The impossible situation of Iraqi Kakai

This week, the Iraqi journalist Mostafa Saadoon wonders about the fate of the Kakai minority in Iraq, whose religion is not recognized in the country.

Published in Khabaar on 7 June, 2017

"Nobody knows my Kakai identity, everybody thinks I'm Muslim. I wouldn't have wanted to disguise my identity if I didn't fear death", reveals Ahmad Rachid (not his real name) regarding fears about his religious identity being disclosed. On their identity papers showing their Iraqi civil status, neither Ahmad nor the other followers of the Kakai religion are identified as such. They are obliged to bear the title "Muslim", even though they are not.

The Iraqi Constitution does not recognise them as an existing religion in Iraq, even though it has allowed Islam, Christianity, Yazidism and the Sabean religion. So, their fears increase, day after day, with the gradual dissolution of their identity in the large communities. Rachid continues: "We suffer enormously, the laws are not fair towards us, not even the communities or clerics. Some accuse us of being infidels and say hateful things about us, classing us as non-Muslims and declaring that people must not buy from us or have any dealings with us".

The Kakai religion is a monotheistic but non-Muslim religion, although there is a split and divergence of opinion on this matter within the Kakai community. However, most of them indicate allegiance to a religion that is different from Islam. They have therefore been classed as "apostates", that is to say as people who have renounced the Muslim religion. A great many Kakai have been forced to declare they were Muslims in order to remove any suspicion that might lead extremists to kill them. For this reason, the Kakai, notably those living within Muslim communities, regularly practise all the outward Muslim rites.

Saad Salloum, a researcher in the minorities field, asserts that "the Kakai suffer discrimination. They are accused of being infidels, of worshipping a different god and of allowing incest and sexual deviancies. This is all due to the stereotypes that have been associated with them and that have led some people to regard them as apostates".

Alienation of identity

Daesh and extremist groups in the city of Kirkuk and in other regions they have occupied in the last fourteen years, have killed around 250 Kakai, having decreed them to be infidels. A document stemming from the Daesh rules of procedure states that all followers of this religion are heretics and must be punished, treating them as "apostates or infidels".
Villages inhabited by the Kakai people are regarded as easy prey for attacks by Islamic State (IS). There are ten of them in the Daquq district in the province of Kirkuk, near to other regions occupied by Daesh.

Saman Karim, a follower of the Kakai religion, lives in the province of Kirkuk. He tells of operations carried out by the Takfiri extremists of which they have been the victims: "We would often hear religious audio recordings and video fragments accusing followers of the Kakai religion of being heretics, or classing them as infidels".

Karim remembers the story of two of his close relatives, when Daesh occupied parts of the province of Kirkuk in 2014: "Witnesses told us they were abducted and dragged through the street by IS fighters who accused them of being infidels and of not observing the teachings of the Muslim religion".
Chayane is a 14 year old girl. Her father was killed when Daesh seized Mosul on 10th June 2014. Aged just 11 at the time, she saw with her own eyes the Daesh militants behead him, right in front of their house in the Al Wehda district.

"The scene of the massacre was dreadful. I was standing about ten metres away and people gathered around him to watch, that was the day IS entered the city. My mother, brothers and I were saved. Our neighbours protected us until we managed to flee to Erbil".

Even in Erbil, Chayane, her family and all the other Kakai people cannot reveal their religious identity. They are regarded by some as "foreigners" to Kurdish nationalism and consequently "traitors".
Raed Chawki (not his real name) lives in the province of Erbil in northern Iraq. He admits that "Nobody knows I'm Kakai". He would like to see the day when there is no problem about declaring his identity but, meanwhile, he remains "hidden behind a Muslim identity". Chawki has heard more than once that the government of Iraqi Kurdistan will force the Kakai to declare allegiance to Kurdish nationalism and that they will be deprived of their identity, which has increased his fears and made him think of emigrating.

The Kakai have a temple called a "gemkhana" which is like a church or mosque where they devote themselves to their faith and practise their religious ceremonies. They do not, in general, reveal the place where this is to be found, very often within residential areas and houses.

The dying out of the Kakai identity

Rajab Assi, a Kakai activist, expresses himself thus: "There are attempts made by certain Muslim parties to regard us as Muslims. But we follow our own religion. Their aim is to suppress and to put an end to the Kakai existence in Iraq".

According to Assi, the Kakai people receive no protection against the genocide to which they are subjected. He stresses the need "to adopt laws that protect us against what we suffer, to be recognised by the Iraqi Constitution and to make people aware of the fact that we are neither apostates nor infidels, but followers of a religion like any other".

Political, religious and nationalist parties have sought to assimilate the Kakai identity and thus subjugate this population, estimated to include 250,000 people. According to the activist, Assi, it is not just about having a stranglehold on a number of them, but "putting an end to the Kakai existence".
Some have succeeded in dividing the Kakai community, which is currently demonstrating visible disagreement between those who claim the Kakai belong to Islam and those who regard it as a separate religion in its own right.
There are also those who have become nationalists and have chanted pro-Kurdish slogans.

Absence of political representation

As the Iraqi Constitution did not recognise the Kakai religion, it contributed to the absence of its members from the political scene. In fact, the latter have no representative in the government or parliament, which does have representatives from amongst the Muslims, Christians, Kurds, Arabs, Sunnis, Shia, Yazidi, Sabean-Mandeans and Shabaks.
One Kakai activist, who does not wish to reveal their name, states: "The Kurdish democratic party and Shia parties suggested we join with them in exchange for a seat in the Kurdish parliament. We refused to do so because they do not want our representative, once in parliament, to say he is Kakai".

And yet in Iraqi Kurdistan, the law on minorities contains a clause that makes provision for granting the Kakai the right to have their representative in the Kurdish Ministry of Endowment and Religious Affairs in the regional government.
But up until now, this has not been applied, even though the law was passed about two years ago.
The researcher, Saad Salloum, who has published a number of books on the minorities in Iraq, stresses the necessity for "the Kakai to have the benefit of political representation and for the Iraqi Constitution to recognise them as well as all the other communities that are still not recognised".

Find the ten finalists of the Naseej competition in theWhat does the future hold for minorities in the Middle East?