Country: Iraq

Group: Shabak

Date Finalized: 9/20/2021

Team: Deneb Bobadilla (lead), Johanna McCombs, Ash Pessaran

Over the past century, the Shabak people have been constantly forced to migrate throughout Iraq and abroad to avoid religious and ethnic violence. The data quality of this case study is a 2 because of the limited number of published sources that document their forced migration.

The Shabak are a heterodox Shia Muslim minority in Iraq, who speak the Indo-European language Shabaki and live primarily in the Ninewa plains around Mosul (Minority Rights Group, 2017). Despite political efforts to classify Shabak as either Arab or Kurdish to gain access to their oil-rich lands, most Shabak consider themselves a distinct ethnic group (Minority Rights Group, 2017). They have faced persecution and forced displacement throughout the last 100 years. Saddam Hussein’s Arabization policies also coerced many Shabak to identify as Arab. For example, the 1987 population census for Iraq treated the Shabak as Arab, and when some Shabak leaders protested, their homes were destroyed and they were moved to other parts of northern Iraq (Leezenberg, 2018; van Zoonen, Wirya, 2017). Since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, Shabak have also faced persecution at the hands of Sunni militants with around 1,300 Shabak killed between 2003 and 2014 (Minority Rights Group, 2017). In 2013, in the city of Mosul, the Islamic State in Iraq distributed notices claiming Shabak rejected Islam and threatened to kill them if they did not leave their homes within 72 hours (van Zoonen, Wirya, 2017). In August of 2014, ISIS advanced into the Ninewa plains, took control of around 60 Shabak villages. This resulted in massacres and kidnapping and internally displaced many Shabaks. These increasing cases of religious persecution has led many Shabak to seek refuge in other parts of Iraq or to leave Iraq entirely (O’Driscoll & van Zoonen , D; Minority Rights Group, 2021; Leezenberg, 2018).

Sources

  1. Leezenberg, M. (2018). Transformations in Minority Religious Leadership: The Yezidis, Shabak, and Assyrians in Northern Iraq. Sociology of Islam, 6(2), 233-260.
  2. O’Driscoll, D., van Zoonen , D. (n.d.). Governing Nineveh After the Islamic State: A Solution for All Components. Middle East Research Institute Erbil, 3(2).
  3. Salloum, S. (2016, August 16). Division among Iraq’s Shabak MINORITY reveals Kurdish-Arab LAND RIVALRY. Al Monitor. Retrieved September 20, 2021, from https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2016/08/shabak-minority-iraq-kurdistan-baghdad-erbil.html.
  4. Minority Rights Group. Shabak. (2021, February 6). Retrieved September 20, 2021, from https://minorityrights.org/minorities/shabak/.
  5. van Zoonen , D., & Wirya, K. (2017). The Shabaks Perceptions of Reconciliation and Conflict. Middle East Research Institute.