Human rights in pre-Saddam Iraq were often lacking to various degrees among the various regimes that ruled the country. Human rights abuses in the country predated the rule of Saddam Hussein.
Assyrian historian Eden Naby writes that the relations between Assyrians and Kurds have been marked by a "bitter history", since Kurdish tribal chiefs in Iraq, southeastern Turkey, northeastern Syria, and northwest Iran regularly attacked and plundered Christian tribes, and during World War I Kurds were "responsible for most of the atrocities committed against the Assyrians in particular, due to proximity and a long tradition of perceived Kurdish rights to pillage Assyrian Christians and carry away women and goods", and that "Kurdish expansion happened at the expense of Assyrians". In 1918, a Kurdish chieftain and his tribe assassinated the Patriarch of the Church of the East at the negotiation dinner. [1] [2] [3] It is known that the Iraqi Kurdistan have accepted more than 200,000 Christians refugees and IDPs who had fled from Arab areas between 2012 and 2016. [4] It is also known that security officers and authorities who work for Barzani tribe and his political party, the KDP, have frequently abused some local Christians and IDPs for not being "enough" loyal to them.
From the mid 19th century, "the Kurds carried out numerous massacres of Nestorians, culminating in 1915-1918 with the murder of about half of all the Nestorians and their patriarch Mar Shimun XIX - a genocide proportionally similar to the massacre of the Armenians." [5] The important Rabban Hormizd Monastery and the Mar Mattai monastery in Iraq was plundered countless times by the Kurds. [6] Nestorian libraris were destroyed by Turks and Kurds over the course of centuries. [7] The Kurds murdered thousands of women and men, slicing off the ears of the dead and sending them to Badr Khan, and young women were sold as slaves. [8] The Kurds also forcibly took possession of churches and convents, and they constantly abducted virgins, brides and women, forcing them to turn Muslim. [9] Most notable are the first genocide carried out by Turks and Kurds in the period 1894 1896, [10] and in 1915–1918. [11] The Kurd Agha Simko assassinated the patriarch Mar Shimun XXI Benyamin. [12]
In the 1920s, when Britain held a mandate from the League of Nations (predecessor of the United Nations), British occupational forces, under the command of Arthur Harris, used mustard gas and delayed action bombing to suppress Iraqi resistance to British rule, leading to numerous civilian casualties. [13]
The Hashemite monarchy that took over Iraq from the British has been described as imperfect in terms of human rights, but in many ways better than the regimes that followed:
Prime ministers, and at one point the leaders of a military coup, had enormous influence during the era of the monarchy, and civil rights varied at different points. According to a United States Library of Congress history of Iraq: [15]
In 1915, facing massacres that led to the deaths of up to two-thirds of the Assyrians in southeastern Turkey and northern Iran, about 50,000 survivors streamed over the border into northern Iraq, which was largely populated by Kurds and Turkomen. The refugees were housed in British-run refugee camps. Similar upheavals in 1918 in Iran led to more flows of refugees into Iraq, where Assyrian communities already had existed for centuries. These influxes led to decades of ethnic conflict. [16]
Under the British mandate, Assyrians were organized into militia groups called "the Assyrian Levies" and were used to put down revolts and support the British military presence in Iraq. The Assyrians were abandoned by the British once Iraq achieved independence in 1933. In the summer of that year an armed group of 800 Assyrians crossed from Iraq into Syria, where there were many other Assyrians, to "assert what they perceived as their legitimate national rights", according to Jonathan Eric Lewis, a political analyst. French colonial authorities in Syria forced them back into Iraq where the Iraqi military attacked them. On August 7, "the Iraqi army and Kurdish irregulars, with genuine popular support, committed a massacre at Simele." According to Assyrian sources, the dead numbered 3,000 (other estimates put the number in the "hundreds". [17] "No event has shaped Iraqi Assyrian collective identity more", Lewis wrote. [16]
Assyrians have suffered persecution during the early 20th century, mainly at the hands of Kurdish tribes who persecuted them as individual tribes (Shakkak), and as Muslim allies of the Committee on Union and Progress working through the Ottoman armies during World War I, and later as Kurds who took part in the 1933 Simele massacre of Assyrians. [18] In the early 1930s, the Iraqi ministries disseminated leaflets among the Kurds calling them to massacre Assyrians. This call appealed to Islamic convictions and united Arabs and Kurds against the infidel Christians. Shortly before the August 11 Simmele massacre in 1933, Kurds began a campaign of looting against Assyrian settlements. The Assyrians fled to Simele, where they were also persecuted. There were many accounts by witnesses of numerous atrocities perpetrated by Arabs and Kurds on Assyrian women. Under the command of Kurdish chieftain Bakr Sidqi on August 11 the perpetrators committed the Simele massacre which targeted men almost exclusively. Under the leadership of the Kurdish General Bakr Sidqi Kurds, Arabs and others united and committed the Simele massacre against Christian Assyrians and plundered their towns, and raped and murdered women and children. [19] Since the 16th century after Sultan Selim I brought the Kurds and settled them in Assyrian lands, the Ottoman Empire began using Kurdish tribes to kill Christian Assyrians and Armenians systematically. In the beginning of World War I the Kurdish tribes, and which formed a Kurdish cavalry force in the Ottoman army known as the ""Hamidian Cavalry"" headed to the Assyrian plain villages in the east of what is today known as Turkey as well as the Assyrian villages in Tur Abdin and Hakkari and killed thousands of Assyrians. The Assyrian Patriarch Mar Binyamin Shimon (who was later assassinated by a Kurd) declared that the Assyrians joined the war on Russia's side in self-defence and for liberation. [20]
In the decade following the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy in 1958, various regimes ruled the country, each responsible for the government's treatment of its citizens and for protecting citizens, until the 1968 coup that brought the Ba'ath Party to power with Saddam Hussein as one of the coup leaders: [21]
The second regime of the Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party began with a coup in July 1968, with Saddam Hussein, one of the leaders of the coup, growing in power and eventually assuming the presidency of the country in 1979. He was overthrown in the United States-led invasion of 2003.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Iraqis and many other Arabs often supported the idea of a strong leader "along the lines of Stalin or Mao, Ho Chi Minh or Castro" who would act as "a political savior", acting with great power, a sense of mission and ruling with justice. Saladin, the eleventh-century Islamic hero who defeated the Crusaders, was looked on as a model and even Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, was viewed as a leader from whom an example could be drawn. In Iraq, many felt a strong leader was needed to hold the country together despite its ethnic divisions and other problems. [14]
The 1958 military coup that overthrew the Hashemite monarchy brought to power members of "rural groups that lacked the cosmopolitan thinking found among Iraqi elites". Iraq's new leaders had an "exclusivist mentality [that] produced tribal conflict and rivalry, which in turn called forth internal oppression [...]" [14]
According to Shafeeq N. Ghabra, a professor of political science at Kuwait University, and, in 2001, director of the Kuwait Information Office in Washington D.C.: [22]
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis fled the country within four years of the 1958 revolution. [14] In 1959 there was a massacre committed against the Iraqi Turkmen, known as the Kirkuk Massacre. [23]
Assyrians fared rather well under the five-year regime, but since Baathist rule began again in 1968, they fared much worse, according to Jonathan Eric Lewis. "As Baathist power increased, Assyrian influence and rights within Iraq decreased," he wrote in 2003. [16]
A power struggle developed among the coup leaders Brigadier Abd al Karim Qasim and Colonel Abd as Salaam Arif. Arif's pro-Nasserite sympathies were supported by the Baath Party, while Qasim found support for his anti-union position in the ranks of the communists. Qasim eventually emerged victorious, first dismissing Arif, then bringing him to trial for treason. He was condemned to death in January 1959, then pardoned in December 1962. [24]
Aware of plotting for a coup by officers opposed to Qasim's increasing links with the communists, Qasim had his communist allies mobilize 250,000 of their supporters in Mosul in March 1959. The coup attempt never materialized, but the communists massacred nationalists and some well-to-do Mosul families. As a result of the killings, and a riot in Kirkuk, Baath Party leaders decided assassination was the only way to dislodge Qasim. Their attempt to kill him, led by Saddam Hussein, failed while injuring Qasim, and the dictator reacted by aligning himself more with the communists and by suppressing the Baath and other nationalist parties. But by 1960 and 1961, Qasim decided the communists had become too strong and he moved against them, purging communists from sensitive government positions, cracking down on trade unions and on peasant associations, and shutting down the communist press. [24]
After Qasim was overthrown in 1963, the Baath Party took over. The party was small, with only 1,000 active members, and lacked a coherent program, having been held together largely by opposition to Qasim. Saadi, the leader of the Baathists, established a one-party state with little tolerance for opposing views. The Baath was overthrown by November 1963 in a military coup led by a small group of officers. For the next five years power shifted among the officers until 1968, when another coup brought the Baath back to power. [24]
When the Baathists came back to power, two men, Saddam Hussein and Bakr, increasingly dominated the party. Although Bakr was the older and more prestigious of the two, by 1969 Saddam "clearly had become the moving force behind the party." [25]
Human rights violations in Iraq often came from conflicts between the country's rulers and members of distinct ethnic communities, especially the Kurds and Shiite Arabs, although Sunni Arabs, members of the minority that filled the top positions in the regimes after 1958 and through Saddam's years in power, could feel the wrath of the rulers for reasons unrelated to ethnic conflict. [14]
Ghabra has called the treatment of the Shi'a one of the worst political mistakes of the regimes after 1958. Writing in 2001, Ghabra said the post-1958 regimes dismissed the "Shi'a majority and its rights, alienating them despite their commitment to Iraq." [26]
In the regimes that followed the 1958 overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy, human rights violations in Kurdistan occurred frequently as Kurdish nationalism conflicted with the goals of various Iraqi regimes, causing violence to break out when political negotiations broke down: [27]
Saddam Hussein was an Iraqi politician and revolutionary who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 1979 to 2003. He also served as prime minister of Iraq from 1979 to 1991 and later from 1994 to 2003. He was a leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party and later its Iraqi regional branch. Ideologically, he espoused Ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, while the policies and political ideas he championed are collectively known as Saddamism.
Kirkuk is a city in Iraq, serving as the capital of the Kirkuk Governorate, located 238 kilometres north of Baghdad. The city is home to a diverse population of Kurds, Iraqi Turkmens and Arabs. Kirkuk sits on the ruins of the original Kirkuk Citadel which sits near the Khasa River.
Iraq under the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party saw severe violations of human rights. Secret police, state terrorism, torture, mass murder, genocide, ethnic cleansing, rape, deportations, extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, assassinations, chemical warfare, and the destruction of the Mesopotamian marshes were some of the methods Saddam Hussein and the country's Ba'athist government used to maintain control. Saddam committed crimes of aggression during the Iran–Iraq War and the Gulf War, which violated the Charter of the United Nations. The total number of deaths and disappearances related to repression during this period is unknown, but is estimated to be at least 250,000 to 290,000 according to Human Rights Watch, with the great majority of those occurring as a result of the Anfal genocide in 1988 and the suppression of the uprisings in Iraq in 1991. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issued regular reports of widespread imprisonment and torture.
Abdul-Karim Qasim Muhammad Bakr al-Fadhli al-Zubaidi was an Iraqi military officer and nationalist leader who came to power in 1958 when the Iraqi monarchy was overthrown during the 14 July Revolution. He ruled the country as the prime minister until his downfall and execution during the 1963 Ramadan Revolution.
Bakr Sidqi al-Askari was an Iraqi general of Kurdish origin, born in 1890 and assassinated on 11 August 1937, in Mosul.
Iraqi Assyrians are an ethnic and linguistic minority group, indigenous to Upper Mesopotamia. They are defined as Assyrians residing in the country of Iraq, or members of the Assyrian diaspora who are of Iraqi-Assyrian heritage. They share a common history and ethnic identity, rooted in shared linguistic, cultural and religious traditions, with Assyrians in Iran, Turkey and Syria, as well as with the Assyrian diaspora elsewhere. A significant number have emigrated to the United States, notably to the Detroit and Chicago; a sizeable community is also found in Sydney, Australia.
Minorities in Iraq have been incredibly influential to the history of the country, and consist of various ethnic and religious groups. The largest minority group in Iraq is the Kurds, with Turkmen following shortly after. Prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Assyrians constituted a sizeable population of 1.5 million, and belonged to various different churches such as the Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church, and the Syriac Orthodox/Catholic Churches. Other minority groups in Iraq include Armenians, Mandaeans, Baha'i, and Marsh Arabs, among others.
The Simele massacre, also known as the Assyrian affair, was committed by the Kingdom of Iraq, led by Bakr Sidqi, during a campaign systematically targeting the Assyrians in and around Simele in August 1933.
The Christians of Iraq are considered to be one of the oldest continuous Christian communities in the world.
The Ramadan Revolution, also referred to as the 8 February Revolution and the February 1963 coup d'état in Iraq, was a military coup by the Iraqi branch of the Ba'ath Party which overthrew the Prime Minister of Iraq, Abdul-Karim Qasim in 1963. It took place between 8 and 10 February 1963. Qasim's former deputy, Abdul Salam Arif, who was not a Ba'athist, was given the largely ceremonial title of President, while prominent Ba'athist general Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr was named Prime Minister. The most powerful leader of the new government was the secretary general of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, Ali Salih al-Sa'di, who controlled the National Guard militia and organized a massacre of hundreds—if not thousands—of suspected communists and other dissidents following the coup.
The Assyrian independence movement is a political movement and ethno-nationalist desire of ethnic Assyrians to live in their indigenous Assyrian homeland in northern Mesopotamia under the self-governance of an Assyrian State.
After World War I, Iraq passed from the failing Ottoman Empire to British control. Kingdom of Iraq was established under the British Mandate in 1932. In the 14 July Revolution of 1958, the king was deposed and the Republic of Iraq was declared. In 1963, the Ba'ath Party staged a coup d'état and was in turn toppled by another coup in the same year, but managed to retake power in 1968. Saddam Hussein took power in 1979 and ruled Iraq for the remainder of the century, during the Iran–Iraq War of the 1980s, the Invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf War of 1990 to 1991 and the UN sanction during the 1990s. Saddam was removed from power in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party, usually abbreviated as KDP or PDK, is the ruling party in Iraqi Kurdistan and the senior partner in the Kurdistan Regional Government. It was founded in 1946 in Mahabad in Iranian Kurdistan. The party states that it combines "democratic values and social justice to form a system whereby everyone in Kurdistan can live on an equal basis with great emphasis given to rights of individuals and freedom of expression."
Iraqi nationalism is a form of nationalism that asserts the belief that Iraqis form a nation and promotes the cultural unity of Iraqis of different ethnoreligious groups such as Mesopotamian Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens, Assyrians, Yazidis, Mandeans, Shabaks and Yarsans.
The Iraqi Republic, colloquially known as the First Iraqi Republic, as well as Qasimist Iraq (1958–1963) and Nasserist Iraq (1963–1968), was a state forged in 1958 under the rule of President Muhammad Najib ar-Ruba'i and Prime Minister Abdul-Karim Qasim. ar-Ruba'i and Qasim first came to power through the 14 July Revolution in which the Kingdom of Iraq's Hashemite dynasty was overthrown. As a result, the Kingdom and the Arab Federation were dissolved and the Iraqi republic established. Arab nationalists later took power and overthrew Qasim in the Ramadan Revolution in February 1963, and then Nasserists consolidated their power after another coup in November 1963. The era ended with the Ba'athist rise to power in a coup in July 1968.
The First Iraqi–Kurdish War, also known as the September Revolution, was a major event of the Iraqi–Kurdish conflict, lasting from 1961 until 1970. The struggle was led by Mustafa Barzani, in an attempt to establish an independent Kurdistan. Throughout the 1960s, the uprising escalated into a long war, which failed to resolve despite internal power changes in Iraq. During the war, 80% of the Iraqi army was engaged in combat with the Kurds. The war ended with a stalemate in 1970, resulting in between 75,000 to 105,000 casualties. A series of Iraqi–Kurdish negotiations followed the war in an attempt to resolve the conflict. The negotiations led to the Iraqi–Kurdish Autonomy Agreement of 1970.
The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region, officially the Iraqi Regional Branch, is an Iraqi Ba'athist political party founded in 1951 by Fuad al-Rikabi. It was the Iraqi regional branch of the original Ba'ath Party, before changing its allegiance to the Iraqi-dominated Ba'ath movement following the 1966 split within the original party. The party was officially banned following the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, but despite this it still continues to function underground.
Between 1968 and 2003, the ruling Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party of the Iraqi Republic perpetrated multiple campaigns of demographic engineering against the country's non-Arabs. While Arabs constitute the majority of Iraq's population as a whole, they are not the majority in parts of northern Iraq, and a minority in Iraqi Kurdistan. In an attempt to Arabize the north, the Iraqi government pursued a policy of ethnic cleansing, killing and forcefully displacing a large number of Iraqi minorities—predominantly Kurds, but also Turkmen, Yazidis, Assyrians, Shabaks and Armenians, among others—and subsequently allotting the cleared land to Arab settlers. In 1978 and 1979 alone, 600 Kurdish villages were burned down and around 200,000 Kurds were deported to other parts of Iraq.
Ali Salih al-Sa'di was an Iraqi politician. He was General Secretary of the Iraqi branch of the Baath Party from the late 1950s until the November 1963 Iraqi coup d'état. From February 8, 1963 until the November 1963 Iraqi coup d'état, he was Deputy Prime Minister under Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, Minister of the Interior and as Commander of the National Guard.
Qasimism is an Iraqi nationalist ideology based on the thoughts and policies of Abd al-Karim Qasim, who ruled Iraq from 1958 until 1963.
