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Arabs in Mosul, campaign slogan spells
'Kurds out'
29.1.2009 |
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January 29, 2009
Ninewa, Northwest Iraq,
— Athil al-Nujeifi,
a leading candidate in the largely Sunni Arab
province of Nineveh, has the simplest of campaign
slogans for Saturday's Iraqi provincial elections:
reverse the Kurdish takeover.
"The Kurds kept up tension to serve their own
interests. And I want to end it," asserts the leader
of the Hadba list which unites 15 parties and has
the backing of the main tribes in the region.
Nearly six years after the US invasion, Nineveh and
its capital Mosul is the continuing symbol of the
inability of US and Iraqi forces to halt the
activities of Al-Qaeda and other insurgent groups.
The persistence of violence is closely related to
the Kurdish question, or at least that it is the
view of Arab candidates aiming to succeed Duraid
Kashmula,www.ekurd.net
the outgoing governor
who is widely seen as a puppet of the Kurds.
"In 2003, the Americans entered Mosul followed by
the Kurds and these only had one aim -- to maintain
instability," said 51 year-old Nujeifi, who owns the
biggest stud-farm in Iraq with 400 thoroughbred
Arabian horses.
Asked to be more specific, he admitted: "What with
Al-Qaeda, the insurgents and the Kurds, one never
quite knows who is responsible" for the near daily
attacks in Mosul.
However, in the streets of Iraq's second city, among
its 1.9 million people, the "Kurdish question" is on
everyone's lips. "I have no confidence in the
pershmerga (Kurdish armed forces)," said an Iraqi
student who asked not to be named.
The Kurdish fighters "are not from around here. They
behave badly. They should be replaced by Iraqi
soldiers," he said.
In fact, the peshmerga keep a low profile.
But confusion arises from the fact that alongside
two Iraqi army brigades from Anbar and Baghdad,
"there is a brigade composed of Iraqi soldiers of
Kurdish origin who report to military command in
Baghdad," Governor Kashmula said.
The Sunnis of Nineveh, like those in other Iraqi
provinces, shot themselves in the foot when they
boycotted the last provincial elections in 2005.
The region lies next to Kurdish provinces and the
absence of Sunni votes enabled pro-Kurdish
candidates to seize 31 of the 41 seats on the
Nineveh regional council.
The Yazidis are primarily ethnic Kurds located
near Mosul. Some 350,000 Kurdish Yazidis live in villages
around Mosul near Kurdistan autonomous region
border.
Kashmula admitted: "These elections will certainly
be fairer than in 2005. The participation rate will
be greater, especially among Sunnis.
"I tried to keep a balance between the ethnicities
and faiths. No-one helped me," he insisted,
complaining that the central government was slow to
send extra troops to deal with the insurgency.
"I was asking for them from 2005. Reinforcements
arrived too late," he said.
It was during his term in office that Mosul plunged
into violence, especially when Al-Qaeda extremists
took refuge in the city after being chased out of
Baghdad and from Anbar province in western Iraq.
But Kashmula rejects the idea that the presence of
Kurdish soldiers in Mosul is fuelling the trouble
and believes violence will continue even after
Sunnis rejoin the council.
"Terrorism is not finished. There will still be
attacks. We have received bomb detection equipment
but not enough. There are altogether 1,000 to 1,500
insurgents in Mosul but the security forces are too
few to watch everything," he said.
In June, US troops will withdraw from the cities,
villages and other built-up areas in Nineveh like in
the rest of Iraq.
"Our security forces are not ready, but they will
still be able to call on the Americans for help,"
said Kashmula, who is looking forward to going home
-- to Arbil in Kurdistan.
Feelings against Kurds in Mosul echo an ongoing
confrontation between the central government of
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and Iraqi Kurdistan's
president,www.ekurd.net
Massoud Barzani.
This week, without actually naming names, they
branded each other as dictator and separatist.
Maliki wants a strong central state and has called
on the Kurds to respect the constitution while
Barzani aims to preserve his region's near-autonomy
and does not hide his territorial ambitions, notably
for a large chunk of Nineveh province.
Mosul, capital city of Ninewa province in Iraq, near
the border with Kurdistan region, lies 405 km north
of Baghdad. A Kurdish Yazidis are primarily ethnic
Kurds located near Mosul. Some 350,000 Yazidis live
in villages around Mosul near Kurdistan autonomous
region border.
Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution states that
there will be a referendum in the areas bordering
the Kurdistan autonomous region, including the
northern oil city of Kirkuk, so that people can
choose whether to be ruled by the central government
or the Kurds.
"We
hope that the land now lived
on by the Yazidis will join the Kurdish area,"
the community's leader, Amir Tahseen Beg, told the
Associated Press in 2007 from his residence in
Sheikhan. "This will depend on the referendum, but
our areas must return to the original motherland."
The Yazidis are a dominant group in the northwest
region, a historically oppressed people who speak
Kurdish and are ethnically Kurd but follow their own
religion. In fact, they are reputed to be devil
worshippers, not just by Iraqi Muslims but they’ve
been characterized that way by Western scholars over
the years.
On November 1, 2008, hundreds of Iraq’s Shabak
people took to the streets in Mosul-Ninewa calling
for
including them in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan
region, according to a local official.
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
AFP | Agencies
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