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Murdered Kurdish academic Dr Sharif in
Kirkuk linked to Saddam Hussein
14.3.2008
By Michael Field
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A Kurdish man murdered in Kirkuk ciry, northern Iraq
who was carrying a New Zealand passport was an ally
of now executed dictator Saddam Hussein.
March 14, 2008
Abdul Al-Sattar Tahir Sharif al-Tadrissi, gunned
down last week in Kirkuk, was described by local
Kurdistan's police as a Kurdish academic carrying a
New Zealand passport.
Sharif was
shot dead by unknown gunmen
on March 5, on a road just north of Kirkuk, assistant
police chief Major General Torhan Yussef said.
He and the party he founded, the Kurdistan
Revolutionary Party (KRP), was a front for the then
ruling Ba'ath Party to give the impression that
Iraq's minority Kurds supported Hussein. |
Dr Abdul Sattar Taher Sharif, 74 |
Fairfax Media could not establish why Dr Sharif had
a New Zealand passport and under that name he left
no obvious trace in New Zealand and was unknown in
the small Iraqi community here.
The Department of Internal Affairs, which
administers citizenship and passports, was yesterday
checking its records and was not able to comment.
Agencies reported Dr Sharif, 74, was killed 10 days
after he wrote an article in the Kurdish-language
monthly Lizin criticising Kurdish leaders for not
pushing harder for the city's incorporation into the
autonomous Kurdish region.
At the time of his death he was a psychology
professor at Kirkuk University. Assistant police
chief Major General Torhan Yussef told Agence
France-Presse that Dr Sharif was shot dead by
unknown gunmen at midday on a road just north of
Kirkuk.
An Iraqi security source told a Kurdish website that
“a terrorist group shot … Dr Sharif in his car in
the main street of Rahem awa area,www.ekurd.net
Kirkuk Province when he
was heading to Erbil City”.
Kirkuk University assistant president Mohammed al-Naimi
described the murder as "a big loss to Iraq".
Extensive background reports offer no clue to why he
was holding a New Zealand passport.
In 1958 he joined the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)
led by Mustafa Barzani, father of Massoud Barzani,
the current president of Iraq's Kurdistan region.
In 1972,apparently resentful at Barzani, he broke
away and formed KRP, notionally wanting to turn the
Kurdish parts of Iraq into a socialist state. He was
secretary-general of the KRP.
He cooperated with Hussein's Ba'ath Party and in
turn in the 1970s was awarded posts as Minister of
Municipalities and later Minister of Transport.
A United Nations High Commission for Refugees report
says KRP was “set up by the (Hussein) regime to
create the impression of Kurdish opposition to the
(Kurdish) guerrilla organizations”.
The British Home Office report in 2001 said the KRP
"supports Baghdad (Hussein) and plays practically no
active role in the part of Northern Iraq, which is
under the control of the Kurdish parties".
It said Dr Sharif left Iraq somewhere around 1999
but on March 11, 2002, Dr Sharif bestowed an "Iraq
Kurdistan Sash" on Hussein, saying it was to honour
his role in consolidating bonds of unity with Iraq.
At the time Western nations had imposed no-fly zones
over northern and southern Iraq.
Dr Sharif hailed the Hussein regime for protecting
Kurds in Kurdistan 'northern Iraq' and said the
no-fly zone was “an Anglo-American conspiracy …
which constitutes an insult to the international
community”.
Hussein told the gathering that he was concerned
with the people of Kurdistan. A decade earlier, in
the Iraq-Iran War, Hussein had gassed thousands of
Kurds.
In a statement earlier this week the secretary
general of the rival Kurdish Islamic Union,www.ekurd.net
Salahuddin Mohamed
Bahaaddin, expressed “sadness and sorrow” at news of
the killing of Dr Sharif.
Kirkuk has been gripped by ethnic tension since the
US-led invasion of 2003, with Arab and Turkmen
residents fearful they would be marginalised if the
city were handed over to the Kurds.
Under Hussein the city was the scene of massive
population upheaval with tens of thousands of
Kurdish residents being expelled to make way for
Arab settlers.
The attack on Dr Sharif spotlighted ongoing assaults
on Iraqi academics and professionals since the
invasion.
At least 40 per cent of Iraqi academics fled the
country in the three years after the invasion,
according to the Brookings Institution, a
Washington-based think tank.
Copyright, respective author or news agency, stuff
co.nz | Fairfax Media
Some information for this report was provided by AFP
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