Strangers In Their Own Motherland

Dr. Ala Musa Hasan | Exclusive to iKurd.net

For many decades, the Faili Kurds population lived in their own homeland Iraq without any identity and nationality. They suffered statelessness status for almost 50 years, even when they were part of Iraq’s development in terms of its economic, politics, social growth, and etc.

This population has long been discriminated against in Iraq. The 1924 Iraqi Nationality Law which divided the Iraqis population into three categories based on religion and ethnicity.

However, the Shiite Faili Kurds people were systematically classified in the lowest category of Iraq’s population. They were repeatedly stereotyped and differentiated by the Iraqi’s government officials and social institutions who claimed that the Faili Kurds were in fact originally from Iran.

In Iraq, it is very essential to hold a nationality certificate in order to access work, education, health care services, and other basic rights and opportunities. The nationality certificate is often required to obtain other kinds of documentation such as birth, death and marriage certificates. Without a nationality certificate, many Faili Kurds have been denied access to basic services and rights for at least four decades.

From generation to generation, this population lived in their own homeland like a strangers without nationality, identity, rights, recognition, and basic human rights status. However, all that didn’t matter to the majority and the dominant group in Iraq and them deliberately carryout a cruel and massive deportation act that was unheard of. They were forced to leave all their belonging and their life time earning behind them and they were mandated to leave their own motherland with unbreakable humiliations and unresolved sorrows.

The Faili Kurds people lived in their homeland Iraq like a strangers without a state, they feel like that they are an outsider and a burdened on the society, even though, they had a huge participations in its social, political, and economic growth. They found themselves facing a mounting flood of discriminatory laws and restrictive policies.

These unfair discrimination and unjust policies chased them all the time at their workplaces, shopping spaces, their place of resident and socialization, their school, and all other places that are populated with people who dislike them. They feel like they have to be on their guard most of the time, because they don’t know how people will treat them. These feelings and behaviors make the Faili Kurds enthusiastically to be aware that they are unlikeable and different from others.

For many years, the Faili Kurds people experienced within their homeland Iraq daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignity whether intentional or unintentional. The Faili Kurds experienced Racial Microaggressions behavior in three categories, such as, microassaults, microinsults, and microinvalidations.

Microassaults refer to conscious and intentional actions of the dominant and the superior group that have the propensity to attend to the needs of the majority and ignore the minority requests.

Microinsults refer to the verbal and nonverbal communications that subtly convey rudeness and insensitivity to demean a person’s racial heritage or identity. Microinvalidations refer to the communications that subtly exclude, negate or nullify the thoughts, feelings or experiential reality of a person from the minority group.

The dominant group is in a superior position to favour and appropriate certain cultures and reject others. The oppression that the Faili Kurds people went through from generation to generation, was created from the place of privilege and power (systematic discrimination and structural racism), by taking no notice of the minority group’s existence.

The psychological impact of Racial Microaggressions on the Faili Kurds can have a negative effect on their self-esteem. It makes them frequently looking for an external validation of themselves, by seeking the attention and the approval of others. It makes them to look for something outside of them to deem them as worthy and good. This is because, at their core life and society, they are filled with self-doubt. Thus, they became like a slaves to that which they believe others should approve them.

Furthermore, it has been well-documented in many psychological research studies that social anxiety is directly correlates to an exaggerated desire to increase validation from others in order to decrease criticism. This means that the more the Faili Kurds people care about how others will react to what they do, the more likely they are to be socially discontented and uncomfortable.

These unfair treatment and backhanded communications makes the Faili Kurds feel as foreigners that they don’t belong in their own society, and that they are abnormal or that they are untrustworthy. The uncertainty of the racial microaggressions progression can have a tremendous psychological impact on minority people, including their job performance, their academic performance, their socialization abilities, their parenting capacity, etc.

In turn, this treatment will leave people from the minority to question what actually is happening to them, thus, the result will be confusion, anger, frustration, hatred, and an overall sapping of energy. For their existence, they have to be careful what to do, keep their low profile, observe how to behave in public, and watch where ever they go.

In short, the overall systems makes the Faili Kurds people feel as they like an odd part in society, not a member of the mainstream, not sure where they fit in the community. Caring too much about what the majority think of them, will stifles their ability to enjoy life and disrupts their social satisfaction.

When the Faili Kurds people start to mimic the values and the principles of the dominant culture, they will become a hypocritical piece of clay, molding themselves constantly to try to fit in everywhere, and in doing so, retaining no shape to call their own.

Dr. Ala Musa Hasan, a Canada-based Faili Kurd, PHD Candidates in Clinical Psychology.

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.