Kirkuk District (Kirkuk)

 district, draw only border, third-level administrative division, do not draw title

Kirkuk District is a district in northern central Kirkuk Governorate, Iraq. Its administrative center is the city of Kirkuk.

Despite an uninterrupted affiliation with Kirkuk governorate, Kirkuk district has a complicated administrative history. At present it consists of seven subdistricts: Kirkuk Center, Multaqa, Yaychi, Schwan, Qara Hanjir, Laylan (Qara Hassan), and Taza Khurmatu. The three other districts inside the current boundary of Kirkuk governorate, i.e., Daquq, Dibis, and Hawija, were at some point subdistricts within Kirkuk district. Their respective histories will not be repeated here.

Major changes were made to Kirkuk district beginning in 1976, especially those affecting Daquq and Dibis, as described. In addition, RCCD no. 369 of 1975 expropriated agricultural land in Kirkuk Center subdistrict, Qara Hassan (Laylan), Yaychi, and Taza Khurmatu. Interlocutors stressed to UNAMI the importance of these decrees in giving the state control of lands on which housing complexes were built and Arab tribes settled over the following twenty-five years.

The 1980s witnessed the most intensive Arabization in Kirkuk district. RCCD no. 42 of 1986 provided an important basis for the settlement of Arab tribes by empowering the At-Tamim (Kirkuk) governor to give land to persons (Arabs) “moved to At-Tamim governorate” without any cost, provided that they remained permanently in the governorate and did not rent the land without prior permission. During the Anfal in 1988, local accounts given to UNAMI indicate that in areas with substantial Kurdish populations: seventy of seventy-six villages were destroyed in Schwan and approximately 20,000 inhabitants forced to flee; forty-five of fortysix villages were destroyed in neighboring Al-Rabi’ (Qara Hanjeer) and their estimated populations of 42,000 to 50,000 people forcibly expelled and housed in resettlement camps; and between thirty and forty-two villages were destroyed in Laylan (Qara Hassan) and their populations largely expelled.

During the same period four subdistricts in Kirkuk district, Qara Hassan (Laylan), Schwan, Yaychi, and Al-Rabi’ (Qara Hanjir), were abolished by Republican Decree no. 321 of 1987. This was likely related to the destruction and deportation of the populations of these Kurdish and mixed subdistricts. Local interlocutors also indicated to UNAMI their belief that administrative cancellation was intended to “erase” the identity of these areas. Two years later, Republican Decree no. 434 of 1989 affected Kirkuk district by, as described, downgrading Dibis to a subdistrict and re-creating Daquq district.

The mixed Kurdish, Turkoman, and Arab subdistricts of Taza, Yaychi, and Kirkuk City were affected by Arabization during the 1980s, but were spared the total destruction of the Anfal. In particular, the creation of closed military zones around oil infrastructure in the governorate had serious effects in Yaychi. UNAMI was provided with a document claiming that 2,708 families were deported from Yaychi from January 1987 to June 1988. Many of these deportees are believed to have been affected by Northern Affairs Committee Decision no. 1305/6 of 1987, which prohibited populations from living within nine kilometers of oil pipelines and gave orders to shoot on sight “any human” in the area.

In Kirkuk City, the Shi’ite Turkoman majority neighborhoods of Tise’en (Section no. 63) and Hamzali (Section no. 39) were a target
of Arabization beginning in 1980 (around the start of the Iran-Iraq war). UNAMI was told by a Turkoman member of the Kirkuk city
council that in these neighborhoods some 2,400 clay houses were destroyed, 600 stone houses were confiscated, and the entire area
subsequently settled with Arabs. Kurdish interlocutors also identified to UNAMI the neighborhoods of Baghdad Road, Huriya, Wahda, Qadissiya, Nasr, and Huzeriya as areas of the city from which Kurds began to be targeted during the 1980s for displacement
and as places where Arabs were subsequently settled. Many interlocutors from the Kirkuk Center stated to UNAMI that the city
was a primary target for Arabization after 1991, perhaps because most of the Kurdish villages of the governorate had already been
destroyed.

Meanwhile, one of the four subdistricts abolished in 1987, Qara Hassan (Laylan), was recreated in Kirkuk district by an unnumbered
1999 decision under the name of Umm al-Ma’arik (Mother of Battles, Saddam Hussein’s name for the First Gulf War). Similarly, in 1996 and
2000 Dibis was enlarged and restored to district status. In 2002, Multaqa subdistrict was created in the location where the canceled Yaychi subdistrict used to exist (unnumbered decision, 2002).

UNAMI located records from the 1990s related to the settlement of Arab tribes in Kirkuk to provide strategic depth in areas “adjacent” to the newly established Kurdish Autonomy Zone. These include: notes of a 1994 Meeting of the Tri-Partite Committee for Arabization
that identified Daquq, Kadir Karam, Qarah Hassan, and Laylan as priority areas for the settlement of Arab tribes, documents of the RCC’s Northern Affairs Committee related to settlement policies in Kirkuk, and unverified correspondence between the At-Tamim (Kirkuk) Governor and the Northern Affairs Committee. These documents indicate that land rights held by those who fled Kirkuk to the
Kurdish Zone were canceled, the related arable land was to be distributed among the Arab tribes in accordance with the Northern
Committee rules, and approval was given to build residential complexes in locations such as Schwan, Qarah Hanjeer, and Taza.

Source: www.usip.org/sites/default/files/resources/PW69.pdf