All events · Empires Unmade

Expulsion and Denationalization of Iraq's Faili Kurds

c. 1970–1990 · Middle East & North Africa

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What happened

The Faili Kurds are Shi'a Kurds long settled in Baghdad and in the border districts of eastern Iraq, many of whom were classed under the 1924 Iraqi nationality law as descendants of Persian rather than Ottoman subjects. From the late 1960s the Ba'athist government treated them as foreigners: tens of thousands were expelled to Iran between 1969 and the mid-1970s, and in April 1980 Decree 666 provided for revoking the citizenship of Iraqis deemed of foreign origin or disloyal. Between 220,000 and 300,000 Faili Kurds were denationalized, their businesses and property confiscated and most driven across the Iranian border, in many cases on foot. Minority Rights Group records that thousands of military-age men were detained instead of expelled and that between 10,000 and more than 20,000 people disappeared and were never recovered. In 2010 the Iraqi High Criminal Court ruled that the deportation, disappearance and confiscation of the Faili Kurds' rights constituted genocide, and the Iraqi parliament passed a corresponding resolution in 2011. Restitution of nationality after 2003 has been partial: only 16,580 people obtained reinstatement between 2003 and 2013, and roughly 100,000 remain without nationality.

Parties

Iraq's Ba'athist government stripped Faili (Shi'a) Kurds of citizenship as alleged Iranians, confiscated their property and expelled them across the border into Iran, detaining and disappearing thousands of young men

Disputed

The denominator

Minority Rights Group records 40,000 deported in a single episode in autumn 1971 and almost 70,000 displaced between 1969 and 1971, and puts total estimates of those denationalised and deported between 1970 and 1990 at anywhere from 150,000 to 500,000. No Iraqi census identified Failis as a group - they were registered as Iranian subjects (taba'iyya) under Ottoman-era and 1924 nationality rules - so there is no base population against which the expulsions can be measured. Present-day estimates of Failis in Iraq run to about 1.5 million, after returns since 2003.

Where the baseline comes from

• Feyli Kurds in Iraq — Minority Rights GroupNGO
• Feyli Kurds — Wikipediaopen-edited

On the death toll

Minority Rights Group reports that between 10,000 and more than 20,000 Faili Kurds — chiefly young men detained rather than expelled — disappeared and their remains were never recovered; they are presumed killed. The range reflects the fact that the count rests on families' missing-person claims rather than on documentation or exhumation. Deaths during the expulsions themselves, at the border and in the mountains, were not counted.

Documented forms of violence

Documented by Minority Rights Group International and by the study of the Faili Kurds' statelessness circulated through ReliefWeb, and reflected in the Iraqi High Criminal Court's 2010 ruling.

Formal findings

• Iraqi High Criminal Court, followed by a resolution of the Iraqi Council of Representatives (2011) (2010) — Ruled that the deportation of the Faili Kurds, the disappearance of their detained relatives and the confiscation of their property and nationality constituted genocide — source

Movements mapped

• Baghdad and the Iraqi border districts → Iran (Kermanshah and Ilam)250,000
• Mandali and Badra → Ilam province, Iran

Countries touched, on present-day borders

Iraq, Iran

Sources

• Faili Kurds in Iraq — Minority Rights Group InternationalNGO
• The Faili Kurds of Iraq: Thirty Years Without Nationality — ReliefWebofficial
• Faili Kurds: Decades of injustice vs. Iraq's struggle to reconcile with its past — Shafaq Newspress