An exte­rior view shows a destroyed wall in the office of the Patri­otic Union of Kur­dis­tan in the town of Arbil, some 400 km north of Iraqi cap­i­tal Bagh­dad on Sun­day. REUTERS/Namir Noor-Eldin

Two sui­cide bombers attacked the offices of the Kur­dis­tan Demo­c­ra­tic Party and the Patri­otic Union of Kur­dis­tan in Arbil, the seat of the Iraqi Kur­dis­tan par­lia­ment, today, killing dozens and wound­ing more than 200.
Reports vary as to the num­ber of dead, with some reports putting the num­ber at 56, oth­ers 70 and still oth­ers at 100 or more. This is the worst bomb­ing since the August “attack on the shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000451.php#000451, which killed more than 100 peo­ple, includ­ing Aya­tol­lah Moham­mad Baqir al-Hakim, a key Shi’a cleric and then-head of SCIRI.
Among the dead are:

• Sami Abdul­rah­man, Deputy Prime Min­is­ter KRG, polit­bu­reau Sec­re­tary, KDP
• Shawkat Shekh Yezdin, Coor­di­na­tion Min­is­ter, KRG, Cen­tral Com­mit­tee Mem­ber, KDP
• Sa’d Abdulla, polit­bu­reau Mem­ber, Head of Branch 2, KDP
• Mehm­mod Halo, Deputy Finance Min­is­ter, KDP
• Akram Men­tik, Gov­er­nor of Arbil, KDP
• Mehdi Khosh­naw, Deputy Gov­er­nor of Arbil, KDP
• Ahmad Rojbeyani, Head of Admin­is­tra­tion of the City of Arbil, KDP
• Ner­i­man Abdul-Hamid, Head of Police in Arbil
• Shakhe­wan Abbas, Lead­er­ship Mem­ber, PUK
• Khasro Shera, Lead­er­ship Mem­ber, PUK

At a news con­fer­ence in Sofia, Iraqi For­eign Min­is­ter Hoshi­yar Zebari, a Kurd, blamed the attacks on the al Qaeda net­work or its allies.

Sami Abdul­rah­man, KDP deputy prime min­is­ter, in his offices in Arbil in July 2002. Christo­pher Allbrit­ton ® 2002“It was an attack by ter­ror­ists, al Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam,” he said. Sev­eral senior Kur­dish offi­cials have been tar­geted in assas­si­na­tion attempts in recent years, with the Kurds accus­ing Ansar as the cul­prit. Today’s attack has the hall­marks of Ansar, who killed Aus­tralian cam­era­man Paul Moran on March 22, 2003 at a road­side check­point near Suleimaniya. PUK Deputy Prime Min­is­ter Barhim Salih has also been nar­rowly escaped assas­si­na­tion.
Peter Gal­braith, a for­mer U.S. ambas­sador and expert on the Kurds, said the attacks would strengthen the hand of sep­a­ratist Kur­dish groups who want to break away from Iraq. He — and I — con­sider this a very bad idea. “It is too early to pre­dict the fall­out, but the bomb­ings will strengthen those in the Kur­dish move­ment who want to insu­late Kur­dis­tan phys­i­cally and polit­i­cally from the rest of Iraq,” Gal­braith said.
The attacks came on Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of the Sac­ri­fice, which is one of the holi­est and most joy­ful hol­i­days in the Islamic cal­en­dar. The sui­cide bombers appar­ently were able to get past secu­rity into the party head­quar­ters because of lax secu­rity on the hol­i­day.
On a per­sonal note, I knew Sami Abdul­ra­ham. I met him in July 2002, and was intensely impressed with him. He was a hero to many in the KDP for his unwa­ver­ing loy­alty to the Barzani clan — first to the founder of the KDP, Mustafa Barzani, and then to his son, Mas­soud Barzani. He treated me with grace and hos­pi­tal­ity, let­ting me have “drafts of the pro­posed con­sti­tu­tions for a Fed­eral Repub­lic of Iraq.”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000046.php#000046 He had writ­ten most of the drafts him­self, hope­ful even then for the future of his coun­try and his peo­ple. I still have my last inter­view with him on tape. I con­sid­ered him a friend.
Sev­eral mem­bers of Abdulrahman’s fam­ily were also killed, includ­ing a young mem­ber named Saleh, who was con­sid­ered a ris­ing star. A few fam­ily mem­bers have already been buried in Duhok in keep­ing with trad­tion.
To all the Kurds and other Iraqis who have felt this loss, my sym­pa­thies to you all.
On a more crit­i­cal note, what can be done to secure Iraq from this vio­lence? Yes­ter­day, 17 peo­ple, includ­ing three Amer­i­can GIs, died in three sep­a­rate attacks. A car bomb in Mosul, mor­tars in Bagh­dad and an road­side bomb in Kirkuk. The insur­gency or ter­ror­ists or what­ever you want to call these killers are not con­fined to the “Sunni Tri­an­gle” as the Bush admin­is­tra­tion keeps insist­ing. The num­ber of dead GIs for the month of Jan­u­ary alone is 41, mak­ing it the sec­ond dead­liest month of the occu­pa­tion since Pres­i­dent Bush declared Iraq a “Mis­sion Accom­plished” with the end of major com­bat oper­a­tions on May 1. Wasn’t the “cap­ture of Sad­dam Hussein”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000495.php#000495 sup­posed to end — or at least blunt — the attacks?
Some may con­sider that a cheap shot in light of today’s death toll, but a hard ques­tion remains: Why are sol­diers and civil­ians dying in num­bers greater than ever while the White House con­tin­ues to insist “we’re mak­ing progress” against these killers? Iraqi Kur­dis­tan is con­sid­ered the safest part of Iraq, patrolled by _peshmergas_ and build­ing on the bur­geon­ing civil soci­ety the Kurds built in the last decade. What coun­try can be con­sid­ered secure when the safest part is attacked like this?