Kurdish farmers face legal pressure over disputed lands in Khurmatu

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Kurdish farmers in the disputed Khurmatu district, Salahaddin province, say they are facing legal pressure over more than 2,000 dunams of farmland after Arab settlers filed lawsuits seeking to take control of the lands based on agricultural contracts dating back to the former Baath regime.

The land lies between the Kurdish-majority Tapa Sawa area and the Arab-populated Haliwa village in Salahaddin province.

A court team accompanied by municipal surveyors visited the disputed plots on October 5 as part of proceedings related to the lawsuits, Mohammad Aasi, representative of the farmers, told Rudaw's Hastyar Qadir on Tuesday. 

Kurdish farmers told Rudaw the dispute has been ongoing for years. “Every year during planting season, police and judges come to stop us from seeding the land. The government tells us not to plant,” farmer Jaber Hamid said.

Hamid said he and his 10 brothers are facing legal action despite owning deeds dating back to before 1975. He said he has also been fined one million dinars (around $658).

The Baath regime seized the 2,000 dunams in the late 1980s to build a military airbase. The airbase stopped being used in the 1990s, after which the lands were awarded to Arab settlers through agricultural contracts, the farmers’ representative said. The Kurdish villagers were also expelled as part of the Baath regime’s Arabization campaign. 

Kurdish landowners returned after 2003, but seven of the Baath-era agricultural contracts have recently been renewed, and the settlers have filed lawsuits seeking control over the land, Aasi explained.

The dispute has now expanded beyond land claims, with cases brought against 26 Kurdish farmers from Tapa Sawa under Article 413 of Iraq's Penal Code, which concerns intentional assault.

“There is a lawsuit with a 20 million IQD (around $13,158) fine against me,” another farmer, Burhan Hamid, said. “Another lawsuit says I got into a fight, but I did not fight anyone. That is a lie."

Meanwhile, Geylan Kakakhan, another farmer, said Arab settlers regularly arrive in the village accompanied by security forces. “Every day, a group of Arabs comes to our village with a force and wants to take our lands,” he said. “We will never accept it, even if we are all killed.”

The legal dispute is part of a broader land conflict between Kurdish inhabitants of disputed territories and Baath-era Arab settlers that resurfaced after the October 16, 2017 events, when Iraqi federal forces and Iran-backed Hashd al-Shaabi forces took control of disputed areas, including Khurmatu.

Salahaddin provincial council member Yasin Dawudi linked the dispute to changes in the district’s agricultural administration, including the replacement of the Kurdish director of the Khurmatu Agricultural Directorate with an Arab official in September 2024.

“The Kurdish director of the Khurmatu Agricultural Directorate was replaced by a member of the Arab community," he said.

Dawudi said he has spoken with the director of the Agriculture Directorate in Tikrit, the provincial capital, and that a meeting with a delegation is expected.

Iraq’s parliament in January 2025 passed a property restitution law aimed at returning land confiscated under certain Baath-era Revolutionary Command Council decisions to its original owners. The law entered into force in February 2025 and has been cited by Kurdish officials as applying to disputed areas including Khurmatu. 

Khurmatu is among the disputed areas covered by Article 140 of Iraq's Constitution, which calls for normalization, a census and a referendum to determine the status of disputed territories. The area was subjected to a systematic campaign of demographic change under the Baath regime, during which Kurdish villages were razed, residents forcibly displaced and land awarded to Arab settlers.