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THE IRAQI BA'TH REGIME'S ATROCITIES AGAINST THE FAYLEE KURDS Nation-State Formation Distorted

Adel Soheil

The Iraqi Ba’th Regime’s Atrocities Against the Faylee Kurds

The Iraqi Ba’th Regime’s Atrocities Against the Faylee Kurds Nation-State Formation Distorted

Adel Soheil

Dedicated to the killed Faylee Kurds and those who suffered at the hands of the Ba’thists in Iraq

Contents

Introduction 1.Theoretical Perspectives The Nation-State and Security

1 10 21

2.The Ottoman Empire: Mass Expulsion and Genocide as Instruments of Nation-State Formation 30 From Ottomanism to Arabism 35 Sunni Arab Dominance, 1921-1932: Early Strive for Homogenization 38 The Impact of Saati al-Husri 43 The Unsuccessful State Foundation 47 3. Post-Independent Iraq Until the Revolution of 1958: Suppression of Ethnic Groups, Arab Nazi/Fascist Inclination The Assyrian Massacre Kurdish Demands Unheeded Sami Shawkat and His Legacy for the Ba’th Party

52 53 56 59

4.The Origins of Ba’th Ideology and its Rise in Iraq The Impact of Michel ‘Aflaq ‘Aflaq and Non-Dominant Ethnic Groups ‘Aflaq and Violen The Ba’th Party in Iraq: Early Years

67 71 73 76

5. The Origins of the Faylee Kurds:

A Historical Overview Ethnicity and Language Posht-e-kuh During the Sasanian and the Islamic Conquests Language and Religion of the Faylee Kurds The Term Faylee Faylee Kurds in Baghdad 6. Qassem, the Kurdish Question, the Ba’thists and the Faylee Kurds The Ba’thist Coup against Qassem and the Faylee Kurds

78 85 90 95 99 102 112 121

7.The Ba’thist Coup of July, 1968: The First Wave of Mass Expulsion of the Faylee Kurds 128 The Shu’ubiya: Its Meaning, its Use and Implications 132 The Nationality Question of the Faylee Kurds 136 National Security and New Restrictive Measures 145 Events Leading up to the Mass Expulsion of the Faylee Kurds 148 The Mass Expulsion of the Faylee Kurds, 1970-197 151 8. Saddam’s Drive for Homogenisation, 1980-1991 Saddam’s Rise to Power 160 Arabization of the Kurdish Population 163 Arabization of Kirkuk and other “Contested Areas” 168 9. Nation-State Formation and Mass Expulsion, 1980-1991 Conceptual Definitions and International Norms 178 Reasons Contributing to Mass Expulsions: The State Security Reason: A) The Economic Position of the Faylee Kurds 185 B) The Political Activities of the Faylee Kurds 188

The Mustansiriya Bomb Attack and its Aftermath 192 The Second Wave of Mass Expulsion of the Faylee Kurds,1980-1991 197 Eyewitness Accounts 198 The Ba’th Regime’s Documents on Mass Expulsions 206 10. Nation-State Formation and Genocide in Iraq, 1980-1991 216 The Nation-State 219 From Authoritarianism to Totalitarianism: The Road To Genocide 222 Relationship Between War and Genocide: The Kurdish Dimension 231 The Concept of Genocide 240 Genocide of the Faylee Kurds: Ba’th’s “Final Solution” The “Disappeared” Faylee Kurds 245 The Riot at the Prison of Abo Ghraib 247 The Prison of Nugrat al-Salman 251 Ba’th Regime’s Lists of the “Disappeared” Faylee Kurds and the Year 1986 253 Stanton’s Eight Stages of Genocide

259

Conclusion

263

Appendix

267

Bibliography

268

Index

284

Introduction

The history of the relationship between the Iraqi Ba’th party and the Faylee Kurds, an integral part of the Kurdish nation, provides ample evidence of insecurity and large-scale violations of fundamental human rights. The Ba’thists employed different strategical methods against the Faylee Kurds ranging from discrimination and social exclusion on the one extreme to mass expulsion and genocide on the other. They justified their systematic prosecution and repression of one of the main components of the Iraqi society based on national security. Saddam Hussein’s assuming the presidency of Iraq in 1979 without a doubt marked a dramatic turning point in the relationship between the Ba’thists and the Faylee Kurds. The Ba’th party and Saddam in person intensified their animosity against the Faylee Kurds during conflict-ridden relationships with Iran. Faylee Kurds were accused of being of Iranian origin, or tabaiya, a word the regime used for people it regarded as to be originally Iranian, and were then considered to be holding allegiance to Iran. They were therefore regarded by the regime as a fifth column in Iraq, who posed a threat to the security of the state. These accusations were on several occasions reiterated explicitly and implicitly in Saddam’s comments and speeches on the current domestic affairs accompanied sometimes by threat of “uprooting” (ijtithath) those who were deemed unfit for the Iraqi society by “purifying” (tathir), or “cleansing” (tanzif) the Iraqi population from them, or rendering it “homogenous” (mutajanis). The extensive Arabization campaign was also part of the Ba’th regime’s idea of eradicating differences between the Iraqi populace, and to create one single Arab nation inculcated 1

Iraqi Ba’th Regime’s Atrocities Against the Faylee Kurds by Ba’thist ideology. The ultimate goal of the policy the Ba’thists adopted since they took power in 1968 was to form a homogenous nation-state out of a society composed of different ethnic and religious groups. This policy found its violent expression under the rule of Saddam when hundreds of thousands of the Faylee Kurds were expelled to Iran and about 22,000 of them were exterminated. That said, the central argument of this study is that the Ba’th regime in Iraq, particularly during the rule of Saddam Hussein, envisioned to create a homogenous nation-state through different practices such as Arabization, mass expulsion and genocide in order to acquire national security as well as legitimacy for its authority. The policy of social exclusion and oppression of the nondominant ethnic and religious groups in Iraq was not only practiced by the Ba’thist rulers, its root can be traced back to the foundation of the modern Iraqi state. When the Ottoman Empire was dismantled after World War 1 the Allied powers superimposed the nation-state on Iraq as well as on the countries in the Middle East as a political system, disregarding ethnic, religious and social particularities. King Faysal 1, who was installed by the British in 1921 in Iraq, together with his entourage, consisting of ex-Ottoman officers, were ardent advocates of Arab nationalism. They were proponents of Iraq’s unity and undertook under the British aegis, the project of nation building which for the most part during the mandate period entailed ignorance and when necessary violent suppression of non-Arab groups’ demands. The Kurds as the second largest ethnic group after the Arabs in Iraq even though the Sèrvres Treaty concluded in 1920, entitled them to an independent state, became, after the winning of the Mosul Wilayat in 1926 and thus the consolidation of the Iraqi state, incorporated into Iraq. Neither the pan-Arab in power nor the British, favoured a serious accommodation of Kurdish aspirations, and this attitude, indeed, by and large, remained so until the downfall of the Ba’th regime in 2003. 2

Introduction Other ethnic and religious groups did not escape the same destination; such were the Assyrians, the Jews, the Christians, the Shi’ites and others. Despite discriminatory treatments and hostile persecutions that the Faylee Kurds experienced during different nationalist and pan-Arab regimes, they succeeded to play a significant role in modern Iraq’s history. They made themselves felt in the first place in the realms of trade, commerce and politics. Several leading personalities within the two main Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, were Faylee Kurds. They were among the founders and promoters of these parties and their commitment to the struggle for Kurdish rights attracted many Faylee Kurds to these parties. Faylee Kurds merchants and businessmen, especially those who had prospered economically in Baghdad, also provided the Kurdish national movement financial help. Faylee Kurds were also active in other political parties, mainly in the Iraqi Communist party and to a limited extent in the Da’wa party. Consequently, Faylee Kurds were viewed by the regime as a subversive group, although they did not constitute any opposition force of their own. Nor were they involved in any anti-governmental group when the regime mounted its atrocities against them in April 1980, given that at the time the regime principally had destroyed its opponents. The argument of the national security was paramount in the Ba’th regime’s rationalization of its policy towards the Faylee Kurds. Indeed, the concept of national or state security is closely interlinked with the enterprise of nation-state formation. Ethnic dominant groups claim to act in the interests and for the security of the state and the people, and that it is incumbent on them to ensure the security of the state and the people from other non-dominant groups which they consider a real or potential threat. The consequence of this rationale is often rendering the state free from them by means of mass expulsion, ethnic cleansing and even genocide in order to achieve a homogeneous population. In the case of the Kurds and some other minorities in Iraq, these practices were 3

Iraqi Ba’th Regime’s Atrocities Against the Faylee Kurds also accompanied by cultural assimilation and Arabization. In fact, the security of the state, and hence, of those exercising state power, is embodied in international law. As it is established by international norms, a sovereign state has the right to mass expulsion as long as it does not violate international obligations. These norms also legitimize withdrawal of citizenship and expulsion of those who the state regards as a threat to its security, for example due to their collaboration with a foreign power. The security argument was already enshrined in agreements concluded after World War II between the Allied powers. At the time the mass expulsion or as it was called “transfer” of minorities such as ethnic Germans and other minorities to their homelands was carried out to guarantee the security of eastern and central Europe states.1 As an example of population exchange to remove “minority problem” in Europe Ian Brownlie refers to the transfer of ethnic Germans sanctioned by the Potsdam Agreement which “may be justified as a part of the sanctions and measures of security imposed by the principle members of a coalition which had fought a lawful war of collective defence against Nazi Germany.”2 The main concern of the Ba’thists was ensuring their own security and the preservation of their power which they sought to achieve through infringement of basic international human rights law and norms which prohibit arbitrary and unlawful practices by a state against its own people. Nevertheless, the ambiguous nature of the term security in certain international laws renders a clear-cut interpretation of it difficult. It allows for different interpretations depending on the type of the regime and the agency and the purpose thereof. It is not to say that the Ba’thists acted in accordance with interpretation of any law or were constrained by some others. Yet, they should have been cognisant that the international principles vested in 1 2

See this study, pp.135-137. Ian Brownlie, Principles of Public International Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 564-65.

Introduction a sovereign state the right for protecting national security. This might explain the silence of the regional and international governments on the Ba’th regime’s policy towards the Faylee Kurds. In this study practices of extreme violence such as mass expulsion, forced assimilation, ethnic cleansing and genocide are defined as state-lead radical homogenization. It differs from cultural homogenization which is defined in this study as eradicating of linguistic diversity like the policy of Arabization implemented by the Sunni Arab rulers in Iraq. This book is divided into 10 chapters. Chapter 1 provides an overview of theories of nation state formation and homogenization of people mainly drawn on studies of modernist scholars of state nation formation which demonstrate that the formation of the modern nation-state in Europe and the rest of the world engendered nationalism and entailed homogenization of different ethnic and religious groups particularly in Europe as a function of nation-state formation. However, in these and similar studies of nation states formation and international relations the question of security as an important element in the homogenization policy has often been absent or mentioned in passing. The study of the relationship between the Iraqi regimes and the Faylee Kurds, and for that matter, other ethnic and religious minorities, provides good examples with regards to the importance of the security for the Ba’th regimes in their efforts to create a homogeneous nation-state and to construct a single national identity. The Ba’thists’ pursuing of strategies of systematic suppression of its opponents seemed to have emanated from the conviction that the more people were homogenized the more their security was secured. This chapter also discusses concisely related topics to nation-state formation namely nation and nationalism, security and genocide. The study is carried out within the context of the political development in Iraq since the creation of the Iraqi state in 1921. In chapter 2 and 4 I will illustrate the attitudes of the 5

Iraqi Ba’th Regime’s Atrocities Against the Faylee Kurds Sunni Arab rulers towards other ethnic and religious groups as well as explore the socio-political roots of Arab nationalism from its inception formulated by Saati al-Husri and its influence on Michel ‘Aflaq, the principal founder of Ba’th ideology, who in his turn influenced the pan-Arab rulers in Iraq and, on a personal level, Saddam Hussein. Emphasising the rulers’ nationalist ideology has the advantage of highlighting the role of agency in targeting nondominant ethnic groups in the process of nation-state formation. The study of the relationship between the Ba’th regime and the Faylee Kurds will hopefully be more comprehensible if it is conducted within the structure and agency framework. As it will be demonstrated in this book, structure and circumstances allowed for the policies the Ba’thists pursued against the Faylee Kurds and other dissenters in Iraq. Chapter 2 besides dealing with Arab nationalism it also discusses together with chapter 3 the genocide of the Armenians between 1915-16 at the hands the CUP, the Committee of Union and Progress, and the massacre of the Assyrians during the Hashemite monarchy in 1933. Examining these known historical occurrences are primarily done to demonstrate that the policy of exclusion and elimination of unwanted populations has been an enduring feature in the history of the nation-state creation and international relations. It illustrates as well the ideological influence of the Young Turks on the Sunni Arab elites as they were ex-Ottoman officers trained and educated in the Ottoman Empire. This influence which also was combined with Arab nationalism found its expression in the ill-treatment of non -Arab ethnic minorities already at the early stage of the creation of the Iraqi state. Chapter 5 provides a short account of the origins of the Faylee Kurds. It traces their origins back to the ancient Elam and Mesopotamia. The aim of the study of the origins of the Faylee Kurds is primarily to draw attention to them as an ethnic community since they are unknown to the outside 6

The history of the relationship between the Iraqi Baath party and the Faylee Kurds, an integral part of the Kurdish nation, provides ample evidence of insecurity and large-scale violations of fundamental human rights. The Baathists employed different strategical methods against the Faylee Kurds ranging from discrimination and social exclusion on the one extreme to mass expulsion and genocide on the other. They justified their systematic prosecution and repression of one of the main components of the Iraqi society on the basis of national security. The animosity towards the Faylee Kurds intensified during the rule of Saddam Hussein as they were accused of being of Iranian origin and constituting a fifth column in Iraq, and hence a threat to be removed. As a result, the Baath regime expelled hundreds of thousands of Faylee Kurds to Iran and exterminated about 22,000 of them. The Faylee Kurds have lived in Iraq for centuries and played a significant role in the history of modern Iraq, and most notably for being expelled and killed on a vast scale, yet they are still an unknown community to the outside world. This book attempts to address this shortcoming. From the introduction. Cover photo: Monument in Baghdad honouring the killed and disappeared Faylee Kurds.

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