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Kurdish list says Ninewa to see serious escalation
if govt. fails to intervene
16.8.2009 |
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August
16, 2009
MOSUL, Northwest Iraq,—-
The Kurdish Fraternal Ninewa List in the provincial
council warned against a “serious escalation in the
level of violence in the province if the federal
government failed to show some action to bring an
end to increasing armed groups.”
“The areas where religious and ethnic minorities
live in Ninewa are facing a great threat as armed
organizations have mustered their strength while the
local administration in Ninewa was turning a blind
eye,” Mustafa Jameel al-Sinjari,www.ekurd.net
a
List member, told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.
“The armed groups are focused in the areas of
minorities in Ninewa like Shiites, Yazidis and
Christians. Matters will be heading toward a
dangerous juncture if the federal government does
not intervene to bring an end to the growing power
of the gunmen who are capitalizing on al-Hadbaa
List’s Baathist discourse,” Sinjari added.
Al-Hadbaa, which occupies 19 out of a total 37 seats
in the Ninewa provincial council, has grabbed top
administrative posts, which prompted the Fraternal
Ninewa List, which has 12 seats, to boycott the
council as of April 2009.
A delegation comprising Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister
Rafie al-Issawi and the ministers of defense,
national security and communications is currently
visiting the city of Erbil to meet Kurdish
officials.
Two days ago, the delegation was in Mosul to meet
with the local administration and discuss the
security, service and political situation in Ninewa
that has been witnessing an escalated wave of
violence and a decreasing level of services.
Mosul, capital city of Ninewa province in Iraq, near
the border with Kurdistan region, lies 405 km north
of Baghdad. The Yazidis are primarily ethnic Kurds
located near Mosul. A Kurdish Yazidis are primarily
ethnic Kurds located near Mosul. Some 350,000
Yazidis live in villages around Mosul near Kurdistan
autonomous region border.
Kurdish
Yazidis look to
Kurdistan region, the Kurdish Yazidis
are concentrated in key areas for the referendum,
including lands coveted by the Kurds north of Mosul
and around Sinjar on the Syrian border. The Kurds
see the referendum as a chance to right Saddam
Hussein's historic wrongs of forced population
transfer and Arabization.
"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,www.ekurd.net
but our areas must return to the original motherland."
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.
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,www.ekurd.net
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,
aswataliraq info | Agencies
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