Syria: 1. Did Syria accept Shi'ite Iraqis who were expelled from Iraq around 1980? 2. If so, what status was conferred upon them? 3. Is Syria considering returning these Shi'ites due to escalation of hostilities?

1.        Iraq expelled a large number of Shi'ites during the 1970s and into the 1980s. The first large mass expulsion was in 1972, and the second occurred in April 1980, but news reports indicate that the majority of the deportees were sent across the Iranian border. [ International Commission of Jurists, "Human Rights in Iraq", For the Rule of Law, Niall MacDermot, ed., December 1988, p.15. ] Information on the expulsion of Iraqi Shi'ites to Syria is not among the sources currently available to the IRBDC. However, it should be noted that there has been a long-standing rivalry between the Iraqi Ba'ath Party and the Syrian Ba'ath Party. It is not known whether Iraqi Shi'ites were expelled directly to Syria, however, it is mentioned in Iraq and Iran at War (p. 291) that by November 1980, "Iraqi opposition fronts form[ed] formed of secular opposition, Iraqi Communist Party, Kurdish nationalist parties, and eventually, al-Da'wa". The current hostilities between Syria and Iraq (being played out in the Lebanese arena through Iraq's support for christian General Aoun) are said to be the result of Syria's support for Iran during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

Background to the mass deportations in 1980:

After the Iraqi Ba'ath Party came to power in 1968, it advocated increased secularism and allegedly interfered with religious processions. [ U. Zaher, "The Opposition" in Saddam's Iraq: Revolution or Reaction?, by the Committee Against Repression and for Democratic Rights in Iraq (CARDRI), (London: Zed Books Ltd., 1986), p. 165.] The Shi'i clergy began to organize opposition to the government to combat the weakening of their authority with the formation of the Da'wa party in 1968-69. Following major demonstrations against the regime in 1977, "eight Shi'i dignitaries, five clergy and three laymen, were sentenced to death and executed". [ Ibid.] In October 1978, Ayatollah Khomeini (who was in exile in Iraq) was expelled to Iran and, according to U. Zaher (Saddam's Iraq: Revolution or Reaction?), "early in 1980, after a number of grenade attacks in Baghdad blamed on the Da'wa Party, tens of thousands of people were expelled to Iran, in brutal conditions, under the pretext that they were of Iranian origin". [ Ibid., p. 166.] The mass deportation of Iraqis of Iranian descent is also mentioned in Iran and Iraq at War, (Shahram Chubin and Charles Tripp,

p. 291). According to Chubin, an assassination attempt on the deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, allegedly by an Iraqi of Iranian origin, led to the execution of Mohammad Baqr al-Sadr and the deportation of thousands of Shi'a from Najaf, Karbala, and Al-Thawra, as well as to the initiation of a campaign "to expel from Iraq any Iraqi who had even the remotest connection with Iran, by birth, marriage or name". [ Shahram Chubin and Charles Tripp, Iran and Iraq at War, (London: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 1988), p. 27.] Shortly thereafter, the Revolution Command Council made membership in the Da'wa Party punishable by death. [ Ibid.]

2.             The status conferred on Iraqi Shi'ites who may have been expelled to Syria is not among the sources currently available to the IRBDC.

3.             No information on the forcible repatriation of Iraqi Shi'ites from Syria is available to the IRBDC at present.

Attachments:

-               Ofra Bengio, "Shi'is and Politics in Ba'thi Iraq", Middle East Studies, 21 (1), January 1985;

-               Amnesty International, Amnesty International Report 1989, New York: Amnesty International Publications, 1989;(Montreal)

-               Henry Degenhardt, Revolutionary and Dissident Movements, London: Longman Group UK Ltd., 1988;(Montreal)

-               Niall MacDermot, ed., "Human Rights in Iraq", For the Rule of Law: The Review, International Commission of Jurists, No. 41, December 1988;

-               U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1988, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, February 1989;(Montreal)