligence No. H/ SH/ 3/17 Date: 6/1/1959 Confidential and
personal To: His Excellency the
Military Governor General Subject:
The Teachers Union in Kirkuk raise the issue of making Kirkuk the
centre for the Kurdistan Education Directorate. I held a meeting with
members of the Teachers Union Committee in Kirkuk. (all of whom were
Turkmans who won in the Teachers Union elections within the "Nationalist
List" which comprised the Arab nationalists, Ba'athists and Turkmans; Author). They reported that the Kurdish
students in the city schools have begun to organise a petition to send to the
Ministry of Education calling for the establishment of the Kurdistan
Education Directorate, with headquarters in Kirkuk. After questioning
some of those students (they belong to the Musalla secondary school), they
reported that the request originated from persons in Baghdad (whose names
they did not disclose) and that they were carrying out their wishes. The members of the union
made it clear that this request worries them for several reasons, the most
important of which is that the Kirkuk province has a Turkman majority
with Arab, Christian, Assyrian and Armenian minorities. The establishment of,
or the attempt to establish the Kurdistan Education Directorate in the centre
of the Kirkuk province, will create uneasiness as well as increasing
concern in the position of the nationalities here toward the project. It will
stir up a spirit of competitiveness and animosity among the nationalities
because they will be subject to the authority of the proposed new
organisation, whose purpose is to impose education in Kurdish. This will lead
to measures being taken concerning the type of education which should prevail
in the area. They further reported that they were doing this in the public
interest, for the unity of education and for the future of the country
threatened by the existence of a Directorate whose principles do not apply to
a province with a non-Kurdish majority. They requested a clarification of the
suggestion circulated by the Kurdish side to site the headquarters of the
Kurdistan Education Directorate in Kirkuk. I promised them that I
shall refer the matter to your Excellency in order to avoid the possible consequences
of deciding on such a project, such as confusion and complex setbacks. I urge
you to put aside the project and to appoint a neutral Arab Director to be in
charge of the Kirkuk Education Directorate, in order to bring together
all the nationalities of the province and the city, so that they may quietly
attend to their cultural and political future, as they do at present.
Teaching in Arabic is the acceptable solution in the Kirkuk province. Signed Lt. General Nazim
Al-Tabaqchali Commander of the Second
Division Copy to: The Military
Intelligence Directorate (The Memorandum referred
to in the two letters from the Second Division Command was presented by the
Kurdish and Arab teachers’ delegations from the Provinces of Arbeel, Sulaimania,
Mosul, and Diyala -from the Unified Professional List which
included democrats, left-wing Arabs and Kurds- to the first conference of the
Teachers’ Union, which was held at the beginning of 1959 in Baghdad. This
same memorandum was presented previously to officials of the Ministry of
Education. It contained the demand for the inclusion of the Kirkuk
province under the supervision of the Iraqi-Kurdistan Education Directorate
in view of the fact that the majority of the province’s population, according
to the Official Census of 1957, is Kurdish. They also mentioned in the
memorandum that the Turkmans, as well as others, have the right to open
special schools within the province just as the Kurds do, contrary to the
claims of the Turkman teachers’ memorandum to the Second Division Command.
This actually happened subsequently as many schools were opened where
teaching was in Kurdish or Turkmani, in addition to Arabic". the Author) The Third Document Second
Division Command Intelligence No. 1/5/142 Date: 1/1/1959 To :His Excellency the
Army Chief of Staff Subject:
The political situation in the Second Division's area of responsibility. 1 - Regarding the
declaration of the formation of the Front for the Union of Kurdistan parties:
The Democratic Party of Al -Party, the Communist Party and National Union
Front. (Sic. The Second Division’s political information about the
then-existing political parties seems rather superficial. It names the
Kurdistan Democratic Party, KDP, as "the Democratic Party of Al Party
and considers the National Union Front as a political party, while the latter
was, in fact, a grouping of the political parties active on the Iraqi
political scene at that time. The Author). These groups have been
working actively, helped by their supporters and representatives who were
sent to the districts and villages, in order to restore the Iraqi-Kurdistan
region within the Iraqi Republic. Certain groups in Baghdad joined in urging
this front to abide by the charter they established and in which they called
for the publications of these secret parties in their periodic meetings. They
plan to achieve their aim by taking advantage of Article Four of the Iraqi
Republic's Provisional Constitution which specified that Arabs and Kurds are
partners in this country. Their intentions are as follows: 1. To work actively to persuade the Government to
recognize their national demands within the Kurdistan region which they have
mapped out within the Republic. This comprises most of the territories
located east of the Tigris to the Gulf of Basrah, although they agree to
remain within the Iraqi entity. 2. To declare the Iraqi Kurdistan region as such,
according to the text of the Constitution so that this region, as such,
becomes a basis to include Kurds from Turkey and Iran within the map they
have drawn up. 3. Both groups, extremists and moderates, believe their
plan for their Republic and its future will come to fruition sooner or later
as follows : A. The official recognition by the Iraqi Republic of
the said region to be within the Iraqi unity as a first step. B. The establishment of the Kurdistan Education
Directorate, with headquarters in the city of Kirkuk provided that
education in this area be purely Kurdish and that a university be founded in
Kurdistan to raise the level of Kurdish culture. C. The recognition of the Kurdistan Student Union while
co-operating with the General Student Union of the Iraqi Republic. D. The formation of the Kurdistan Teachers' Union
although an elected Teachers' Union already exists in each province; and in
the same manner a Lawyers' Union and a Doctors' Union of Kurdistan. E. To work towards the industrialisation of Kurdistan
and the raising of cultural and social standards within region. F. The formation of Kurdistan Trade Unions in all their
variety, so long as they cooperate with the trade unions of the Iraqi
Republic; and so long as they leave the issues of defence, finance and
foreign representation to the jurisdiction of the Republic's Government in
Baghdad. These are the basic
principles and plans adopted by the Kurdish Intelligentsia, and they are
propagating it everywhere. The Kurdish officers are assisting by supporting
it. The United Front for the Kurdistan Parties, are in agreement concerning
the renaissance of Kurdistan, although they might differ as to the methods.
Therefore, all these groups in the region are working according to directions
from Baghdad, where the representatives of this front and the officers rally
around their favourite personality of the moment, that is Mulla Mustafa
Barzani, together with the Kurdistan intellectuals close to him. Instructions
are issued overtly and covertly for the implementation of their political
plans.(1) (Nos 3 and 4 are omitted
as they do not relate to Kirkuk). Signed, Lt. General Nazim
Al-Tabaqchali Commander of the Second
Division Enclosure: One List Copy to : The Military
Intelligence Directorate. 1.
This front was never in existence. There was a committee for national
cooperation between the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Communist Party
during the period prior to the July 1958 revolution. It continued for a short
period afterward due to the refusal of the two Arab nationalist parties : Istiqlal
and Ba'ath - to allow the entry of the KDP as a member of the National United
Front which included all the Iraqi parties opposed to the monarchy", The Author APPENDIX -III- Concerning the Kirkuk
events of July 1959: I. THE MARCH: As the first anniversary
of the 1959 revolution approached, an executive committee was formed in the Kirkuk
Governorate (as in other Governorates) to supervise the organising of the
celebrations. It was composed of representatives from the military command
and all official and popular establishments, headed by the Deputy Governor. A
decision was taken to organise a public procession through the principal
streets of the city (Hanna Batatu, op.cit. p.915), on the afternoon of July
14, 1959, in which everyone would participate. On the appointed afternoon,
the march proceeded in the direction specified by the organizing committee.
Most of the participants were Kurds, including Communists and supporters of
the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). Most of them were members of the
professional organizations and trade unions. As the head of the march reached
the entrance to Atlas (Al-Jumhuriah) Street, the location of shops and cafes
belonging to the Turkmans, the tail end was just leaving its starting point
which was a considerable distance from Atlas Street. II. EXTREMISTS’
PROVOCATION: According to an official
report from the Police Directorate of the Governorate, (Hanna Batatu, op.
cit.), a large number of Turkmans in military vehicles confronted the head of
the march at the beginning of Atlas Street. Police intervened and prevented a
serious incident by separating the two sides. The march continued along its
agreed route. Dr. Hanna Batatu questions the significance of the presence of
Turkmans in military vehicles in some of the streets of the city on that
particular day, (Hanna Batatu, ibid., p 95). When the march reached the July
14 cafe (a gathering place for extremist Turkman youths), located almost at
the end of Atlas Street, several shots were suddenly fired from the direction
of the cafe at the crowd marching in front of it, thus causing confusion and
panic among them, and fighting soon broke out between some of the marchers
and a crowd of Turkmans standing in front of the cafe. Sticks and stones were
used; then shots were fired by some of the soldiers and members of the
"Muqawama Al Shabiyah" (Popular Resistance) who had accompanied the
march from the outset. III. WHO WAS
RESPONSIBLE FOR THE VIOLENCE The official report from
the Governorate’s Police Directorate put the number of Turkmans killed at 20
and injured at 130. An estimated 70 shops and commercial establishments were
looted ,(Hanna Batatu, ibid., p. 915.). In contrast, another
report (No.6694, dated July 20, 1959) from the Kirkuk Amn (Security)
Directorate to the Security Directorate General, estimated the casualties as
32 killed and 130 injured (Hanna Batatu, p.919 ibid.). Some Arab and Turkish
media put the number killed in the hundreds and the injured in thousands. It appears that undisciplined
and provocateur elements contributed to the spread of the agitation,
especially after rumors circulated in the Kurdish sections of the city that
the Turkmans had opened fire on the marchers and killed a number of them.
This news quickly spread and some people raided the Imam Qassim police
station, located in the Kurdish section, and captured the weapons inside,
(Hanna Batatu, p. 917 ibid.). It is worth noting that many of those
committing murder, dragging corpses into the streets and doing the looting,
were connected to the Ba'athist organised Party which served, and is still
serving, the Iraqi regime. IV. OFFICIAL
COMPLICITY: It must be mentioned, in
this connection, that the high-ranking officials of the Intelligence and
Security machinery in the Second Division's Command and the Governorate
played different roles during the events, each according to their own
political thinking. While the Director of Police, an Arab who had no specific
political leanings, was concerned for the people's lives and properties and
did his utmost to control the widespread chaos in the city, the (Amn)
Security Service Director, who was an Arab nationalist, deliberately fanned
the flames of the agitation. The Kurdish officers played a prominent role in
controlling the worsening security conditions and in preventing law-breaking
and disobedience. They also prevented Kurdish peasants from the villages near
Kirkuk from entering the city in the early morning of July 15, 1959,
an act which prevented extremely serious consequences. If those responsible for
professional and popular organisations in the city can be accused of not
controlling their members and failing to prevent attacks on lives and
property then equally, the Turkman leaders should be held responsible for
encouraging groups of the more extreme elements of their youth to parade
through the streets of the city, carrying provocative banners, on the night
of July 13 and in the morning of July 14th. Probably the Turkman leaders did
not expect such a violent reaction from the other side or they might not have
behaved in this way. It seems that, as a result of expressions of approval
and support which they had constantly heard from the officials of the
Governorate and the leadership of the Second Division of the army during
meetings in the days prior to the sad events, that they were confident that
the authorities would side with them should any dispute arise. It was
noticeable that during the military ceremonies led by the Commander of the
Second Division on the morning of July 14, 1959, several Turkman and Kurdish
notables who had recently been released from prison, stood side by side with
the Commander and other officials and guests on the reviewing platform.
Moreover, the Deputy Division Commander, the Deputy Governor and the heads of
Security Departments were Arab nationalists known to be antagonistic towards
the Communist Party and the Kurdistan Democratic Party and their control of
the city streets. V. THE ROLE OF THE
BA'ATHISTS : Apparently, the Turkman
leaders who were incarcerated in Baghdad prisons had contact with certain
nationalist elements, such as Ba'athists and others, and as a result, they
got together and co-ordinate their efforts to bring down General Qassim.
Also, it soon became clear that the regime in Baghdad was continuing to
pursue its policy of divide and rule, with the intention of weakening all
groups. At first, it offered to the supporters of the Communist Party the
opportunity to dominate all organisations, including the "Popular
Resistance" para-military organisation. Then suddenly it began to
squeeze them, and opened the door to the Turkmans, encouraging their return
to the scene during the era of Nazim Al Tabaqchali. Opposing this trend was
the prevailing wave of extremism within the ranks of the Communist Party
which created the atmosphere of enmity and lead to the brutal and tragic
events. VI. THE IPC
SUPPORTED THE AGITATION: All these factors
contributed to the events of July 1959. It is difficult to pinpoint the main
factor in the process because they were all inter-connected and complemented
each other: from the extremism of the two sides, to the incitement by the
Government and the Arab nationalist and Ba'athist forces in alliance with the
Turkmans, to the external factor Kirkuk’s being the administration
centre of the British Iraqi Petroleum Company (IPC) whose "public
relations" department was involved. The close connection of some Turkman
dignitaries, such as the lawyer, Siddiq Naqqash, the retired Colonel Younis
Omar, the merchant Mohammed Salihi, and others in the IPC's "public
relations" department was later disclosed, in 1962, by Salah Terzi, a
Turkman activist, who later admitted responsibility for the killing of many
Kurds in 1960 and 1961. The painful events caused
division between Kurds and Turkmans in the city of Kirkuk whose
repercussions are still felt. It is truly regrettable that the officials of
the Second Division and the Security Service played an obvious role in
fanning the fires of agitation and widening the rift between the various
fictions. This was clearly revealed after the overthrow of the regime of
General Qassim, since most of them were connected with the leaders of the
1963 coup d'etat and played an active part in it, assuming prominent
positions following its success. APPENDIX -IV- (A) The administrative map of Iraq before it was altered by the Regime APPENDIX -IV- (B) The administrative boundaries of the Kirkuk Governorate after
the Iraqi regime detached four districts from it in 1976. Source: Statistics of Atrocities in Iraqi Kurdistan. APPENDIX -IV- (C) The Arabized and destroyed areas in Iraqi Kurdistan, including
the Kirkuk Governorate. Appendix VII Kurdish Organisation for Human Rights - UK Patron: Lord Avebury PO Box 479 Sutton, Surrey SM2 6WP, UK Fax: 0171-582.8894 HIS EXCELLENCY MR.
KOFI ANNAN, SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE UNITED NATIONS, NEW YORK THE MEMBERS OF THE
SECURITY COUNCIL, NEW YORK ALL ORGANISATIONS AND
PERSONALITIES CONCERNED WITH HUMAN RIGHTS 25 March, 1998 The Iraqi regime
continues in its campaign of expelling Kurdish families from the Kurdish
cities of Kirkuk, Khanekheen, Jalawla and Tuz-Khurmatu, which are all under
the control of the regime. We have detailed lists of 1468 Kurdish families to
be expelled from their homes in Kirkuk. Since November 1997, hundred of these
families have been forcibly moved to the Kurdish controlled regions. The
international aid Organisations have been assisting them there. The process of
expulsion is implemented by arresting the head of the family, so as to
prevent family members from escaping. The Iraqi intelligence Service then
confiscate all of their assets, including property and all forms of
identification. In addition, the Iraqi
regime practices a policy of discrimination against those who live in Kirkuk
by cutting water supplies, and a range of services including waste collection
and road cleaning; this results in increased disease. Even inside the
hospitals, a policy is followed which is biased against the Kurds. A Kurd is
the last patient to receive treatment, even if he is seriously ill. Furthermore, the
regime settles Arab families brought from central and southern Iraq in the
homes of expelled Kurdish families. This policy of ethnic cleansing really
began in 1963, when the Bath’ist regime expelled the Kurds from 33 villages
around Kirkuk, and thousands more from the city itself. When the Bath’ists
came to power by another coup d’etat in 1968, this policy was implemented in
a systematic way which resulted in the destruction of 732 villages during the
following twenty years. All the Kurds employed in the Civil Service and
public sector jobs were also sent to the south of Iraq and their positions
were given to Arabs. We appeal to the Members of the Security
Council and all Organisations and personalities concerned with human rights
to condemn this policy which violates the most basic human rights and is in
contradiction of the Security Council Resolution No 688 of 1991. We also
request that all the expelled Kurdish families from Kirkuk city and other
Kurdish areas be returned to their homes, under the safety of UN control. The Author 1. Born in the city of Kirkuk. 2. Completed elementary education, intermediate and
secondary school in Kirkuk. 3. Received the Bachelor of Science degree in Law from
the University of Baghdad. 4. Received his Doctorate (Ph.D.) in Law from the
Sorbonne. 5. 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. 6. Is the author of numerous publications and research
studies on jurisprudence in Kurdish, Arabic and French. 7. Is the author of the first dictionary of legal terms
in Kurdish/Arabic/French/English. 8. Proposed the draft Constitution for the
Iraqi-Kurdistan Region. 9. At
present, he is the Chairman of the Kurdish Organisation for Human Rights in
Great Britain. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|