Iraq’s mosaic of ethnic groups
August 23, 2005
BAGHDAD — Iraq’s majority Shias and the Kurds, over the objections
of the Sunni Arabs, flexed their newfound muscle to present a draft
constitution to parliament on Monday.
The following are short profiles of the main groups in Iraq’s mosaic
of ethnic groups:
Shias
The Shias, who faced decades of repression dating back to the Ottoman
period, make up around 60 percent of Iraq’s population and are
concentrated in the south of the country and the capital.
Their religious leaders, especially spiritual chief Grand Ayatollah
Ali Al Sistani, have encouraged Shias to seize the initiative on the
political front.
The Shias have been the target of devastating attacks by Sunni
insurgents determined to bring down the new order:
At least 83 people, including top cleric Mohammed Baker Hakim, were
killed in Najaf in August 2003, and more than 170 died in March 2,
2003, attacks in Karbala and Baghdad during the Ashura religious
holiday.
Last December 19, 66 people were killed in further bomb attacks in
Najaf and Karbala, the homes of the two holiest sites of Shia Islam.
In modern Iraqi history the Shias during the 1950s made up the
rank-and-file of the Baath and communist parties, before being
sidelined after the rise to power of Saddam Hussein’s Sunni clan from
Tikrit in the 1970s.
Some Shia religious events such as the public display of grief for
Ashura were banned and a bloody repression targeted Shia leaders,
including Ayatollah Mohammed Baker Sadr, who was executed in 1980.
Brutal force was used to put down a Shia uprising in the aftermath of
Iraq’s ouster from Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War.
Sunnis
The Sunnis, although the majority sect in the Arab world, account for
only 20 to 25 percent of the Iraqi population.
Under Saddam’s regime they occupied the top posts in the army and
police as well as the ruling Baath party. But since the invasion they
have been overshadowed by the Shias and Kurds, and they mostly
boycotted elections in January.
Most of the bloodiest attacks and bombings since the United States
declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq on May 1, 2003,
have taken place in Sunni areas.
Kurds
In a milestone on the road to autonomy, the non-Arab Kurds of
northern Iraq took part in two simultaneous elections in January: for
a transitional National Assembly in Baghdad and for their own
111-member parliament.
They are estimated to number some 4 million to 5 million in Iraq, or
between 15 and 20 percent of the population.
In the early 1970s the Iraqi authorities forcibly displaced the Kurds
as part of an “Arabization” policy of strategic areas such as the
oil-rich center of Kirkuk, launching two decades of repression.
After a Kurdish uprising in the aftermath of the 1991 war over
Kuwait, hundreds of thousands of Kurdish civilians were driven across
the mountains into Turkey and Iran.
Under a Western security umbrella the Kurds returned and held the
first elections in their history, resulting in the Kurdistan
Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) sharing
power.
But fighting erupted between the two factions in 1994 leaving some
3,000 dead and paralyzing fledgling Kurdish institutions.
They buried the hatchet on the eve of the US-led invasion to
overthrow Saddam, fighting alongside American troops in the north of
the country. The peshmergas (guerrillas) entered Kirkuk in April
2003.
The Kurds insist on an historical claim to Kirkuk and a federated
Iraq.
Turcomans
The Turcoman minority, who originated in Central Asia and moved to
Mesopotamia in the eleventh century, represent between 1 and 2
percent of the population, with most of them living in northern Iraq.
After the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 the British occupiers of
Iraq launched a campaign to assimilate the Turcomans with the Arab
and Kurdish communities.
They were the victims of several massacres between 1924 and 1959,
straddling independence in 1932.
Like the Kurds the Turcomans were driven out of Kirkuk during the
1970s to be replaced by Arabs. The two ethnic groups have clashed
since Saddam’s fall and are now in dispute over who was in the
majority before the expulsions.
Ankara has pledged to protect the interests of the Turcomans and,
fearful of unrest among its own sizable Kurdish minority, opposes too
high a level of autonomy for the Kurds of Iraq.
Christians
The Christian community stood at 1.4 million people according to a
1987 census but has since shrunk to 700,000 – out of a total
population of 25 million – during a turbulent period of war and years
of crippling sanctions.
They have been heavily targeted in the unrest that has swept
post-Saddam Iraq.
At the start of August 2004 four attacks against Christian targets in
Baghdad and two others in Mosul left 10 people dead and 50 injured,
sending tens of thousands of Iraqi Christians into exile.
Liquor stores, owned by Christians, have been blown up by Islamic
militants. And Christian families, many considered wealthy by Iraqi
standards, have been targeted by kidnappers for huge ransoms.
The Chaldeans, whose 600,000 people represent most Christians in
Iraq, are an oriental rite Catholic community. Iraq also has Assyrian
Christians, Catholic and Orthodox Syriacs, and Catholic and Orthodox
Armenians.