ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Two Kurdish farmers in northwestern Kirkuk were rearrested on Monday after Arab citizens accused them of illegally using their land, a farmers’ advocate told Rudaw. The arrest comes despite a prior court acquittal and amid ongoing delays in implementing Iraq’s land restitution law in disputed areas. Mohammed Amin, head of the Farmers’ Defense Committee in Sargaran subdistrict, said the farmers - Bakr Mustafa and Muhsin Ismail from Shanagha village - were detained after the Court of Appeal in the Dibis district issued a new arrest order. “The same court had previously issued a decision to release the two farmers,” Amin said. “But after a complaint from Arab settlers, it reversed that decision and declared that they must be punished.” The original case, dating back to August 10, was based on allegations from two Arab Iraqis claiming the farmers had encroached on their land. However, Amin noted the Dibis court “had earlier acquitted them,” as the lands in question had originally belonged to Kurdish farmers before it was confiscated by the former Baath regime. The disputed lands are located in Sargaran subdistrict and were affected by Saddam Hussein’s Arabization program, under which Kurdish-owned lands were seized and reassigned to Arab families. In 1975, the Iraqi government declared several Kurdish villages in Kirkuk as prohibited oil zones and stripped their residents of land rights. By 1977, through Baath Supreme Revolutionary Court Decree No. 949, those lands were redistributed to Arab settlers. After the fall of the Baath regime in 2003, Iraq adopted Article 140 of the constitution, aimed at reversing such demographic changes. However, implementation has stalled for years. In January, Iraq’s parliament passed a land restitution law to return property confiscated from Kurds and Turkmen during the Baath era. The legislation covers approximately 300,000 dunams (around 750 square kilometers) in Kirkuk and other disputed areas, and follows a July 2023 Council of Ministers decision to revoke Baath-era decrees. Ratified by the Iraqi presidency in February, the law was championed by Kurdish and Turkmen parties determined to reverse decades of demographic engineering by the Baath regime. Much of the seized land was taken under the pretense of oil-related restrictions, then allocated to Arab settlers. In March, the justice ministry announced the formation of a specialized committee to oversee the law’s implementation and suspended all land dealings in Kirkuk. Justice Minister Khalid Shwani then stated that enforcement would begin within two months. However, farmers say they are still waiting.
