Sunday 26 August 2007
Tuesday 14 August 2007
Arabization of the Kirkuk Region
Prof. Nouri Talabany
Arabization of the Kirkuk Region, 141 pp., Uppsala, 2001, ISBN 91-972498-2-3
Table of Contents
Foreword by Lord Avebury.
Preface.
I - A synopsis of the history and geography of the Kirkuk Region.
II - The Non-Kurdish ethnic population in the Kirkuk Region: The Turkmans.
1. Origins.
2. Population Estimates.
3. Relations between Kurds and Turkmans.
4. Politicaal Orientations of the Turkmans.
IlI - Earliest Attempts at Arabization.
A - The period of the monarchy.
The role of the oil company in changing the ethnic character of the city of Kirkuk.
The building of the Hawija Irrigation Project to settle Arab tribes in the Kirkuk Region.
B - The period from 1958 to 1968.
Measures towards Arabization taken by the February 1963 coup organizers in the Kirkuk Governorate.
C - The period from 1968 to the present.
Measures taken by the Iraq regime inside the city of Kirkuk.
Measures taken by the regime to Arabize the entire Kirkuk Governorate.
1. City District of Kirkuk.
2. Dubz District (Arabized to Al-Debiss).
3. Hawija District.
4. Chamchamal District.
5. Duz-Khurmatu District.
6. Kifri District.
7. Kala'r District..
IV The result of Arabization and destruction of the Kirkuk Region.
Appendices.
-------------------------
PREFACE
THE KIRKUK REGION, rich in petroleum deposits and vast 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 Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and beyond. However, it was the discovery of vast quantities of petroleum deposits in the region that led Great Britain, in 1926, to append Kirkuk and the former Ottoman Wilayet of Mosul (of which the Kirkuk region was a part) to the newly-created state of Iraq. This new state, created in 1921, was under the Mandate of Great Britain. Ever since, and particularly after 1963, there have been continuous attempts by the central government of Iraq to Arabize the strategic region of Kirkuk.
To understand better the reasons for this policy, let us, first, briefly consider the geopolitics, history and demography of the Kirkuk region, and then analyse the situation both before and after these attempts.
Arabization of the Kirkuk Region, 141 pp., Uppsala, 2001, ISBN 91-972498-2-3
Table of Contents
Foreword by Lord Avebury.
Preface.
I - A synopsis of the history and geography of the Kirkuk Region.
II - The Non-Kurdish ethnic population in the Kirkuk Region: The Turkmans.
1. Origins.
2. Population Estimates.
3. Relations between Kurds and Turkmans.
4. Politicaal Orientations of the Turkmans.
IlI - Earliest Attempts at Arabization.
A - The period of the monarchy.
The role of the oil company in changing the ethnic character of the city of Kirkuk.
The building of the Hawija Irrigation Project to settle Arab tribes in the Kirkuk Region.
B - The period from 1958 to 1968.
Measures towards Arabization taken by the February 1963 coup organizers in the Kirkuk Governorate.
C - The period from 1968 to the present.
Measures taken by the Iraq regime inside the city of Kirkuk.
Measures taken by the regime to Arabize the entire Kirkuk Governorate.
1. City District of Kirkuk.
2. Dubz District (Arabized to Al-Debiss).
3. Hawija District.
4. Chamchamal District.
5. Duz-Khurmatu District.
6. Kifri District.
7. Kala'r District..
IV The result of Arabization and destruction of the Kirkuk Region.
Appendices.
-------------------------
PREFACE
THE KIRKUK REGION, rich in petroleum deposits and vast 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 Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and beyond. However, it was the discovery of vast quantities of petroleum deposits in the region that led Great Britain, in 1926, to append Kirkuk and the former Ottoman Wilayet of Mosul (of which the Kirkuk region was a part) to the newly-created state of Iraq. This new state, created in 1921, was under the Mandate of Great Britain. Ever since, and particularly after 1963, there have been continuous attempts by the central government of Iraq to Arabize the strategic region of Kirkuk.
To understand better the reasons for this policy, let us, first, briefly consider the geopolitics, history and demography of the Kirkuk region, and then analyse the situation both before and after these attempts.
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.
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”.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[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.
Who Owns Kirkuk? The Kurdish Case
by Nouri Talabany
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2007
Kirkuk is an essential part of Iraqi Kurdistan. While Kirkuk's demography has been in flux in recent decades, this is largely a result of ethnic cleansing campaigns implemented by Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime. Free from Baathist restrictions, many Kurdish refugees have returned to their homes in the city and its immediate environs. While many diplomats and analysts may be tempted to delay decisions about the final status of Kirkuk—whether it should remain as it is or join Iraq's Kurdistan Region—any delay could be counterproductive to the goals of peace and stability.
A Mixed City
Historically, the majority of the city's population was Kurdish and Turkoman. The Turkomans traced their families back to the Ottoman era. Later, Arabs began to settle in the region. Writing of the ethnic composition of the city, the Ottoman encyclopedist Shamsadin Sami, author of the Qamus al-A'lam, found that, "Three quarters of the inhabitants of Kirkuk are Kurds and the rest are Turkomans, Arabs, and others. Seven hundred and sixty Jews and 460 Chaldeans also reside in the city."[1]
The Kurds predate other resident groups; the northern and eastern districts of the cities have been traditionally Kurdish. Turkomans later migrated to the region. According to the Encyclopedia of Islam, the local Kurdish population in Kirkuk was joined by a Turkoman minority as far back as the ninth century c.e. when caliphs installed Turkoman garrisons in the region.[2] In his history of the various Iraqi provinces, Iraqi historian Abdul Majid Fahmi Hassan placed the Turkoman migration in the mid-seventeenth century when Ottoman Sultan Murad IV wrested the region from Iranian control. As Murad returned to Istanbul, he left army units in position to control the strategic route linking Baghdad and Anatolia; the Iraqi Turkomans descended from these troops.[3] Prominent Turkoman families in Kirkuk, such as the Neftçiler and Awçi, trace their ancestry to Murad's troops;[4] moreover, the prominent ethnic Arab Tikriti family also traces their presence in the region to Murad's soldiers and the sultan's gift of land in and around Kirkuk as a reward for their military service against the Iranians.[5]
In the late Ottoman period, Kirkuk was the administrative center of the vilayet (province) of Sharazur. In 1879, it became a sanjak (district) within the vilayet of Mosul. Further changes occurred in the region in 1918 when the British army occupied the Mosul vilayet and created a new Arbil governorate. In 1921, the British estimated the population of the Kirkuk region to be 75,000 Kurds, 35,000 Turkomans, 10,000 Arabs, 1,400 Jews, and 600 Chaldeans. A League of Nations Committee that visited the Mosul vilayet in 1925 estimated that the Kurds comprised 63 percent of Kirkuk's population, the Turkomans, 19 percent, and the Arabs, 18 percent.[6]
Many Kurds grew crops and raised livestock near the streams and wells in the northern and eastern parts of the Kirkuk region, but after the 1927 discovery of oil, Arab, Assyrian, and Armenian migration into the city of Kirkuk itself accelerated.[7] From 1935, Arab families migrated to the nearby Hawija plain, southwest of Kirkuk, after the Iraqi government launched a large-scale irrigation project to open the drier southwestern portion of the region to agriculture. Other Arabs settled in Kirkuk as civil servants or serving as officers and soldiers in the Second Division of the Iraqi army, most of which was stationed in Kirkuk.
Because there was no census taken in Iraq until 1947, however, such figures are estimates, and the 1947 census itself is of little help because it gives no precise details of the ethnic composition of the population. However, the 1957 census—widely acknowledged as the most valid because it was the least politicized—broke down population by mother tongue, finding Kirkuk was 48.3 percent Kurd, 28.2 percent Arab, 21.4 percent Turkoman, and the rest Chaldean, Assyrian, or other.[8]
While demography might shift with time, Kirkuk's various communities have a long history of coexistence. Politically, Kurds have a long tradition of leadership in Kirkuk. On a national level, most Kirkuk representatives in the Iraqi parliament were Kurds and a smaller number of Turkomans. Local Arab representatives entered the parliament after settlement of the Hawija region. In the late Ottoman era, the sultan's governors mostly nominated Turkomans as mayors although, on certain occasions, Kurds also held the position. Later, during the monarchy, Kirkuk's mayors were mostly Kurds from the Talabany family.[9] It was only during the late Ottoman era and the Iraqi monarchy that many Turkomans became mayors. The first Arab mayor took office in 1969 when the Baathist regime appointed Muzhir al-Tikriti.
Until 1955, Kirkuk had just one high school, and the majority of the students had Kurdish and Turkoman backgrounds with smaller numbers of Arabs, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Armenians. Most Arab students were the children of civil servants, military personnel, or employees of the Iraqi Petroleum Company (IPC).
By long-standing tradition, the Kurds, Turkomans, Chaldeans, and Jews have had their own cemeteries. The Arabs, being a minority, buried their dead in the Turkoman cemeteries. However, in 1991, Saddam Hussein's government created special cemeteries for Arab settlers and banned Arab Shi‘ites from taking their dead back to Najaf for burial in order to bolster the Arab claim to the city. The Baathist regime subsequently began to rewrite Kurdish tombstone inscriptions with Arabic in order to retroactively alter the demography.
Ethnic Cleansing
The Baathists sough to implement their Arab nationalism by force. In June 1963, the short-lived Baathist regime of Ali Saleh al-Sa'adi destroyed thirteen Kurdish villages around Kirkuk and expelled the population of another thirty-four Kurdish villages in the Dubz district near Kirkuk, replacing them with Arabs from central and southern Iraq.
After the Baath party consolidated power in 1963, the National Guard (al-Haras al-Qawmi), recruited Arab Baathists and Turkomans who systematically attacked ethnic Kurds. Between 1963 and 1988, the Baathist regime destroyed 779 Kurdish villages in the Kirkuk region—razing 493 primary schools, 598 mosques, and 40 medical clinics.[10] In order to prevent the return of the Kurds, they burned farms and orchards, confiscated cattle, blew up wells, and obliterated cemeteries. In all, this ethnic cleansing campaign forced 37,726 Kurdish families out of their villages. Given the average rural Kurdish family size of between five and seven people, this policy forced over 200,000 Kurds to flee the region. The Kurds were not the regime's only victims. During the Iran-Iraq war, the central government destroyed about ten Shi‘ite Turkoman villages south of Kirkuk.
The Iraqi government also compelled urban Kurds to leave Kirkuk. It transferred oil company employees, civil servants, and teachers to southern and central Iraq. The Baathist government renamed streets and schools in Arabic and forced businesses to adopt Arab names. Kurds could only sell real estate to Arabs; non-Arabs could not purchase property in the city. The government allocated thousands of new residential units for Arabs only. Ethnic cleansing intensified after the 1991 Kuwait war when the Republican Guards crushed a short-lived uprising. In 1996, the regime passed an "identity law" to force Kurds and other non-Arabs to register as Arab. The government expelled from the region anyone who refused. In 1997, the Iraqi government demolished Kirkuk's historic citadel with its mosques and ancient church. Human Rights Watch estimated that between 1991 and 2003, the Iraqi government expelled between 120,000 and 200,000 non-Arabs from Kirkuk and its environs.[11]
In September 1999, the U.S. State Department reported that the Iraqi government had displaced approximately 900,000 citizens throughout Iraq. The report continued to describe how "[l]ocal officials in the south have ordered the arrest of any official or citizen who provides employment, food, or shelter to newly arriving Kurds."[12]
A New Beginning for Kirkuk?
In April 2003, coalition forces and the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga liberated Kirkuk from Baathist control. Many victims of Saddam's ethnic cleansing campaign sought to return to the region, only to be prevented by U.S. authorities. Many remain in tent-city limbo. Article 58 of the March 8, 2004 Transitional Administrative Law[13] sought to settle disputes in Kirkuk by means of an Iraqi Property Claims Commission and "other relevant bodies." In practice, however, successive Iraqi governments have done little, creating suspicion among many Iraqi Kurds as to the central government's intentions. The uncertainty over Kirkuk's status has impeded local development and sidelined the issue of refugee resettlement.
Article 140 of the new Iraqi constitution has adopted Article 58 of the Transitional Administrative Law, which necessitates the normalization of the situation in Kirkuk by which the legislature meant the assistance of the return of internally displaced people and their reclamation of seized property. Arabs installed in the region should be helped to return to southern and central Iraq, should they so desire. The four subdistricts of Kifri, Chemchemal, Kalar, and Tuz-Khurmatu annexed to neighboring governorates by the regime in 1976 should be returned to the governorate of Kirkuk. Article 140 also states that a local census must be organized and a referendum held to decide the future of the province. The set deadline for the implementation of this article is December 2007. However, if Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki does not implement the article within the allocated time, ethnic and sectarian unrest could explode in Kirkuk, the effects rippling throughout Iraq.
A report by the International Crisis Group proposes that the Iraqi government invite the U.N. Security Council "to appoint an envoy to start negotiations to designate the Kirkuk governorate as a stand-alone, federal region for an interim period" and recommends postponing the constitutionally-mandated referendum because of the threat that it could further exacerbate an already uncertain security situation.[14]
There is no need for another envoy. With many Arab League nations and Turkey opposed to the expansion of Kurdish self-rule, a U.N. envoy would not have the confidence of most of Kirkuk's residents. Nor should outside organizations, however well-meaning, delay implementation of Article 140. A wide swath of Iraqi society accepted the constitution after extensive consultation. And, on August 9, the Iraqi government nominated a high committee chaired by the Minister of Justice to implement Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution without delay.
Until the December 2007 referendum, which the U.N. has the expertise to organize, it will be impossible to know whether local residents wish Kirkuk to be absorbed into the Kurdistan Regional Government. Many Kurds do, but others are afraid of being pushed aside by established patronage networks and political machines imposed from outside the city.
Rather than destabilize the region, formal resolution of the dispute over Kirkuk's status should calm the city. Various ethnic and sectarian communities coexisted peacefully in Kirkuk until Abdul-Karim Qasim's 1958 coup d'état. The central government in Baghdad rather than local politics fueled most subsequent conflicts. Any census is sure to confirm the majority status of Kurds inside Kirkuk. They will demand the right to have their voice heard through the ballot box. But Kurdish empowerment through the democratic process need not mean disenfranchisement for the local Arabs and Turkoman communities. There is no reason why the various communities within Kirkuk cannot coexist peacefully again.
Nouri Talabany is the author of several books and articles about Iraqi Kurdish history. He is currently an independent member of parliament in the Iraqi Kurdistan region.
[1] Shamsadin Sami, Qamus al-A'lam (Istanbul: Mihran Press, 1896), see "Kirkuk."
[2] Encyclopedia of Islam (Leiden: Brill, 2004), s.v. "Kirkuk."
[3] Abdul Majid Fahmi Hasan, Dalil Tarikh Mashahir al-Alwiya al-Iraqiya [A Guide to the History of Iraqi Liwas-Kirkuk Liwa], vol. II, (Baghdad: Dijla Press, 1947), p. 58.
[4] Ibid., pp. 284, 301.
[5] Ibid., p. 289.
[6] Jabar Qadir, "Kirkuk: karnun wa nisf min siyasat at-tatrik w'al ta'arib," Al-Malaful Iraqi (London), no. 99, Mar. 2000, p. 42.
[7] Hasan, Dalil Tarikh Mashahir al-Alwiya al-Iraqiya, p. 55.
[8] Census Registration Records of 1957, Iraqi Ministry of Interior, the General Population Directorate.
[9] Nouri Talabany, Arabization of the Kirkuk Region, 3rd ed. (Arbil: Aras Publisher, 2004), p. 21.
[10] Nouri Talabany, Arabization of the Kirkuk Region (Uppsala, Sweden: Kurdistan Studies Press, 2001), p. 94.
[11] "III: Forced Expulsions," Iraq: Forcible Expulsion of Ethnic Minorities, vol. 15, no. 3(E) (New York: Human Rights Watch, Mar. 2003).
[12] "Repression of the Iraqi People," Saddam Hussein's Iraq, U.S. Department of State, Sept. 13, 1999 (updated Feb. 23, 2000), accessed Aug. 7, 2006; Al-Hayat (London), Sept. 29, 2000.
[13] "Law of Administration for the State of Iraq for the Transitional Period," Coalition Provisional Authority, Baghdad, Mar. 8, 2004.
[14] "Iraq and the Kurds: The Brewing Battle over Kirkuk," Middle East Report, no. 56, International Crisis Group, Brussels and Amman, July 18, 2006.
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2007
Kirkuk is an essential part of Iraqi Kurdistan. While Kirkuk's demography has been in flux in recent decades, this is largely a result of ethnic cleansing campaigns implemented by Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime. Free from Baathist restrictions, many Kurdish refugees have returned to their homes in the city and its immediate environs. While many diplomats and analysts may be tempted to delay decisions about the final status of Kirkuk—whether it should remain as it is or join Iraq's Kurdistan Region—any delay could be counterproductive to the goals of peace and stability.
A Mixed City
Historically, the majority of the city's population was Kurdish and Turkoman. The Turkomans traced their families back to the Ottoman era. Later, Arabs began to settle in the region. Writing of the ethnic composition of the city, the Ottoman encyclopedist Shamsadin Sami, author of the Qamus al-A'lam, found that, "Three quarters of the inhabitants of Kirkuk are Kurds and the rest are Turkomans, Arabs, and others. Seven hundred and sixty Jews and 460 Chaldeans also reside in the city."[1]
The Kurds predate other resident groups; the northern and eastern districts of the cities have been traditionally Kurdish. Turkomans later migrated to the region. According to the Encyclopedia of Islam, the local Kurdish population in Kirkuk was joined by a Turkoman minority as far back as the ninth century c.e. when caliphs installed Turkoman garrisons in the region.[2] In his history of the various Iraqi provinces, Iraqi historian Abdul Majid Fahmi Hassan placed the Turkoman migration in the mid-seventeenth century when Ottoman Sultan Murad IV wrested the region from Iranian control. As Murad returned to Istanbul, he left army units in position to control the strategic route linking Baghdad and Anatolia; the Iraqi Turkomans descended from these troops.[3] Prominent Turkoman families in Kirkuk, such as the Neftçiler and Awçi, trace their ancestry to Murad's troops;[4] moreover, the prominent ethnic Arab Tikriti family also traces their presence in the region to Murad's soldiers and the sultan's gift of land in and around Kirkuk as a reward for their military service against the Iranians.[5]
In the late Ottoman period, Kirkuk was the administrative center of the vilayet (province) of Sharazur. In 1879, it became a sanjak (district) within the vilayet of Mosul. Further changes occurred in the region in 1918 when the British army occupied the Mosul vilayet and created a new Arbil governorate. In 1921, the British estimated the population of the Kirkuk region to be 75,000 Kurds, 35,000 Turkomans, 10,000 Arabs, 1,400 Jews, and 600 Chaldeans. A League of Nations Committee that visited the Mosul vilayet in 1925 estimated that the Kurds comprised 63 percent of Kirkuk's population, the Turkomans, 19 percent, and the Arabs, 18 percent.[6]
Many Kurds grew crops and raised livestock near the streams and wells in the northern and eastern parts of the Kirkuk region, but after the 1927 discovery of oil, Arab, Assyrian, and Armenian migration into the city of Kirkuk itself accelerated.[7] From 1935, Arab families migrated to the nearby Hawija plain, southwest of Kirkuk, after the Iraqi government launched a large-scale irrigation project to open the drier southwestern portion of the region to agriculture. Other Arabs settled in Kirkuk as civil servants or serving as officers and soldiers in the Second Division of the Iraqi army, most of which was stationed in Kirkuk.
Because there was no census taken in Iraq until 1947, however, such figures are estimates, and the 1947 census itself is of little help because it gives no precise details of the ethnic composition of the population. However, the 1957 census—widely acknowledged as the most valid because it was the least politicized—broke down population by mother tongue, finding Kirkuk was 48.3 percent Kurd, 28.2 percent Arab, 21.4 percent Turkoman, and the rest Chaldean, Assyrian, or other.[8]
While demography might shift with time, Kirkuk's various communities have a long history of coexistence. Politically, Kurds have a long tradition of leadership in Kirkuk. On a national level, most Kirkuk representatives in the Iraqi parliament were Kurds and a smaller number of Turkomans. Local Arab representatives entered the parliament after settlement of the Hawija region. In the late Ottoman era, the sultan's governors mostly nominated Turkomans as mayors although, on certain occasions, Kurds also held the position. Later, during the monarchy, Kirkuk's mayors were mostly Kurds from the Talabany family.[9] It was only during the late Ottoman era and the Iraqi monarchy that many Turkomans became mayors. The first Arab mayor took office in 1969 when the Baathist regime appointed Muzhir al-Tikriti.
Until 1955, Kirkuk had just one high school, and the majority of the students had Kurdish and Turkoman backgrounds with smaller numbers of Arabs, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Armenians. Most Arab students were the children of civil servants, military personnel, or employees of the Iraqi Petroleum Company (IPC).
By long-standing tradition, the Kurds, Turkomans, Chaldeans, and Jews have had their own cemeteries. The Arabs, being a minority, buried their dead in the Turkoman cemeteries. However, in 1991, Saddam Hussein's government created special cemeteries for Arab settlers and banned Arab Shi‘ites from taking their dead back to Najaf for burial in order to bolster the Arab claim to the city. The Baathist regime subsequently began to rewrite Kurdish tombstone inscriptions with Arabic in order to retroactively alter the demography.
Ethnic Cleansing
The Baathists sough to implement their Arab nationalism by force. In June 1963, the short-lived Baathist regime of Ali Saleh al-Sa'adi destroyed thirteen Kurdish villages around Kirkuk and expelled the population of another thirty-four Kurdish villages in the Dubz district near Kirkuk, replacing them with Arabs from central and southern Iraq.
After the Baath party consolidated power in 1963, the National Guard (al-Haras al-Qawmi), recruited Arab Baathists and Turkomans who systematically attacked ethnic Kurds. Between 1963 and 1988, the Baathist regime destroyed 779 Kurdish villages in the Kirkuk region—razing 493 primary schools, 598 mosques, and 40 medical clinics.[10] In order to prevent the return of the Kurds, they burned farms and orchards, confiscated cattle, blew up wells, and obliterated cemeteries. In all, this ethnic cleansing campaign forced 37,726 Kurdish families out of their villages. Given the average rural Kurdish family size of between five and seven people, this policy forced over 200,000 Kurds to flee the region. The Kurds were not the regime's only victims. During the Iran-Iraq war, the central government destroyed about ten Shi‘ite Turkoman villages south of Kirkuk.
The Iraqi government also compelled urban Kurds to leave Kirkuk. It transferred oil company employees, civil servants, and teachers to southern and central Iraq. The Baathist government renamed streets and schools in Arabic and forced businesses to adopt Arab names. Kurds could only sell real estate to Arabs; non-Arabs could not purchase property in the city. The government allocated thousands of new residential units for Arabs only. Ethnic cleansing intensified after the 1991 Kuwait war when the Republican Guards crushed a short-lived uprising. In 1996, the regime passed an "identity law" to force Kurds and other non-Arabs to register as Arab. The government expelled from the region anyone who refused. In 1997, the Iraqi government demolished Kirkuk's historic citadel with its mosques and ancient church. Human Rights Watch estimated that between 1991 and 2003, the Iraqi government expelled between 120,000 and 200,000 non-Arabs from Kirkuk and its environs.[11]
In September 1999, the U.S. State Department reported that the Iraqi government had displaced approximately 900,000 citizens throughout Iraq. The report continued to describe how "[l]ocal officials in the south have ordered the arrest of any official or citizen who provides employment, food, or shelter to newly arriving Kurds."[12]
A New Beginning for Kirkuk?
In April 2003, coalition forces and the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga liberated Kirkuk from Baathist control. Many victims of Saddam's ethnic cleansing campaign sought to return to the region, only to be prevented by U.S. authorities. Many remain in tent-city limbo. Article 58 of the March 8, 2004 Transitional Administrative Law[13] sought to settle disputes in Kirkuk by means of an Iraqi Property Claims Commission and "other relevant bodies." In practice, however, successive Iraqi governments have done little, creating suspicion among many Iraqi Kurds as to the central government's intentions. The uncertainty over Kirkuk's status has impeded local development and sidelined the issue of refugee resettlement.
Article 140 of the new Iraqi constitution has adopted Article 58 of the Transitional Administrative Law, which necessitates the normalization of the situation in Kirkuk by which the legislature meant the assistance of the return of internally displaced people and their reclamation of seized property. Arabs installed in the region should be helped to return to southern and central Iraq, should they so desire. The four subdistricts of Kifri, Chemchemal, Kalar, and Tuz-Khurmatu annexed to neighboring governorates by the regime in 1976 should be returned to the governorate of Kirkuk. Article 140 also states that a local census must be organized and a referendum held to decide the future of the province. The set deadline for the implementation of this article is December 2007. However, if Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki does not implement the article within the allocated time, ethnic and sectarian unrest could explode in Kirkuk, the effects rippling throughout Iraq.
A report by the International Crisis Group proposes that the Iraqi government invite the U.N. Security Council "to appoint an envoy to start negotiations to designate the Kirkuk governorate as a stand-alone, federal region for an interim period" and recommends postponing the constitutionally-mandated referendum because of the threat that it could further exacerbate an already uncertain security situation.[14]
There is no need for another envoy. With many Arab League nations and Turkey opposed to the expansion of Kurdish self-rule, a U.N. envoy would not have the confidence of most of Kirkuk's residents. Nor should outside organizations, however well-meaning, delay implementation of Article 140. A wide swath of Iraqi society accepted the constitution after extensive consultation. And, on August 9, the Iraqi government nominated a high committee chaired by the Minister of Justice to implement Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution without delay.
Until the December 2007 referendum, which the U.N. has the expertise to organize, it will be impossible to know whether local residents wish Kirkuk to be absorbed into the Kurdistan Regional Government. Many Kurds do, but others are afraid of being pushed aside by established patronage networks and political machines imposed from outside the city.
Rather than destabilize the region, formal resolution of the dispute over Kirkuk's status should calm the city. Various ethnic and sectarian communities coexisted peacefully in Kirkuk until Abdul-Karim Qasim's 1958 coup d'état. The central government in Baghdad rather than local politics fueled most subsequent conflicts. Any census is sure to confirm the majority status of Kurds inside Kirkuk. They will demand the right to have their voice heard through the ballot box. But Kurdish empowerment through the democratic process need not mean disenfranchisement for the local Arabs and Turkoman communities. There is no reason why the various communities within Kirkuk cannot coexist peacefully again.
Nouri Talabany is the author of several books and articles about Iraqi Kurdish history. He is currently an independent member of parliament in the Iraqi Kurdistan region.
[1] Shamsadin Sami, Qamus al-A'lam (Istanbul: Mihran Press, 1896), see "Kirkuk."
[2] Encyclopedia of Islam (Leiden: Brill, 2004), s.v. "Kirkuk."
[3] Abdul Majid Fahmi Hasan, Dalil Tarikh Mashahir al-Alwiya al-Iraqiya [A Guide to the History of Iraqi Liwas-Kirkuk Liwa], vol. II, (Baghdad: Dijla Press, 1947), p. 58.
[4] Ibid., pp. 284, 301.
[5] Ibid., p. 289.
[6] Jabar Qadir, "Kirkuk: karnun wa nisf min siyasat at-tatrik w'al ta'arib," Al-Malaful Iraqi (London), no. 99, Mar. 2000, p. 42.
[7] Hasan, Dalil Tarikh Mashahir al-Alwiya al-Iraqiya, p. 55.
[8] Census Registration Records of 1957, Iraqi Ministry of Interior, the General Population Directorate.
[9] Nouri Talabany, Arabization of the Kirkuk Region, 3rd ed. (Arbil: Aras Publisher, 2004), p. 21.
[10] Nouri Talabany, Arabization of the Kirkuk Region (Uppsala, Sweden: Kurdistan Studies Press, 2001), p. 94.
[11] "III: Forced Expulsions," Iraq: Forcible Expulsion of Ethnic Minorities, vol. 15, no. 3(E) (New York: Human Rights Watch, Mar. 2003).
[12] "Repression of the Iraqi People," Saddam Hussein's Iraq, U.S. Department of State, Sept. 13, 1999 (updated Feb. 23, 2000), accessed Aug. 7, 2006; Al-Hayat (London), Sept. 29, 2000.
[13] "Law of Administration for the State of Iraq for the Transitional Period," Coalition Provisional Authority, Baghdad, Mar. 8, 2004.
[14] "Iraq and the Kurds: The Brewing Battle over Kirkuk," Middle East Report, no. 56, International Crisis Group, Brussels and Amman, July 18, 2006.
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