Kurds in Iraq

Group Profile
Iraq’s Kurdish population lives in the semi-autonomous northern region of the country (Iraqi Kurds are the only Kurdish population who enjoy semi-autonomy).  Kurds in Iraq are mostly of the Sunni branch of Islam, but mainly follow the Shafi’i school, which distinguishes them from the majority of the Iraqi Arab Sunni Muslim population, which is primarily of the Hanafi school.[1]  Fayli Kurds are a Shia people from the mountainous region near the Iran-Iraq border.

Demography

The Kurdish population in Iraq is currently estimated to be 15 to 20 percent of the total population, or 4 to 5.5 million people.[2]  In 1957, Kurds and other minorities in Kurdistan represented an estimated 22 percent of approximately 6.5 million Iraqis; by 1975, the total population of Kurdistan had risen to about 2.8 million people, or 28 percent of the total population.[3]  Population estimates in the late 1980s record that Kurds represented 18 to 19 percent of Iraqis, or 2.2 to 3.1 million people.[4]

In the 1980s, Saddam Hussein launched a brutal campaign against the Kurds, killing hundreds of thousands.  Between 1983 and 1987, as the Iran-Iraq war raged on, an estimated 300,000 Iraqi Kurds were killed.[5]  Then, between 50,000 and 100,000 Kurds were killed during the notorious Anfal Campaigns – which came during the final phase of the war – when Hussein used chemical weapons to attack Halabja and countless other Kurdish towns.[6]  In addition to the murders, Hussein’s reign saw the destruction of over 4,000 Kurdish villages and towns. 

Beginning in 1969, over 100,000 Fayli Kurds were forcibly deported to Iran; in 1980, Hussein stripped between 200,000 and 500,000 Fayli of their possessions and documentation and ordered them to march to Iran during military crossfire.

Geographic Distribution

In 1975 autonomy law defined Kurdistan as areas found by the 1957 census to have a Kurdish majority, meaning the governorates of Dohuk, Erbil, and Sulaymaniyah. However, Kurds have long disputed the census, and make additional claims on both the city and governorate of Kirkuk, a city rich with oil resources.[7] Kurds are settled as far south as Khanaqin.

Once mainly nomadic or semi-nomadic, Kurdish society was characterized by a combination of urban centers, villages and pastoral tribes; by the 19th century, about 20 percent of Iraqi Kurds lived in historic Kurdish cities such as Kirkuk, Sulaymaniyah and Erbil.[8] Since the 1960s, the rapid growth of urban Kurdish areas has helped develop Kurdish nationalism.[9]

Historic Hardship

In 1922, a joint British-Iraqi declaration recognized the Kurds’ right to ‘form a Kurdish Government within the Iraqi frontiers.’  Despite Kurdish uprisings in 1919 and 1923, the League of Nations allocated the province to the new state for 25 years in 1925, with the recommendation that the Kurds should be granted a degree of autonomy and various cultural rights. These cultural rights were, in fact, granted, by the British occupying authorities. Once the British mandate came to an end in 1931, the Iraqi government sought to establish its control over the north; the Barzanis, led by Mustafa Barzani, revolted in 1922 and were crushed by the Royal Air Force. They rose up again in 1943 and eventually moved into Iran (during the Mahabad Republic).

The 1958 Revolution, when Iraq really became independent from Britain, defined Iraq as a country made up of ‘two peoples,’ the Arabs and the Kurds.[10]

In 1961 the Kurds launched a war of liberation to secure autonomy within the framework of the Republic. Between 1961 and 1968 the armed struggle waged by the Kurds caused the fall of four Iraqi regimes, until the Ba’ath came to power in July 1968.[11] In March of 1970 the new regime signed an agreement with the Kurdish leaders promising autonomy for Kurdistan in all areas of Iraq which a projected census would establish as having a mainly Kurdish population.  The census, which would have been decisive in the oil-rich Kirkuk area, was never carried out.

Conflict broke out once more in March of 1974 when the Baghdad government decided to implement unilaterally a restricted form of autonomy. The conflict, during which Kurds had the tactical support of the Iranian regime, and the covert support of the U.S., came to an end with the March 1975 Algiers agreements between Iran and Iraq; as a prisoner of its own alliances, the Kurdish movement, led by Barzani, opted for surrender.

Shortly thereafter, the Iraqi government implemented a policy of Arabization in the oil rich and the frontier Kurdish areas such as Kirkuk, Khanaqin and Sindjar.  Hundreds of thousands of Kurds, at a conservative estimate, were deported to the south or to the shrunken ‘autonomous region’ that the Baghdad government allocated to them.  Kurdish officials were transferred to Arab Iraq and replaced by Arab officials faithful to the government.  Towns and villages in parts of Kurdistan were renamed.

The autonomy of the Kurdish area was restricted to the operations of an executive body appointed by Baghdad and a legislative body following government guidelines.  Limited and spontaneous guerrilla activity broke out in the summer of 1976, and the Iraqi army upped its patrol.[12]

The Kurdish national movement underwent a profound crisis, which took the form of a split into three fractions: the Democratic Party of Kurdistan (provisional leadership), the Kurdistan Patriotic Union, and the Democratic Party of Kurdistan (preparatory committee).

The Kurds suffered immensely under Baathist rule, as is obvious from the vast scale of the aforementioned atrocities.  500,000 Kurds were murdered by Hussein’s regime, many of them during the brutal Anfal attacks, which marked the first usage of chemical weapons against civilians.  The scars of Anfal are still apparent today.  A large percentage of Halabja’s citizens suffer from aftereffects, which have included birth defects, infertility, neurological problems and cancer; lasting damage has been done to the region’s food and water supply; and a sizable portion of Halabja remains in ruins.  The Kurdistan region was also mined to an enormous extent under Hussein; the dictator consistently defied international efforts to remove the 10-22 million land mines that he planted in the north.  Since the end of the Gulf War, over 15,000 people have been killed or maimed by these mines.        

Ongoing Hardship

Iraqi Kurds have supported the U.S. war in Iraq and fear that the withdrawal of U.S. troops would leave the Kurdistan Region vulnerable to attack by the Turks, who continue to shell along the border. And while they have been critical of the fact that just 3 percent of the roughly $21 billion that has been allocated for Iraqi reconstruction has been spent in Kurdistan,[13] they are encouraged by the recently-established Iraqi Business Gateways project, which will promote Kurdistan as a stable and secure environment that is conducive to foreign investment.[14]

Other major issues of concern include: U.S. support of Iraqi-initiated national reconciliation efforts; equitable distribution of Iraqi national resource revenues through passage of the hydrocarbons law; integration of the city of Kirkuk into the Kurdistan Region through approval of a referendum on the issue; and replication of the economic success and relative stability of Iraqi Kurdistan through a federalist policy that affords other Iraqi regions comparable clout.[15]