Shafaq The “Revolution Command Council”, the highest ruling body in Iraq under the Baath era made a decision (Decision 666) directed mainly against Faily Kurds in Iraq...

Decision 666 was obviously a political decision taken on the highest level of the state in Iraq. It was dated 7/5/1980 and published in the official Gazette (al-Waqa’I al-Iraqiya) Number 2776 on 26/5/1980 (http://www.faylee.org/english). However, deportations began on 4/4/1980 when prominent Faily Kurd businessmen, merchants and importers were invited by Baghdad Chamber of Commerce to a meeting to discuss new import quotas. Once there, the doors and windows of the meeting hall were closed. They were rounded up and taken to the General Security Headquarters, questioned, stripped of their ID cards and other papers, money and everything else except the clothes they were wearing and then deported to Iran. Their families did not know anything then about what had happened to them. This was the start of the mass-deportation that followed and lasted for more than a decade from 1980 until 1990 and later.

This decision had no legal ground in Iraqi law, as the verdict passed by the Supreme Iraqi Tribunal on November 29, 2010 has shown.

It is against the United Nations Charter. It is a violation of The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 16, 1966, and in force from March 23, 1976. It is also a violation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 16 December 1966, and in force from 3 January 1976.

Decision 666 was taken to punish Faily Kurds for opposing the regime, for actively supporting the Kurdish Movement and the other opposition groups and for being the dynamic middle and wealthy class in Iraq. To begin and justify the mass deportation of more than half a million Iraqi nationals the bulk of them Faily Kurds, the regime used a well-staged “incident” involving Tariq Aziz and a trumped-up accusation that a Faily Kurd student, who was killed on the spot, was the supposed “assassin”. But in fact these deportations were well planned in advance and were on a very large scale. They were also part of the regime’s preparations for war with Iran after the “Islamic Revolution” in 1979. The “Revolution Command Council” the highest decision making body in Iraq under the Baath totalitarian regime issued Decision No. 666 of 7/5/1980 signed by Saddam Hussein himself. It decided, firstly, to nullify the Iraqi nationality and citizenship of every Iraqi “of foreign origin” if it is shown that “he is not loyal to the fatherland and the people and the supreme nationalistic and social objectives of the revolution”, and secondly to deport them from the country by the Ministry of the Interior. Consequently, more than 120 000 Faily Kurds families (between 500 000 and 600 000) of a total of 135 000 families were forcibly deported from Iraq (according to Ali Hussein Faily, member of the Kurdistan Regional Parliament, the Interior Ministry in Baghdad has a CD containing the names of 135000 deportee Iraqi families, among them about 120 000 Iraqi Faily Kurds having Iraqi citizenships). Decision 666 was followed by numerous other clarifications, decisions and laws confiscating the deportees movable and immovable property and seizing all their official documents and non-official papers. Thousands of children, youth and young men were interned while their families were forcibly deported. Decision No. 666 was followed by other laws and decisions which broke down families separating husband from wife and children from mothers or fathers, if one was a deportee, by giving financial incentives to non-deportees to divorce their deported wives/husbands (Decision No.474 of 15/4/1981). These were followed by “the law of the correction of ethnicity” which coerced Iraqi citizens of non- Arabic ethnic background to “correct” their ethnic background and become Arabs (Decision No. 199 of 6/9/2001). This decision affected Faily Kurds not deported from Iraq.

The number of Faily Kurds children, youth and young men interned in concentration camps who have “disappeared” without a trace “is more than 20 000” according to the current Iraqi Prime Minister Mr. al-Maliki (Press Release dated 17/1/2008 from the Information Office of the Prime Minister, http://www.pmo.iq). These more than 20 000 represented a tangible segment of Faily Kurds new generation. The pain and sorrow this caused their parents, children, wives, sisters and brothers was tremendous before 2003. There was no knowledge about the internees and therefore uncertainty and a glimpse of hope. All this changed and the pain and grief became unbearable after the demise of the former bloodstained regime. They were nowhere to be found. More than 260 mass-graves have been discovered in different areas of Iraq but none of them contained the remains of these “disappeared” more than 20 000 Faily Kurds! Many mothers passed away their only wish being to see their sons or at least smell some of their clothes. The defunct former regime was really a master of punishing and inflecting pain and suffering on the Faily Kurds and many other segments of Iraqi society.