[lg policy] Minorities Trapped in Northern Iraq ’s Maelstrom

Sun Aug 16 16:51:21 UTC 2009

Minorities Trapped in Northern Iraq’s Maelstrom

By SAM DAGHER
KHAZNA, Iraq —

Kamal Ahmed woke up before the crack of dawn and went to the village
mosque where he serves as the muezzin. After calling the people to
prayer, he went back to sleep on the roof of his house in a metal post
bed covered with a mosquito net, a common practice in Iraq during the
sweltering summer months. Minutes later, a huge explosion brought down
half of the two-floor house. His side of the house remained
miraculously intact, but three members of his family, who were asleep
inside, were crushed to death. Two explosions, which obliterated a
large swath of this village of nearly 10,000 people near the northern
Iraqi city of Mosul on Monday, killed 34 people and wounded almost
200. The village is inhabited by Shiite Shabaks, a Kurdish-speaking
minority.

The attack and others like it — including the suicide bombing on
Thursday that killed 21 Yazidis in Sinjar, west of Mosul, and a truck
bomb in Shirakhan, just north of Mosul, on Aug. 7 that killed 37
Shiite Turkmen — have underscored how vulnerable minorities continue
to serve as fodder for a bigger battle under way in northern Iraq. The
struggle for land, resources and control along a northern strip that
has become known as the fault line is festering and threatening hopes
of unity among Iraq’s disparate ethnic and religious factions.

“We have three governments up here: the central government, the
Kurdish government and the Islamic State of Iraq government,” said an
Iraqi soldier from Khazna who spoke on the condition of anonymity for
fear of retribution. “We are lost in the middle.”  The central
government is trying to push back an expansionist Kurdistan regional
government; Sunni Arab leaders have old and new scores to settle with
Kurdish leaders; and insurgents linked to Saddam Hussein’s ousted
government and Al Qaeda want to foment conflict. All sides appear to
be retrenching, shunning compromise or buying time as the withdrawal
of American forces looms. Villages like Khazna and minorities like the
Shabaks who live on this fault line continue to pay the heaviest
price.

Maj. Gen. Robert L. Caslen Jr., commander of American forces in
northern Iraq, told reporters on Tuesday that the Sunni insurgent
group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia had now teamed up with another militant
group, the Islamic State of Iraq. He said the groups, which have
headquarters in northern Iraq, and Mosul in particular, had been
behind the attacks in Khazna and Shirakhan. General Caslen said that
despite being “aggressively” pursued by American forces, both groups
remained “a resilient force that has the capability to regenerate
their combat power as necessary.”

As the villagers of Khazna buried their dead and held funeral wakes,
they traded ideas on how best to secure the village. Some said the
provincial and central government should do so, while others wanted
the protection of the adjacent semiautonomous Kurdistan region. A few
said they should start their own village militia, similar to the
American-backed Awakening Councils. At the northern entrance of
Khazna, Thulfiqar Mohammed Jaafar, 20, stood guard carrying a battered
AK-47 rifle with a taped-together ammunition clip.

Mr. Jaafar said he lost 10 relatives in the attack. He is among a
clutch of men, some as young as 15, who are now guarding the village
along with the Iraqi police. In one home, only a single wall remained
standing, on which hung a talisman that Shabaks believe protects
babies from evil spirits. A cluster of six homes was reduced to rubble
with a green Shiite banner, the remnants of a cupboard and shredded
blankets.  At least 65 homes were leveled or severely damaged in the
two simultaneous truck explosions, villagers said.

“This is mass murder,” one muttered. Many angry residents claimed that
they had evidence that the attack was ordered by Kurdish leaders to
compel Shabaks in the Nineveh Plain, a strip of land sandwiched
between Mosul and Iraqi Kurdistan, to join the Kurdish region.
Although Kurdish troops have de facto control of the plain, the
ultimate fate of these resource-rich territories claimed by both the
Kurdish regional authorities and the central government remains in
limbo. Sheik Thanoun Wali recalled how two years ago a local Kurdish
official dismissed a written request that had been approved by Prime
Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to organize a tribal force of 500 men to
protect Shabak villages in the plain.

“He put the folder in his drawer and told me, ‘Let the prime minister
come and take it out and implement it,’ ” Sheik Wali said. “We are
helpless.”  Abdul-Wahed Abdullah, an official in the Kurdistan
Democratic Party, which dominates the area, distributed bags of flour,
rice and sugar to Khazna’s residents on Tuesday.  Mr. Abdullah said
that such a tribal militia would be a recipe for a civil war and that
he would stop its creation by force. He said he had already asked his
party’s leadership to send additional Kurdish forces to the area to
help protect places like Khazna. He said Shabaks were Kurds, not a
distinct ethnic group as most of them claimed.

He accused the Hadba coalition, led by Sunni Arabs who came to power
in Mosul after January’s provincial elections, of masterminding the
Khazna attack.
“They wanted to kill two birds with one stone: kill Shiites and have
Kurds blamed,” Mr. Abdullah said. The Kurds are boycotting the
Hadba-led government because it excluded the Kurdistan Democratic
Party from all senior posts in the new local administration, even
though the party won a third of the provincial council’s seats.

The standoff has become personal. On several occasions, Kurdish gunmen
have blocked the Arab governor from entering areas of the province
under their control. The governor, Atheel al-Nujaifi, said last week
that he could not protect communities like Khazna unless Kurdish
forces were evicted from Nineveh and replaced by government troops. In
an interview in Mosul on Wednesday, a senior Kurdish official
dismissed Mr. Nujaifi as “hysterical,” but said American diplomats
were trying to broker a solution to the local government crisis in
Mosul. It was American pressure that led to a meeting this month
between Mr. Maliki and Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan
region, to resolve the bigger standoff and acrimony.

All sides may be willing to meet and talk, but no one seems to be
interested in making a compromise, at least for now. The devastation
that befalls minorities like the Shabak is even used as leverage, said
Dildar Zebari, the deputy chairman of Nineveh’s provincial council.
“Everyone is using the blood of citizens for political pressure,” he
said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/world/middleeast/16khazna.html?hpw
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