Ethnic Cleansing by the Iraqi regime in the Kirkuk Region

Nouri Talabany - Professor of Law

The Treaty of Kasr Shireen - Zehab, signed in 1639 between the representatives of the Ottoman and Safawid Empires determined the official division of Kurdistan between these two powers. From then on, those Kurdish Emirates, which were either wholly or partially independent, were obliged to seek protection from one or either of these two powers if threatened by external aggression or in the face of internal unrest caused by conflict between the ruling families. The Sultans and the Shahs and their representatives actively encouraged such conflicts with the express intention of weakening the Kurdish Emirates. Consequently, the power of these emirates was systematically undermined and, by the mid - nineteenth century, they had ceased to exist. The last Kurdish emirates were the Ardalan (617 - 1284 Hi) whose capital was the city of Senna, and the Baban (1106 - 1267 Hi) whose capital was Sulaymania.[1]These two Kurdish emirates deserve special mention because the Kirkuk region, or a part of it, was once a part of either one or the other of them for various periods.


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

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

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

The Wilayet of Mosul remained a part of the Ottoman Empire until the end of the 1st World War when it was occupied by British troops under the command of General Marshall on 17th May 1918. He withdrew his troops on 27th May, only to re-occupy it at the end of October that same year, after the signing of the Modrus Agreement between Britain and the Ottomans. Secret British documents revealed that the Foreign Office had warned General Marshall not to advance on the Wilayet of Mosul.[8] With the exception of the Sulaymania region, the greater part of the Mosul Wilayet was occupied by the British army and governed by British political officers. The decision to remain in the Wilayet was taken by the British when they discovered oil in the region of Kirkuk, which is an important part of the Wilayet of Mosul. Under the terms of the secret Sykes Picot Agreement, signed in 1916 between France and Britain, this Wilayet was given to France. According to the later San Remo Agreement between France and Britain, France gave it to Britain in return for a share in the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC), which was established by the Ottomans and the Germans to exploit the oil in the two Wilayets of Baghdad and Mosul.[9] This discovery eventually led to the annexation of the Wilayet of Mosul to the newly created Iraqi state after a decision taken by the League of Nations in 1925. To encourage support for this annexation, King Faisal 1 visited most of the Wilayet, including Kirkuk, in December 19, and urged the people to demand to join to new Iraqi state created in 1921.[10]

Most Iraqi researchers are agreed that the Wilayet of Mosul became a part of Iraq with the help of the British. It was in their economic and strategic interest to annexe it so as to be able to send oil from Kirkuk through Iraqi territory to the Mediterranean ports and from there to Europe. Because of the bad relations between Britain and Turkey caused by Turkey’s claim that the Wilayet of Mosul was part of its territory, it was difficult at that time to send it through Turkish territory.[11] The annexation of the Wilayet was sanctioned by international decision, but this decision was conditional on both Britain and Iraq honouring the wishes of the Kurds that civil servants in the Kurdish area be Kurds and that Kurdish was to be the official language.[12] In reality, successive Iraqi governments ignored this international agreement and proceeded to implement a policy which was completely opposed to it, especially in the Kirkuk region. This became abundantly clear during the direct British rule of Kirkuk when Turkish remained the official language in administration and education as it had been under the Ottomans, and important positions in the city continued to be given to the Turkmans.[13] Later, when the Iraqi Petroleum Company (IPC), which was run by the British and which had its headquarters in Kirkuk, began operating, it brought the majority of its employees in from other parts of Iraq. Many thousands of technicians and other professionals, as well as small trades people, came to live in the city, bringing their families with them.[14] To accommodate them, hundreds of housing units were constructed and new districts developed, mostly for Arabs, Assyrians and Armenians. Research suggests that the population of Kirkuk increased by 39,000 between 1947 and 1957 and that, between 1919 and 1968, there was a fivefold increase in the population.[15] But, although the Kurds remained the majority in both the city and the governorate, far fewer of them were employed by the company than were members of other ethnic groups.[16]

During the years of the monarchy, all Iraqi governments encouraged non-Kurds to settle in Kirkuk and prohibited the use of the Kurdish language in education there. In passing, I would like to mention my own bitter experience of this. At both primary and secondary school we were obliged to learn everything by heart as all the text books were in Arabic and we could not understand them. Even so, these governments did not expel Kurds from Kirkuk, nor did they bar the people from nearby villages from coming to reside in the city. But in the mid 1930s, all this began to change when the government of Yassin Al Hashimi brought Arabs from the Al-Ubaid and other nomadic tribes to settle in the Hawija district in the south-west of Kirkuk.

The July 1958 revolution encouraged the Kurds to hope that these discriminatory policies would be reversed, and they asked that Kurdish be used as the language of instruction in the primary schools, at least in those districts, which remained wholly Kurdish. But their hopes were dashed when extreme Arab nationalists were appointed to prominent positions in Kirkuk and they felt convinced that the situation would never change. This conviction was strengthened when General Tabakchali, the new Commander of the 2nd Division stationed in Kirkuk, took several decisions which were to the obvious advantage of the Turkmans. He began by ousting the Kurdish mayor and appointing a Turkman in his place. He then sent a number of secret memoranda to the Ministry of Defence in Baghdad - the real power in Iraq at that time - accusing the Kurds of causing unrest and of trying to found a so-called “Kurdish Republic” which would be joined later by other areas of Kurdistan.[18] His “evidence” for this was the request by Kurdish intellectuals to establish an Education Department to supervise Kurdish education in the region. During General Tabakchali’s command, from July 1958 to March 1959, he concentrated all his efforts on creating tensions and divisions between Kurds and Turkmans.[19]

The appointment of a new commander, General Al- Janabi, in mid-March 1959, brought yet another change in the situation. During his short command the Kurds felt relaxed and celebrated Nawroz openly for the first time in the city’s history. However, three months later, General Al-Janabi was dismissed and the situation steadily deteriorated until Kurds and Turkmans clashed in July 1959. From then on, the Kurds were once more subjected to ever increasing discrimination. This time is considered as a time of fear and forced expulsion of Kurds from Kirkuk. It marked the beginning of a period of terror for the Kurds when they were forced to leave the city. Special terrorist groups were formed from Turkmans, collaborating with the security forces, whose task it was to assassinate prominent Kurdish figures in the city. [20] This situation continued until the coup d’etat by the Ba’ath party on 8th February 1963. From then on, the campaign of terror against the Kurds, led by the “National Guard” of Turkmans and Ba’athists, intensified. Several densely populated districts were demolished and 13 Kurdish villages located near Kirkuk and the IPC oil installations were destroyed. The inhabitants of 33 villages in the Dubs district, close to Kirkuk, were forced to leave and Arab tribes were brought in and settled there. [21] Other measures taken by the regime against the Kurds in Kirkuk were:

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


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

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

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

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

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

The Ba’ath party returned to power in a second coup d’etat in 1968. Shortly after seizing power, the regime instigated a policy deliberately designed to change the ethnic character of Kirkuk and of the governorate. Civil servants, schoolteachers and oil company employees who had escaped the previous expulsions, were transferred and replaced by Arabs. Any Kurd, having once left Kirkuk, is never allowed to return, and this is what happened to most of those transferred.[22] The regime also took the following measures:

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

Houses were demolished in Kurdish neighbourhoods to allow for the unnecessary construction of wide roads and the owners were neither compensated nor allowed to buy other property.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After the nationalisation of the IPC in June 1972, the regime changed the historic name of Kirkuk to Al Tamim, meaning “nationalisation”. In 1976 it also reduced the area of the governorate by annexing four Kurdish areas to the neighbouring governorates, thus making the Kurds a minority in the Kirkuk governorate.[23] Where the regime was unable to settle Arabs, it destroyed all the Kurdish villages and forced their inhabitants into concentration camps. The Anfal operations of 1987 and 1988 claimed the lives of about 180,000 Kurdish civilians, most of whom were from the Kirkuk region. Since the villagers in that region lived far from international borders, they were unable to reach them and so surrendered to the army and secret services and were later sent to the south of Iraq where they were massacred.

The Iraqi regime’s policy of ethnic cleansing continued without comment or challenge from either the Iraqi oppositions groups or from the international community, even though its measures were far more severe than those used in other countries such as Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor, which have been condemned by the international community.

By the end of the eighties, Kirkuk city had lost its historic character as the Arab settlers had become dominant and were ruling the city and its administration, and security and the army were all under their control. Most of the best agricultural land was given to them. It was plain to everyone that people from outside the area were in charge and that the original inhabitants had become strangers in their own city.

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

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

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

During negotiations between the Iraqi regime and representatives of the “Kurdistan Front”, the regime agreed to allow the citizens of Kirkuk to return to their homes, but this promise was only partially honoured. After the collapse of the negotiations, and especially after the withdrawal of the Iraqi administration from three governorates of Kurdistan in September 1991, the Kurds became the target of a renewed reign of terror, which intensified during the years from 1994 to 1996 and was particularly severe at the beginning of 1997 during the preparations for a new census. The methods used by the Iraqi regime exceeded even those used during the apartheid era in South Africa. Kurds were issued with official forms on which they were required to declare that they had been wrongly registered as Kurds in previous censuses. They were told that anyone refusing to sign these forms would be expelled from the city and, in this way; the regime ensured that thousands of Kurds were expelled from Kirkuk. Even after this census, the regime continued its policy of expulsion. In declarations made by Izzat Ibrahim, vice-president and responsible for arabization in Kirkuk, it was publicly declared that no non-Arab would be permitted to remain in Kirkuk.[]

To date, more than 108,000 people have been expelled from the areas under the control of the regime, especially from Kirkuk. Most of these people are now living in camps in appalling conditions and are dependent on aid from international relief organisations. As a result of their continuing misery, some of them, especially the young people, try to make their way to Europe illegally and many lose their money, and sometimes their lives, before arriving there.

Sadly, the international community still ignores the plight of these people. It puts no pressure on the Iraqi regime to halt this racist policy, which is completely contrary to Security Council Resolution No. 688 of 1991 and against all those international documents to which, as a member of the UN and its organisations, Iraq is a signatory. Meanwhile, the majority of the Iraqi opposition still refuses to condemn the regime’s policy which endangers co-existence between Kurds and Arabs in Iraq and which will probably lead to the disintegration of the Iraqi state.

From the Iraqi regime’s ability to continue expelling the people of Kirkuk from their homes, in flagrant violation of international law and Resolution No.688, which condemns this policy, it is obvious that it will not stop unless forced to do so by the resolve of the international community. Only in this way will those expelled be able to return to their homes and the Arab settlers be sent back to the parts of Iraq from which they came originally. This will only happen when all of the Kurdish region which remains under the control of the regime, especially Kirkuk, comes under the control of the international community until Saddam Hussein’s regime ends and democracy is established in Iraq. This would provide the only guarantee of protection for the civilian population there. The request for this was made by 122 Kurdish civil organisations and political parties, both inside and outside Kurdistan, supported by several organisations and public figures in Europe, in a memorandum presented to the Security Council, other international organisations and western states on 29th December 2000.[25] The memorandum also stressed that such a measure would contribute “to the establishing of peace and security in the otherwise turbulent Middle East”.


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[1] 1 Mohammed Amin Zaki, “The History of Kurdish States and Emirates in the Islamic Era”, translated from Kurdish to Arabic by Mohammed Ali Awni, 2nd edition, London, 1986, pp 276 - 291 and from pp 416 - 422.

[2] Sheikh Rezza Talabany is one of the foremost Kurdish poets. To date, six editions of his poetry have been published: in Baghdad in 1935 and 1946, in Iran, in Sweden in 1996, in Sulaymania in 1999 and, most recently, in Arbil in 2000. Many studies have been written about his poems - one of them in English by G.D.Edmonds. On 2nd May 2001, the M.Sc. thesis of Mr. Hawkar Raouf Mohammed was presented for discussion at the College of Art at the University of Sulaymania. (“Al Itihad”, a weekly Kurdish paper, No.419, of May 4, 2001).

[3] Ata Terzibashi, “The Kirkuk Poets” vol.2, in Turkish, printed by Al - Jamhuriah Press, Kirkuk 1968, and p.144.

[4] Shamsadin Sami, “Qamus Al - A’alam” Istanbul, Mihran Press, 1315 Hi/1896.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Abdul-Majid Fahmi Hassan, “A Guide to the History of Iraqi Liwas - Kirkuk Liwa”, vol.2, Dijla Press, Baghdad, 1947, pp 284 and 301.

[7] Enc. Islam, s.v. “Kirkuk”.

[8] Brian Cooper Bush. “Britain, India and Arabs” p.40, and Marian Kent, “Oil and Empire” p.120. Nouri Talabany, “Southern Kurdistan and International Law” in “An Analysis of the Legal Rights of the Kurdish People” pub. By The Ahmed Foundation for Kurdish Studies, Virginia, USA, 2000, p.96.

[9] Nouri Talabany, Ibid.

[10] Nouri Talabany, “Arabization of the Kirkuk Region”, pub. In Sweden by Kurdistan Studies Press, 2001, p.34.

[11] Nouri Talabany, “La Politique de l’Arabisation de la Region de Kirkuk”, Speech given at Green Party of France Conference on Economic Sanctions and Human Rights in Iraq, Assemble National, Paris, 5 February 2001

[12] Walid Hamdi, “Kurds and Kurdistan in British Documents”, a documentary study published in Arabic in London, 1992, p.186.

[13] Jabar Kader, “Kirkuk: A Century and a half of The Policy of Turkisization and Arabization (in Arabic), Iraqi File Magazine No.99, March 2000, p.42.

[14] Abdul Majid Fahmi Hassan, Ibid., p.54.

[15] Ahmed Najmadin, “Population Conditions in Iraq”, Cairo, Arab Studies Institute, 1970, p. 109. In 1921, when Britain occupied Iraq, they estimated the ethnic composition of Kirkuk as 75,000 Kurds, 35,000 Turks, 10,000 Arabs, 1000 Jews and 600 Childo/Assyrians. The 1957 census gave the figures as 48.3% Kurds, 28.2% Arabs, 21.2% Turkmans.

[16] Nouri Talabany, “Arabization of the Kirkuk Region”, p. 35.

[17] Ibid. pp. 36-38.

[18] Ibid. The text of these memoranda is published in Appendix II, p 104 - 113.

[19] Nouri Talabany, “Kurdo/Turkman Relations”, “Ra'yat-ul Islam” Magazine, Vol.1, Year 15, No.1, March 2001, p.2.

[20] Nouri Talabany, “Arabization of the Kirkuk Region”, p.43.

[21] Ibid. P.51.

[22] This was my experience when I was made redundant for political reasons from my post as Professor of Law at Baghdad University in December 1982. I was not allowed to return to my city of Kirkuk where my family has lived for six generations and was obliged to settle in the city of Arbil. The lorry driver who took our belongings from Baghdad to Arbil, via Kirkuk, later told me that a Security Service agent from the entry checkpoint of Kirkuk accompanied him until the exit checkpoint to be certain that he had left Kirkuk!

[23] Ibid. P.66.

[24] Al Hayat newspaper of 29th September 2000.

[25] The text of this memorandum can be found in “Arabization of the Kirkuk Region” by Nouri Talabany, published in Sweden by the Kurdistan Studies Press, 2001,p.131.