On the site of their demolished homes, Hussein re-established with his relatives and friends the Faili Kurd neighborhood in Kirkuk.
In 1990, the Baath regime expelled the Faili Kurds from Kirkuk and leveled their homes to the ground, and they have not received any compensation since then. They say that “we are being fought a lot and our rights are being taken away,” noting that their demands “were not legislated, neither in the Kurdistan Region nor in Iraq.”
Hussein Ali, a Feili Kurd from Kirkuk, explained why he and his sons did not receive compensation for the tragedies they suffered.
He said, “Why were we not compensated? When we went to Baghdad, they told us that you are Kurds, go to the Kurdistan Region, and when we went to the Kurdistan Region and demanded our rights, they told us that you are Shiites. We stayed like this in the middle and we ourselves collected the blocks and built our houses.”
According to unofficial statistics, more than 4 thousand Faili Kurds live in Kirkuk, most of whom were displaced to the Kurdistan Region and returned following 2003 to the province.
In Kirkuk, there is a union for the Faili Kurds, established in 2015. It works to gather the people of the component and register them, and tries to become a bridge of communication between the Faili individual and government institutions on the one hand, and to revive their special events on the other hand.
The head of the Faili Kurds Union in Kirkuk, Dawoud Asaad, confirmed that “we have not obtained any of the rights you are talking regarding so far. We go ourselves and demand points for appointment and other demands if they agree to grant them to us.”
The Union of Faili Kurds in Kirkuk represents all the institutions and federations of the Faili Kurds in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region. The Union took the decision to form a council consisting of 15 members to deal with their affairs. The main objective is to establish a real representative office for the Faili Kurds.
Ali al-Faili, an advisor to President Barzani and responsible for the Faili file at his headquarters, revealed that “at the request of President Masoud Barzani, and as a representative of the Faili file at Barzani’s headquarters, I was assigned the task of gathering the Faili because their problems and pains are many.”
Although there is no accurate census of the number of Faili Kurds yet, but according to activists and their representatives, they number more than two million people across Iraq.
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