Content area
Full text
On the eve of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980, Saddam Hussein's regime waged a wide-scale campaign of expulsion of so-called Iraqis of Iranian origin, or taba'iyya iraniyya (often referred to as taba'iyya).1 These Iraqis were Shi'i Arabs and Kurds whose family line held Persian nationality under the Ottomans.2 The government came to see them as a threat, especially with the rise of Shi'i ulema-led religious opposition in the 1970s and after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. The designation of some Iraqis as taba'iyya rendered two million Iraqis, or about ^fteen percent of the population, vulnerable and suspect.3 Massive expulsion of thousands of families4 was accompanied by widespread brutality. The regime held families in prisons and prison camps for months before abandoning them on the border with Iran. It con^scated their property and documents and subjected them to rape and torture. The state also ordered the broad-scale detention of young men between eighteen and twenty-eight. The regime killed many of these young men and then buried their remains in mass graves. Those who did not manage to ^ee the country were forced to collaborate with the regime when the frenzy subsided.
The expulsions and brutality were not simply arbitrary measures of an oppressive regime. The legislation authorizing the taba'iyyas denaturalization, Resolution 666 of 1980, was in fact an adaptation of the ^rst Iraqi Nationality Law of 1924 that British o^cials dra^ed and Iraqi statesmen approved. The law of 1924 undermined the notion of equal citizenship when it categorized Iraqi citizens on the basis of the citizenship they had held under Ottoman rule, and whether they were at the time Ottoman or Persian citizens. The law and the deportation of the taba'iyya in the 1980s are also rooted in the question of "Persians" in Iraq. During the early days of the modern state of Iraq, established in 1921, the presence of "Persians" preoccupied British o^cials and Iraqi statesmen. For the British o^cials and ruling elites, these "Persians," often Shi'a of Arab descent, posed a threat to their rule and the consolidation of the nation-state. This fear was deeply imbricated in Iraqis' struggle for power in the early days of the nascent state and had a longer genealogy dating back to Ottoman rule. The "othering" of the...