Conflict and Peace from the Perspective of Iraqi Roma and Gypsies
Sarah Edgcumbe is a doctoral researcher with the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews
“There are no Roma in Iraq”. This was the response to an interview request I sent a non-Iraqi humanitarian professional working in Iraq in 2021. Iraqi Gypsies and Roma have been narratively erased from the Iraqi landscape during conflict analyses and subsequent evaluations of humanitarian provision, development, and peace building. Very few people from outside of Iraq and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) are aware of the centuries-long presence of Roma (referred to as Domari in the Middle East) and Gypsies in Iraq. This is symptomatic of the systemic discrimination and exclusion Roma and Gypsies face not only in Iraq, but also across the broader Middle East and Europe.
Under the Ottoman Millet system, communities were categorised and administrated according to their religious affiliation rather than their ethnic status. However, despite largely being Muslim in Muslim-majority areas, Roma and Gypsies were assigned a tax category of their own – likely due to their nomadic lifestyle. This singled them out as “other”, with a lower-status than most Ottoman subjects. When the Iraqi state was created, due to their status as nomadic “other”, Roma and Gypsies were omitted from censuses. This bore implications for citizenship that persevere today, with many Roma and Gypsies in federal Iraq being unable to access public services, despite a 2019 law promising full citizenship documents which bear neither their ethnicity nor an “exception” stamp.
A primary divergence exists in social positionality between Roma and Gypsies in federal Iraq, and Gypsies in the KRI. That is the existence of a socially entrenched association of Roma and Gypsies in federal Iraq – particularly in Diwaniyah governorate – with sex work. This is the result of Saddam Hussein commercialising some Roma and Gypsy villages, advertising them as ‘pleasure towns’ for wealthy visitors from Gulf states. In return, under Saddam’s regime, Roma and Gypsies were afforded protection from direct physical harm and partial citizenship. However, they continued to be subjected to the more discreet, enduring harms enacted through structural violence such as absence of full citizenship documents, absence of education provision, poor residential infrastructure, limited access to healthcare, and absence of economic opportunities outside of those deemed to be expected of Gypsies: music, dancing, begging, and in some cases, sex work. While many Gypsies used to produce handmade tools and goods, the advent of mechanised production has resulted in their inability to compete with lower-priced, mass-produced goods.
Conflict and Persecution in the KRI
The Gypsy community in Rizgari, KRI, identify strongly as Kurds and under Saddam Hussein they shared highly traumatic experiences of persecution and displacement with the rest of the Iraqi Kurdish population. During Saddam’s Anfal Campaign, much of Rizgari and neighbouring Dohuk city’s population fled to the mountains of Turkey. The Gypsies who participated in my doctoral research remember this time as one of fear, hunger, extreme cold, and of losing loved ones to starvation, exposure, and drowning during river crossings.
Though they were treated as equally Kurdish during displacement, after their return to the KRI, many Gypsies I spoke with began to feel like second class citizens. Subjected to governmental neglect (particularly since 2008) and increasingly stigmatised as beggars, Rizgari’s Gypsies have been obstructed from development and thus being able to participate in post-Saddam, clientelist, consumer-driven Iraqi Kurdish society. This has been experienced as a betrayal by their fellow Kurds.
Gypsies in the KRI are stereotyped as being uninterested in education or “proper work”. They are also portrayed by non-Gypsies as dishonest, with many people in Dohuk telling me Gypsies present themselves as poor when begging but they are really very rich. There is a myth (relayed to me as a “true story”) well known in Dohuk, which tells of a beautiful Gypsy woman who married a prince but would not stop begging. This myth posits begging as a biological compulsion rather than an act of economic necessity and significantly contributes to the stigmatisation of Gypsy communities. The fact the many Gypsies in Dohuk do not beg also appears to be overlooked by non-Gypsy society.
Not only do many Gypsies not beg, but several work in the Peshmerga Kurdish armed forces. During the war against the Islamic State (IS) militant group in Mosul and the Nineveh Plains, many more Gypsy men from Rizgari joined the KRI’s Peshmerga forces as volunteers. Men who fought articulated their desire to do so as a patriotic duty – an expression of their feelings of deep connection to the land of Kurdistan. Fifteen men from the village of Rizgari were martyred during the battle but this sacrifice seems to have had little bearing on social relations. Gypsies in the KRI continue to be viewed through a one-dimensional lens as either valued successful musicians or, more often, devalued as beggars.
Conflict and Persecution in federal Iraq
When Saddam Hussein’s regime crumbled in the wake of the U.S-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the consequential power vacuum resulted in a rise of Islamic fundamentalist militias. These groups targeted Roma and Gypsy communities for their perceived immorality due to their association with sex work and the selling of alcohol under Saddam Hussein. Gypsies and Roma in Mosul who participated in my doctoral research described this period as “a time of war and beheadings”. Many Roma and Gypsies were slaughtered causing entire extended families to flee to the KRI, Syria and other neighbouring countries. Amidst the reporting on the U.S-led invasion, occupation and subsequent civil war, only a smattering of reports focused on the persecution of Roma and Gypsies and these were largely within the national Iraqi media.
Gypsies and Roma have historically lived on the outskirts of large cities such as Baghdad, Mosul and Basra, as well as Roma/Gypsy-exclusive villages, which often resemble slums due to the houses being built on squatted land with insufficient infrastructure. Over time, many Roma and Gypsies who had initially fled the post-2003 violence returned to their homes. Perceived as non-citizens, stigmatised for a socially constructed immorality and an imagined refusal to integrate, Roma and Gypsies have continuously been painted as a polluting influence. Iraqi society has therefore allowed the government to neglect Gypsy and Roma communities without challenge or consequence.
This absence of care was brought into sharp relief in the wake of the IS occupation of Mosul and Nineveh. Roma and Gypsies who fled Mosul were overlooked by government bodies, international agencies and non-governmental organisations. This despite the fact that the degree of social stigmatisation they faced prevented many from securing protection and assistance alongside other internally displaced persons (IDPs), raising unique protection concerns. Conversations with Roma and Gypsies from Mosul illustrate a pattern of unassisted displacement, followed by an unassisted return characterised by a complete absence of humanitarian support.
Roma and Gypsy Prioritisation of Education
My research compares Gypsy and Roma experiences of contemporary liberal “peace” with community-generated conceptualisations of peace. Despite the divergent experiences of conflict and persecution shared among Gypsies in Rizgari compared to Gypsies and Roma in Mosul, peace was conceptualised in very similar ways.
Reflecting the entrenched stigmatisation and marginalisation confronting Gypsy communities across Iraq and the KRI, indicators of peace identified by research participants focused very much on addressing the ways in which structural violence enables and enforces discrimination, in turn severely limiting opportunities for development. Gypsies and Roma in both Rizgari and Mosul uniformly prioritised access to education for their children, stable employment opportunities for adults and community development – specifically development of community infrastructure.
In Rizgari, Gypsy children have access to a makeshift primary school and government-provided teachers. However, to access secondary education they must travel to nearby towns. The transport costs in this case are prohibitive for many families and with no free school transport available only a lucky few can access the level of education enshrined in both international law and the Sustainable Development Goals.
In Mosul, research participants lived in the city and their children could, in theory, access both primary and secondary schools. However, participants reported that their children were often harassed, bullied and often physically attacked by other students purely because of their ethnic identity. Teachers and school staff meanwhile were frequently unsupportive of Gypsy and Roma students and often failed to intervene in cases of bullying. In many cases, Gypsy children dropped out of school finding the relentless discrimination too much to cope with. Instances where children persevered with their education were a source of immense pride for their parents.
No education, no peace
Education and stable employment were consistently identified as the foundations of peace by Gypsy participants who were exhausted by poverty and saddened by the second-class status conferred upon them by society. Iraqi and Kurdish institutions insist on emphasising the immorality of begging and sex work rather than acknowledging the immorality of structural violence which prevents children from accessing education, thereby severely restricting opportunities in later life. How can a community experience peace, when their children are not valued enough to be protected and educated?
The opinions expressed are those of the contributor, not of the RSAA.
