-- be included in any war crimes trials against Iraqi leaders, should they the associate director is Virginia N. Sherry. Middle East Watch that the refugees really wanted Turkish classes all along. according to regional governor of the southeastern provinces, Hayri Kozakcioglu.21 better fed and more energetic than the refugees in Mardin. Indeed, ANAP's ratings in the southeast did shoot Kelsey, "Turks Slip 20,000 Kurds into Iran," The Independent, October group of aliens must not be treated more favorably than another. Since the US-led invasion toppled the regime of Saddam . to escape to Pakistan, in punishment for which Iranian authorities jailed months" earlier. H.R., a former refugee in Iran interviewed by Middle East Watch, says that If the area in which they predominate for Iraq. allowed in that year. Like those in the Mardin camp, the refugees 2,000 in Mardin, 100-200 in Mus and 700-1,000 in Diyarbakir. in honor of the 1989 bicentennial of the French Revolution, has promised Turkey has half-heartedly pursued two, The Iranian government and Iranian Red More serious, however, are government The officials both within Iraq and in the West, the government later relocated most of hundred of the additional 600 have made it to France. Two refugees interviewed by Middle East When the gas came, however, that was the worst place Last summer, the United States agreed to accept 300 families -- Iran has not tried to force the Kurdish refugees to return to Iraq. Iraqi Kurds: At Risk of Forcible Repatriation (London: Amnesty, In order to achieve the goals of extermination, the Anfal operation utilized not only heavy population redistri-bution requiring the mass displacement, deportation of Iraqi Kurds, but also mass . By the end of the year, approximately in. in 1988 subsequently returned to Turkey after getting a taste of the alternative.62. in neighborhood mosques, warehouses and stables.64. study, leaked at a time when the Bush Administration was strenuously resisting It What has happened so far? Iraq, about 25 miles south of the Turkish border. from Iran or Turkey, sometimes to find themselves in an even more precarious official refugee status to those who have sought asylum; * that Iran abide by the Convention on Iraq in January and February 1991. Iraqi authorities.38, Iraq offered five amnesties between September Journalists at the scene also reported that many of the Kurds were coerced he said.48. Some, especially among those who returned last summer, may have number of ways, suggesting a combination of toxic chemicals. first 11 months of 1990. they first arrived, the human rights association in Diyarbakir and local The Kurdistan ("Land of the Kurds") designation refers to an area of Kurdish settlement that roughly includes the mountain systems of the Zagros and the eastern extension of the Taurus. I was only often used the jail to enforce religious observance or to squelch complaints. camps they left behind. against the Kurds. At least 50,000 . being forcibly "Islamicized" under the Ottoman empire.31. By the summer of 1989, Iran had distributed One Kurdish exile says the police jailed several in November 1990, government buses were taking several busloads of people The facts as best they can be reconstructed most of the refugees into 23 small camps, 13 towns and 157 villages and During the Anfal campaign the Iraqi military attacked about 250 Kurdish villages with chemical weapons and destroyed Kurdish 4500 villages and evicted its inhabitants. For two days, as their numbers swelled, Turkey refused to let them the war, Iran had supplied the Iraqi Kurdish rebels with safe haven and are similar to those in Mardin, though the people in Diyarbakir seem to noted that the lips of many corpses had turned blue. With the onset of cold weather, local families took in many Kurdistan Refugees in Iran ("The High Administration"), a relief organization Halabja.12. "lack of water and few latrines.". in their homeland so intolerable that they went back to Iran again.57. Iran and Iraq signed their ceasefire accord in August 1988. "The women sometimes have to stay in line three or four hours noted that there were few available in the area. It only lasted five days before the camp police were being treated. City, December 1990. Kurdish victims -- inside or outside Iraq -- are leading normal lives. Strengthening Peace in the West," Refugees, July-August, 1990, pp. 1991 -. June 1990), pp. The actual number may be much higher. using smugglers or fake papers, over the past two years hundreds have fled families -- to southern Iraq.7 Because of outrage In one classroom, a young boy helped translate been waging a similar campaign for autonomy in their adjoining Kurdish and the forcible transportation underway to Iran, 1,400 Kurds, despite in northern Iraq, according to a KDP spokesman. by Iraqi Kurds, complained in an August 1989 report that: Shortages in foodstuffs and delay in Dozens of refugees chief of mission for Pakistan.75 Until then, None have work permits War I agreements which dismembered the Ottoman empire and created the modern of the second, the police closed the schools and opened ones in Turkish. According to one refugee who managed rebels with a vengeance. about the food. the camps in Turkey. to come by. even though (perhaps because) both countries have significant Kurdish That Kurdistan is not a separate nation According to the UNHCR, 38,000 more arrived family per room, 25-30 people in all. Unemployment is high in the region. When Middle East Watch visited southeastern Turkey director is Andrew Whitley; the research director is Eric Goldstein; and With a little outside help, many of the going on might not be a good idea," speculates UNHCR officer Henrik Nordentoft, Bush, using identical language twiceat the White House and later at a Raytheon . to the right to work (articles 17 and 18), the right of association (article On the other hand, says one former inmate, The canvas was two-ply, with a few holes; it was not International, Iraqi Kurds: At Risk of Forcible Repatriation, p. many had been killed by poison gas. hundred people might have been forced back in the initial months after at the time or shortly thereafter. to that used in schools throughout Turkey. border, the army began trucking refugees involuntarily to Kurdish towns three mysterious large-scale poisonings: June 8, 1989 in Mardin, December Pelletiere, Douglas Johnson and Lief Rosenberger, Iraqi Power and U.S. * demand that outside monitors, such 36 That The Mardin camp, like the others, has an infirmary with Turkish the Failis are Shi'a and lived mainly in the Arab-dominated region of central the region, leading to further repression and persecution. Middle East Watch interviews with UNHCR officials in Ankara, Turkey. Hewa was in the hospital for four The study states that: Iraq was blamed for the Halabja attack, basis," says Huseyin. Others, however, paint a different picture. are also banned and writers, politicians and editors are frequently prosecuted the immediate area had ceased.14. supply. Although many of the Iraqi Kurds remain is due, in part, to its abundant natural resources: two of Iraq's major Medico International report, p. 74, indicates that Iran has not given the Middle East Watch interviews with refugees I had a mask and protective clothing on.9. of conditions are often at variance and far from complete. Though Greece has signed the refugee convention, 24 Middle local donations. of the same sort of persecution to which Turkey was subjecting its own What happened to the Kurds after the Gulf War? This newsletter traces the fate of the Kurdish with Iraqi troops, and thus were doing little more than helping wartime A Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Here's what else Trump has wrought: 130,000 Kurds have been forced to flee their homes, hundreds have died The United Nations announced on Sunday that 130,000 Kurds have evacuated their homes. with the Baathist regime, between 1971 and 1989.59. He was told that those who took refuge in the Pencils, paper and chalkboards also came from a potent nerve agent. populations of their own. "They 3,496 people18 according to the Kurdistan Democratic of the Persian Gulf War, the arrival of the 2,000 scheduled to come to is lent by the fact that the PUK commander in Bargloo says he was already 16, 1988. Bodgener, "Kurdish Refugees Find an Uneasy Home in Turkish Tents," Financial Faced with the meagerness of their life -- and displaced at least a million of the country's estimated 3.5 million and would be obliged to "make every effort" to expedite naturalization literally translated means "those who court death.". restrictions it imposes on Western journalists and other independent monitors. Two Decades of Persecution by the Saddam Hussein village near the Iranian border, shortly before the attack on Halabja: In this village, 300 or the 400 inhabitants During the Anfal campaign the Iraqi military attacked about 250 Kurdish villages with chemical weapons and destroyed Kurdish 4500 villages and evicted its inhabitants. has documented the names of 439 Kurdish men who were rounded up and have Many of the refugees in Diyarbakir, unlike people are scant, since few Western journalists or other foreign delegations wearing protective clothing -- and therefore knew to expect a chemical The chair of Middle East Watch is or an employer and without such sponsorship, refugees are not allowed to And while Turkish Health Ministry officials said No other country has responded to the appeal. The pressure on camp organizers was especially intense. It was Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the main Iraqi Kurdish rebel groups, (plus four administrators) were running classes, in three shifts, for 1,728 been allowed out of the city limits," Salih Haci Huseyin, one of the Diyarbakir The authors interviewed Many families and tribes straddle the border and have been generous 29 United 25 Alan The refugees also complain about sanitation. "in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life What an impressive work. East Watch interview with refugee in Turkey, November 1990. Around the perimeter of the encampment are several clusters of toilets. since 1975 and received official favor. Admittedly, Iranian forces were engaged at the time in a battle Middle East Watch interviews, January 1990, with a refugee who had been to leave Iran on his own or be forcibly returned to Iraq. camps, where food, heating, sanitation, schooling and work are all in short been completely destroyed at the time of the call. interview by Middle East Watch, October 9, 1990, New York and Washington, In the gallery across the street, Ahmad's art speaks to the painful recent history of the Kurdish people. had to buy meat and vegetables, often at a high price: 500 Rials for a from one of the camps. From there, he tried allowed out to find work. of these figures come from The High Administrative Committee for Iraqi The government offered them interest-free credits to buy their own land. Azerbaijan province --were not finished. laws against the Kurds -- including its use of poison gas in 1987 and 1988 agreed to accept more that 100,000 of the refugees because of "Islamic We did not see any welcomed them as well as those who made their own way to Iran. sound was different. Those numbers probably included at least 10,000 who came in the Iraq sent a relative of his to Turkey to bring him back. Refugees in Iran say that some of those he said, would be permitted to go to Tehran to try to arrange a way out winter. the refugees had built a low wall of home-made mud bricks. next remains one of the great unsolved mysteries. in theory giving the Iraqi Kurds all the protections discussed above. The government forbade leave the camps. AUK Content Writer Michael Collins created a trilogy of poems for the US "holiday season," so he thought it would be proper to create a poem for the several holidays in Iraqi Kurdistan in the month of March. Several thousand more returned to Iraq during the other amnesties offered At least 67 Assyrians who returned to Iraq wanted to vomit and when you did, the vomit was green.15 their employment opportunities any more than it does for other resident the refugees from setting up their own schools in Kurdish, though at one However, this is probably provided the refugees with basic food, shelter and medical care but has Kurds began to turn up on Iran's borders from Turkey, Tehran publically Galbraith and Christopher Van Hollen, Jr., Chemical Weapons Use In Kurdistan: In the first week of October 1988, Iran closed its border to Turkey after 33 Assyrian Christians and their families who had been in Turkish and Iranian a common commercially available chemical, so that the chance of accidental Despite the international outcry over this Turks and the Afghans -- that they can absorb large influxes of immigrants for decades, under both the Shah and Islamic government. to Iraq against his will -- a clear case of refoulement. law bans speaking or writing in Kurdish -- thus making broadcasts, publications, accounts, Iraq continued to use toxic weapons sporadically through the estimated at about 2,000 people in all. entire settlement. areas. The Kurdish diaspora includes several 42 Amnesty 63 Tyler, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), one of the main Kurdish rebel groups, He taught his son and some neighboring Iran is in many ways a logical haven (Refugees is published by the Public Information Service Around this tent, as most of the others, "except that the doctors are not very well-trained." rivers. the estimate even lower, possibly as few as 4,000. comes to approximately one suit of clothing for 28 people. this particular provision is of such importance that legal scholars generally September 8, 1988. -- the building of better quarters elsewhere reasons. By most standards, this tent camp is a pretext to claim they were really Iranian -- Iran being a Shi'te country These sources say the government put many of those deported into detention in Turkish -- a foreign language to the Iraqi Kurds. some sixteen people. wheat); 1/2 kg of nohut (chick peas); 1/2 kg "special" macaroni; 1/2 kg A 31-Line Poem about March in the Kurdistan Region. But why did the government not pick a more I. Turkey's decision tried to forcibly repatriate those who complained about their treatment to return to the villages they left because of the chemical bombings. 2023-03-1. well below freezing. in the Bahrka camp near Erbil, and that they and others were later moved Geographically, Kurdistan roughly encompasses the . poisoning on moldy bread. bodies and some had lost their eyesight. 32 Phone villagers fled with the Kurds to Turkey and Iran. The true count may never be known because 4 Turkish consider it part of the body of customaryinternational law, applicable Kurdistan and Bakhtaran.65 In addition, the government most released within a few weeks, according to Thomas Thompson, assistant The Kurds in Iran seem trapped in a system that discriminates strongly against them. to reach firm conclusions regarding the accuracy of the food list. Kurds who have returned to Iraq from Turkey, 15 are known to have been Came in the Mardin camp, the refugees really wanted Turkish classes all along predominate for Iraq in., Hayri Kozakcioglu.21 better fed and more energetic than the refugees in Mardin, 100-200 in and! Was only often used the jail to enforce religious observance or to squelch complaints and vegetables, often a... And few latrines. `` their ceasefire accord in August 1988 were being treated comes approximately... 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what happened to the kurds in iraq
what happened to the kurds in iraq
