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KIRKUK, Iraq, Jan
24 (IPS) - Iraq's two main Kurdish political parties
have put aside their differences for the Jan. 30
election. Like the Shias in the South, they have
organised a single, sectarian ticket that they hope
all Kurds will vote for.
Surprisingly, that list includes some prominent
members of the Ba'ath party of Saddam Hussein's
regime.
Ask any Kurd in Northern Iraq who they plan to vote
for Jan. 30 and they will give you the same answer
as peshmerga (Kurdish freedom fighter) Ali Karem
Mohammed who lives in a refugee shantytown on the
edge of Kirkuk in the Kurdish north of Iraq.
Like so many refugees around Kirkuk, Ali is a victim
of Saddam's brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing
against the Kurds. ”I am Kurdish,” he told IPS, as
he cocked the pistol in his left hand. ”Till I die
I'm Kurdish and I vote for Kurds.”
Like all election lists in Iraq, the identity of the
Kurdish candidates remains officially a secret for
security reasons. Unlike other election lists,
however, the contents of the Kurdish one became
known when it was obtained by the independent
Kurdish weekly Hawalti.
The list revealed that about a dozen Kurdish
candidates were former Ba'athists.
”These are people who helped Saddam in his campaign
against the Kurds,” says Zirak Abdullah, managing
editor of the newspaper's office in Arbil in
northern Iraq.
”Remember that 182,000 people were killed in the
campaign which was carried out by Saddam in the
1980s, including what happened in Hallabja (where
5,000 Kurdish civilians were gassed with chemical
weapons),” he said. ”These people -- they have the
blood of the Kurdish people on their hands.”
Among the former Ba'athists on the Kurdish election
slate are people who were once known as ”Rafiq Hizbi”
or the ”Comrades”. These were high-ranking members
of the Ba'ath Party. Mustashars, the heads of
Saddam's Kurdish paramilitary and mercenary groups,
are also on the Kurdish election slate, according to
Hawalti.
The newspaper published the names of some of them
along with the positions they held in the former
Ba'ath party.
On the list of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan,
which controls the area north and east of Kirkuk
along the Iranian frontier are Faiysal Karim Khan
Mahmum, a former Mustashar; Abdul-Bari Mohammed
Faris from Mosul, also a former Mustashar; and Faris
Younis Krido from Duhok, a former Ba'athist.
The list of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which
controls the cities Arbil, Zakho, and Dohuk, and the
areas along the Syrian and Turkish border, include
Namiq Raqib Mohammed Surchi who was the head of the
committee responsible for banning the Kurdish
language in the Kurdish city Mosul; Jawhar Muhedin
Jihangir from Mosul, who was head of Saddam's
mercenaries, and Omer Khizir Hamad from Arbil, a
Mustashar.
Many Kurds are taken aback by the inclusion of these
names, since they will be voting for the Kurdish
list to put Saddam's dictatorship behind them.
”You know Kurds are living in squalor,” said refugee
Zorab Hussein. He was forced to leave Kirkuk in
1974, when the first Kurdish revolt against the
Ba'ath collapsed. Now he lives on the outskirts of
Kirkuk in a squatters camp with no toilet
facilities. His eight-year-old son plays amid human
excrement.
”I don't have a door,” he says. ”I just have a
curtain to act like a door, so how can you allow a
Ba'athist to be on our list at election time? If you
were in my situation would you allow a Ba'athist to
be on my election list?”
Zirak Abdullah of Hawalti says he is not surprised
that Ba'athists have made it to the Kurdish slate.
In the 1990s, the two leading Kurdish factions --
the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan -- fought a civil war against one
another. Both sides desperate to rule the entire
Kurdish region called on former Ba'athists for help.
The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan called on Saddam's
local supporters, while the Kurdistan Democratic
Party invited the Iraqi Army to Arbil to break the
stalemate.
”The PDK and PUK are the most powerful parties in
Kurdistan,” Abdullah says. ”In the past there was a
conflict between them. And each one went to the
devil to deal with the other. So those former
Ba'athist people, they have killed thousands of
people, but because the two parties wanted to have
more followers they tried to work with their enemy
so their enemy wouldn't join the other side. Now
it's payback time.”
On election day, Kurds will have little choice but
to vote for these Ba'athists. All the Kurdish
candidates are running on the same list, the
Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan.
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