The Ba'athist Arabization campaigns in northern Iraq were part of a large-scale effort in demographic engineering undertaken by the erstwhile Iraqi government, which had aimed to shift the country's population in a way that would render non-Arabs subjugated under Arab hegemony. While comprising the ethnic majority on a national scale, the Arab population is a regional minority in northern Iraq; this region of the country (also known as Iraqi Kurdistan) is where Iraqi ethnic minorities are concentrated. In order to Arabize the north, the government adopted a policy in line with settler colonialism, allotting land in the north to Arab settlers. The campaigns also involved ethnic cleansing, primarily targeting Kurds, but also Turkmen, Yazidis, Assyrians, Shabaks, Mandaeans, and Armenians, among others. In 1978 and 1979, 600 Kurdish villages were burned down and around 200,000 Kurds were deported to other parts of Iraq.
The campaigns took place as part of the Iraqi–Kurdish conflict, motivated by historical ethno-cultural friction between Arabs and Kurds. The Ba'athist policies that motivated these events are sometimes referred to as internal colonialism, described by Ghanaian-Canadian scholar Francis Kofi Abiew as a "Colonial 'Arabization'" program, including large-scale Kurdish deportations and forced Arab settlement in the region.
Background
The Yazidis, the Shabaks and the Assyrians are minorities in Iraq and historically were concentrated in northern Iraq, and they are still sizeable populations there in the early 21st century, in line with more prominent ethnic groups of Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs.
Under the Iraqi Hashemite monarchy as well as the subsequent Republican regime, Yazidis were discriminated against: measures applied included the loss of land, military repression and efforts to force them into the central state's struggle against the Kurdish National Movement.
Policies
Displacement of minorities and Arab settlement
From early 1979, under Saddam Hussein, both Kurds and Yazidis were confronted with village destruction, depopulation and deportation. Kurdish displacement in the North in the mid-1970s mostly took place in Sheikhan and Sinjar regions but also covered an area stretching from the town of Khanaqin. The repressive measures carried out by the government against the Kurds after the 1975 Algiers Agreement led to renewed clashes between the Iraqi Army and Kurdish guerrillas in 1977. In 1978 and 1979, 600 Kurdish villages were burned down, and around 200,000 Kurds were deported to the other parts of the country.
Arabization concentrated on moving Arabs to the vicinity of oil fields in northern Iraq, particularly the ones around Kirkuk. The Ba'athist government was also responsible for driving out at least 70,000 Kurds from the Mosul’s western half, thus making western Mosul into all Sunni Arab. In Sinjar, in late 1974, the former Committee for Northern Affairs ordered the confiscation of property, the destruction of the mostly Yezidi villages and the forced settlement into 11 new towns with Arab placenames that were constructed 30–40 km north or south of Sinjar, or other parts of Iraq. There were 37 Yezidi villages destroyed in the process and five neighbourhoods in Sinjar Arabized in 1975. The same year, 413 Muslim Kurd and Yezidi farmers were dispossessed of their lands by the government or had their agricultural contracts cancelled and replaced by Arab settlers. In Sheikhan in 1975, 147 out of a total of 182 villages suffered forced displacement, and 64 villages were handed over to Arab settlers in the years following. Seven new towns were built in Sheikhan to house the displaced Yezidi and Kurdish residents of Arabized villages.
As part of the Al-Anfal Campaign, during the Iran–Iraq War, Saddam's regime destroyed 3,000 to 4,000 villages and drove hundreds of thousands of Kurds to become refugees or be resettled across Iraq, as well as Assyrians and Turkmen. Some 100,000 people were killed or died during the al-Anfal campaign, which is often equated to ethnic cleansing and genocide. The forced campaign of Arabization also attempted to transform the multi-ethnic city of Kirkuk, with a Turkmen plurality, into an Arab majority city.
In the 1990s, the distribution of land to Arab settlers was resumed and continued until the fall of the Ba'ath regime, in 2003.
Cultural and political Arabization
In the Iraqi censuses in 1977 and 1987, Yezidis were forced to register as Arabs. Some Muslim Kurds were also forced to register as Arabs in 1977.