The persecution campaigns led to the expulsion, flight and effective exile of the Feyli Kurds from their ancestral lands in Iraq.
On 7 May 1980, Saddam Hussein signed decree number 666 which legalized and ordered the confiscation, forced deportation, exile and detention of Feyli Kurds.
Saddam justified the decree by accusing Feyli Kurds of having "foreign origin" and "disloyalty to the people and father land and to the political and social principles of the Revolution".
The deportees were not allowed to take with them anything apart from the clothes they were wearing when they were picked up from their homes, schools, government offices, workplaces, shops and military units.
[11] In 2006, the spokesman of Kurdistan Alliance, Muayad al-Tayeb, called on Iraqi and Kurdish parliaments to support Feyli refugees, stating that "Feyli Kurds have been subjected to persecution for three reasons, first because they are Kurds, second they are from the Shiite sect and third because they are patriotic people and joined the Kurdish and Iraqi national movement.