Kurdish Feyli community marks decades after Iraq's 1980 forced displacement

TEHRAN, Iran — The Kurdish Feyli community, one of the most tragic cases in Iraq's modern history, faced mass displacement on April 4, 1980, when the former regime issued a forced exile order affecting hundreds of thousands of people. The community, which is Shia Muslim and speaks a distinct Kurdish dialect, had historically lived in Diyala, Wasit, eastern Baghdad and areas around Sulaymaniyah and Halabja. The Interior Ministry, accusing roughly half a million people of holding Iranian citizenship, removed them from their homes without notice, confiscated their property and seized their documents. More than 22,000 Feyli young men serving in the military were taken to prisons, most notably Abu Ghraib, and were never seen again; their remains could not be located in mass graves after 2003. In 1981, Decision 474 encouraged divorces in cases where one spouse was classified as "Feyli" or stateless, offering financial rewards and resulting in more than 10,000 forced separations. Those who reached Iran lived for years without formal identity in poor settlements such as the Izni camp, as neither Baghdad nor Tehran granted them full citizenship. Although a 2003-era decision (No. 666) annulled parts of the earlier measures, the Feyli remained politically marginalized, with Kurdish parties treating them as Shia and Shia parties treating them as Kurdish. The fate of the disappeared and compensation claims remain largely unresolved, and the community's place in Iraq continues to anchor debates over diversity-based citizenship.