Minorities in Iraq
Member State of the Arab League Minorities in Iraq have been incredibly influential to the history of the country, and consist of various ethnic and religious groups.
Under the Kingdom of Iraq, Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani led a rebellion against the central government in Baghdad in 1945.
When the Ba'ath Party took power in Iraq, the new government, in order to end the Kurdish revolt, granted the Kurds their own limited autonomy.
For this, Iraq was widely condemned by the international community, but was never seriously punished for oppressive measures, including the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds, which resulted in thousands of deaths.
After the Persian Gulf War, the Kurds began another uprising against the Ba'athists and established the autonomous Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq, which was never recognized by the Iraqi government until 2005.
[1] During the same year, Turkey, fighting Kurds on its on territory, bombed Kurdish areas in Northern Iraq, claiming that bases for the terrorist Kurdistan Workers Party were located in the region.
Nouri al-Maliki was at loggerheads with the leader of ethnic Kurds, who brandished the threat of secession in a growing row over the symbolic issue of flying the Iraqi national flag at government buildings in the autonomous Kurdish north.
But Mesud Barzani, president of the Iraqi Kurdistan region, told the Kurdish parliament the national leadership were "failures" and that the Iraqi flag was a symbol of his people's past oppression by Baghdad: "If at any moment we, the Kurdish people and parliament, consider that it is in our interests to declare independence, we will do so and we will fear no one."
[10] Yezidism has roots in a western Pre-Zoroastrian religion, and is based in the belief that the world was created by God to be entrusted in the care of seven angels.
They are known for being very wealthy businessmen, bankers, merchants, politicians, senators, highly educated and dominated the politics and economy of Iraq especially during the 30s until the 70s.
On 7 May 1980, Saddam Hussein signed decree number 666 which legalized and ordered the confiscation, forced deportation, exile and detention of Feyli Kurds.
[20] The Turkmen/Turkoman minority mainly reside in northern and central Iraq, in the so-called Turkmeneli region – which is a political term used by the Turkmen/Turkoman to define the vast swath of territory in which they have historically had a dominant population.
[28] In particular, the Turkmen/Turkoman consider the capital of Turkmeneli to be Kirkuk and its boundaries also include Tal Afar, Mosul, Erbil, Mandali, and Tuz Khurmatu.
[32] They are predominately Muslims, formed of a majority Sunni population (about 60%-70%) but there is also a significant number of Turkmen/Turkoman practicing the Shia branch of Islam (about 30% to 40%).
More generally speaking, the Assyrians (like the Mandaeans) are the descendants of the ancient Mesopotamians (Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, Babylon, Adiabene, Osroene and Hatra).
[44] This would be the catalyst for the Simele massacre, led by Bakr Sidqi that lasted for several days, with killings and lootings in Assyrian villages.
[45] The massacre had drastic consequences for Assyrians in the new state, propelling sectarian divisions through the creation of separate Chaldean and Syriac identities, and acting as a basis for military involvement in Iraqi politics, which has re-emerged as a continuous pattern since 1958.
[46][47] Although Assyrians experienced a relative period of calm during the Qasimist-era, they continued to come under persecution during Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime.
[48] Additionally, Hussein appointed Assyrian politicians, namely Tariq Aziz, to high positions in the Ba'ath government.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees reports that half a million Iraqi Christians have registered for temporary asylum in Syria.
[51] Reports published in the 1990s indicated that greater levels of freedom for Assyrians existed under the authority of the Kurdish Regional Government, however human rights violations continued.
The lack of stability left Assyrians open to violence due to their faith, exacerbating the threat of ethnic cleansing by insurgent groups.
[55][56][57] The deaths of Chaldean Catholic clergy Ragheed Ganni and Paulos Faraj Rahho are also testaments to the violence that Assyrians faced as Iraq became more sectarian following the deposal of Saddam Hussein.
The cemetery was transferred to another location in the Shi'ite neighborhood of Sadr City, under supervision of the government and Saddam paid the amount for relocation.
[76]: 4 [77]: 4 The Mandaeans were originally native speakers of Mandaic, an Eastern Aramaic language, before many switched to colloquial Iraqi Arabic.
The Iraqi Mandaean community, in the pre-1990 Gulf War period, was the most important in the world with 30,000–50,000[78] of the 70,000 total living in the country mainly in the area around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
They gained large protection from the Ba'ath Party against persecution with the Ba'athist regime helping pay for the construction of Mandi's in Iraq, Saddam Hussein even allocated the land owned by the Iraqi ministry of finance to the Mandaeans in the 1980s, granting the Mandaeans a free 1,200 square meters of land, which allowed for the construction of the Sabian–Mandaean Mandi of Baghdad.
Iraq's Roma (Kawliya) ethnic minority was looked down upon as second-class citizens under Ba'ath party rule.
The Iraqis of largely African descent live mostly around the city of Basra, having been brought to the region as slaves over one thousand years ago to work the sugarcane plantations then in existence.
In the mid-9th century, black slaves around Basra rose in a rebellion, conquering their former masters and ruling the city for 15 years before being put down by forces sent by the Caliph in Baghdad.
